Economic and mobility repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Chile–Bolivia border

Abstract

This article analyzes how the pandemic caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) has impacted international migration. In particular, we compare the mobility and economic repercussions faced by Bolivian and Venezuelan migrants. We conducted 16 semi-structured interviews with migrants who requested legal and social support and advice provided by the Open Assembly of Migrants and Pro-Migrants of Tarapacá, Chile (AMPRO), an organisation dedicated to defending migrant rights. The Bolivian interviewees worked in Chile before the pandemic in the city of Iquique (close to the Bolivian border). The Venezuelan interviewees are undocumented people in transit who entered Chile during the pandemic. Through this comparison, we describe the economic repercussions on the everyday life, mobility, and survival strategies of people in transit, transboundary workers, and migrants with transnational families, and reveal a realignment of Chile’s border regime that benefits post-pandemic capitalism. Furthermore, we clarify how the health restrictions implemented due to the pandemic have favoured the reconfiguration of the border regime imposed in Chile, through a racist immigration policy based on the control and management of migration, leading to a greater irregularization of migration.

Introduction

For the general population, 2020 was a challenging year due to the pandemic’s multiple impacts on their lives, which have included restrictions on transnational mobility and within cities of residence, along with a global economic crisis that has increased poverty and dependence on informal work (ECLAC, 2020). The pandemic has produced one of the greatest global economic crises ever known, comparable to that of 2008 and the Great Depression of 1929 (Foladori and Delgado, 2020). This situation has become even worse and more profound for the migrant population (Blanco and Cuervo, 2021) because of the consolidation of migratory policies influenced by the global migratory regime, given the international approach in the control and management of migration (Mezzadra, 2005; Pécoud, 2018).

In Chile, in particular, 2020 will be remembered as the year the Congress debated and voted for the new Law of Migration, without the participation of the people it concerns (Liberona et al., 2022a, 2022b). At the beginning of the pandemic, President Piñera requested extreme urgency for a parliamentary discussion on the migration bill that he had presented at the beginning of his mandate in 2018. Thus, the parliamentary vote for the bill took place amid a state of exception ¹ and was implemented by a decree in response to the pandemic. Moreover, the parliamentary debate was dominated by a government executive, and a repetitive and misleading discourse that constantly alluded to the need for ‘orderly, safe, and regular’ migration, but in truth, was being used only to criminalise any form of irregular migration (Dufraix et al., 2020; Pécoud, 2018; Piñones-Rivera et al., 2022).

The year 2021 commenced with the country’s borderlands stained by the deaths of mostly Venezuelan nationals. Between November 2020 and November 2021, 19 people died, including a 9-month-old baby, as they attempted to enter Chile from Bolivia along the border near the village of Colchane in the Chilean highlands. In this settlement, a 4-h drive from Iquique (the capital of the Tarapacá region in northern Chile), Venezuelan migrants, identified as the second-largest group worldwide in terms of forced displacement after Syria (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – International Organisation for Migration (UNHCR-IOM), 2021), experienced horrific state neglect and social rejection (Mayorga, 2021). Thus, these borderlands were overwhelmed by a huge migratory flow, consisting of families with children of different ages and older adults. Moreover, the health of many people was seriously affected by the extreme climatic conditions of the Andean highlands, as well as the long journey, often by foot, which they had endured across the continent (Liberona et al., 2022b).

In this article, we present the economic and mobility repercussions experienced by two groups of migrants in the context of the pandemic, addressing two different types of mobility. The first is the Bolivian group which has been subject to a long-standing phenomenon of cross-border migration, and who enter and leave the country in search of work and have strong transnational networks in Chile; the second is the Venezuelan group who, instead, enter Chile after being forcibly displaced by a complex humanitarian emergency, ² and with the hope of becoming long-term migrants. Our research question is as follows: How do these particularities produce differences and similarities in the economic and mobility repercussions? Our goal is to compare the experiences of both groups and show their differences and similarities, according to each group’s specific characteristics and determinations and their relationship with Tarapacá’s territory. Considering that Iquique is a border city and is affected by international border flows in multidimensional aspects (economic, demographic, cultural, etc.) (Fondecyt Project 1210602), we are interested in understanding the importance of the territorial and political context, as well as how both economic and mobility repercussions are defined. Importantly, Tarapacá is a region characterised by social, cultural, economic, and demographic exchanges with neighbouring countries (Guizardi et al., 2015). Moreover, in recent years, the region has witnessed significant migration from other South American and Caribbean countries (INE-DEM, 2021).

