Conflict on the southern peruvian border: discourses and constructions about the foreign migrant

Abstract

Tacna is the border city between Peru and Chile. Its identity is marked by the War of the Pacific and the subsequent occupation of its territory for 50 years, which has determined an identity conflict in the face of migratory processes. Due to its geographical location, it has been characterized as a city where two types of migration converge: the first, characterized by foreign migrants who were on their way to Chile or Argentina, and the second, by circular migrations in the border area. Starting in 2014, this dynamic changed and the Tacna region went from being a place of passage to becoming a reception area for people of Colombian and Venezuelan nationality. Faced with these processes of human mobility, conflicts have arisen as a result of the negative perception that exists towards migrants, which has generated situations of xenophobia and segregation. In this sense, the objective of this research is to analyze the discourses of the Tacneña population about migrants of Venezuelan origin between 2018 and 2023, to identify the ideas that have been built around the Venezuelan migratory flow in the border area. For this, semi-structured in-depth interviews that were applied to people from Tacna during 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023 will be examined.