Unpacking the Ideational Foundations of South American Migration Governance: A systematic analysis of the South American Conference on Migration

Is there empirical proof for a liberal paradigm that informs South American immigration governance? And how does this paradigm relate to other ideas on managing immigration? Based on Pécoud’s (2021) categorization of immigration governance philosophies, and the content analysis of all final declarations of the South American Conference on Migration between 2000 and 2022, we confirm a dominant liberal paradigm in South American regional migration governance. We further find that this liberal, or global rights-based philosophy operates as a hinge between three other philosophies: the free (non) governance of migration, anti-migrant governance, and managerial/development global migration governance philosophy. This paper shows the applicability of Pécoud’s (2021) immigration governance philosophies to a major immigrant receiving region in the Global South, and contributes to the ideational literature by showing how paradigms and philosophies represent ideational building blocks that can be combined, merged, and adapted by political actors to different regional contexts.