Although people from both nationalities entered Chile before and after the pandemic, we focused our analysis on the Bolivian migrant population present in Iquique up to 2020, and the Venezuelan population that entered during the pandemic. This is because we wanted to observe the application of migratory and border policies that have been differentiated towards certain groups, following Heyman’s (2012) approach to unequal mobility. This proposal is based on recognising the border as a valve that allows mobility flows to be controlled to establish a subtle balance and thus produce an enormous unauthorised migrant labour force. This approach allowed us to observe differentiated border policies for both groups and their consequences. Based on the inter-actionist approach proposed by Fredrik Barth ([1976] 1969: 18), who states that ‘stable inter-ethnic relationships presuppose a similar structure of interaction’, we believe, on the hand, that there is a type of historical inter-ethnic relationship with neighbouring countries, especially regarding the Bolivian migrant population of indigenous origin, which has influenced the pandemic’s role in restructuring capitalist exploitation.

On the other hand, we consider that Chilean immigration policies, under the influence of migratory governance in South America (Domenech, 2017) have focused on controlling Venezuelan migration because of the huge numbers of people involved, taking advantage of the context of sanitary border closures to push the vast majority of this population into a condition of illegality. Both realities highlight how capitalism relies on such restrictions on mobility caused by the pandemic to exploit migrant labour. Thus, this study enhances our knowledge on how capitalism profits by sophisticating the global regime for migration control in South America in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Border regimes and the pandemic

If the borders, as defined by Heyman (2011), represent a system of differentiated flows, and the approach to these flows is what differentiates them at the time of people crossing borders, the pandemic, and the consequent border closures for health reasons, simply intensified the differentiation of such flows. This has also led to a change in cross-border mobility practices, which can be observed in a comparative analysis as unequal. Heyman states that there is a differentiated form of mobility across borders based on ‘a complex series of social, cultural and economic inequalities’ (Heyman, 2011: 82). This refers to a movement in space that can be considered a form of unequal mobility displayed within contemporary capitalism, the main characteristic of which is the segregation of the poor, from whom economic participation is demanded but who are socially excluded (Heyman, 2012). This is the case for South American and Caribbean migrant populations in Chile, who have been racialised by policies enacted for immigration control (Tijoux and Mandiola, 2014). However, parallelly, they are viewed as useful for the system’s reproduction; the more precarious their lives, the more they can be exploited, which is achieved by forcing them into a condition of irregularization (De Genova, 2002).

This case study forms part of the discussion regarding border regimes (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013) in Latin America, in which migratory dynamics and their control, since 2015, have experienced the so-called punitive turn (Domenech, 2017) with the consolidation of neoliberal policies (Velasco et al., 2021). Following Llavaneras (2022), border regimes refer to the various actors and interactions through which borders operate, with human (in)mobilities being an integral part of these regulatory systems of inclusion and exclusion that determine what and who cross the borders of nation-states, and under what conditions. This concept was extensively discussed in a collective work whose Anglo-Saxon authors propose a ‘radically constructivist approach to border studies’: ‘By speaking of a ‘border regime’ we signal an epistemological, conceptual and methodological shift in the way we think, conceive and research borders’ (Casas-Cortés et al., 2015: 28). The study of border regimes incorporates the agency of migrants as a constitutive element of their configuration, as their practices and bodies are at the centre of conflict and negotiation.

The intensifying state violence towards migrants takes place within the context of important changes in migratory patterns. The agency of migrants in these changes is seen in the consolidation of corridors from the Andean−Central America−Mexico region and the formation of the Andean−Southern Cone corridor (Velasco et al., 2021: 22); these trends adapt to the creation of a ‘global regime for the control of migration’, characterised by ‘the emergence of new ways of thinking and acting on migrations, such as migration management’, the purpose of which is the regulation of international migrations within a neoliberal global framework. These policies have focused on preventing, eliminating, and regulating ‘migratory pressures’. One of the culminating moments of this global regime is the Global Compact for Migration (2018), which sets out that migration should be ‘safe, orderly, and regular’. Domenech (2017: 24) states that ‘the idea of’ orderly migration ‘constitutes one of its fundamental components and, consequently, establishes “illegal” or “irregular” migration as a worldwide problem that entails multiple risks, making its “prevention” and “combat” the focus of a specific intervention strategy’.

In a highly developed capitalistic context (Foladori and Delgado, 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the capital−work relationship irreversibly. In this case, we see how the conditions of confinement, along with the restriction and control of cross-border mobility, favour the exploitation and the precariousness of migrant labour due to the massive irregularization and consequent deportability they are subjected to, caused by collective expulsions (De Genova, 2002). Furthermore, this is implemented by incorporating elements of global trends absent in other countries of the region, such as the privatisation of deportations and the adoption of humanitarianism to manage forced migration (Casas-Cortés et al., 2015). Despite this, there are similar forms of control in other Latin American countries, as in the case of Mexico’s border with the United States, as studied by Castro (2021), with the sanitised management of migrations, a process that adds another marker of difference to the migrant, as a carrier of the virus, thus becoming part of the pathogenic element themselves.

