The importance of desecuritizing Venezuelan immigration in Colombia

Abstract

In order to analyze the process of inclusion or exclusion of Venezuelan immigrants in Colombia, two tendencies within security studies are taken into account: the Securitization Model (established by the Copenhagen School) and the concept of Human Security (proposed by the UN). These two approaches have in common the fact that they go beyond the interpretations focused on the defense of the State, the latter being the object of reference for classical security models. Both Securitization and Human Security will be put into perspective in this paper with respect to the complex panorama of migration, especially on the basis of the place of the immigrants in the security schemes of the States. Without any intentions to give a categorical answer -since the phenomenon and institutional measures have not ceased to mutate over time- it is of particular interest to elucidate to what extent the Venezuelan diaspora has or has not been securitized in Colombia, the first country to which migrants go and the one that currently hosts the most Venezuelans.