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Citizenship, Migration,

and Uncertainty

Predicated on being a “full member of a community,” citizenship acts to include and exclude.¹ Citizens must be constructed in opposition to an “other,” and frequently that “other” has been a migrant. Nevertheless, the boundaries between citizen and migrant are, and always have been, blurred. As Engin Isin argues, “[C]itizenship and otherness are … really not two different conditions, but two aspects of the ontological condition that makes politics possible.”² In this chapter I am interested in how these two aspects have been understood as fitting together. I trace the origins of citizenship, examine critiques of the classic liberal interpretation, and explore iterations of citizenship in Latin American contexts. I then similarly outline how interpretations of the processes lived by migrants have changed over time, also providing a brief account of migration in and from Bolivia and to Chile. This serves to enable the final discussion, which draws together perspectives on citizenship and migration with work on uncertainty to develop the twin concepts of transnational spaces of citizenship and uncertain citizenship.

CITIZENSHIP

Broadly speaking, there have been two main politico-philosophical schools of citizenship: the liberal and civic republican traditions.³ The foundations of the liberal tradition of citizenship can be found in John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689), as well as in the US Bill of Rights (1789) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789). This tradition holds at its core the values of individual liberty—conceived of as “negative freedom,” or the freedom to do what one likes as long as it does not impede others’ right to do the same—and the right to property. Participation of the citizenry in the running of society is largely through voting and the payment of taxes. This liberal notion of citizenship was reformulated in the mid-twentieth century in T. H. Marshall’s seminal work Citizenship and Social Class.⁴ While maintaining a focus on the individual, he incorporated the idea of “social rights” as being crucial to citizenship in addition to civil and political rights. As those before him had, he saw the state as bestowing these rights on those it governs. He contended that the provision of rights had expanded progressively from civil to political to social rights.

In contrast to the liberal tradition, the civic republican tradition highlights the collective rather than the individual. Its roots can be traced back further than those of the liberal tradition, to Aristotle and the Athenian city-state.⁵ While both traditions conceive of the individual as preexistent to and choosing to enter into society, in the liberal tradition the individual then has minimal responsibilities, and political engagement occurs through representation. In the civic republican tradition, by contrast, direct political participation is vital; as Stephen Castles and Alastair Davidson put it, this is a tradition “based on popular wisdom” through the active engagement of all in the creation and upholding of laws.⁶

In the twentieth century, communitarianism emerged as a “cousin” of civic republicanism, and its followers further developed arguments about the importance of community and the collective in order to challenge the individualistic focus of liberal interpretations of citizenship.⁷ Crucially, communitarians, perhaps most notably Michael Sandel, call into question the liberal notion that the individual is “unencumbered”—that is, rational, autonomous, and self-sufficient.⁸ Rather, they argue, the individual is very much “encumbered” by community because, as Alison Assiter writes, humans are “social beings.”⁹ Thus our actions as citizens are influenced by our relationships to our community and cannot be separated from them (in other words, the individual is not preexistent to society). While considered to offer valuable contributions regarding how we might better comprehend citizenship, communitarianism has not been without its critics.¹⁰ Indeed, both the broadly liberal and broadly civic republican traditions and their offshoots have been strongly critiqued from a variety of theoretical perspectives, not least a feminist one.

The feminist critique of both liberal and civic republican traditions of citizenship is founded on an analysis of who the citizen is supposed to be. Feminist interrogations of this question expose the answer to be, as Ruth Lister explains, “a definitely male citizen, and a white heterosexual, non-disabled one at that” under the “universalist cloak of the abstract, disembodied individual.”¹¹ The supposedly universal, gender-neutral citizen is in fact profoundly gendered because of the classic binary created between public and private spheres, whereby the rational and abstract is associated with the public sphere and masculinity and the emotional and embodied with the private sphere and femininity.¹² The citizen acts in the public sphere and so must be rational, capable of abstraction, and therefore masculine.¹³ Moreover, as those working in the communitarian tradition had identified, this rational, autonomous citizen fits within a highly individualistic concept of citizenship. While a communitarian perspective did attempt to overcome the individualistic approach of liberal citizenship and, to a lesser extent, civic republicanism, feminist theorists such as Iris Young criticized communitarianism for its reification of the idea of community and therefore its failure to admit difference.¹⁴

More recent understandings of citizenship, such as Ruth Lister’s, have highlighted the fluidity and multiplicity of identity and group belonging while maintaining the ideal of universal rights for all.¹⁵ Through a focus on agency, she proposes a synthesis of the liberal and civic republican traditions:

Citizenship as participation [civic republican tradition] represents an expression of human agency in the political arena, broadly defined; citizenship as rights [liberal tradition] enables people to act as agents. Moreover, citizenship rights are not fixed. They remain the object of political struggles to defend, reinterpret and extend them. Who is involved in these struggles, where they are placed in the political hierarchy and the political power and influence they can yield will help to determine the outcomes. Citizenship thus emerges as a dynamic concept in which process and outcome stand in a dialectical relationship to each other.¹⁶

Thus, Lister is advocating an understanding of citizenship as both “being” and “doing,” as a status and a practice. Furthermore, she argues that citizenship occurs on multiple levels, blurring the perceived gap between public and private and giving prominence to the idea that the experience of citizenship is not limited to state-level interactions but also includes participation in more “informal” arenas, such as collective participation in community organizations. As Luin Goldring indicates, Lister is also highly aware of the impact of social identities, such as gender, on the ability of individuals to act at different levels.¹⁷

