"Migrants are Citizens Too!": Everyday Acts of Citizenship and the Lived Experiences of Venezuelans Across the Andes

Amid one of the largest ongoing cross-border migration processes in the world, Venezuelans living across the Andes are often categorized as non-citizens by the governments of the countries they reside in. Full access to their rights is limited by dominant legal technologies of population governance, centred on positioning individuals as subjects in/of nation-states, under different political /juridical statuses instrumental to consolidate objectives of ‘migration management’. Yet, by embracing diverse, and meaningful acts of citizenship, many have found creative ways to perform citizenship in countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile; allowing them access to some rights that otherwise could not be effectively claimed. In this article, I use 23 interviews with migration activists in these four countries to explore the formation of a specific form of political subjectivity in the case of Venezuelans, through the dual lens of acts of citizenship and of performative citizenship. I argue that in absence of an equivalent legal status, quotidian actions derived from different productive and creative acts are essential in enabling a disruptive form of lived citizenship across an alternative, evolving space for politics in the Andean region.