Disentangling complexity in migrants’ (Ir)Regularization Pathways in Latin America

Although Latin America has been internationally praised for its generous response to Venezuelan displacement, devising a wide range of regularization strategies (Selee & Bolter, 2020; Gandini & Selee, 2023), recent trends point to a shift toward the increased securitization of migration governance, the criminalization of migrants, the expansion of externalization practices across the region (Gandini et al., 2024; Álvarez Velasco, 2023). While the existing literature has documented these broad shifts in migration and refugee policy in the region over the past decade, less attention has been paid to how such transformations have impacted on migrants’ regularization pathways. This paper contributes to filling this gap by questioning how regularization processes unfold for people in terms of the form they take, their duration and whether they are consistent with the procedures outlined in the different countries’ legal frameworks.

Drawing on qualitative data from 143 interviews with Venezuelan migrants across eight Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Uruguay) and a systematic review of legal and policy frameworks, the paper presents a comparative analysis of migrants' documentation itineraries vis-à-vis regularization pathways in these destination countries and their implications for social inclusion. This multilevel assessment, ten years after the onset of Venezuelan mass displacement, contributes to the literature on (i)regularization and migration governance with an empirical analysis that captures individual itineraries of both recently arrived migrants and those that left the country at the beginning of the Venezuelan crisis. The analysis covers a set of countries that display different legal frameworks and a diversity of political-institutional responses to Venezuelan displacement over time.

We argue that regularization is not a singular legal outcome, but a dynamic, often non-linear process shaped by the proliferation of legal-administrative instruments and widespread documentation fragility. The findings point to a regional trend towards the complexification of documentation itineraries, resulting in the emergence or expansion of irregularity and the development of diverse regularization pathways. This complexification often involves the succession of temporary and permanent statuses, transitions between administrative and asylum regularization pathways, and periods of regularity interwoven with irregularity. This complexity contributes to greater legal stratification and increasingly hazardous and prolonged processes for securing permanent legal status.

The paper sheds light on the intersection between legal frameworks and individual trajectories, offering new perspectives on(i)regularity, rights access, and the governance of migration in Latin America.