The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements: Remaking Citizenship From the Margins by Ilker Atac & Kim Rygiel & Maurice Stierl

Author:Ilker Atac & Kim Rygiel & Maurice Stierl [Atac, Ilker & Rygiel, Kim & Stierl, Maurice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351737944
Goodreads: 41389907
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Enacting humanitarian migration

The vast majority of the Haitian migrants take long, unsafe, and costly routes led by ‘coyotes’, crossing into Brazil through the Amazonian border with Peru into the northern state of Acre. Haitian migrants are often exposed to extortions and physical violence during their journeys. They might spend weeks on their way to Brazil and pay up to 4000 dollars to the human smugglers. Brasileia became the center for reception and processing of thousands of Haitian migrants arriving in Brazil. In the beginning of 2014, the town had an improvised shelter that took over the remaining structure of an old and abandoned recreation center.

Upon arrival in the makeshift shelter, many migrants2 expressed their frustration regarding its precarious condition. According to the shelter coordinator, the place had the maximum capacity to host 300 people3 but was systematically overcrowded with more than 1000 migrants in February of 2014. Old and deteriorated mattresses occupied most of the shelter’s covered area. The place was by all means unsanitary: Only ten toilets and eight showers were available, and often out of service, open sewage and trash could be found everywhere. Additionally, food was scarce and there were frequent physical fights during meal distribution. Unsurprisingly, migrants routinely suffered from intestinal problems, dermatitis, and respiratory tract infections.4 In interviews, migrants would constantly voice their frustration stating that ‘if I knew things would be like this in Brazil, I wouldn’t have come’ or ‘we are treated worse than dogs here’. Such conditions stimulated Haitian migrants to devise tactical means of survival and routes of escape. Even though they had the freedom to move in and out of the shelter, their mobility was hampered by the fact that most of them lacked the resources to move either in or out of town. As a young Haitian who used to work in the Dominican Republic bluntly put it ‘I feel like I’ve been arrested, but I don’t know on what charges’ (Interview with Emmanuel5 in Brasileia, 14 February 2014).

Mobility of Haitian migrants is a disputed issue among governmental authorities, particularly given the deteriorating conditions in Brasileia. Provincial and municipal authorities claim that Haitians are the responsibility of the federal government. They argue that Brasília has to pay for the migrants’ transportation to other parts of the country as Brasileia is unable to cope with their numbers and demands. The federal government, on the other hand, has little power to negotiate alternative destinations and has, for the past years, limited its role to the concession of legal documents. In the beginning of 2012 and of 2013, two critical periods of time with record numbers of migrants stranded in the town, Brasília used its limited resources to finance basic assistance and sent a task force to help with the processing of migrant cases in Brasileia. At the same time, the federal government attempted a slow, controlled dispersion of Haitians within the Brazilian territory by giving resources to Acre’s government to hire buses to transfer migrants to other cities.

Hence, the federal government

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