Abstract
While the criminalization and hyper‐sexualization of Venezuelanmigrants and refugees across South America have received growing scholarly attention, fairly little is known about the coping strategies of migrants in this context. In this article, we build on quantitative and qualitative data from a survey (N = 100), 72 in‐depth interviews, and five focus groups with Venezuelan immigrants in five Peruvian cities, collected between 2018 and 2020, to explore how they make sense of, and react to, negative shifts in public opinion on immigration and the criminalization of Venezuelan nationals. We identify two broad coping mechanisms: (a) opposition to their criminalization, including its satirical ridiculing, and (b) intra‐group boundary‐making and “othering.” Our findings make an important contribution to the literature on migrant responses to criminalization and intra‐group relations in the Global South.
Highlights
In the past five years, scholars have characterized Venezuelan displacement as a “migration of despair” (Paez & Vivas, 2017), in response to the country’s deep‐ ening economic, political, and humanitarian crisis, which has been stoked by falling international petroleum prices and opposition to President Nicolás Maduro’s gover‐ nance
For Venezuelan migrants in Peru, spe‐ cific coping mechanisms surfaced as a response to their socioeconomic precarity in an increasingly hostile cli‐ mate
More than half of the sample was married (64%) and 30% were single. These characteristics are consistent with the data collected during the same period by the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) displacement tracking matrix (IOM, 2020)
Summary
In the past five years, scholars have characterized Venezuelan displacement as a “migration of despair” (Paez & Vivas, 2017), in response to the country’s deep‐ ening economic, political, and humanitarian crisis, which has been stoked by falling international petroleum prices and opposition to President Nicolás Maduro’s gover‐ nance. As of October 2021, over 5.9 million Venezuelans have fled their homes due to generalized violence, poverty, and lack of access to health and education, among other reasons (R4V, 2021), rendering it the second‐largest and fastest‐growing displacement sce‐ nario worldwide (Freier & Parent, 2019). The nature of this displacement is largely regional, with over 4.8 million living in Latin America and the Caribbean (R4V, 2021). In Peru studies tend to examine Venezuelan men and women’s criminalization experiences in both the public sphere and in the workplace (Freier & Pérez, 2021), as well as the interconnectedness between Venezuelan women’s hyper‐sexualization and criminalization (Pérez & Freier, 2021; Pérez & Ugarte, 2021). While this migra‐ tion is still unfolding, and notwithstanding the research conducted, we know relatively little about the reactions and coping strategies of migrants in this context
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