Iterations of Citizenship in Latin America

In the Latin American context, Bryan Roberts, though not writing from an overtly feminist standpoint, has taken a similar approach. He understands citizenship as “always negotiated[,] since by their participation citizens can change their rights and obligations and, equally, governing elites may seek to limit or influence these changes as a means of consolidating their power.”¹⁸ Roberts traces the history of citizenship in Latin America back to the aftermath of the wars of independence, a period that saw the adoption of liberal constitutions in many Latin American countries, often directly modeled on those of the United States or France. He argues, however, that following these liberal beginnings, “the evolution of citizenship in Latin America is not linear, nor did the extension of one set of rights, whether civil, political or social, necessarily entail the extension of others.”¹⁹ He is also cognizant of the different ways in which citizenship in Latin America is and has been experienced according to gender and ethnic identities, and he emphasizes particularly the significant exclusions suffered by indigenous populations. Thus, Roberts disrupts Marshall’s argument regarding the linear way in which the provision of citizenship rights expanded, in addition to arguing for an understanding of citizenship much more akin to Lister’s.²⁰

Indeed, Roberts argues that in the majority of Latin American countries, from the 1940s to the 1970s social rights were the first “set” of rights to be extended to the population in a relatively comprehensive fashion, although there were still significant gaps in provision. He suggests that this reflected the priorities of both the growing urban poor, for whom education, health, and other social welfare provisions were of obvious importance, and the state and the elite, with whom the developmentalist theories of the time, with their emphasis on health and education as the keys to development, resonated strongly. Moreover, the expansion of social rights represented a way for the state and elite to quell and co-opt potential discontent from the working classes. Bolivia arguably fits within this assessment to a considerable degree, and Chile to a lesser extent (as Roberts acknowledges).

The 1930s and 1940s in Bolivia were a period of deep unrest and turbulence after the 1932–1935 Chaco War with Paraguay, which was a disaster for Bolivia. Huge swathes of Bolivian territory were captured, and the human cost was staggering.²¹ By the end of the war many of the men who had fought were disgusted with the corruption, racism, and classism of the military elite, and more broadly with the Bolivian oligarchy and social inequalities in the country. This sentiment hardened into political resolve, spawning various movements and parties. The one that ultimately came to the fore in 1952 was the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Movement), led by a coalition of members of the urban middle class and workers. A coup d’état was staged, which overthrew the established order.

From these beginnings the revolution burgeoned in the coming years into an attempt at fairly sweeping social and economic change as increasing numbers of more radical miners and peasants joined the movement. One of the consequences of the revolution was agrarian reform, and large haciendas in the western altiplano were seized and redistributed to the indigenous population. Another key consequence was the expansion of health care and provision of education. Civil and political rights were also expanded, most notably through the enfranchisement of indigenous people and women. Nevertheless, the eventual outcomes of the revolution were mixed, and the degree to which it produced a lasting social change has been debated.²² In particular, serious violations of indigenous peoples’ civil rights very much persisted, and politics continued to be highly volatile in Bolivia.

The Chilean context was somewhat different, and until 1973 Chile had one of the strongest democratic traditions in Latin America. There was a well-developed party system and high levels of political participation among large sectors of the population, particularly from the 1930s onward as enfranchisement gradually expanded; universal suffrage was achieved in 1947 when women won the right to vote. During this period there was marked investment in health, education, and social services, which did bear some fruit, although much of the population still lived in poverty.²³ Throughout the 1960s, during the presidencies of the right-wing independent Jorge Alessandri (1958–1964) and particularly that of the centrist Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei (1964–1970), political awareness and discontent with the status quo, especially the serious social inequalities within the country, increased dramatically. The Frei government did bring about some not insignificant changes, including the expansion of state ownership of the copper mines and a program of agrarian reform. However, there was a sense of frustration that change had not been deep enough nor sufficiently far-reaching.²⁴ During the late 1960s, many who were disillusioned found in the Unidad Popular (UP, Popular Unity)—a coalition of left-wing parties led by Salvador Allende—a party that expressed these frustrations and offered a solution: the “Chilean road to socialism.”

Elected by a narrow margin in 1970, Allende and the UP initially fostered a heady sense of optimism among their supporters. This rapidly deteriorated, however, as the country became riven by division and anger. The coup d’état of September 11, 1973, irrevocably changed the course of Chile’s history and the fabric of its society.²⁵ As is well-known, the subsequent seventeen years of dictatorship under General Pinochet saw massive human rights abuses, including the murder or disappearance of more than 2,200 people by government agents and the torture of nearly 30,000.²⁶ It also resulted in the exile of approximately 200,000 people, 2 percent of Chile’s 1973 population.²⁷ Civil and political rights were effectively entirely repressed. In addition, Chile became the first testing ground for neoliberal ideology and was thus subject to particularly extreme versions of policies of privatization, deregulation, and cuts to social spending. This stalled Chile’s progress in terms of social welfare and had a deleterious impact on equality in the country.²⁸

