The COVID-19 health crisis has put to the test Latin America’s already precarious social protection systems. This paper comparatively examines what type of social protection has been provided, by whom, and to what extent migrant and refugee populations have been included in these programmes in seven countries of the region during the COVID-19 pandemic, between March and December 2020. We develop a typology of models of social protection highlighting the assemblages of actors, different modes of protection and the emerging migrants’ subjectification in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay in relation to Non-Contributory Social Transfer (NCST) programmes and other actions undertaken by state and non-state actors. The analysis is based on 85 semi-structured interviews with representatives of national and local governments, International Organisations, Civil Society Organisations, and migrant-led organisations across 16 cities, and a systematic review of regulatory frameworks in the country-case studies. The proposed typology shows broad heterogeneity and complexity regarding different degrees of inclusion of migrant and refugee populations, particularly in pre-existing and new NCST programmes. These actions are furthering notions of migrant protection that are contingent and crisis-driven, imposing temporal limitations that often selectively exclude migrants based on legal status. It also brings to the fore the path-dependent nature of policies and practices of exclusion/inclusion in the region, which impact on migrants’ effective access to social and economic rights, while shaping the broader dynamics of migration governance in the region.

Based in an interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophical conceptions on structural and cultural violence, and a qualitative study on domestic violence in migration contexts, this article points out the relationship between culture and violence against women, its power mechanisms, and the possibilities to revert them. The concepts of structural violence, cultural violence and ethical recognition, are essential for the analysis on the reversal of violence against women. The non-fixed state of violence demands the creation of a more humane way of living; therefore, all types of legitimized and justified violence (explicit, structural and cultural) in our lives must be critically rejected and surpassed by means of an infallible resource: ethical recognition.

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Este artículo expone la importancia de estudiar la política migratoria a través de una aproximación etnográfica a las prácticas y relaciones de poder que se gestan en la interacción cotidiana de las personas migrantes con las burocracias. En especial, analizo los procesos de detención migratoria y reflexiono acerca de la distancia entre la norma y su aplicación por la burocracia local, lo que puede afectar de manera particular a las mujeres migrantes. La sociología jurídica y el feminismo crítico enmarcan la mirada con la que analizo una específica forma de discriminación o violencia “suave” que se ejerce desde el Estado contra las mujeres migrantes. Retomo las paradojas planteadas por diversas teóricas sobre la valoración de las diferencias sexuales tanto en los marcos jurídicos como en políticas públicas para lograr la igualdad (Wendy Brown, 2002; Nancy Fraser, 1997; Joan W. Scott, 1992). Un punto central es el dilema de la diferencia (Luigi Ferrajoli, 2002; Martha Minow, 1985;1990), que pone en cuestión la dicotomía entre la igualdad y la diferencia, para así lograr construir formas de igualdad ciudadana que reconozcan la diferencia sexual, y que permitan contextualizar y ponderar sus efectos en el ejercicio de los derechos humanos.