Migration and development transitions: A perspective from Latin America

Abstract

The chapter traces the political, economic, and social links that migration has had with the concept of development in Latin America from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. It is structured into four sections that cover the changes in the ideological make-up of the relationship between these two terms. These sections cover from 1850 to 1950 (‘Fantasies of Progress’), from 1950 to 1985 (The Development Era), from 1985 to 2008 (Globalised and Transnational), and from 2016 onwards (The Adversities of Post-Globalisation). In each section the socio-political contexts are characterised, and the more general economic processes that frame migrations in, from, and to Latin America are synthesised. The chapter focus is posed on the semantic changes that have attributed socially contradictory, heterogeneous, and disputed meanings to the concepts of migration and development.