28 July2020
Italy
Dr. Leiza Brumat, an international relations analyst who is currently Research Fellow in the MIGPROSP project at Migration Policy Centre, RSCAS, EUI, discussed the political responses to COVID-19 and their effects on mobility in South America during the virtual panel discussion on the topic ‘Migration Management during COVID-19: Practices from Latin America, Africa and Asia’, conducted by the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism [GRFDT] on 28 July2020.
Dr. Brumat began by stating that South America is “a regionof inter-regional migration” unlike Mexico and Central America. The regional dynamics gave rise to various interdependencies within South America and many regional organizations have emerged to eliminate the shared problems.
Social Unrest Prior to the Pandemic
Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 there was massive social unrest in many South American countries which started in Chile and soon spread to other parts of the continent. Venezuela has been experiencing a multi-dimensional crisis of largest forced migration in the history of South America, affecting the economy, politics and society. More than 95 percent of these Venezuelan migrants are moving to other South American countries. In addition to this, countries like Argentina and Brazil have been experiencing an economic crisis prior to the pandemic. All these factors contributed to the latest trend of forced migration in South America. Meanwhile, the continent was also dealing with other epidemics like dengue fever or measles in Venezuela.
“The COVID pandemic hit South America at a very bad moment and it will likely make all these problems worse, and it has limited the options of the governments of these countries to deal with such a deep crisis”: Dr. Leiza Brumat.
Pandemic Response Strategies
The factors mentioned above have contributed immensely to the response strategies that South American countries chose to adopt.Dr. Brumat highlighted the crisis response at three levels: regional level, national level, sub-regional and local levels.
Regional Level
There has been a limited but coordinated response to COVID-19.Dr Brumat pointed out that the urban spaces that belong to two countries have had their borders closed outside the cities and not along the national border.She further asserts that the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which was abandoned by most of its members in the past years, would have been useful at this time as it had developed a lot of regional policies in the area of health.The failure of UNASUR exemplifies what Dr. Brumat calls “fragmented multilateralism”. Now the existing cooperation mechanisms arealladhoc,which focuses on general policies based on cooperation with no binding agreements.
National Level
There has been diversity in the political response and monitoring of the virus in South America.The responses have been based on the economic statuses of the countries, with Uruguay currently having the best response system in placeby“adopted asociety-oriented approach”.Countries like Brazil, in contrast, is “privileging the economy”, while some states such as Bolivia,Ecuador,Peru and Chile have militarized immobility with soldiers patrolling streets and borders to deal with those violating the lockdown guidelines. This has been criticized as abuse of citizen’s rights in the name of enforcing lockdowns.
Sub-regional and Local Levels
The responses adopted at this level were enormous and were often contradictory with national level setups. For instance, intra-state lockdowns were imposedand this has led to citizens getting stuck within their own countries due to restriction of movement from one province to another. Chile and Columbia, on the other hand, had adoptedmunicipality-based lockdowns. Thus,a wide variety of COVID-19 responses can be found at sub-regional and local levels.
Dr. Leiza Brumat highlighted that “mobility is a basic necessity for subsistence in South America” and the pandemic has impacted the patterns of mobility, with an increase in return migration, especially to Venezuela, and rise in urban to rural migration. NGOs are playing an important role in organizing regional responses to COVID-19 and promoting “Stay in your neighborhood” policies to ensure that lockdown mechanisms are followed.
She concluded her presentation by asserting that the responses to COVID-19 in South America have been based on mutual cooperation amongst states, which were drawn from the long legacy of intra-regional migration that binds these countries. While restrictions to mobility have been imposed, total immobility is not an option for South America.
Inomusa Ndlovu, a Zimbabwean, creative writer, feminist and a student of M.A in Political Science at the University of Lucknow, India. She can be reached on twitter @InomusaCN.