In the following section, we present the working methodology and collaborative ethnography on which this study was based. We then address the mobility of the Bolivian and Venezuelan migrants interviewed, who have experienced restrictions and challenges caused by the sanitary and political closure of the border. Furthermore, we present details of the economic repercussions that the COVID-19 crisis has generated in the everyday life, mobility, and survival strategies of the two groups of migrants mentioned above. Finally, we analyse how these restrictions impacted the reconfiguration of the border regime that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic, while simultaneously favouring capitalist restructuring.

Methodology

This investigation has resulted from 6 years of monitoring and collaboration with the organisation Open Assembly of Migrants and Pro-Migrants of Tarapacá, Chile (AMPRO), which is dedicated to defending migrant rights (Piñones-Rivera et al., 2023). Our collaborative efforts included producing documents, studies, and communications, thereby contributing to AMPRO’s work. We emphasise that this participation has not made us the protagonists of AMPRO’s work, but simply some among the organisation’s collaborators. In addition, particularly for this investigation, we conducted 16 semi-structured interviews with migrants who requested legal and social support and advice provided by AMPRO in their office in Iquique and during the organisation’s field trips. All the interviewees were adults whom we subsequently consulted regarding their interest in participating in the investigation. They included three Venezuelan women who recently arrived in Chile and were homeless; a Venezuelan woman who had just entered the labour market; and three Venezuelan men, one who had recently arrived in Chile and was unemployed, while the other two had been in the country for a while and had a more stable level of labour and social integration. The Bolivian nationals were four women and four men with different degrees of social and labour participation, but they had worked in Iquique for several years.

We reviewed reports in the Chilean press between March 2020 and August 2021, categorising the news based on issues related to our objectives. This was how we selected news articles about the pandemic, borders, and migrations. The information collated contextualised the investigation and provided references for some of the events described in this article.

1. Mobility repercussions of the pandemic on two groups of migrants in Tarapacá.

Between 2017 and 2018, there was a significant increase in Venezuelan migration to Chile, which became the largest immigrant group in the country, representing 23% of all migrants (Stefoni et al., 2019). Until 2019, Venezuelans in Chile stood out as one of the migrant groups with the highest levels of qualifications and best workforce participation, although this did not necessarily translate into better jobs due to the difficulties in obtaining recognition for their qualifications. After the first few migratory waves, other Venezuelans began to arrive, for family reunification and seeking asylum in many cases. In fact, in 2018, the largest number of asylum applications globally was made by Venezuelans (Servicio Jesuita a Migrantes (SJM), 2020). By 2019, the Venezuelan diaspora was firmly consolidated in Chile as the largest immigrant group, representing 30.5% of all resident migrants (INE-DEM, 2021), while in the Tarapacá region in 2020, it represented 6.6% of the total migrants (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas (INE), 2021). In the same year, 16,748 asylum applications were made at the Chilean border by Venezuelan nationals (SJM, 2020). According to some surveys, this population still has a good level of workforce participation because of their high levels of qualifications and professional skills, although they are mostly included in the informal job market (Centro Nacional de Estudios Migratorios – United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (CENEM-UNHCR), 2021). In 2021, in the northern zone of Chile, almost 50% of this group was undocumented, while 68.5% indicated having entered the country through unauthorised border crossings (CENEM-UNHCR, 2021).

Furthermore, at the beginning of the pandemic, the presence of a significant Bolivian migrant population in the country was evident, with people affected by the border closure. This prevented Bolivians from returning to their country, leaving many in conditions of extreme vulnerability, first in the country’s centre, then in the city of Iquique, and finally at the border. The cross-border migration of Bolivians in the Tarapacá region has a long history (Tapia, 2015), in addition to being an important practice in communities of indigenous origin, particularly the Aymara (Tapia, 2018). This means that the place of such people had already become pre-established in the social, racial, and sexual organisation of work, taking up the most lowly appreciated and precarious jobs, such as domestic, agricultural, and construction work (Fernández, 2015; Leiva and Ross, 2016; Stefoni et al., 2017; Tapia, 2015). However, the 21st century witnessed a significant increase in the number of traders, truck drivers, and service workers (Tapia and Chacón, 2016). In 2020, the Bolivian diaspora was the main group of foreign nationals in Tarapacá, representing 45.7% of the total migrants (INE-DEM, 2021). The historical presence of Bolivians in the region has created a consolidated social fabric, expressed through social and family networks (Guizardi and Garcés, 2013) that have maintained profound and extensive transnational links, aided by circular migration (Leiva and Ross, 2016). Therefore, the entry of Bolivian migrants into Chile since the onset of the pandemic has not been considered newsworthy. However, support networks have played an essential role in the reception of this population.

