Keywords

Introduction

In April 2018, a rather unbelievable migratory journey caught the attention of international media when a Brazilian fishing boat rescued a group of twenty-five men from West Africa, who risked their lives crossing the Atlantic in a dilapidated catamaran from Cape Verde to Brazil.Footnote 1 Their survival was close to miraculous: their engine failed, their mast broke, and they had to resort to fishing and drinking their own urine to survive. Finally, they were rescued after spending thirty-one days at sea. The ordeal these men went through illustrates the extreme risks some African migrants are willing to take in the pursuit of a better life (Parent et al., 2021).

While images of African nationals trying to reach Europe dominate popular perceptions and media coverage, African migrants are also taking longer and riskier journeys in the search of new destinations and improved opportunities (Yates & Bolter, 2021), including China (Bork-Hüffer et al. 2014; Mulvey, 2021), Israel (Orr & Ajzenstadt, 2020), and Latin America (Cinta Cruz, 2020; IOM, 2015).Footnote 2 Latin America-bound African migrants have profited, in many cases, from both relatively liberal immigration policies and border porosity, moving with the intention of settlement and transmigration towards North America (Baeninger et al., 2019; Freier & Holloway, 2019).

Although African migration to Latin America plays a relatively small role in absolute numbers, it has significantly increased in the past decade. Consequently, the corresponding literature has significantly gained momentum, yet it remains little noticed in mainstream migration studies, partly because it is predominantly written in Spanish. At least four factors make African migration to Latin America especially worth academic analysis: first, its stark increase; second, its relatively new and pioneer character; third, the vast geographical and cultural distances travelled; and fourth, the diversity of migrants characteristics, aspirations, and capabilities (see De Haas, 2021). The questions that the literature has raised include why African migrants choose Latin American host or transit countries, and how they are received in both political and sociocultural terms.

In this chapter we seek to showcase what has been discovered and also what remains unknown regarding these questions, based on the secondary literature and empirical population data. In the first section, we provide a review of the existing literature. The second section offers an empirical exploration of the patterns of African asylum seekers and refugees in Latin America based on UNHCR data, as well as Mexican apprehension data. In the third section, we discuss the socio-political reception of African migrants in three main receiving countries: Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. We then conclude by the highlighting main takeaways and avenues for further research.

Latin America as a New Destination of African Migrants

Africa has long been seen as a “continent on the move” based on three partial misconceptions: first, African migration has been seen as high and increasing; second, as almost exclusively directed towards Europe; and third as predominantly driven by poverty, violence, and environmental crises factors (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016; Setrena & Yaro, this volume). Although some of these assumptions go back to journalistic observations and biases rather than empirical evidence, the migration literature has long built on them, developing push–pull explanatory models that point to African migration as a South–North dynamic driven by poverty and income gaps, especially vis-a-vis Europe, underpinning the idea of the failure of development in African countries (Bakewell, 2008; Collier, 2013; De Haas, 2007).

According to the IOM, in 2020 around 21 million Africans were living in another African country, a significant increase from 2015, when around 18 million Africans were estimated to be living within the region. The number of Africans living outside of Africa, also grew during the same period, but less, from around 17 million in 2015 to over 19.5 million in 2020, with 11 million (56.4%) residing in Europe, and 5 million (25.6%) and 3 million (15.4%) living in Asia and North America, respectively.Footnote 3 In global comparison, of the 281 million international migrants in 2020, 14.4% were African migrants. This constitutes an increase of only 0.3% in five years, from 14.1% in 2015.Footnote 4

In the past twenty years, the field of African migration studies has grown, addressing this increasing diversity of African migration that is far from exclusively directed to Europe, but mainly to other African countries (Beauchemin et al., 2015; Sander & Maimbo, 2003), and also to other regions such as the Gulf countries and the Americas (Bakewell & De Haas, 2007), including Latin America (Freier, 2011; Freier & Holloway, 2019; Yates & Bolter, 2021). There is a growing refutation of classical “push–pull” models that focus on migrants as passive objects that are pushed by external factors such as poverty, demographic pressure, violent conflict, or environmental degradation. Indeed, just as other migrants, Africans migrate for a variety of reasons, such as family, work, educational reasons, and other personal aspirations (Bakewell & Jónsson, 2011; Beauchemin et al., 2015; Feyissa et al., this volume).