Similar regimes took over throughout the Southern Cone in this period. Nor was Bolivia unaffected. Indeed, the 1970s and early 1980s was an especially chaotic and brutal epoch in Bolivian politics. From 1971 to 1978 the country was under the dictatorship of General Hugo Banzer. Then, over just four years, from 1978 to 1982, there were three different regimes: a transitional military regime following the Banzer dictatorship, a brief period of civilian rule, and then the forceful installation of a military junta initially headed by General Luis Garcia Meza. A period of extreme violence and repression, it left the economy devastated due to corruption and mismanagement by both the state and private sectors. Democratic, civilian government returned in 1982 under the presidency of Hernán Siles Zuazo, swiftly followed by Víctor Paz Estenssoro in 1985, who assumed the presidency for the third time. In his first year back in power, Paz Estenssoro—infamously—implemented Decreto Supremo no. 21060. In keeping with what was at that time common economic policy in the region and globally, it incorporated a series of tough, orthodox measures intended to bring the economy under control, thus ushering in an era of neoliberalism in Bolivia as well.²⁹

Roberts contends that throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with this movement toward neoliberal economic policies throughout most of the region, the emphasis in terms of citizenship rights shifted to the civil and political. This was in part because, as indicated, the rollout of neoliberal policies entailed cuts to social service provisions; subsequently, “by throwing more of the responsibility for social and economic welfare onto the populace, states, both directly and indirectly, promote[d] the independent organization of citizens.”³⁰ Moreover, in the dictatorships of the Southern Cone during these decades, groups began to organize—often putting themselves in great danger—to defend their civil and political rights. They played a key role in the eventual return to democracy in Chile in 1990 and in the rest of the Southern Cone.³¹

The legacy of dictatorship has been long-lasting, however. One respect in which this has made itself felt in the Chilean context (and others) is that, as Patricia Richards argues, “the imposition of neoliberal reform represented a transformation of the content of citizenship.”³² The key elements of this transformation, she continues, are that it has reduced “the role of citizens … to voting, consuming, and participating in community projects to make up for the loss of state services, rather than making demands on the state.”³³ Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, this change has gone hand in hand with a shift toward “multiculturalism” in many Latin American countries, resulting in what has been critically referred to as “neoliberal multiculturalism.”³⁴ Under the policies of such a framework there may be official recognition of cultural differences, for example, through celebration of the more “folkloric” elements of indigenous culture. This is not, however, accompanied by serious attempts to redress the severe social, political, and economic disadvantages faced by indigenous peoples and other historically oppressed groups. While falling within the paradigm of “neoliberal multiculturalism,” as Richards argues, Chile has been a “particularly reticent” case with respect to enacting both policies of cultural recognition and policies that would have substantive impacts on indigenous populations.³⁵ Around 9 percent of the Chilean population self-identifies as belonging to one of Chile’s nine officially recognized indigenous peoples, 84 percent of whom self-identify as Mapuche.³⁶ They continue to suffer serious discrimination.³⁷

Until the election of Evo Morales in 2005, Bolivia was also considered a clear, if different, example of neoliberal multiculturalism.³⁸ This changed, however, following Morales’s extraordinary victory after several years of turmoil and unrest. Protests had centered on indigenous rights and access to natural resources, and they reached a crisis point in conflicts that came to be known as the Guerra del Agua (Water War) in Cochabamba in 2000 and the Guerra del Gas (Gas War) in El Alto in 2003. Morales’s rise to power during this period was greeted with jubilation by those on the left in Bolivia, and globally, and was hailed as opening up new “postmulticultural” possibilities for citizenship.³⁹ The reality has been somewhat different. As Nancy Postero outlines, there have been significant changes under the Morales government.⁴⁰ In Bolivia, 40 to 60 percent of the population self-identifies as belonging to one of thirty-six indigenous peoples—Quechua, Aymara, Chiquitano, and Guaraní are the largest groups—and indigenous peoples have suffered centuries of oppression.⁴¹ The symbolic importance of having an indigenous president has therefore been huge, as has that of the 2009 constitution, which proclaims Bolivia to be a plurinational, communitarian state and establishes particular rights for indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, as Postero indicates, “the emancipatory language about indigenous rights in the constitution obscures the more important results of the constitution: the overarching power of the central state in the new model” and the restrictions placed on indigenous autonomy.⁴² Moreover, the continued pursuit of hydrocarbon extraction as a strategy for economic growth has been strongly criticized, as have other projects (such as the road to be built through the TIPNIS national park and protected area) that have serious environmental consequences and negatively affect certain indigenous groups.⁴³

Bryan Roberts’s astute assessment of the evolution of citizenship in Latin America as uneven and complex continues to ring true, at least in the cases of Chile and Bolivia. Ongoing struggles over its meanings and contents abound. This is increasingly reflected in a rich and growing body of work—such as that by Teresa Caldeira, Daniel Goldstein, James Holston, Sian Lazar, and Patricia Richards—that examines how traditionally marginalized groups seek to express an alternative vision of citizenship and/or demand the substantive rights that are so often denied them, in spite of their nominal formal citizenship status.⁴⁴ This scholarship explores how nonstate actors may play a crucial part in shaping and pushing the boundaries of citizenship in a process that is, as Étienne Balibar notes, always “imparfaite.”⁴⁵ Nevertheless, it also considers the ways in which the top-down ideas—or “regimes”—of citizenship prevalent in each nation-state also have a fundamental role in this process, as do the actions of state actors, who will interpret these “regimes” in different, nonmonolithic ways.⁴⁶

Both this work on the anthropology and sociology of citizenship in Latin America and the synthesis of the two traditions of citizenship from a feminist perspective that comes from within political theory have influenced how I think about citizenship in this book. Citizenship is a process that is constantly under construction. It is built in part “from below” through the everyday practices of ordinary people who, irrespective of their uniform possession of formal citizenship status, have differentiated access—contingent on their social identities—to the substantive rights of citizenship. Their practices may either support or contest the hegemonic narrative of citizenship promoted by the state; this is a narrative that will vary according to history and location, as will the practices in which ordinary people may engage. Already complex, the ways in which citizenship is lived and constructed in the everyday are further complicated by the movement of people across nation-state borders.

