“Sentir su camino”: (Im)mobilities in the return of Venezuelan migrant women during the pandemic in Ecuador

Abstract

The pandemic exacerbated the already inequitable conditions to which Venezuelan migrants are exposed in Latin America. Influenced by global policies of public health control, the Ecuadorian government imposed numerous constraints on internal and external mobilities to reinforce its restrictive shift of at least the past decade, thereby limiting migrant regularization and curtailing the guarantee of the right to seek refuge. In line with Hyndman and Giles’ concepts of the embodied feminist geopolitics of waiting and (im)mobilities this article examines how, in the context of restrictive state policies, social hostility and nationalism, heightened by a public health discourse emphasizing the threat of contagion embodied in migrants and a new border regime scenario, Venezuelan migrant women have deployed multiple strategies of self-care to preserve their lives. Such strategies including reverse migration to their home country, even when it meant returning to places that are even more precarious but perhaps safer for them. It also explores how Ecuador’s institutional responses to the pandemic affected Venezuelan migrants and their action capacity.