The sanitary closure of the border has had wide-ranging repercussions on the mobility of these two migrant groups, although this does not mean that there has been no mobility. In this case, we can observe an increase in the number of people entering via non-authorised border crossings, accompanied by a rise in migrant smuggling and collective expulsions (Liberona et al., 2022b). This is the first element of the reconfiguration of the border regime.

According to the analysis carried out by Mayorga (2021), the sanitary closure of the borders responds to the historical role played by the state to protect public health by limiting international mobility. He thus concludes that these limitations established by states in any country in the world must be based on strict epidemiological criteria; otherwise, they can affect the fundamental rights of people who migrate, which has happened when other questionable reasons are considered. In the case of Chile, Mayorga analysed the link between immigration control and public health, which began with the suspension of the free movement of people within the framework of the state of exception of catastrophe, a decree issued in March 2020. According to the author, international experience has shown that when technical concepts of medical science are applied to restrict human mobility, they tend to merge with other kinds of arguments, such as those pertaining to ‘public morality’, or ‘national security’. This is precisely what has happened in Chile, where restrictive migratory policies have been justified:

The response of the State has been to militarise the border with Peru and Bolivia, authorising the Armed Forces to support the control of the illegal traffic of migrants and human trafficking [. . .] but while this has been going on, Santiago’s International Airport has resumed operations to reactivate international tourism. (Mayorga, 2021: 218)

In other words, to protect the health of the national population, a sanitised management of migrations is carried out (Castro, 2021), associating migrants with the pathogenic element and with transnational crimes that must be combated.

With this introduction, we wish to comment on the repercussions experienced by Bolivian and Venezuelan migrants in terms of their mobility, caused by the changes in migration policies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This allows us to explain how these changes in the border regime have intensified unequal mobility (with reference to Heyman) between the two groups studied.

Repercussions on the mobility of Bolivian nationals

Border closure has brought repercussions for the Bolivian group in two ways: first, in the impossibility of exercising their lives as cross-border workers, given the obstruction to the migratory circularity system based on the possibility of tourist visas (Tapia and Chacón, 2016), and the regular practice of entering and leaving Chile every 90 days. Second, it has affected transnational families who have not been able to be physically together since the beginning of the pandemic:

I had travel plans, but it was no longer possible. Because I had to leave before my visa period ended again. So I just had to stay here (in Chile). (Carmen, Iquique, interviewed in April 2021)

In these cases, many Bolivian nationals preferred not to leave Chile via unauthorised border crossings to avoid exposing themselves to migratory controls and sanctions, as the arrival of the armed forces led to increased violence on the border. In other cases, border closure has not prevented continuous cross-border mobility, as commented by Ana, referring to women who work informally in the dressmaking sector during periods of temporary border opening and the restrictions imposed by the Chilean government:

And these women come from other countries to work in dressmaking, and they come anyway. I know the case of three women, who just when we entered phase two (of quarantine restrictions by the Chilean government) they came over [. . .], but just as we went back to phase one, they left. They obviously had to expose themselves to using an authorized border crossing, without any permission, they travelled without permission, and the employer does not take any responsibility for that, and they did not have a written employment contract anyway. (Ana, Iquique, interviewed in April 2021)

This last account illustrates how cross-border mobility continued between Bolivia and Chile via non-authorised border crossings, which the Chilean media did not report or question. However, this undoubtedly favoured the exploitation of this population segment. Consequently, it can be observed how interaction has been maintained despite the border closure, reconfiguring the border regime, which underlines stable inter-ethnic relations, marked by the existence of a cross-border territory. This can be corroborated by the fact that Iquique’s municipality set up shelters for Bolivians trying to return to their country and were stranded in the city due to border closure. ³

Repercussions on the mobility of Venezuelan nationals

The situation of the Venezuelan population has been quite different, as they have become the most rejected national group in the continent. The border closures in response to COVID-19 simply reinforced the administrative measures that had already been implemented to prevent the entry of Venezuelan immigrants into Chile, such as the Democratic Accountability Visa (DAV) and the Consular Tourist Visa (CTV), both of which are very difficult to obtain (Liberona et al., 2022b). Instead of resorting to applying through the Law of Asylum, considering the humanitarian emergency from which they are fleeing, they simply prolonged the humanitarian emergency at the borders of Chile with Peru and Bolivia in 2019. With the sanitary closure of borders, the processing of this visa was suspended, but people continued to migrate to Chile, accompanied by the formation of new migratory patterns.

