Piecemeal regional integration in the post-neoliberal era: Negotiating migration policies within Mercosur

Abstract

ABSTRACT The negotiation of migration issues within the Latin American Southern Cone Market (Mercosur) has gained momentum lately and has followed a specific (relatively autonomous and fast) dynamic that is unprecedented and contrasts with the slow and conflictive negotiations to achieve the bloc's economic goals. This study explains why negotiations to harmonize migration policies are taking place, why now, and how this is happening in a way that contradicts previous assumptions. It highlights a number of facts and explanatory factors largely neglected by the existing literature, such as: (1) instable political contexts in which social inequality, marginalization, and discontent call attention to socio-political issues and prompt state attempts to regulate human mobility cooperatively; (2) regional leadership that is not simply based on relative power and economic interests but on ideologically-loaded political projects and key actors who forge and legitimize a post-neoliberal consensus linking domestic and foreign policy strategies; (3) policy networks of private and public actors whose ideas inform top policy-makers discourses and contribute to the processes of socialization of policy elites, construction of shared understandings, and cultivation of cooperative practices that feed regional integration. The findings and conclusions shed light on the interplay between domestic politics and foreign policy, as well as the processes of coalition- and identity-building that are allowing South American governments to expand cooperation in a piecemeal and somewhat inconsistent fashion.