MIGRATION

I understand migration across nation-state borders from a transnational perspective. That is, I take the view that, in the words of Linda Basch, Nina Glick-Schiller, and Cristina Szanton-Blanc, “immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement.”⁴⁷ This now widely accepted approach to the study of migration emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s to counter prior understandings of migration as entailing a definitive cutting of ties with the country of origin.

As migration increased in the late nineteenth century, the process experienced by migrants upon arriving in a different nation-state was predominantly understood as one of assimilation. The “melting pot” analogy was used to indicate how the majority group would remain largely unchanged by the absorption of the new migrant minority group, and the minority group would only retain some limited features of “ethnic” identification.⁴⁸ Heralded particularly by Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan’s 1970 publication Beyond the Melting Pot, it was gradually recognized, however, that not all migrants were assimilating.⁴⁹ Many were, in fact, retaining features of the cultures of their countries of origin. One reaction to this was the emergence of multiculturalism as an approach to migration in academia and the policy arena. Approaching migration from the perspective of multiculturalism, difference is recognized and acknowledged, and migrants are encouraged to maintain cultural practices from their countries of origin. However, they are encouraged to do this from a position that is embedded within the “settlement country,” thus forming a “cultural mosaic” or “tapestry” as opposed to a “melting pot.”⁵⁰

While purporting to be very different, in a certain sense assimilation and multiculturalism are two sides of the same coin.⁵¹ They are both based on the notion of the nation-state and society as being one and the same.⁵² From both perspectives, migration is understood as a discrete event, a decisive break in the life of migrants as they move from one nation-state to another. Migrants renounce their ties to their countries of origin and enter into some form of integration process in the settlement country. It is not possible to remain part of more than one geographically bounded society. In the case of assimilation, migrants adapt completely to a new way of life. In the case of multiculturalism, they retain aspects of their cultural heritage but nonetheless focus on doing so within the context of the settlement country, and as mentioned above with respect to indigenous peoples, the focus is usually on the retention of the “folkloric” aspects of their culture.

By contrast, a transnational approach suggests that migrants maintain a thick web of networks that connect them to both countries. These connections play a vital role in their daily lives. It has become increasingly common to think about migrants’ experiences of moving and “settling” from this viewpoint. Nevertheless, the concept of transnationalism has not been without its critics. The extent to which migrants really do maintain transnational ties has been debated, with some suggesting that it has been exaggerated.⁵³

This is because transnationalism has sometimes been understood in terms of the practices in which individual migrants engage, such as visiting their countries of origin.⁵⁴ This certainly does lead to a fairly limited definition of what constitutes engagement in transnationalism; there may, for example, be extended periods during which individual migrants do not visit their countries of origin.⁵⁵ But that is not to say that they do not think about their countries of origin and engage in other, less tangible, activities that nevertheless reproduce and reinforce their connections across borders. These might be things like socializing with conationals or decorating their homes in a way that incorporates the aesthetics of the places they have come from. Reflecting on these types of practices has led others to a different conceptualization of transnationalism. This interpretation understands international migration as a process occurring within, and creating, “transnational social spaces.”⁵⁶

Peggy Levitt and Bernadette Jaworsky define “transnational social spaces” as “arenas” that “are multi-layered and multi-sited, including not just the home and host countries but other sites around the world that connect migrants to their conationals and coreligionists. Both migrants and nonmigrants occupy them because the flow of people, money, and ‘social remittances’ (ideas, norms, practices, and identities) within these spaces is so dense, thick, and widespread that nonmigrants’ lives are also transformed, even though they do not move.”⁵⁷ Expanding further on the idea, Levitt and Jaworsky explain that even though few people may engage in intensive transnational activity, many more take part in occasional activities. Over time “their combined efforts add up and can alter the economies, values, and practices of entire regions.”⁵⁸

Thus, the idea of transnational social spaces challenges the “methodological nationalism” that would equate geographical, physical space with societal space.⁵⁹ It is an idea founded on the tenets that space is actively socially constructed and is a fluid and changing process.⁶⁰ A transnational social space exists beyond, and indeed may contest, the boundaries of the “national container society.”⁶¹ Nevertheless, the importance of the state in forging, shaping, and restricting the creation of transnational social spaces cannot be overlooked.⁶² Not only individual migrants and nonmigrants, but also states, institutions, and businesses at the local, national, and international levels are involved in the construction of transnational social spaces. Furthermore, the degree to which individual migrants (and nonmigrants) can negotiate and control the construction of transnational social spaces is highly contingent on their gender, race, socioeconomic status, and other social identities. It is therefore important to consider migrants’ relationships to transnational social spaces from an intersectional perspective.⁶³

In addition to the perspective on citizenship previously discussed, a transnational social spaces approach to international migration forms one of the conceptual building blocks of this book. It is an approach informed by an understanding of space as a fluid, multidimensional process constructed through interrelations among varied actors. These actors may be states and institutions or migrant and nonmigrant individuals. Individual actors’ ability to move within and manipulate transnational social spaces will be profoundly impacted by their intersecting social identities. As I explain at the end of this chapter, I transfer this spatial understanding of migrant transnationalism to the concept of citizenship in order to better comprehend how and why migrants are excluded from some aspects of citizenship but included in others across nation-state borders. Recognizing the importance of history and place to the development of specific transnational spaces of migration, prior to this I turn, however, to outline approaches to migration studies taken in South-South contexts and examine migration flows specifically in the Bolivian-Chilean context.

