Latin America has often tended to be overlooked by scholars and policymakers working on refugee protection. However, the region has experienced significant refugee flows across its recent history, including from countries in the Southern Cone in the 1970s, Central America in the 1980s, the Andes in the 1990s and 2000s and, more recently, Central America and Venezuela. It also has its own regional frameworks and mechanisms on political asylum and refugee protection.

This project engages principally with the dynamics of refugee protection within Latin America. A particular interest is the way in which longstanding transnational forms of cooperation on forced migration within the region have produced important regional approaches to refugees and asylum. One pertinent theme within the Latin American context is the connection of refugee protection to wider migration responses, especially given the ‘mixed’ nature of many cross-border flows of people within the region or to the region from outside. National level approaches are also of interest, since they show considerable degrees of coherence across the region. This project complements work on ‘Criminality and Displacement Dynamics’ and ‘Disasters, Environment and Mobility’ in the Americas.

Key publications and other outputs

Key institutional activities

  • RLI Conference on “A Liberal Tide: Towards a Paradigm Shift in Latin American Migration and Asylum Policy-Making” (London, 2013)

The work between 2012 and 2015 was supported by Economic and Social Research Council Future Research Leaders grant (PI: Cantor - ES/K001051/1). The conference was funded by Institute for the Study of the Americas.