Contradicting the mainstream assumption that African migration is somewhat “exceptional” in that it is mainly driven by myriad “crises”, De Haas and co-authors have stressed that people only migrate if they have the ambition and resources—or aspirations and capabilities—to do so, thus focusing on the agency of migrants (Castelli, 2018; De Haas, 2011, 2014, 2021; Flahaux & De Haas, 2016). From this, it follows that “development”, and not the absence of it, is a main driver of migration, as aspirations and capabilities to migrate tend to increase progressively as countries grow richer (De Haas, 2011, 2014; Flahaux & De Haas, 2016). Although poor people also migrate, they tend to do so less frequently and over shorter distances; while the more skilled and relatively wealthy are more likely to turn into long-distance international migrants (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016; McKenzie, 2017).

Against this backdrop, the literature on African migration to Latin America significantly increased in recent years, ranging from earlier policy reports (IOM, 2015) to a number of special issues (Requene, 2021), covering a range of topics from the drivers of migration and choice of destination to socio-political reception and integration. In Argentina and Brazil, some African migrants have successfully integrated locally through—often informal—commercial activities (Kleidermacher, 2013; Wabgou, 2016; Zubrzycki, 2019), while intersectional discrimination is a continuous challenge for African migrants across the continent (see also de Souza e Silva et al., this volume on the experience of Haitians in Brazil).

The receiving countries of African migration that have been most studied include Argentina, with migrants coming mostly from Senegal, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Congo, and Angola (Maffia, 2014); Brazil, with migrants coming mostly from Senegal, Eritrea, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, and Ghana (Álvarez Velasco, 2016; JRS, 2023; OIM, 2012; Yates & Bolter, 2021); and Mexico, with migrants coming mostly from Eritrea, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, and Ghana (Ray & Leyva, 2020).

African transmigrants to the United States tend to pass through many Latin American countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia (Cinta Cruz, 2020; Kyle & Ling, 2001). These journeys imply many (irregular) border crossings, and extensive treks through the deadly Darien jungle, in the border area between Colombia and Panama, which serves as the gateway for both intra- and extra-regional migrants to Central America and from there to the United States and Canada (Amahazion, 2021; Miraglia, 2016).

In this context, for many authors, a key concern is the increased securitisation of the US–Mexican border, which has resulted in policies that restrict the entry and lead to the detention of African migrants—such as the case of the detention of thousands of African migrants in the “Siglo XXI” migrant detention centre in Tapachula (Requene, 2021). The risks of these journeys include the lack of legal protection, exposure to human trafficking, the threat of deportation, and the ill-treatment African migrants receive from authorities in both the United States and Mexico, where instances of discrimination and mistreatment are widespread (Gibney, 2021; Mercada, 2021; Requene, 2021; Winters & Mora Izaguirre, 2019).

Regarding the determinants of African migration to Latin America, these have been seen in the liberalisation of Latin American migration policies in contrast to the North America and Europe, including the relaxation of entry visa regimes, and relatively stable economic development in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis (Freier, 2011; Freier & Holloway, 2019; Maffia, 2010; Zubrzycki & Agnelli, 2009). Here Ecuador’s extreme policy of “open doors”—the abolishment of all visa requirements for all nationals in 2008 (which was soon partially reversed) has received special attention (Freier & Holloway, 2019; Álvarez Velasco, 2020; Sector, 2016). Aspirations and capabilities of African migrants in Latin America, of course, are diverse. In the Ecuadorian case, Freier and Holloway (2019) show how socio-economic and educational background vary across different groups of African migrants who chose Ecuador as a visa-free safe haven fleeing persecution, for the sake of settlement (based on relatively improved opportunities), or as a gateway for transmigration to North America.