South-South Migration

Katja Hujo and Nicola Piper point to a “dearth of knowledge on the dynamics of migration between countries in the South” and in general a profound lack of research on the topic.⁶⁴ Arguably largely responsible for the scarcity of work on South-South migration is the northern bias of academia more widely.⁶⁵ Susanne Melde and colleagues remind us that most funders are located in the North, resulting in relatively little support for research that examines migration within the global South, given the many northern anxieties surrounding migration flows to the North from the South.⁶⁶ This is in addition to the more generalized tendency for migration research to focus on short-term projects that will offer solutions to “migration problems,” which leads to a subsequent lack of study of the “nature, causes, and consequences of migration,” as Mohamed Berriane and Hein de Haas maintain.⁶⁷

Nevertheless, a slow but steady series of attempts have been made to seriously address the flows that conform what is estimated to be nearly half of all international migration.⁶⁸ Much of this work has focused on the “migration-development nexus,” and there has been a tendency to address the potential for migrants to be “agents of development”—for example, through remittance sending. This focus can be to the neglect of the many other important aspects of the everyday lived experiences of migrants addressed in the transnational studies literature, which looks predominantly at South-North migration.⁶⁹

Still, there is some research that is beginning to address these lacunae, as in the case of the important, incipient work on migration in Chile and from Bolivia, with which I engage throughout this book. While I agree wholeheartedly with Hujo and Piper and others that there is a severe paucity of research on South-South migration, I suggest that they may potentially fall into one of the traps of northern academic bias through neglect of some research on the subject published in the South, often in languages other than English.⁷⁰ Additionally, some research that could be considered to address “South-South migration” does not identify itself as such, preferring instead to refer specifically to the countries under study. This is understandable given the problematic nature of the terms “global South” and “global North” and the homogenizing effect they can have.⁷¹ However, greater use of the term “South-South migration” as one way of categorizing such studies may assist with knowledge sharing and construction. In doing so, somewhat paradoxically, it may aid in promoting understanding of South-South migration as a heterogeneous phenomenon, but with marked points of difference from South-North migration—as this book endeavors to do.

The Bolivian-Chilean Context

An overview of the particular migration context under study is therefore important to understand both its specificities and the ways it fits within broader trends. In terms of Bolivian migration, it is estimated that around 706,000 Bolivians, or 6.8 percent of the Bolivian population, currently reside outside the country, although some estimates put the figure as high as 14 to 23 percent of the population.⁷² While historically Bolivia pursued policies of encouraging (white, elite) immigration in order to populate what was portrayed as an “uninhabited country,” for many years now it has been a country of negative net migration. This has been combined with a continuous flow of internal migration from rural to urban areas since the 1952 revolution.

As previously indicated, the effects of the revolution were complex, and its lasting impacts are debated. What is clear, however, is that the processes it set in motion sparked the beginning of a significant increase in rural-urban migration, predominantly from Aymara and Quechua communities in the western altiplano. While the agrarian reform—which was one of the major changes wrought by the revolution—did make most rural indigenous families into landowners, plots of land were not large, and they became further reduced through fragmentation due to inheritance and the population growth that followed the revolution. Combined with the increasing importance of a cash economy, the smaller size of plots made it difficult for rural indigenous inhabitants to make a living. This was particularly the case for young women, who were not necessarily favored in inheritance arrangements. They also had the greatest chance of making an income in the city, often as domestic workers, but in addition as market and street vendors. Many therefore ventured to the city as part of a family livelihood diversification strategy, or sometimes to seek a degree of independence. Thus, although both men and women left their rural communities for urban areas in large numbers from 1953 onward, young women in particular migrated.⁷³

Internal migration increased particularly from 1971 to 1978, during General Hugo Banzer’s dictatorship. Almost one-third of those from the rural altiplano who moved to La Paz between the years 1953 and 1980 did so in this period.⁷⁴ It was an era of massive modernization of urban areas, not just in the west of Bolivia but notably in the eastern Santa Cruz region as well. While the population had previously been clustered in the west and around the cities of La Paz, Potosí, and Oruro, people began to move eastward, with the importance of the cities of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz growing significantly. Rural-urban migration in Bolivia has continued through the present day. According to the last census in 2012, 67 percent of the population was classified as urban, compared to just 26 percent in 1952.⁷⁵ These changes in population distribution within the country have been accompanied by mass out-migration beginning in the 1970s during the political upheaval of that decade and continuing into the 1980s following the implementation of neoliberal economic policies under President Paz Estenssoro.

