Border Jobs: The Business of Work on the Colombia/Venezuela Border

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article explores the life and work of Venezuelan migrants in the Colombia/Venezuela border neighborhood of La Parada, in the Colombian municipality of Villa del Rosario, Department of Norte de Santander. We use ethnographic fieldwork, complemented with a simple survey we helped organize in the area, to show how border jobs are shaped and depend upon a variety of actors such as state institutions, non-governmental and other humanitarian organizations, members of guerrilla groups, and paramilitaries. All these actors have influence and control different aspects of the flow of goods and people across this busy border, where the distinction between legal and illegal transits is blurry in every sense. The overlapping territorialities that these actors shape through different practices articulate a particularly precarious life for migrants who must learn to read and respond to volatile and changing systems of border control. We discuss the perspectives of migrants themselves and show how they had to respond to the effects of the quarantine instated during the COVID-19 pandemic.KEYWORDS: Migrationborderscross-border laborColombiaVenezuela AcknowledgementsThis work was supported by the Scientific Colombia Program – EFI Alliance: Programs and Policies for the Promotion of a Formal Economy, code 60185, which are part of the EFI Alliance – Formal and Inclusive Economy, under the Contingent Recovery Agreement No. FP44842-220-2018.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 This paper is part of the project titled “Destinos Colombianos: experiencias migrantes de venezolanos en tres regiones del país” which was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Universidad del Rosario, in Bogotá, under the filing number DVO005 140-CS101 on October 11, 2018.2 Unless we give a specific date, all equivalences in US dollars are calculated using the exchange rate for August 28, 2021, when the interview was conducted.3 Colombia has no ius soli or birthright citizenship (Price Citation2017) but agreed to give migrant children born in the country Colombian nationality to honor its commitments in the fight against statelessness.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Scientific Colombia Program – EFI Alliance: Programs And Policies For The Promotion Of A Formal Economy – Formal and Inclusive Economy, under the Contingent Recovery Agreement No. FP44842-220-2018: [Grant Number code 60185].