Governance Through Uncertainty and the Making of Mixed-Status Venezuelan Families in Chile and Colombia

Since the introduction of the term “mixed-status families” by Fix and Zimmermann in 2001, a growing body of literature has examined how migration and citizenship politics affect people as family units rather than individuals. While most of this literature has focused on contexts in the Global North, and on the effect of nationality acquisition rules, this paper explores the emergence of mixed-status Venezuelan families in South America, as the result of the precarisation of protection frameworks in the region and, more broadly, of what Biehl has called “governance through uncertainty”. Using 60 life-history interviews with Venezuelan migrants in Chile and Colombia, alongside 16 semi-structured interviews with civil society representatives, it argues that, unlike the formal stratification systems explored thus far, this phenomenon occurs through a combination of gender-blind migration policies and piecemeal regulations that afford family members different rights depending on the documents they possess, the timing of their departure, and, sometimes, sheer luck. By comparing the contexts of Colombia and Chile, the paper also underscores that the impacts of mixed migration statuses need to be analysed at the interplay between economic and legal precarity, and will vary substantially according to each country's labour market conditions and broader institutional context.