Bureaucrats and Migrant Integration: Statebuilding, Agency, and Governance in Brazil

• In Event: Migration Shocks: Bureaucrats, Citizens, and Migrants

Abstract

What is the role of bureaucrats in integrating migrants into a host society? The argument developed here is that within Brazil’s migration governance, bureaucrats play a key role in integrating Venezuelan migrants into local society, which produces wide-ranging impacts on local state capacity. This article demonstrates that contact with Venezuelan migration positions Brazilian public servants to: learn new skills or enhance pre-existing ones, create informal networks of support with other bureaucrats, socialize migrants within Brazilian social norms, and search for new resources. This process results in Brazilian bureaucrats establishing new norms for how the state operates and leads to spillover effects for all public service users. However, these transformations depend on the will of each Brazilian bureaucrat, meaning they have agency and choose when and how to exercise it. These claims are based on 286 semi-structured interviews and 60 participant observations with bureaucrats across Brazil’s federal, state, and municipal government branches, and Venezuelan migrants.

Author

• José Oviedo Pérez, The Ohio State University