REFUGEE AND MIGRANT CIVIC SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS AND COLLECTIVES IN RIO DE JANEIRO: SOCIAL INTEGRATION AND ENTANGLEMENTS

In the last decades, there has been a substantive growth in international migration between countries in the Latin American region, most especially among Haitians and, lately, Venezuelans. In Brazil, foreigners represented 200,000 in 2023, and there were around 50,000 asylum requests in 2022. These processes confront individuals with several stressors and force them to develop resilience strategies, many of which are promoted and supported by civic society associations acting in their favour or by migrant and refugee collectives. These have risen as a privileged locus to mediate the relationship between the state and society and act in the empty spaces left by public migration policies. The present study describes and reflects upon the role of these associations, their aims, actions, and forms of inter-institutional articulation in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Its findings show that they fulfil valuable common goals, such as upgrading migrants´ and refugees´ information on documentation and human rights, providing legal orientation, promoting insertion into the labour market, and upgrading their social integration and political advocacy capacities. However, they act in fragmented ways, often with few financial resources and entanglements between them or with other institutions are short-lived.