Towards the end of 2020, this dramatic situation worsened as the number of families reaching the border, closed because of the pandemic, began building up in border towns and cities. This led to unrest and panic, as well as an increase in racism within the local indigenous community and in the local population in general, resulting in public demonstrations, ⁴ reports in the media, ⁵ and key decisions taken by local and national authorities (including the militarization of the border). Migratory control, carried out with the support of the Armed Forces, employed sanitary control to associate the new migratory patterns with organised crime.

In 2021, Venezuelans became the largest population group in the world requesting asylum (IOM). In this context, the Chilean State granted asylum to only five Venezuelan nationals. In 2020, only seven nationals from this country were recognised as refugees, after processing 1629 applications for asylum (SJM, 2021). In 2021, the processing of asylum applications dropped dramatically due to a policy of disincentives, along with barriers to making such applications, as revealed by the Comptroller’s Report on freezing this administrative process by the country’s border authorities for the year in question. Through Oficio (official instruction) 7.196 issued in 2021, the order was given to certain provincial governments to suspend the reception of asylum applications, in accordance with Law 20,430. Furthermore, it has been confirmed that ‘State agents have hindered the possibility to apply for international protection and to claim the right to asylum’ (Pascual, 2020: 408). This same situation has been documented at the U.S.−Mexico border, revealing a similar reconfiguration of border regimes at the regional level (Paris, 2022).

In February of the same year, the first of a series of collective expulsions occurred, when 138 foreign nationals were expelled from Chile, 100 of whom were Venezuelans. The people concerned were then staying at a quarantine health residence ⁶ in Iquique and were notified of their expulsion less than a day in advance. The expulsion was carried out without the legal guarantee of the right to due process and a legal defence and was therefore completely illegal (Liberona et al., 2022a; Piñones-Rivera et al., 2022).

Other similar operations were carried out following this event, ignoring the rights of this population, violating the protection of their health – recognised as an inherent right of migrants within the framework of international migration law – and violating the prohibition on collective expulsions. Although, in this respect, the case of the collective expulsions of Cubans in Ecuador represents a precedent in South America (Álvarez, 2020), how these operations were carried out indicates a reconfiguration of the border regime that is unique in the context of the pandemic. In particular, there is evidence of an alignment with global trends for the control of irregular migration which, according to López-Sala and Godenau (2017), include coordinated management between States; the use of technologies for monitoring, surveillance and data management; the strengthening of internal control mechanisms; and the participation of various types of public and private actors. A specific example was the hiring of the private company Sky Airlines ⁷ to carry out the expulsions, involving private sector actors in a form of outsourcing of state responsibilities, as is the case with border externalisation (Casas-Cortés et al., 2015). Furthermore, expulsion/deportation policies have the functionality of producing deportability (De Genova, 2002), that is, the generation of a disciplined and docile labour force (Álvarez, 2020). Thus, the deportation of a limited group of migrants could have the effect that precarious migrant labour increasingly benefits post-pandemic capitalism.

Instead of applying the law of asylum to a population that certainly met the requirements, the creation of the respective DAV and CVT visas for specific national groups represented bureaucratic strategies for the deprivation of rights. Likewise, the implementation of questionable acts of mass expulsions during a pandemic reveals a reconfiguration of Chile’s border regime, based on the production of deportability. This reconfiguration was supported by the ‘Colchane Plan’, the ‘Protected Borders Plan’, and numerous administrative actions of the State, such as an official instruction that prevents the processing of asylum applications. Although these measures had repercussions for Bolivian nationals, as obstacles to historical mobility, their knowledge of the cross-border territory and the transnational networks of this population permitted them to continue their mobility with certain limitations. However, for the Venezuelan population, the repercussions of mobility represented significant denials of their rights, which seriously exacerbated their vulnerabilities.

• 2. Economic repercussions of the pandemic on two groups of migrants in Tarapacá

In this section, we compare the economic repercussions faced by Bolivian migrants who had been working in Chile before the pandemic, with those of Venezuelan nationals, especially those in a state of irregular transit, and those who had entered Chile in search of asylum. The economic conditions we present here focus on their employment situation, the labour or economic sectors in which they are engaged, and the relevant experiences indicated in the interviews.

