Friday, September 28th, 2018 Building Migration Regimes: The Case of Latin America

Description

Since the end of authoritarian regimes in the late 80s, migration and refugee law took a new and more liberal direction in all different countries of Latin America. The new Immigration Politics consolidated in the last two decades explain in part the growing number of migrants and refugees to the region. How different Latin America is from nationalistic and restrictive countries on display in other parts of the world? The Global South, contrary to mainstream migration studies, is the region that receives more migrants in the world and urges us to reorient our debate and understanding on how the south hemisphere in general can cope with the challenges of massive migration flows and how the Americas in particular can work together on sharing the burden of migration crisis in the region. To answer these questions the presentation will take two major receiving countries in the region, Brazil and Argentina, and will explain how these liberal policies were implemented under their leadership and how resilient they can be in face of new conservative governments in power in the last few years. Are supranational institutions and liberal refugee and migration regimes strong enough to face these challenges? How effective are national and supra national courts in balancing anti migrants social and political movements in the region? Is the freedom of residence and work agreements for nationals in the region under attack? How Venezuela can be a parameter to test the resilience of our region in preserving our liberal tradition in migration and refugee politics.

Charles P. Gomes is senior researcher at Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa and director of the CEPRI, a pro bono legal clinic for Refugees and Migrants in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He has a PhD in Political Science (2001) from the former IUPERJ (University of Rio de Janeiro Research Institute) current IESP. During his doctorate, he was a visiting researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris, France. He was a visiting professor at the Université Paris I in the years 2006 and 2007 and the Center for Forced Migration Studies at North Western University in Chicago in the year of 2012. His studies focus on constitutional and supranational courts, international law, immigration and refugee policies. He is now leading a comparative study in Immigration policies and politics in major countries of Latin America. He has several books, articles and reports on the topic of Refuge and International Migration.