The Americas is, without a doubt, a region of migrants, a territory where voluntary, and in many cases forced, migration is part of past and present history. It is home to a total of 75 million migrants, close to 650,000 refugees, more than 2 million asylum seekers and more than 8 million internally displaced persons. Within this context, recent years have seen a growing trend of narratives that dehumanise migrants. Polarisation and populism have permeated political discourse, exploiting citizens’ feelings of fear of the different, uncertainty and frustration in the face of social deficiencies and shortcomings that the region’s public institutions have not been able to resolve.
This is why Club de Madrid, the General Secretariat of the Organisation of American States (OAS) and Equilibrium CenDE with the collaboration of Diasporas, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the University Seminar for Studies on Internal Displacement, Migration, Exile and Repatriation (SUDIMER), have published this report to analyse these trends and try to bust myths related to migration.