The immediate impact of the measures Paz Estenssoro and his government implemented could be categorized to some degree as short-term “political and fiscal successes.”⁷⁶ Nonetheless, the longer-term impact was a lack of economic growth and increased social injustice. Unemployment rose to 20 percent, particularly due to the collapse of the tin industry, which also severely impacted organized labor. Working conditions became increasingly precarious for many.⁷⁷ The economic uncertainty in this period led to a marked increase in out-migration, especially to Argentina.⁷⁸

During this period, Buenos Aires rose to prominence as a favored destination for Bolivian migrants to Argentina. Here, many migrants—predominantly women—found employment in garment manufacturing, working in small sweatshops that were generally informal and unregulated. They labored sewing precut garments for contractors for around twelve hours per day and sometimes more. Food and board were provided, but living conditions were usually poor. Moreover, workers’ freedom of movement was restricted, and wages were low, particularly in the first few months, when migrants owed “debts” to their employers, who paid for their transport from Bolivia to Argentina in many cases.⁷⁹

There are still significant numbers of Bolivians residing in Buenos Aires, and many continue to work in garment manufacturing. Following the 2001 Argentinean crisis and the devaluation of the Argentine peso, however, those Bolivians who were compelled to migrate began to look to other destinations as well, and the Bolivian population resident in Argentina declined, although in 2011 there were still approximately 345,272 Bolivians resident in Argentina.⁸⁰ Outside Latin America, Spain became a popular destination for Bolivian migrants with the resources to leave the continent.⁸¹ This was motivated in large part by the fact that it was not necessary for Bolivians to have a visa to move to Spain until 2007. The United States was also an increasingly appealing option for those with the means to get there. From 2001 to 2008—the period during which many Bolivians moved to Spain and the United States as well as other destinations outside Latin America—the amount of money sent back to Bolivia in remittances boomed, reaching 7.4 percent of Bolivian gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007.⁸² Of the remittances sent back to Bolivia in 2007, 46.2 percent came from Spain and 21.7 percent from the United States.⁸³

There were many Bolivians on lower incomes, however, who could not afford to leave the continent for places like Spain and the United States, but who nonetheless still considered it vital to leave the country. While there had been marked improvements in access to health care and education since the 1970s, as Bolivia entered the twenty-first century it remained one of the poorest countries in Latin America, having suffered years of economic turmoil and neoliberal policies unfriendly to those not in the upper echelons of society. In the early 2000s, 29.7 percent of the population lived on less than US$1.90 per day, and 66.4 percent of the population lived below the national poverty line. Life expectancy at birth was just fifty-five years, and the infant mortality rate was eighty per one thousand live births.⁸⁴

For Bolivians with limited economic resources and little formal education who were seeking better opportunities, Brazil, and particularly São Paulo, increased in popularity as a destination within Latin America from the early 2000s onward. In São Paulo as in Buenos Aires, many migrants have found work in garment manufacturing, working under similar conditions to those in Buenos Aires.⁸⁵ Demonstrating the increase in the Bolivian migrant population in Brazil, the 2010 Brazilian census recorded 38,816 Bolivian migrants resident in the country, compared to 20,394 in 2001.⁸⁶ It is likely that this significantly underrepresents the Bolivian migrant population, however; in 2011, it was estimated that there were between 50,000 and 80,000 Bolivians resident in São Paulo alone, many of whom held irregular status and were thus not recorded in the census.⁸⁷

Further indicating the growth of the Bolivian population in Brazil, remittances sent back to Bolivia from Brazil have increased notably, from 0.6 percent of the total in 2007, to 3.8 percent in 2013, to 10.4 percent in 2017. By contrast, remittances coming from Spain decreased to 33.8 percent of the total in 2017, and those from the United States to 17.1 percent.⁸⁸ This change can be attributed to a considerable degree to the impacts of recession and austerity on Spain and the United States since the 2008 crisis, which have played a role in reducing migration to these countries and encouraging those intending to migrate to consider destinations within Latin America.⁸⁹

The other major shift in Bolivian migration away from Argentina within Latin America has been to Chile, although there is far less information available on Bolivian migrants in Chile than on their counterparts in Brazil and Argentina. This is in spite of the significant numbers entering Chile, especially when one considers the markedly smaller population of Chile in comparison to Brazil (17.8 million and 200 million, respectively).⁹⁰ The most recent Chilean CASEN (Caracterización Socioeconómica Nacional, National Socioeconomic Characterization Survey) data estimated the Bolivian population in Chile to be 47,100 in 2015, showing a significant increase from an estimated 24,116 in 2009.⁹¹ The remittance data for flows from Chile to Bolivia is also telling. In 2007 remittances from Chile to Bolivia accounted for just 1.6 percent of total remittances to Bolivia; by 2013 this had increased to 6.1 percent, and in 2017 this figure reached 9.5 percent.⁹² As is the case for Bolivian migration flows generally, Bolivian migration to Chile is highly feminized, and in 2014 54.5 percent of all Bolivian migrants were women.⁹³

The flow of Bolivian migrants into Chile seems set to continue and potentially to increase further as part of a rapidly shifting landscape of migration patterns within Latin America. As for why this may be so from the Bolivian perspective, as already outlined, the economic, social, and political outcomes of the period under Evo Morales since 2005 have been mixed, and in different, complex ways, they may contribute to the continuation of Bolivian migration. First, there have been some very marked improvements in key poverty indicators in Bolivia in the past decade. The number of those living on less than US$1.90 per day had decreased to 6.8 percent by 2016, and the number of those living below the national poverty line had also decreased, to 38.6 percent. Life expectancy at birth has increased to sixty-six years, and the infant mortality rate has decreased to thirty-eight per one thousand live births.⁹⁴