Despite their legislative liberalisation, in practice, Latin American host countries are ill equipped for the integration of African migrants, partly because African immigrants were long considered transit migrants (Álvarez Velasco, 2016; FLACSO, 2011; GS/OAS, IOM, 2016; Yates & Bolter, 2021). In this sense, policy implementation faces major challenges due to legislative loopholes and bureaucratic deficiencies that end up creating difficulties for migrants to regularise their status (Acosta & Freier, 2015; Castles, 2004a, 2004b; Lahav & Guiraudon, 2006). At the same time, Latin American governments struggle to provide adequate humanitarian protection and services to those in need (Langberg, 2005; Moncayo & Silveira, 2017; Yates & Bolter, 2021). Such difficulties also arise in the context of considerable asylum procedure drop-out rates, as both migrants and refugees seek asylum to regularise their stay, often only being in transit.Footnote 5

African migrants in Latin America often find themselves in situations of vulnerability, due to linguistic and informational barriers regarding migration rules in the region (Pavez-Soto et al., 2019), the dangers involved in transregional travel (CEPAL, 2021), the presence of structural racism and other forms of discrimination in the host countries (Espiro, 2019). The literature has paid special attention to realities such as discrimination (Espiro et al., 2016); education (Pavez-Soto et al., 2019); religious practices (Henao, 2009; Parent et al., 2021);poverty and its links with the socio-economic crisis, gender, and evolving social, economic, and political processes, among other aspects (Wabgou, 2016).

As in other regions, “race” is an indispensable analytical category for the study of African migration and socio-economic integration in Latin America (see also de Souza e Silva et al., this volume). Its reception has to be understood in terms of the socio-psychological heritage of slavery and structural racism, for example in Brazil where race still operates as a “hierarchical criterion in various legal norms on migration, nationality and citizenship” (de Souza Silva & Borba de Sá, 2021; de Souza Silva et al., this volume). Racist representations of African migrants perpetuate dynamics of racialisation and segregation and are linked to confinement in immigration detention centres and surveillance by the countries migrants are trying to cross or reach (Requene, 2021). At the same time, discrimination is intersectional with pregnant African migrants facing special stigmatisation (Muñoz et al., 2021; Wabgou, 2016).

Research has also shown that, while migrants often face discrimination and vulnerability, they can also demonstrate resilience in the face of such challenges. This resilience can manifest in various ways, such as through civic activism and empowerment, which tends to increase with legal status (Espiro et al., 2016; Freier & Zubrzycki, 2019). In addition, studies have explored the religious coping strategies of migrants, such as those who risked their lives crossing the Atlantic in a dilapidated catamaran from Cape Verde to Brazil (Parent et al., 2021). Understanding the resilience and coping strategies of migrants can help policymakers and practitioners support their well-being and integration into their new communities.

Mapping African Migration to Latin America

In order to map the trends in African migration flows to Latin America,Footnote 6 in the following section we discuss UNHCR data on African asylum seekers and refugees, as well as apprehension data on African nationals in Mexico. Although the numbers of asylum seekers do not allow us to measure the overall numbers of migrants and refugees moving towards and through the region, they likely mirror trends in African migration, in terms of both origin and destination countries, as both Africans in need of international protection and economic migrants tend to file asylum claims as a way of migratory regularising (IOM, 2015). The numbers of refugees, on the other hand, indicate which nationalities are granted protection, and consequently are likely to form communities. Finally, data on apprehended migrants at the US–Mexican border indicate which nationalities tend to transmigrate towards North America.