Economic repercussions experienced by Bolivian nationals

For Bolivian nationals residing in Iquique, the problem that most affected them during the pandemic was related to mass dismissals, causing them consequent difficulty in paying their rent for housing. Moreover, the slowness of administrative processing in the Department of Immigration, for issuing or renewing visas and identity documents, had impacts on other areas of their lives (Liberona et al., 2022a). The demand for an identity card was maintained as a requirement for different procedures and benefits, forcing people into exploitative jobs if they did not have this document. In addition, the health control measures imposed by the government were described by one interviewee as ‘indeterminate and destabilizing’, which directly affected access to work because such measures were constantly changing. Furthermore, when we asked people in the interviews about their economic situation, the answer was clear: ‘It’s worsened a lot, now I only earn enough for food, no more than that’ (Elda, Iquique, interviewed in May 2021). It was clear that people’s income had fallen, thus restricting the possibility of sending remittances back home:

Some of my girlfriends are in the same boat, others are unemployed, others only have a half salary that doesn’t cover their needs, because they pay rent and apart from that have to send money back to Bolivia, so it’s just not enough . . . (Natalia, Iquique, interviewed in May 2021)

When analysing these repercussions in terms of people’s contractual situation, it was clear that the loss of employment had been the most destabilising factor, as well as having to re-enter the informal sector, which many people had been able to abandon once they had managed to normalise their immigration status. In comparison, at the national level, the informal occupation rate of the migrant population in Chile rose to 28.9% in 2021, representing a year-on-year growth of 6.4 percentage points. The number of informally employed migrants grew by 52.4% during this period (SNM-INE, 2021). ⁸

However, informal work only enables day-to-day survival. For example, in the hotel and food sector, which depended on the lifting of restrictions to open up to the public, there was no advanced warning of such conditions. This meant that staff were not being hired, creating more harsh conditions of exploitation and uncertainty.

For self-employed migrant workers, the situations have been diverse, and in some cases, quite complex, as seen from accounts of two interviewees (Wilfredo and Elda). They told us that before the pandemic, they had a hairdressing business, but they had to close their salon because of restrictions and military control. However, they had to continue paying rent for the salon while working from home:

I had to run a clandestine hairdressing salon to be able to work [. . .] to keep up on the rent of the house and the business premises, and to buy food. Thankfully, we only have one child; otherwise, it would have been much more difficult. (Wilfredo, Iquique, interviewed in May 2021)

Fernando has an agri-food sales business that allowed him to maintain his economic situation during the pandemic, and even to open another similar businesses, although he pointed out that the job only provides him with daily sustenance: ‘if one day you don’t work, it’s a day you don’t eat’ (Fernando, Iquique, interviewed in May 2021).

In some labour sectors, it was practically only the migrant community that continued to work: ‘I’m a truck driver, so I’ve been working; in other words, the pandemic opened up more opportunities for me to work given the sector I’m in’. (Roly, Iquique, interviewed in May 2021). This was also the case for Antenor, who claimed to have his own business, all legalised – he confirmed – which has been doing well during the pandemic, mainly due to the increase in delivery work in the sale of prepared meals, added to which was the 10% withdrawal permitted from people’s pension funds, a national policy to reactivate the economy.

Observing the situation for contractual labour insertion, many of the jobs occupied by this population segment were provided by small businesses, which stopped hiring staff, especially in the service sector. This was because public service was suspended as a health protection measure. Thus, many Bolivian nationals preferred to return to their country instead of attempting to survive under such precarious conditions. ⁹

In the agricultural sector, various irregularities could be identified, such as the falsification of contracts to obtain interregional travel permits. Generally, in this sector, contracts consist of verbal agreements, but these types of irregularities have an economic impact on workers, who also have to pay expenses and deal with the associated risks.

Another employment sector that is clearly precarious is dressmaking, with the women in this sector being able to work only sporadically, when the sanitary control system established by the Chilean government in response to the pandemic allows a temporary opening for domestic mobility. That is, when it passed from phase 1 (equivalent to total confinement) to phase 2, mobility was allowed during working weekdays. In the latter case, Bolivian women entered the country to work, but on the resumption of phase 1, they had to return home to Bolivia. In addition, it was also pointed out that the payment was per day worked or garment manufactured, in which case, they received only one third of the product price.

In the area of domestic work, there has been a greater level of exploitation owing to confinement. Working days off has been a normal practice, thus preventing other activities and even complementary jobs, as Carmen shared. In her case, she could not take her days off and leave the house where she worked, and had to work those days without receiving any extra payment.

To address the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chilean government began to provide support through food boxes and emergency benefit payments, in addition to allowing people to withdraw 10% of their pension funds. All those contributing to such funds were entitled to these withdrawals on three occasions, irrespective of their nationality. However, much of the migrant population did not receive this support, especially those whose residency in Chile was still being processed by the authorities.

