The role of returned migrants in the perpetuation of the Brazil- US - PDF document

The role of returned migrants in the perpetuation of the Brazil- US migration system during a period of economic stress Leonardo Sousa 1 Gilvan Ramalho Guedes 2 Alisson Barbieri 3 Dimitri Fazito 4 Abstract During the 2000’s Brazil and the United States have undergone economic shocks (positive and negative). Historical migration flows from the Brazilian municipality of Governador Valadares (GV) towards the US, however, remained unaffected. A key factor explaining the stability of this migration system is the role played by the return migrant through social and informational support. Brazil now faces a deep recession, promoting incentives for the increase in out-migration flows, but the US election outcome and its prospect for the US migration policies work as a counteracting force for potential international migrants. Using data on ego -centered networks of migrants, return migrants, and non-migrants for the main sender of international migrants to the US in Brazil, collected in 2006 and 2016, this paper analyzes the role of return migrants in the perpetuation of the Brazil-US migration system during a period of economic and institutional shocks. Our preliminary analysis reveal the important role of the return migrant in the perpetuation of this flow by providing or facilitating the exchange of strategic material and informational resources in the sending community. The 2016 data suggests that migratory social networks remain active and provide intensive material and immaterial exchange among their peers, acting as a maximizer for new, voluntary displacements in the face of the current financial crisis in Brazil. Keywords: International Migration, Returned Migrants, Social Network Analysis, Brazil-US Migration System 1 Phd in Demography, Center for Development and Regional Planning – Cedeplar/ Federal University of Minas Gerais – UFMG, and Professor at Pitágoras College. leogosousa@gmail.com 2 Core Faculty at Cedeplar and Associate Professor at the Demography Department, UFMG, Brazil. 3 Core Faculty at Cedeplar and Associate Professor at the Demography Department, UFMG, Brazil. 4 Associate Professor at the Sociology Department – Federal University of Minas Gerais.

Introduction The 2000’s was a decade marked by an increasing surveillance for illegal immigrants coupled with the mortgage crisis in the United States. The result was an increase in the number of return migrants and a significant decline in remittances, with non-negligible impact for many sending communities around the world. The scenario in Governador Valadares (GV), the main Brazilian municipality in terms of international out-migration to the United States (US), was not different (Sousa and Fazito, 2016; Fazito, 2005). According to the institutional migration framework, international migration flows in this environment should be strongly reduced, with likely consequences for the stability of the established migration system (de Haas, 2010). Despite the increased difficulty for illegal immigrants and the economic crisis in the US on the one hand, and the advances in the Brazilian economy and employment opportunities during the 2000’s on the other hand, migration from GV to the US remained virtually unaltered (Sousa and Fazito, 2016). We argue that this apparent paradox is partially explained by the unique role played by the international return migrant who, through his/her personal network, provided social, material, and informational support to the prospect migrants, contributing to the stability of the historically established migration system. Since 2015, Brazil has undergone the deepest economic and political crisis in the last century. The institutional and economic instability has promoted social unrest, civil conflicts, and unemployment throughout the country, increasing the stimulus for both legal and illegal international out-migration. Using data collected in 2006 and 2016, this paper analyzes the likely differences in the network structure and activity of GV over time. More specifically, we hypothesize that the propensity to out-migrate have increased recently due to the institutional and economic crisis in Brazil, but international destinations might have become more diverse as migration laws in the US after the election outcome will likely impose

additional barriers to illegal immigration. The role of return migrants, however, might have intensified from 2006 to 2016, working as a counteracting force to the consequences of the election outcome for those prospect migrants who have the US as their main destination of interest. In this circumstance, we might expect not only an intensification in the social support operated by the return migrant, but also a likely change in the type of resource channeled through his/her ego -centered network. Migration as a System Theoretically, migration can be understood as a social (Massey et al., 1987) and collective process (Sayad, 2000), sustained and operationalized by an integrated system of structures such as social networks, market institutions, psychosocial attributes (representations, beliefs, norms, and values), and strategic material and informational resources. These structures and their links define the territorial, economic, and motivational space for the migration system (Fawcett, 1989; Kritz and Zlotnik, 1992; Fazito, 2005). The modeling of migration networks represents the core issue in the operationalization of a migration system, defined and expressed by the social and institutional interactions among the many actors in the migration process. These networks of migrants are made of a set of interpersonal ties connecting individuals with migration experience (both current and past) to themselves and to other actors in the sending and destination communities (Fazito, 2010). These ties are mostly established by kinship, friendship, or shared interests of many sorts (Massey et al.,1993), and hold a rich amount of diverse flows that contribute to a privileged visualization of the migration system (Wasserman and Faust, 1994; Fazito; 2005; Fazito, 2010). Potential migrants are expected to have different ties with qualified actors of migration through direct and indirect contacts embedded in the social structure. Migration is also a

consequence of cumulative causation, where repeated migration experiences reinforce and expand migrants’ social capital in both places – origin and destination communities. This expanded social capital would reflect a wider pool of direct and indirect contacts, as well as a larger number of strong and weak ties, crossing the limited space of communities and linking individuals through social bonding (Massey, 1990; Massey et al., 1993). Although the concept of social capital is very encompassing, its concept for migration networks translates into a set of strategic resources (contacts) provided by the migrant’s personal network. These resources facilitate the concretization of the migration project by the provision of material (money, documents, information), instrumental (transportation, communication, falsification), or expressive (physical and psychological security) support (Lin, 2001). Thus, the structural positions available and effectively occupied by migrants and non-migrants in a network with local (here or there) and global (here and there) dimensions provide the strategic resources that may facilitate or constrain decisions regarding the migration project. In this scenario, the migration develops upon the daily relations between the many actors strategically positioned in the social structure (Fazito and Soares, 2010). Little explored in the social network literature of migration, the return migration holds all the positional structures to facilitate the flow of resources in the community. Different from other social actors, the return migrant occupies a privileged position in the migration network as he/she is able to mediate resources in the local (here) and global (here and there) network, having a privileged access to the intervening mechanisms of the legal or illegal migration process. This actor may be of different bonding nature, from a formal broker to a family member reinforcing the transnational family link (Lin, 2001). Studies on the perpetuation of migration systems must then pay special attention to how return migrants operate their social capital within the system because of their unique ability to mediate resources across space at different levels of aggregation (Massey et al., 1993; Kritz and Zlotnik, 1992).