Paper short abstract:

The paper reviews the refugee resettlement agenda in Latin America by exploring the implementation of the programme in Chile and Brazil. Focusing on Colombians and Palestinians resettled in both countries, the study maps all the actors involved and explores the relationship and tensions among them.

Paper long abstract:

The paper looks to ground the regional resettlement programme by mapping it to its local scales, exploring the roles, relationships and tensions between the actors involved, including the UNHCR, States, NGOs and refugees themselves. By establishing these relationships, and also the processes and stages in resettlement, we aim to explore and assess the implementation of the programme specifically in two spheres: social policy and refugee integration. In this sense, the presentation will explore what is understood by refugee integration and how the emergence of social policy, or the lack of it, plays a role in the process. In addition, the presentation will give an account of the current programmes and its main challenges. The study is based on depth interviews with different stakeholders and a survey implemented to resettled refugees during two separate fieldworks in Chile and Brazil.

The refugee resettlement programme as we know it today emerged after 2004, when twenty Latin American countries strengthened their commitment with refugees by signing the Mexico Plan of Action. One of the declaration proposals was resettlement in solidarity, by which countries of the region compromised to help Colombia's neighbour countries with the massive influx of refugees as a result of the ongoing conflict, through resettlement. The programme was also open to refugees from outside the region. Since then, five countries of Latin America have resettled more than 1.100 refugees, most of them in Chile and Brazil. The paper aims to review how the programme is working and to explore where is heading.