It would be reasonable to assume that these improvements might make Bolivia a more attractive place to remain. In one of the apparent paradoxes of migration, however, there is evidence that—broadly speaking—as poverty in a country decreases, out-migration increases. This is because growing numbers of people have the necessary resources to leave the country for somewhere that is still better off than the home country (out-migration then decreases again once a country hits a certain economic level).⁹⁵ As will be made clear throughout this book, although the migrants with whom I worked were generally from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and many came from contexts of multidimensional poverty, they were not the very poorest in society (see particularly chapter 4). As this sector of the population in Bolivia expands, it could be expected that so too would out-migration flows. Other factors may also contribute to continued migration flows from Bolivia, however, and as Hein de Haas reminds us, while “economic forces often play an important role as one of the root causes of migration … this alone cannot explain the actual shape of migration patterns.”⁹⁶ In the Bolivian case, one sociopolitical factor that may have an impact is the sense of dissatisfaction among a growing proportion of the population who think that change under Morales is not happening fast enough, or that it is not the type of change they hoped for (see chapters 4 and 6).

In terms of Chile as a migration destination, as indicated above, part of the story behind the reduction in migration to Spain and the United States and the concurrent increase in intraregional migration in Latin America to countries such as Chile has been the impacts of recession and ongoing austerity measures. Within South America, the unrest in Brazil due to the ongoing corruption scandal at the highest levels of politics and the severe economic downturn, in addition to ongoing economic instability in Argentina, may well position Chile as an increasingly popular destination for those migrating in search of economic opportunity and relative social and political stability.

This would be consonant with the general shifts in migration to and from Chile over the past forty years. As a consequence of the exile of tens of thousands during the Pinochet dictatorship, the number of Chileans outside the country grew rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s, increasing what was already a negative net migration trend. Furthermore, very few foreigners moved to Chile during this period. While Chileans who had been in exile did gradually return following the end of the military regime, in 2005 it was estimated that over 850,000 Chileans resided outside the country.⁹⁷

Today Chile remains a country of negative net migration, but the number of migrants residing in the country has increased exponentially since the 1990s. In 1992 there were an estimated 114,597 foreigners living in Chile, or 0.9 percent of the total population. This number has more than quadrupled, with conservative estimates putting the migrant population at 465,319 in 2015, around 2.7 percent of the population.⁹⁸ The majority—90 percent—are from other Latin American countries, and there is increasing diversity in the range of migrants’ countries of origin. As already indicated, the increase in migration to Chile can largely be explained by the relatively steady economic growth and the political and social stability that Chile has experienced since the fall of the dictatorship.⁹⁹ Moreover, once a certain number of “pioneer migrants” select a destination such as Chile, their social networks across borders facilitate the arrival of more people at the same destination.¹⁰⁰

Chile became a member of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in 2010 and was the first (and to date, only) South American country to join. Thus, in some respects it is perhaps more comparable with countries considered part of the global North than with those of the global South, and this is undoubtedly part of its allure for migrants from other parts of Latin America. Nevertheless, Chile is consistently well below average with respect to many OECD social indicators.¹⁰¹ The effects of years of neoliberal polices continue to reverberate; while experiencing sustained economic growth, Chile has a Gini coefficient of 0.49, making it the most unequal country in the OECD and average within Latin America.¹⁰² Public social spending is also very low, and 14.4 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line.¹⁰³ It is thus situated in an ambiguous position between global North and global South. Migrants, and particularly Bolivian migrants, are some of the most marginalized and discriminated against people in this highly unequal society and often do not reap the benefits of living in a country considered to be one of the thirty-four most “developed” in the world.¹⁰⁴ While this is also true for many migrants from the global South living in the global North, it is arguably especially acute in a country like Chile that is so glaringly unequal.

The unique, in-depth qualitative perspective offered in this book sheds light on the everyday lived experiences of migrants in this context. In the chapters that follow, the similarities and differences between this and other migration destinations in both the global South and North are highlighted. By marrying perspectives on citizenship from feminist political theory and sociological and anthropological studies of Latin America with insights drawn from studies of migration that take a transnational, intersectional approach, the book also offers a fresh conceptual approach, as I explain in the next section.

CITIZENSHIP, MIGRATION, AND UNCERTAINTY

Within migration studies, there is a growing body of work that—mirroring the approach taken in the scholarship on citizenship in Latin America previously discussed—focuses on citizenship in practice in order to comprehend how it is actually experienced in the everyday as opposed to how it is normatively represented.¹⁰⁵ Such analyses have sometimes struggled, however, to consider holistically the “formal” and “substantive” aspects of citizenship in a way that accounts for the interactions between them, how they are produced within and across nation-state borders, and the multiple ways in which migrants may be simultaneously included in and excluded from citizenship.

A spatial perspective on citizenship and migration has been adopted by some in attempting to make such an analysis because, as Lynn Staeheli and colleagues put it, citizenship “is inseparable from the geographies of communities and the networks and relationships that link them.”¹⁰⁶ While they have made extremely important advances, the complexity of inclusion and exclusion is not fully recognized by the approaches taken to date because spaces of citizenship have been conceptualized as binary (as spaces of citizenship/noncitizenship) or triadic (as spaces of citizenship/noncitizenship with a third space in between).¹⁰⁷ Where attempts have been made to overcome these binary and triadic interpretations, the focus has been on the politico-legal dimensions of citizenship, not its other substantive components.¹⁰⁸ The multitude of simultaneous in/exclusions from different aspects of citizenship that migrants may experience transnationally is not, therefore, as wholly accounted for as it might be.