We also verified that access to state aid to deal with the economic crisis was differentiated according to immigration status and duration of permanence in the country, although the employment areas in which people worked had a significant influence on whether they received such support. For those who had a long-term residence status in Chile, it was confirmed that they received both the food boxes and benefit payments provided by the government, and it was possible for them to withdraw 10% of the pension funds. In some cases, they were even eligible to receive the Emergency Family Income. A permanent status in the country of more than 5 years in Fernando’s case, 8 years in Antenor’s case, and 20 years in Role’s case enabled them to enjoy a certain level of job stability, even though they were self-employed workers whose income depended on their daily activities.

In the case of the four women interviewed, it was confirmed that they had limited access to state aid given their circular cross-border way of life, which left them in a situation of irregularity (with the Chilean authorities). Friendships and solidarity between peers has been their main survival strategy when ‘you don’t have enough brass’ (Janeth, Iquique, interviewed in 2021). When asked about receiving financial aid, the answer was quite blunt:

Nothing, everything’s come straight out of my pocket, so we were just supporting each other, us Bolivian women, and among my three or four friends. I spent about four months without a job, with nothing, and during that time I was staying in a friend’s apartment. There were three of us, and she gave us so much support during those three or four months when I was without a job. (Natalia, Iquique, interviewed in May 2021)

We noted that the economic repercussions experienced by the Bolivian people interviewed have been significant, and due, to a large extent, to the position they occupy in the social hierarchy historically imposed on such people. Likewise, it is due to the impossibility of maintaining a migratory circulatory system between Chile and Bolivia, which keeps them trapped in a state of irregularity. Furthermore, we can confirm that there is a restructuring of the capitalist economy through exploitation, the hyper-flexibility of labour, and a trend to use migrant labour resources for jobs where people are over-exposed to the spread of the coronavirus. The situation of the women interviewed is particularly concerning, especially when considering information published in the Migrant Employment Bulletin, which indicates that in the August−October 2021 3-month period, the unemployment rate of migrant women at the national level was 8.4%, whereas that of men was 6.1% (INE-SNM 2021). This underlines the differences in economic repercussions due to gender inequality in Chile, which has been previously documented (Liberona et al., 2022a).

Economic repercussions experienced by Venezuelan nationals

The situation is much worse for Venezuelans who entered Chile during the pandemic using unauthorised border-crossing routes, many of whom then found themselves on the streets and homeless, and with the type of job that this situation allows, such as guarding and washing parked cars. This was the case for Haydée, who studied journalism and completed her graduation in broadcasting studies in Venezuela. Women were particularly affected:

It’s really difficult because we are homeless, we are not eating well, cannot cover our basic needs, and as women, we have many needs. (Angélica, Iquique, interviewed in May 2021)

Moreover, many also have to care for their young children, and when working as street sellers, they must take them along, as they have no one to look after them. They are then criticised for exposing their children to street work, although such critics seldom consider that leaving their offspring alone or in improvised squatter camps in squares and beaches is not an option because of the dangers to which the children are then exposed.

Nevertheless, street work is also very difficult for Venezuelan men who arrived recently in Chile, such as for Carlos, especially to make enough money to send remittances back home. Carlos’s main concern is that there are days when he has no money to provide anything to his children, apart from paying for some form of accommodation: ‘After paying for the hostel, I often have nothing left . . . and that makes me so sad’ (Carlos, Iquique, interviewed in April 2021).

In addition to these types of jobs that they can access fairly easily, these individuals are still looking for other options, offering their labour for whatever might be needed. Few homeless people are able to escape this situation, however, as not many employers agree to hire them, even informally.

Thus, the economic repercussions of the pandemic for these people are quite profound, particularly as they are combined with the Chilean government’s immigration policies, which have made it impossible to normalise their migratory situation after entering the country through unauthorised border crossings, leaving most of them relegated to a state of social indigence. Once again, only social solidarity has allowed such people to survive on a daily basis, with interviewees telling us how they received support from certain organisations and people, mainly in the form of food. This sets in motion the externalisation of the control and management of adversities through humanitarianism, representing another specific element of the Chilean border regime’s reconfiguration that followed the pandemic.

Despite the fact that precariousness is constant, we observed specific differences in how the pandemic affected each national group economically. First, we noticed that each group had its own characteristics, which were distinguished by their link with the adopted territory and by their length of stay in Chile. In the case of the Bolivians, we can highlight the long-standing transnational networks fostered by circular migration, which favours both permanence in the country and their return to Bolivia. Similarly, the cross-border mobility of the territory facilitates access to certain employment sectors, such as the transport and dressmaking industries. Length of stay in Chile is another differentiating factor, given that those in the country for several years (e.g. the three Bolivian men interviewed) reported a certain level of job stability and being eligible to receive emergency state aid.

