The Value of Illegality: Venezuelan Migrants in Ecuador and the (Re)Entrenchment of Neoliberal Capitalism

Abstract

Despite Ecuadorians’ own extensive experiences as international migrants, as Venezuelan migration into Ecuador has increased sharply in the last five years, the Ecuadorian government has enacted a barrage of restrictive and exclusionary policies at and within the country's borders. Consequently, Venezuelans in Ecuador are forced into illegality, a spatialized social condition that entails simultaneous marginalization and inclusion in the contemporary socioeconomic order. This paper draws on theorizations of governmentality, destitution economies, and status value to argue that the illegalization of migrants produces various forms of value for the government and broader public. First, illegality works as a governmental mechanism to reconcile neoliberal capitalism with the inequalities it exacerbates. At the national scale, illegalization of Venezuelan migrants facilitates political legitimation for the Ecuadorian government, and at the local scale, illegality makes migrants hyper-visible in ways that obscure the negative consequences of neoliberal economic strategies. Second, illegality facilitates strategies for economic exploitation of migrants by private actors at the local scale. Exploring how illegality produces value in Ecuador is useful for understanding other cases of South–South migration and draws attention to the disciplinary functions of migration management outside the Global North. This article provides a case study of multiple mobilities in the context of growing poverty, historical inequalities, and the entrenchment of neoliberal capitalism.