Figure 16.1 shows the stark increase of African asylum seekers in the past ten years, from 1,840 in 2012 to 38,459 in 2022. In 2015, African asylum seekers represented more than 30% of all pending asylum claims in the region, which led to significant political concerns (Freier, 2011). However, with the intensification of the Venezuelan displacement crises since 2015, and 6 million displaced and over 700,000 asylum seekers in the region by 2023 (R4V, 2023), the percentage and political salience of Sub-Saharan African asylum claimants in the region subsided, even though numbers of pending African asylum claims are at a historic high (Fig. 16.2).

Fig. 16.1
A bar cum line graph of African asylum seeker population in Latin American countries. The graph plots the number of asylum seekers and percentage versus years 2000 to 2022. The number of African asylum seekers is the highest for the year 2022. The percentage is the highest in 2015.

African asylum seeker population in Latin American countries (2000–2022)

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Fig. 16.2
A map of South America for African asylum-seeking population. Brazil has the highest number of asylum seekers. The countries like Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia have the lowest numbers.

African asylum seeker population in Latin American countries (2022)

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According to UNHCR figures as of 2022, most African asylum seekers in Latin America come from West and Central Africa. The countries of origin with the highest number of asylum seekers are Senegal, Angola, Nigeria, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (see Table 16.1). Regarding refugees, Southern Africa sends the largest number of refugees to Latin America, with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola standing out, followed by countries in the West and Central Africa region (see Table 16.1). In terms of both sending and receiving countries, the main flows of asylum seekers are: Senegalese, Nigerians, Ghanians, Bissau-Guineans, Angolans, and Congolese in Brazil; Senegalese in Argentina; and Senegalese and Angolans in Mexico (in both cases with a significant increase in 2022).

Table 16.1 Major African countries of origin of asylum seekers and refugees in Latin America, 2022
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In terms of protection granted, we see a small but steady increase from 2015, with overall numbers nevertheless remaining extremely low. The number of African refugees in Latin America increased from 4128 in 2012 to 5948 in 2022. In terms of the percentage of African refugees in the region, it dropped from a high of 12% in 2004 to 2% in 2022. The main host countries of both African asylum seekers and refugees in Latin America are Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, with Brazil standing out with a high number of asylum seekers from West and Central Africa and refugees from Southern Africa (see Table 16.2). In 2022, Brazil hosted 78,4% of the total number of African refugees in Latin America (Fig. 16.3).

Table 16.2 Main host countries for African asylum seekers and refugees in Latin America
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Fig. 16.3
A bar cum line graph plots African refugee population and percentage of total refugee population in L A versus years 1993 to 2022. Refugee population is the highest in the year 2022. The percentage of total refugee population in L A is the highest in 2004.

Total African refugee population in Latin American countries (1993–2022)

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Another way to measure migration flows from Africa to Latin America is by looking at the number of apprehensions of Africans in Mexico. Although in absolute terms the number of African migrants in Latin America remains low compared to citizens of other regions—especially in comparison with South American transmigration—the increase of African migration to and through the region is undeniable. As Yates and Bolter point out (2021), in fiscal year 2019, Mexico made nine times as many (800%) more detentions of African migrants than in 2014, while in Europe the number of arrests decreased by half for the same period. In the case of the number of African asylum seekers in Latin America, 2022 marks an increase of more than 8000% over the number of asylum seekers in 2000 (83 times as many).

According to official Mexican migration statistics, in the last 15 years, the number of detentions of African migrants varied with an upward trend until 2019, when it reached a peak of 7.065 irregular African migrants detained, which represented 3,9% of the total number of irregular migrants presented to Mexican migration authorities. Despite the sharp drop in the number of apprehensions of Africans in 2020 due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2022 the number of African apprehended had again increased to 5437, suggesting an increasing trend in the number of African migrants attempting to reach the United States via Mexico. Looking at the main nationalities of African migrants detained, in 2019, Cameroon led with 3124 detentions, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo with 1822 detentions. In 2022, the top-5 nationalities detained in Mexico were Senegalese (939), Cameroonians (649), Angolans (599), Ghanaians (563), and Somalis (537) (Figs. 16.4 and 16.5).

