“Put our house in order”: securitization and the production of irregularity in the north of Chile

Abstract

The northern area of Chile is considered a privileged space both for economic exchange and for the transit of people. Indeed, the regions of Arica and Parinacota, Tarapacá and Antofagasta are those that exhibit the highest proportions of foreign population in the entire country. This context, however, is at odds with the border policies that have been implemented during the last decade and that operate from a perspective that conceives certain mobilities as a real danger. This functionality of the border manages to account for its heterogeneous behavior, permissive for capital mobility, but restrictive for human mobility. In this context, this paper focuses on the study of two measures adopted during 2018 that turn out to be particularly significant for the purposes of this study: the imposition of consular visas for people from Haiti and Venezuela and the extraordinary process of migratory regularization . Thus, from the review of official data on visas and deportations, it is concluded that the securitization of migration has built a regime of illegality and irregularity for thousands of foreigners in Chile, particularly in the border area of the Norte Grande.

Keywords
borders; migration; control; regularization; production of irregularity