Seventeenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

In April 2018, Chilean Presidentt Sebastian Piñera announced his intention to make immigration “regulated, orderly, and safe,” a slogan that has continued under current President Gabriel Boric. Despite language that promised to protect immigrants and secure their well-being, Chilean policies have resulted in the opposite. A telling example took place in February 2022, when Piñera declared a state of emergency in Chile’s four northernmost departments, authorizing the armed forces to police the border and enabling authorities to transport migrants back to the border without due process. Migrants that Chile sent to its border with Bolivia got stuck there when Bolivian officials would not let them enter. This paper explains how and why the Piñera and Boric administrations adopted a “regulated, orderly and safe” immigration policy that generated unregulated, disorderly, and dangerous realities. Drawing on constructivist and critical theories in geography, political science, and sociology, it pursues this inquiry by focusing on Chile’s borders with Peru and Bolivia, and by centering on Venezuelan migrants who crossed those borders into Chile. In explaining Chile’s border policy, the paper accounts for local geographies and conditions, national identities and strategies, regional boundary disputes, and international organizations.