I suggest in this book that to better capture the dynamism of migrants’ citizenship, it can instead be thought of in relation to overlapping transnational spaces of citizenship. This reflects the approaches to migrant transnationalism and citizenship explained above. Transnational spaces of citizenship are produced through interactions between individual migrants and nonmigrants, in addition to processes initiated by states and their actors and sometimes interventions by international organizations such as the International Labour Organization. Groups within civil society, such as migrant organizations, also play a role in their production. These interactions are shaped by history and are both impacted by, and have an impact on, place. Thus, to think in terms of transnational spaces of citizenship is to take a profoundly geographical approach to comprehending the production of citizenship across nation-state boundaries in terms of both structural processes and agentic practices. Individuals’ relationships to these spaces are deeply influenced by their social identities.

Reflecting on the lived experiences of migrants I worked with, I found it most useful to think about transnational spaces of citizenship as representing citizenship’s legal, economic, social, and political elements, consequently reflecting both its formal and substantive components and giving due weight to each. Clearly these four spaces reference Marshall’s thinking about the civil, political, and social spheres of citizenship.¹⁰⁹ They also build on it, however, reflecting feminist approaches to the political theory of citizenship, perspectives on the lived realities of citizenship that come from those working on and in Latin America, and the rich contributions to understandings of citizenship that have emerged from migration studies.

Primarily, the idea that these spaces are constructed through structural and agentic processes encourages thinking about citizenship not just in terms of the passive reception of rights by subjects, but also in terms of active participation, because of the emphasis on the everyday citizenship practices of migrants and other actors. Additionally, rather than thinking in terms of a linear progression of rights acquisition as Marshall did (from civil to political to social rights), this approach considers that migrants may have simultaneous, uneven access to many of these spaces of citizenship. Finally, following other feminist scholars such as Alice Kessler-Harris, Carole Pateman, and Yvonne Riaño, I expand on the definition of the social to distinguish between social and economic citizenship.¹¹⁰ While Marshall considered protection from poverty a social right, he did not expand further on the economic aspect of citizenship. It has been argued, however, that economic incorporation through equal access to paid employment is fundamental to women’s ability to participate as citizens, and thus the economic must be given greater weight in studies of citizenship.¹¹¹ This argument can be expanded to include other disadvantaged groups, such as migrants, given the powerful impact that nationality and migratory status, as well as gender and other identities, can have on equal access to paid employment.¹¹²

The complex and dynamic ways in which migrants in this research were both excluded from and included in these distinct but interwoven spaces of transnational citizenship (legal, economic, social, and political) are best captured through the analytic of uncertainty. Uncertainty, and how it is navigated, has increasingly been used as an optic in other social science research, and it is noticeably present in some recent ethnographic studies carried out in the global South.¹¹³ While these works may have disparate foci, they coalesce around a common conceptual understanding. There is a shared sense that uncertainty conveys the insecurity, precariousness, and sometimes fear generated by economic, social, and political processes occurring in the countries under study, and that it also elucidates the ways in which these are materialized in everyday life, becoming a normalized part of its texture. Uncertainty also, however, is comprehended as allowing for—and to a degree enabling—anticipation, aspiration, planning, and action. As Austin Zeiderman and colleagues contend, we can therefore understand “uncertainty as something that is both produced and productive.”¹¹⁴ Its temporal mode is thus foregrounded; Elizabeth Cooper and David Patten view uncertainty as “best approached as a theory of action in the ‘subjunctive mood’.”¹¹⁵ The subjunctive mood, as they explain, quoting Susan Whyte, “is a doubting, hoping, provisional, cautious, and testing disposition to action.”¹¹⁶

Uncertainty grasped in this way manages to encompass multiple aspects of migrants’ lived experiences in relation to transnational spaces of citizenship. It is suggestive of the way in which these spaces, and migrants’ places within and outside of them, are constructed through dynamic, multiscalar processes. And it expresses a lived reality of doubt, insecurity, and ambiguity. It also, however, reflects possibilities of hope and aspiration.

CONCLUSION

The approach developed by bringing together the perspectives on citizenship, migration, and uncertainty addressed in this chapter allows comprehension of how at any one time a migrant may be positioned differently, and multiply, in each of a range of overlapping transnational social spaces of citizenship. Her different positions within these spaces are highly contingent on power relations and her social identities—both in terms of how she is perceived and how she perceives herself—and also grounded in place and historical context. Perhaps she is on the very periphery of legal citizenship in one nation-state—holding a tourist visa, for example—while in full possession of legal citizenship in another where she does not currently reside. In terms of the political, she exercises her right to extraterritorial voting and also is a grassroots activist in the country where she is living, but she cannot vote there.

With respect to social citizenship, she had better access to health care in the country she has left than in the country where she lives at present. She has left one country because she could not find waged employment there and is precariously employed in the other. Almost all of these aspects of her citizenship could shift and change depending on both her exercise of agency through everyday citizenship practices (such as applying for legal residency, perhaps with support from a migrant organization) and structural factors (such as changes to immigration law, perhaps precipitated by recommendations from an international body). A change in one may result in a change in another, although not necessarily.

In this way, many migrants are neither entirely citizens nor “noncitizens,” nor are they in a clearly delineated “third space” of citizenship. Rather, as the stories that unfold in the pages ahead illustrate, there is an unpredictable quality to their experiences of citizenship across multiple dimensions. In relation to each of these dimensions, and spanning them, there is a sense of ambiguity, of instability, and sometimes of fear, but also a whisper of possibility. They live uncertain citizenship.