The prolonged crisis in Venezuela has triggered a massive exodus of its citizens from their homeland. Since 2015, the neighbouring island nation of Trinidad and Tobago has been the recipient of significant numbers of Venezuelan asylum seekers and migrants. This chapter examines how the shifting migration trajectories of Venezuelans have impacted the functions of Trinidad and Tobago as a migration site. Analysing data from interviews with Venezuelan migrants on the island within a spatializing migrants’ mobilities framework, I examine migrants’ intended settlement and migration goals and subsequent changes in their intentions. I argue that Venezuelan migrants’ movements to and across Trinidad and Tobago have re-engineered the island’s mobility regimes which serve to interrupt the intended trajectories of migrants, by (en)closing the island’s geography from within and out. While there is an ‘opening’ of the island, spatially, through multiple migrations of Venezuelans, the island is also effectively ‘closed’ due to its amplification in enforcement action in response to their arrivals. This analysis underscores the co-constitutive impacts of migration movements, illustrating how migration trajectories shift in response to contextual changes in traversed spaces.

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The Interrupting Island: Trinidad and Tobago and the Shifting Migration Trajectories of Venezuelans

  • Shiva S. Mohan

摘要

The prolonged crisis in Venezuela has triggered a massive exodus of its citizens from their homeland. Since 2015, the neighbouring island nation of Trinidad and Tobago has been the recipient of significant numbers of Venezuelan asylum seekers and migrants. This chapter examines how the shifting migration trajectories of Venezuelans have impacted the functions of Trinidad and Tobago as a migration site. Analysing data from interviews with Venezuelan migrants on the island within a spatializing migrants’ mobilities framework, I examine migrants’ intended settlement and migration goals and subsequent changes in their intentions. I argue that Venezuelan migrants’ movements to and across Trinidad and Tobago have re-engineered the island’s mobility regimes which serve to interrupt the intended trajectories of migrants, by (en)closing the island’s geography from within and out. While there is an ‘opening’ of the island, spatially, through multiple migrations of Venezuelans, the island is also effectively ‘closed’ due to its amplification in enforcement action in response to their arrivals. This analysis underscores the co-constitutive impacts of migration movements, illustrating how migration trajectories shift in response to contextual changes in traversed spaces.