Fig. 16.4
A line cum bar graph plots number of African immigrants and percentage of global total versus years 2007 to 2022. The number of African immigrants and percentage of global total are the highest for the year 2019.

Number of African migrants detained by Mexican immigration authorities (2007–2022)

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Fig. 16.5
A multiline graph of top 10 irregular African migrant nationalities presented before Mexican immigration authorities. It plots numbers versus years 2007 to 2022. Cameroon is the highest with value 3100 in the year 2019. Nigeria has the lowest numbers.

Top-10 irregular African migrant nationalities presented before Mexican immigration authorities

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Socio-political Reception and Integration of African Migrants

In the following section, we will describe the dynamics of the socio-political reception and integration of African migration in three of the most important host countries, namely Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, embedded in their political and socio-psychological context. The process of discursive and legal immigration policy liberalisation in Latin America that scholars identified as one of the determinants of African migration to the region, began at the turn of the century and was a response to the restrictive migration policies implemented by the United States and European Union (EU). This liberalisation led to the de jure protection of migrants’ rights, in terms of regularisation and decriminalisation of irregular migration (Acosta & Freier, 2015; Caicedo Camacho et al., 2020; Cantor et al., 2015; Melde & Freier, 2022).

Ironically, the literature has pointed out lacking policy implementation and loopholes precisely when it comes to extra-regional and phenotypically diverse, such as African migrants (Finn & de Reguero, 2020; Freier & Castillo Jara, 2021; Santi Pereyra, 2018; Stang, 2016). The stigmatising and criminalising of migrants and refugees in Latin America flourished in the context of the massive displacement of Venezuelan and Central American citizens in recent years (Vera Espinoza et al., 2020).

In socio-psychological terms, it has been pointed out that there are profound historical and structural conditions that impact the reception and socio-economic integration of migrants in Latin America. Here, socio-racial hierarchies are the fluid and context-dependent ranking of individuals and groups, based on their perceived physical and socio-economic characteristics, within a broader system of socio-racial relations in which ethno-racial groups occupy different levels of political, economic, and cultural power (Freier & Bird, 2020; Freier & Lucar Oba, 2023). In some countries, such as Brazil, there is evidence of continuing explicit discrimination and racism towards Afro-descended and indigenous peoples, despite national consciousness construction as “mestizo nations” (Beck et al., 2011; Telles, 2014; de Souze e Silva et al., this volume). In others, such as Argentina, racism has come to show in immigration policy-making practices by prioritising white European immigration and rendering Afro-descendants invisible (Frigerio, 2008).

Argentina

Mirroring the broader regional trend, Argentina has witnessed a gradual growth in the number of asylum seekers from the West and Central Africa region, with Senegalese asylum seekers standing out, especially since 2015. In 2022, UNHCR registered 1.801 African asylum seekers in Argentina, of which 1.386 were Senegalese representing 76.9% of the total number of applicants from Africa in Argentina and 3.6% of all African asylum seekers in Latin America. The majority of Senegalese in Argentina are not formally registered, and the 2010 census only recorded 459 Senegalese nationals, although estimates suggest that the Senegalese community in Argentina was made up of between 2000 and 10,000 people (Cybel, 2018), compared to a total of 1.8 million of foreigners residing in the country in 2010.

Argentina has been a pioneer in immigration policy liberalisation. Its 2004 migration law guarantees all migrants (including irregular migrants) socio-economic rights, such as education, healthcare, and the right to claim unpaid wages, and facilitates migrant regularisation (Melde & Freier, 2022). Its 2006 Refugee Law is the most progressive in the region, and thus likely in the world (Cantor et al., 2015). Despite this, there are practical barriers to regularisation and protection for certain groups of migrants, including African migrants, who entered the country irregularly (Acosta & Freier, 2015; Freier & Zubrzycki, 2019). It is noteworthy that the small yet relatively substantial increase in Senegalese immigration and asylum applications since the early 2000s led to concerns among the Argentine authorities about the “exploitation” of its asylum system (Freier, 2011).

