Migrants: Agents of Transformation

The Scalabrinian Center for Migration Studies (CSEM) has, since its creation, stood out as a congregational study center whose trajectory positions it as an interlocutor between different social actors, such as academia, the Church and organized civil society, in favor of migrant people. It has adopted the PROTAGONISM OF MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES as the core of its studies and research. This is a choice of institutional conduct that strategically and methodologically guides critical/reflective processes in the production of knowledge and as a guiding principle for its programs. The focus is on people on the move, recognizing them as actors/subjects of rights, with the capacity for agency and resilience.

CSEM also advises and participates in training processes on the care of migrants/refugees. In this sense, it carries out an active agenda of formative work aimed at the community in general, with a special dedication to the congregation, both the employees and the Sisters, with the aim of generating a window of continuous dissertation and rapprochement between theory and practice, connecting the research work carried out by the CSEM and the daily social action carried out by the different Centers and activities that work directly with the daily life of migrants. This creates a two-way flow that allows for constant feedback and validation of the knowledge produced and guarantees a positive impact on the population.

With this in mind, the CSEM held a training activity for the Scalabrinian Mission in Ecuador, to discuss the reality of migration, the role of migrants as a key to interpretation, and migration and Pope Francis. In order to expose migratory trends, information produced and published by international institutions was used, such as the IOM's World Migration Report 2024. This base has made it possible to document significant changes in global migration patterns, with a focus on Latin America, a region where complex migratory processes take place that place it as a region of origin, transit and destination. The region is challenged by structural political/institutional factors that condition human mobility as a practice that subverts order and generates social chaos, sustaining the belief that it is a threat to the status quo.

The report sets out the global trends and challenges for human mobility, the most frequent destinations chosen by migrants and the routes they take to get there. It highlights the exponential increase in international migrants, specifically refugees, who number 35.4 million people forced to leave their homes for fear of persecution related to race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, as well as serious and widespread human rights violations and armed conflicts.

Venezuelan and Ukrainian refugees stand out in this global trend. In Latin America, the Darién Jungle route is highlighted as the most dangerous migratory crossing, mostly used by Ecuadorians and Venezuelans. The report also mentions the 71.4 million people displaced by environmental problems such as deforestation, desertification, soil erosion and chemical and nuclear disasters, placing Brazil as the South American country in the spotlight.

International remittances stood out in the interaction between the participants in the training, as they have reached gigantic volumes without causing structural transformations in the recipient countries, maintaining unchanged conditions that reproduce scourges such as poverty and social and economic exclusion.

In addition to the data and characteristics of current migration and the structural factors that condition the actions of migrants, imposing vulnerabilities and risks, the reflection also proposes exploring the migratory phenomenon from the perspective of subjectivation (Mezzadra, 2015), in other words, recognizing the leading role of migrants in facing the challenges of criminalized mobility, which faces physical and structural barriers. It is necessary to understand their capacity for agency to influence the migratory agenda and assume community responsibilities in the face of the fragility of the states involved, both of origin and of transit and destination, to guarantee the human rights of the migrant population.

Never before has the promotion of human rights been so exalted in speeches and documents and, paradoxically, so elaborately neutralized, criminalized with migration policies and legislation that impede human mobility. Likewise, the migrant population has demonstrated its ability to create alternative struggles that challenge the established status quo and ensure, with relative success, actions that politics blocks or ignores, generating spaces and strategies to put the power of their autonomous and protagonist capacities that transform them into social agents driving structural transformations.

Finally, we agree with the idea that the activation of migrants' actions generates changes. The first is that they are considered active subjects with their own projects, capable of building spaces for their consolidation. The second is that they are transformative subjects, creators of spaces of convergence in areas such as the social sphere, through organizations, associations and civil society collectives; in the economic sphere, through entrepreneurship and innovation; in the political sphere, with actions to pressure for political rights and the ability to defend rights and self-representation; and in the cultural sphere, through artistic expressive capacity and cultural hybridization.

As a dissertation proposal, we suggest some questions to position the reflection on the theme around the actions that civil society could activate to understand and design an agenda to influence the local migratory situation.