Transformaciones económicas, migraciones y derechos de las personas migrantes en Latinoamérica: el caso de Chile, Argentina y Brasil

The aim of this doctoral tesis is to demonstrate that the economic transformations that have taken place in the context of capitalist expansion in Latin America and the deficient normative regulation of migration in some countries of the region, have caused important changes in the development of migratory flows, making it necessary to propose guidelines and directives that contribute to safeguarding and protecting the exercise of the rights of migrants. In fact, since the end of the 20th century, most Latin American countries have been inserted into the process of economic globalization, which has had a strong predominance of capitalist value. The foregoing, in a context of capital crisis that began in the mid-1970s and the search to configure alternatives to overcome it, highlighting among them the exploitation of the financial variant and the peripheral relocation of productive capital. Such restructuring has given rise to a new division of labor, marked by the mobility of the labor force in Latin America. That element allows us to explain (structurally) the development of migration in the region, a phenomenon that has intensified in the last twenty years, concentrating in South America through the so-called intra-regional migratory flows. The South American countries with the largest stock of migrants, however, have institutional designs and legal regulations that tend to put pressure on the respect and protection of the rights of migrants by favoring the establishment of control mechanisms and categorizations that fragment and problematize the possibilities of integration of the subjects that make up the phenomenon. Given this scenario, the general objective of the thesis is to propose guidelines and directives that contribute to safeguarding and protecting the exercise of the rights of migrants in Latin America. The foregoing, based on a critical analysis of the economic transformations that have taken place by virtue of capitalist expansion in the region, their influence on the development of migrations and the legal regulation that they receive in Chile, Argentina and Brazil, countries that in recent years have experienced important changes in their socioeconomic structure and in the flow of migrants. To comply with the above, the thesis is structured in four parts, which seek to answer three questions from which the scientific problem is articulated: Is there any correspondence between the development of migrations and the exercise of structural conditions marked by the expansion of capitalism? Is the normative and institutional regulation that Latin American countries with a high flow of migrants make of the phenomenon, are they tensional with the exercise of the rights of the subjects that comprise it? What guidelines and directives can be formulated in order to contribute to safeguarding the rights of migrants? Thereby, in the first part I identify the behavior and trends of migration during the last twenty years in Latin America, in addition to analyzing the historical relationship between migration and capitalism. The foregoing, to show the way in which the displacement of people has responded to the requirements of capitalism in each of its phases of accumulation. In the second part, I critically review the main socioeconomic transformations and the characteristics of migration in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil from the end of the 20th century to the present. In the third part I analyze the legal regulation of migration in Chile, Argentina and Brazil, highlighting its weaknesses and insufficiencies in relation to respect and protection of the rights of migrants. In the fourth part, I propose guidelines and directives that contribute to safeguarding the rights of migrant subjects. The foregoing, projected in at least three ways, that is, the rethinking the socioeconomic structural conditions in which the analyzed migrations unfold, in addition to a theoretical dimension about the integration of migrants through the rights and the development of elements on which the contents of migration policies. Consequently, the present work contemplates a critical analysis that does not focus on the strictly legal-regulatory, but rather broadens its approach towards the consideration of the socioeconomic structural conditions that since the end of the 20th century have been decisive in the development of migrations.