Argentina’s socio-racial hierarchy is reflected in the symbolic erasure of Black individuals from society and the growing prevalence of whiteness in the population (at least in the capital Buenos Aires), especially throughout much of the twentieth century (Freier & Lucar Oba, 2023; Frigerio, 2008). During the Argentine nation-building-process in the late nineteenth century, successive governments strove to make ethnic and “racial” diversity invisible (Zubrzycki, 2019), for which they encouraged large-scale European immigration, often based on openly racist motivations (Bastia & Vom Hau, 2014). These migration policies led to the creation of a national myth according to which “there are no blacks in Argentina” (Cullenward, 2009), with the consequent assumption that “there is no racism” in Argentina (García, 2009).

Against this background, 97.2% of Argentines self-identify as European (mostly Italian and Spanish descendants) (INDEC, 2010). The growing presence of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in the Argentine cities has led to their exoticisation based on stereotypes and attention paid to their physical and body traits (Freier & Zubrzycki, 2019; Morales, 2010; Zubrzycki, 2019). Although especially Senegalese migrants have integrated locally through, often informal, commercial activities (Kleidermacher, 2013; Zubrzycki, 2019), and with the support of ethnic networks and brotherhoods (Kleidermacher & Murguía-Cruz, 2021), discrimination and police violence directed against immigrants of colour persist (Freier & Zubrzycki, 2019).

Brazil

Brazil is the Latin American country that hosts the largest number of African asylum seekers and refugees −29.974 and 4.665, respectively. This means that Brazil receives 77.9% of asylum applications from Africans in Latin America, and hosts 78.4% of African refugees in the region. According to UNHCR data, most asylum seekers come from West and Central Africa (17.519 in 2022). The main sending countries of asylum seekers are Senegal (6.256), Nigeria (3.276), Ghana (2.462), Guinea-Bissau (1.556), Togo (572), and Cameroon (566); followed by Southern Africa with 9.657 asylum seekers, with Angolans standing out with 6.444 and Congolese with 2.506 applicants; North Africa with 1.745 asylum seekers with Morocco standing out with 796 applicants; and, finally Eastern Africa with 1.053 applicants.

Between 2003 and 2010, African migration to Brazil increased significantly, including from Lusophone countries that do not tend to seek asylum, such as Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe (Uebel, 2021). This growth was experienced during the Lula Da Silva administration (2003–2011), who repeatedly stated his openness towards migration and the ties between Africa and Brazil (Silva, 2023; Uebel, 2021). The drivers for African migration to Brazil are linked to the motivations of both transmigration and settlement—Brazil’s strategic geographic location as a common entry point to the Americast (Yates & Bolter, 2019); the cultural and linguistic proximity (in the case of Lusophone countries); as well as Brazil’s foreign policy, which promoted scholarships and professional exchanges (Erthal & Marcondes, 2013; Rizzi & da Silva, 2017; Uebel, 2021).

Under Dilma Rousseff’s government (2011–2016), African immigration in Brazil continued to increase, by 38%, with a growth of 226% in annual flows between 2003 and 2016 (Uebel, 2020a). The influx of African immigrants brought about significant changes in political, academic, and institutional debates in Brazil concerning issues such as racial quotas, recognising vulnerable communities, and the formulation of specific refugee admission policies (Uebel, 2020b). In the context of the World Cup in 2014 and its visa exemption for all nationalities, Senegalese and West African migration to Brazil increased (Campbell, 2018).

