Abstract: 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. Focusing on Brazil, but also looking at other contexts in the region, this presentation explores how colonial and postcolonial constructions of racial difference have historically shaped migratory and asylum policies, 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, and highlights the importance of understanding how race impacts (black) mobilities as more black migrants forcibly migrate to and through Latin America. I will first demonstrate histories of racialisations of migratory and asylum frameworks, and then analyse their impacts on current racialised politics of asylum and migration on mobility rights and on the access to international protection for black forced migrants in the region, using archival and secondary quantitative data, with qualitative analysis of Haitian and Sub-Saharan migrants’ forced mobility experiences to, and within, Latin America.

 

Bio: Dr Natalia Cintra is a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton. Her research focuses on migration, asylum, race and gender, particularly in Latin America. She has a PhD in Law from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil.