ABSTRACT
International migration has become one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century. Conventional wisdom suggests that the majority of migration takes place from the global South to the global North, when in fact, most of migration happens at the intraregional level. In the case of Latin America, immigration policy from its origins was aimed at bringing primarily migrants from Europe. However, because of the need for migrant labor in the agricultural and construction sectors, many governments across Latin America filled these jobs with nonwhite migrant workers from Africa and Asia, and later from nearby countries. Today, most immigrants in Latin America come from neighboring countries, making intraregional migration a common feature of migration flows in the region. This entry analyzes immigration flows across Latin America and then explores differences in the immigration policy of certain representative countries within the region.
