Latin America: Understanding the Anti-Immigrant Turn in the Region

Over the past two decades, Latin America has undergone a profound transformation in its migratory dynamics. Transitioning from a region primarily characterised by emigration — particularly towards the United States and Europe — the territory has increasingly become a major destination and transit space for intraregional mobility. In 2020, more than 43 million people from Latin America and the Caribbean lived outside their countries of origin, reflecting a marked increase in mobility patterns and cross-border displacement across the region (Cecchini and Martínez Pizarro, 2023). Estimates of the number of international migrants in the region indicate that this cohort doubled over the last three decades, rising from 7.14 million in 1990 to 14.8 million in 2020, and reaching 16.3 million in 2022.

A determining factor has been Venezuelan migration, widely categorised as the largest in the region's recent history. Since 2015, over 8 million Venezuelans have left their country, with the vast majority (85%) settling in Latin American nations such as Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico. 

In response to growing migratory flows, several Latin American countries initially adopted quite open migration policies, many of which were based on new legislation enacted between 2000 and 2017. Legislation on migration enacted in Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Uruguay, and Mexico marked a trend towards a human-rights-based approach to migration governance during this period. Furthermore, large-scale regularisation programmes were introduced alongside regional agreements — such as the right to mobility and employment under the Mercosur Residence Agreement or the Andean Community Residence Agreement —, and temporary residence permits to facilitate migrants' legal status and their access to social services and labour markets.

Nevertheless, in recent years, following g global trends, migration governance in Latin America has shifted towards more restrictive policies, characterised by stricter border controls, new visa requirements, and more selective regularisation mechanisms. State responses in Latin America have not been homogeneous, and both regularisation and social protection policies have varied considerably from one country to another. 
This turn has occurred against a backdrop of increasing migratory flows, domestic political pressures, and public debates regarding the alleged correlation between migration and the security challenges confronting the region. 

From 2025 onward, the anti-immigrant agenda led by President Donald Trump has radicalized border control, deterrence, deportation, and the criminalization of migrants. Through bilateral and regional cooperation mechanisms, the United States has expanded the externalization of border enforcement across the Americas, even outsourcing asylum policies through agreements with specific countries. These externalization strategies are echoed by the European Union’s recent approval of the "return regulation," which allows member states to establish deportation centers outside the bloc through pacts with non-EU nations. This global paradigm of externalization deeply affects the Euro-Mediterranean region and Oceania,and is increasingly being deployed across Latin America.

This new context of radicalized anti-immigrant policies destabilizes a policymaking process that, despite implementation challenges, constitutes a significant framework for guaranteeing the rights of migrant and refugee populations. The consequences of this shift point in at least two directions. On the one hand, while many restrictive measures have been enacted through presidential decrees, the region may enter a phase of legislative reforms aimed at replacing this human rights approach with a more security-oriented framework, signaling a more definitive transformation. On the other hand, there is already a widespread legitimization of this anti-immigration narrative in both society and political discourse. While the use of xenophobic narratives by South American politicians is not unprecedented across the political spectrum, it has assumed greater centrality in several recent presidential elections, such as those in Chile in December 2025 and Peru in 2026. Interestingly, this trend does not strictly adhere to a right-left ideological division; rather, both political stances utilize xenophobic discourse with fewer institutional or social barriers. 

In this context, migration studies must address several critical imperatives. First, researchers need to analyze these authoritarian shifts beyond the immediate post-2025 conjuncture, considering the broader spectrum of changes that have unfolded in the region over the past two decades to understand the particularities of institutional capacity building in different Latin American states. Second, it is crucial to examine how border closures in the Global North redirect migration flows toward new destinations within and outside Latin America, how these changing migration dynamics operate, and how concepts of settlement and movement are being transformed. Third, it is imperative to deepen our knowledge regarding the economic, social, familial, and subjective consequences of deportation and detention on migrants' lives. Finally, scholars must articulate reflections on this anti-migrant shift within a broader agenda focused on the state of democracy.