The vulnerabilities of skilled irregular Venezuelan migrants and entrepreneurs in Chile

Abstract

ABSTRACT In a context marked by restrictive migration policies, precarious living conditions and a neoliberal market, this article explores how Venezuelan migrants incorporated themselves into the job market through informal entrepreneurship, the challenges they faced, and sources of resilience they developed. We draw on eleven semi-structured and in-depth interviews with Venezuelan migrants who participated in a micro-entrepreneurship training program delivered by a Santiago-based NGO during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on the entrepreneurship literature, vulnerability framework and thematic analysis, our findings suggest that there isn’t a one-dimensional incorporation into the labour market experience among the group studied, despite similarities among the members; rather there is a dynamic intersectionality of gender, legal status, household economy and structural factors that amplify their precarity. The findings also highlight that migrants’ capability of acquiring stable employment was essential to their well-being, in the absence of avenues to acquire formal employment, microenterprises became a source of motivation and resilience, providing them with a network of contacts and social support.