Autonomy and Struggle in Times of Viral Borders: Venezuelans Across the South American Andes During Covid-19

Abstract

This article takes a close look at Venezuelan migrants' experiences throughout the Andean corridor of cross-border mobility during the COVID-19 emergency. It focuses on the differentiated characteristics of their fragmented journeys to trace the potential of struggles in reclaiming autonomy in contemporary migration. Conceptually, it expands on Nicholas De Genova’s ‘viral borders’ to explore the ways migrants rechannelled, reimagined, and remade their trajectories amid the recent wave of violent, nationalist border controls, expanded in the name of public health. The article argues that, to cope with the consequences of COVID-19 management, Venezuelan migrants made mobility choices related to their differentiated access to social and material resources, enmeshed in prevailing racialised, classed, and gendered social structures. Meanwhile, migrant struggles enabled autonomy amid fragmented journeys opposite Covid-19-related attempts of nationalist (re)bordering. It is suggested that, as legacies of viral borders become more evident, autonomy and struggle remain key in shaping mobility amid the exclusionary post-pandemical border regime.