Colonization and Eugenics Renewed in International Migration

Cristina Gomes

Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, FLACSO Mexico

Latin American migration to the USA and Canadian labor markets has been historically determined by economic factors as the USA pays higher salaries compared to Latin American countries. However, since 2007, increases in violence, organized crime, insecurity, political intolerance and environmental disasters in Latin America, Africa and Asia have increased the number of forced displacements of large population groups of migrants from the Global South who have migrated to Latin America looking to cross the US border. The strengthening of the border controls has limited their aspirations and countries like Brazil and Mexico are now countries of transit and also of residence for migrants. The article adopts a methodology of integrative review of migration, colonization, slavery, eugenics and racism in Latin America to analyze how the history of colonization, racism and eugenics in the region is reproduced against large population groups of Black immigrants from Haiti and Africa, who are compelled to escape a second time due to the xenophobia and racism historically reproduced in these societies. Results indicate that eugenics, racism, and xenophobia have intersected in Latin America since the formation of national states, with the acceptance of the population miscegenation and homogenization, through population engineering projects of “The Cosmic Race” in Mexico and “Racial democracy” in Brazil, which are reproduced until current days with explicit xenophobia and racism against Black migrants and refugees.

Article link: https://www.asianinstituteofresearch.org/JSParchives/colonization-and-eugenics-renewed-in-international-migration-