Immigration, policies, and socioracial hierarchies: The Latin American experience

This chapter discusses socioracial hierarchies and sociopolitical reactions to specific groups of migrants and refugees in Latin America. It argues that socioracial hierarchies are fluid and context-dependent, working by ranking individuals and groups based on their perceived physical and socioeconomic characteristics. First, the chapter examines the broader system of socioracial relations in Latin America in which ethno-racial groups occupy different political, economic, and cultural power ranks. It then theorizes that the role of socio-racial discrimination as a conditioning factor for the reception of forcibly displaced populations in the context of immigration and refugee policies in the region is a product of both racialization and the process of class-based categorization. In conclusion, the chapter uses Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory to examine the paradoxical liberalization of immigration and refugee policies in the region and the cases of so-called extracontinental immigration of Haitians and Africans to Argentina and Brazil and of Venezuelan displacement to Peru.