Brazil has a comprehensive legal framework to protect the rights of migrants and refugees, including its 1997 Refugee Law, which is considered the second most progressive in the region (Freier & Gauci, 2020), its Migration Law (Law No. 13.445/2017), and the National Plan for the Reception and Integration of Refugees. The Migration Law, enacted in 2017, replaced the 1980 Aliens Act and aims to promote the integration of migrants into Brazilian society by granting them access to basic rights such as healthcare, education, and employment. The law also establishes a regularisation programme for undocumented migrants, which allows them to obtain documentation and protection from exploitation. The National Committee for Refugees (CONARE) is responsible for the recognition of refugee status and the protection of refugees.

Despite the legal framework, refugees and migrants in Brazil still face significant challenges, including xenophobia and discrimination (Nemitz, 2022). In particular, refugees and migrants from Haiti, Venezuela, and Syria have faced challenges in accessing basic services and integrating into Brazilian society (Caetano, 2022). Civil society organisations have played an essential role in advocating for the protection of refugees and migrants in Brazil, and the government has taken steps to improve the situation. The National Plan for the Reception and Integration of Refugees, established in 2019, aims to improve the integration of refugees into Brazilian society and increase their access to services (Fischel de Andrade & Marcolini, 2019).

In terms of its socio-racial hierarchy, a defining feature of Brazilian society is its diverse socio-racial composition and the significance of “race” in the structural inequalities that are reproduced to this day (de Albuquerque, 2010; Hordge-Freeman, 2013; de Souza e Silva et al., this volume). Despite the myth of Brazil being a “racial democracy” (Hasenbalg & Huntington, 1982), Brazilian politics and social relations have been characterised by a long history of structural racism that is rooted in the colonial legacy of the slave labour economy of Black Africans, which was the socio-economic foundation on which modern Brazil was built. As the last country in the Western Hemisphere, slavery in Brazil was only abolished in 1888.

More recent African migration has captured the attention of the Brazilian government and its institutions, with some actors actively working to receive and integrate the new immigrants (Uebel, 2020b), while law enforcement is used—as in Argentina—to harass and intimidate informal and irregular merchants (Tendayi et al., 2022). Parts of the Brazilian media have engaged in sensationalism in regard to the African immigration, especially in the case of Senegalese nationals (Araújo & da Silva Freitas, 2022), provoking a rise in episodes of xenophobia and aversion to immigrants, including physical aggression and hate speech by politicians (Nemitz, 2022; Saglio-Yatzimirsky, 2017).

Mexico

In the Mexican case, based on apprehension data, the flow of African migrants has increased over the span of the last 15 years, peaking with 7.065 apprehensions in 2019, which represented 3.9% of the total irregular migrant population detained in Mexico in that year. After the abrupt drop in the number of migrants in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a significant growth in 2022, when 5.437 African migrants were recorded in Mexico. In 2022, the main African nationalities detained in Mexico were Senegalese, Cameroonians, Angolans, Ghanaians, and Somalis. According to UNHCR figures, in 2022, Mexico registered 3.381 asylum seekers from West and Central Africa, 1.866 from Southern Africa, 283 from East and Horn of Africa, and 22 from North Africa.

As other countries in the region, Mexico liberalised its migration policies, embodied in the decriminalisation of irregular migration in Mexico in 2008—through an amendment to the 1974 General Population Law, which decriminalised irregular migration (CALDERÓN CHELIUS, 2012; Casillas, 2015; Gall, 2018)—and the enactment of its migration and refugee laws in 2011, which replaced the 1974 General Population Law. According to Freier and Gauci (2020), Mexico’s refugee law ranks third in the region (with Costa Rica) in terms of rights granted to asylum seekers and refugees. However, despite important advances in the protection of migrants’ human rights, the migration law maintains a securitising and criminalising approach to irregular migration (Gall, 2018).

