Studi Emigrazione – marzo 2003 – n.149

The quest for migration governability in Latin America

Migration policies in Latin America have followed similar stages in different countries. From the encouragement of massive immigration at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, through the restriction derived from the 1929 crisis and then the Second World War, to the selective promotion during the postwar period and the rela­tively open approach to intraregional and extraregional migration in the last decades, the generalised concern from Governments focused on how to manage the flows arriving in their respective countries, with an explicit disregard of those nationals who decided to live abroad.
The decade ofthe ’90s has dramatically changed the orientation of migration flows, exponentially increasing Latinamerican emigration and, therefore, altering the governmental and civil society perception of the phenomenon and the policies on the matter.
Changes in migration flows have in turn taken place within the context of a migration “governability crisis” in which the State unilat­era! answers are insufficient, giving rise to several bilatera! and multi­lateral agreements as alternatives towards concerted governability of the phenomenon.