Securitisation, humanitarian responses and the erosion of everyday rights of displaced Venezuelan women in Brazil

Abstract

This article explores the gendered securitisation of humanitarianism through the lens of Venezuelan women who have fled to Brazil, as part of the largest migration flow in South America. By the end of 2022, the number of displaced Venezuelans had grown to seven million, half of whom were women and girls. Alongside humanitarian programmes, measures of migration control, policing and deterrence are now routinely implemented. This article explores the interplay between securitised policies and humanitarian programmes in the everyday experience of rights of Venezuelan migrant women and girls. We ask: what happens when migrant women reach Brazil, a supposed place of safety? Do they experience rights restitution and protection, or do they continue to be subject to everyday gendered humiliations? Building on fieldwork in Boa Vista and Manaus in 2020–2022, we explore migrant women and girls’ experiences with shelter and healthcare, two central pillars of humanitarian programmes. Contributing directly to literatures on migration management, humanitarianism and control, this article focuses on ‘the receiving end’ of securitised humanitarian practices and deploys a gender lens to reveal how securitised humanitarianism reproduces disciplinary dynamics of governance and creates gendered risks and vulnerabilities that erode migrant women and girl’s rights and agency in everyday life.