Likewise, gender was identified as a differentiating factor, with women of both nationalities being more affected by the type of sector in which they work (such as domestic services), and by the needs and gender mandates imposed by a patriarchal society.

However, the Venezuelans who entered Chile during the pandemic by non-authorised border crossings have been the most economically affected, living on the street, receiving humanitarian support, and with few opportunities for workforce participation. Through forced migration, a characteristic of contemporary capitalism (Foladori and Delgado, 2020), such nationals have to deal with unequal mobility, exclusion, and segregation, while at the same time, they are part of the reconfiguration of the border regime by crossing borders despite their closure, in order to become resident migrants.

Conclusion

The main economic repercussions that the pandemic brought to the migrant population and those that we identified based on our interviews with Bolivian migrants in Tarapacá were the increase in unemployment, informal work, and labour exploitation. In both the groups interviewed, we also identified issues such as greater job insecurity and the risks associated with labour informality and working clandestinely in certain job sectors, including the irregular crossing of borders to carry out their work, or the violation of restrictions on internal mobility. The intensification of unequal mobility, for its part, generated greater economic repercussions on undocumented Venezuelans due to their forced displacement during the pandemic.

Among the main repercussions of the pandemic on mobility, a forced immobility was identified in Bolivian nationals that had, in the first place, an impact on transnational economies and families, due to the impossibility of generating remittances and travelling for reasons of family reunification. Moreover, it led to workers’ irregular border crossings and restricted circular migration, as they were prevented from obtaining tourist visas. In addition, the deployment of clandestine border crossings was identified in those periods when internal mobility was temporarily permitted, thus assuming greater risks of being exposed to migratory and health control, while also demonstrating the stability of inter-ethnic relations and the constitutive role of migrants in border regimes.

Thus, the main contribution of this study lies in its analysis of how economic precariousness is closely linked to migration irregularization and border securitization.

Furthermore, the implementation of a racist immigration policy exacerbated the vulnerability of Venezuelan migrants, while also generating the reconfiguration of the border regime, mainly in terms of a series of factors: the denial of international protection to a population in a condition of forced displacement; the installation of humanitarianism; the militarization of the borderlands; the use of quarantine health residences to implement collective expulsions; and the use of private sector actors to implement these expulsions. The latter reflects a key element in understanding capitalist restructuring, through the privatisation of border control as it intensifies the neoliberal model.

This immigration policy, which focused on the control of migrations and their governance, has been reflected in the promulgation of the new Law of Migration (Law 21.325 of 2021) and in the non-application of the Law of Asylum (Law 20.430 of 2010). Chile’s Law of Migration is based on mobility control. However, the cross-border mobility of Bolivian nationals during the pandemic brings this capacity into question. Furthermore, the policy since 2019 of refusing access to requests for asylum at the border by Venezuelan migrants has failed to recognise that this population is in a state of internationally recognised forced displacement. Despite this refusal, Venezuelans continue to cross this border. Therefore, the border, more than ever before, represents the scenario of the legal irregularization of certain migrant populations (De Genova, 2002).

This comparative case study allows us to demonstrate that the economic and mobility repercussions produced by the pandemic are different according to the type of mobility. Thus, Bolivians’ long-standing cross-border mobility and migratory circularity is favoured by the historical link with the territory of Tarapacá. However, the forced mobility of Venezuelans is criminalised, producing a greater state of deportability, clearly playing a role in restructuring post-pandemic capitalism, but above all, exacerbating their state of vulnerability.

Author biographies

Nanette Liberona Concha has a degree in Ethnology from the University Paris 8 and a PhD in Anthropology and Sociology from the University Paris 7. She is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Anthropology and faculty of the doctoral programme in Social Sciences at Universidad de Tarapacá-Chile. She is currently a researcher in charge of the regular FONDECYT project N° 1210602, ‘Refuge in Chile and transit density: production of corporealities and impact on the health of bodies in mobility’. Her lines of research are migration, borders, racism, corporeality, migrant health and irregular cross-border transit.

Carlos Piñones-Rivera has a PhD in Anthropology from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. He is currently an Assistant Professor of the Department of Social Sciences and faculty of doctoral programmes in Psychology and Social Sciences at Universidad de Tarapacá-Chile. He is a researcher in charge of FONDECYT N° 11230358 ‘SARNAQAÑA’, which addresses mobility, economy and rituality of Andean medical knowledge. He has been a guest editor of international journals such as Health and Human Rights and Global Public Health and visiting scholar at the Berkeley Centre for Social Medicine. Lines of research: health of indigenous peoples, intercultural health, migrant health.