11. The Criminalization of Brazilian Immigrants

Cebulko, Kara; Galvão, Heloisa; Furman, Rich; Lamphear, Greg; Epps, Douglas

doi:10.7312/furm17180-011

Cited by 15 publications

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The Invisibility Bargain

Pugh¹

2021

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In an era of mass migration and restrictive responses, this book seeks to understand how migrants negotiate their place in the receiving society and adapt innovative strategies to integrate, participate, and access protection. Their acceptance is often contingent on the expectation that they contribute economically to the host country while remaining politically and socially invisible. These unwritten expectations, which this book calls the “invisibility bargain,” produce a precarious status in which migrants’ visible differences or overt political demands on the state may be met with a hostile backlash from the host society. In this context, governance networks of state and nonstate actors form an institutional web that can provide access to rights, resources, and protection for migrants through informal channels that avoid a negative backlash against visible political activism. This book examines Ecuador, the largest recipient of refugees in Latin America, asking how it has achieved migrant human security gains despite weak state presence in peripheral areas. The key finding is that localities with more dense networks composed of more diverse actors tend to produce greater human security for migrants and their neighbors. The argument has implications beyond Ecuador for migrant-receiving countries around the world. The book challenges the conventional understanding of migration and security, providing a fresh approach to the negotiation of authority between state and society. Its nuanced account of informal pathways to human security dismantles the false dichotomy between international and national politics, and it exposes the micropolitics of institutional innovation.

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