A key measure included in the 2011 migration legislation was the oficio de salida (exit permit), which authorised migrants without legal status to leave Mexico within a period of 20–30 days, through any border. These oficio de salida were granted to African migrants to legally reach the US–Mexico border and be able to apply for asylum in the United States. As of June 2019, Mexican authorities stopped issuing these permits, preventing many African migrants from reaching the US–Mexico border and forcing them to remain in Tapachula (Averbuch, 2020). This was part of a US refoulement policy to reduce the daily number of asylum seekers, also known as the “metering” policy of the US Department of Homeland Security (Smith, 2019), next to Article 42 expulsions and the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP).

In terms of its socio-racial hierarchy, since the Mexican Revolution of 1910, mestizaje is a central notion of “mexicanness” as a national identity that defines belonging to the imaginary of the Mexican nation in contrast to the immigrant and/or foreigner (Yankelevich, 2017). Mestizaje also defines interethnic relations among Mexicans themselves, based on the idea of a racial mixture based on Spanish primacy and indigenous subordination, largely excluding the African contribution to the Mexican nation. Similar to Argentina, in the first half of the twentieth century, assimilationist and eugenic policies aimed at integrating indigenous and foreigners into the “mestizo” national society to “improve the race” (Yankelevich, 2012), At the same time restrictive and racist immigration policies were applied against black populations (Cunin, 2015); in addition to deportations of Mexicans of Chinese descent; and anti-Semitism against the Jewish community in Mexico (Carlos Fregoso, 2016; Pescador, 2017; Yankelevich, 2015). These racist, eugenic, and nationalist policies led to the enactment of the General Population Law of 1936, which led to prohibition and the closing of Mexico to immigration for the following decades (Gall, 2018; Yankelevich, 2012).

African migrants, who began to arrive in more visible numbers along with Haitian migrants from around 2015, are not only confronted with the lack of institutional capacity of Mexico’s immigration authorities, but also face racism and stigmatisation (e.g. based on the hoax of African migrants as potential Ebola transmitters), rendering them more vulnerable for the exploitation of migrant smugglers (MANDUJANO, 2016; Gall, 2018). Molla (2021) analyses the experience of black African and Haitian migrants in Mexico based on intersectional identities (being a migrant, being black, and being a non-Spanish speaker) and how these identities confront them with the physical, verbal, and psychological violence of being black in a mestizo or, in other words, predominantly “non-black” country. Intriguingly, unlike their Central American peers, migrants of African descent have been well-received in the northern state of Tijuana, where they are provided with shelter, food, and economic aid (Gall, 2018).

Conclusions

The literature on African migration to Latin America has significantly increased in recent years, covering a range of topics from the motivations of migrants to their socio-political integration. The most important receiving countries are also among the most studied: Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. In this chapter we use data on asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants detained in Mexico to map trends in African migration to, and transmigration through Latin America. The stark increase in African asylum applications across the region and African detentions in Mexico suggest that African migration is growing and much larger than official statistics suggest. Refugee numbers, which are largely concentrated in Brazil, remained stable, suggesting that Latin American countries are not expanding protection to African migrants—despite the trend of legislative policy liberalisation.

This, despite the fact that African migrants to and through Latin America are willing to take immense risks. African transmigrants to the United States pass through many Latin American countries including the deadly Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama. On this route, migrants move in speedboats between rivers and mangroves, and others walk through the dense jungle until they reach Panamanian territory, facing criminal groups dedicated to human, arms, and drug trafficking, which translates into insecurity, violence, abuse, and, in some cases, the death of migrants (Requene, 2021).

Overall, African migration to Latin America is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that requires both further in-depth, qualitative research on migrant aspirations, capabilities, and challenges faced, as well as efforts to collect more reliable data on migrant flows and stocks. Persisting knowledge gaps likely have negative implications for the development of effective policies and programmes to protect and integrate African migrants in the region, especially in the context of their socio-racial vulnerability and marginalisation. African migration also invites us to deepen our understanding of the region’s socio-racial hierarchies and sociocultural identities shaped by the colonial imprint racism, often perpetuated after the processes of independence, also vis-a-vis other migrant groups.