Project overview
Latin America concentrates one of the largest global numbers of African descendants. However, this is not reflected on the region’s reception of black forced migrants, who have persistently encountered barriers to protection. This project, which is funded by the British Academy, proposes to explore how colonial and postcolonial constructions of racial difference have historically shaped migratory and asylum policies in Brazil, Mexico, and Chile, and their continuing legacy today in South-South corridors of migration. This focus thus breaks new ground in the emerging literature on the race-migration nexus which focuses mainly on South-North mobilities. The project investigates the histories of racialisations of migratory and asylum frameworks, and the impacts of a racialised politics of asylum and migration on mobility rights and on the access to international protection for black forced migrants in the region. To do so, it combines archival analysis with qualitative analysis of Haitian and Sub-Saharan migrants’ forced mobility experiences to, and within, Latin America.
