Reflexões sobre os sistemas de migração internacional: proposta para uma análise estrutural dos mecanismos intermediários

Abstract

This work focuses on the function of the so called intermediary mechanisms in the migration social systems. In need to support a dynamical and relational approach to the understanding of the migration phenomenon, it has been utilized a formal structural analysis that allowed the comparative perspective among twelve empirical migration systems by the consideration of its basic structural properties.The structural analysis rationale was based on the Graph Theory and the Social Network Analysis. Then, the so called migration structural models which constituted the very objective output of the entire study, in fact are rigorous formal abstractions or representations grounded on the particular empirical systems (eight case studies of international migration, and four case studies of the brazilian migration system) that allowed for evaluation and comprehension of the general aspects of the concrete migration phenomenon.The analysis of the intermediary mechanisms (that is to say, the structural positions in the systems filled empirically by agents, recruiters, brokers, family, friends etc.) points to the fundamental importance of such structural category to the organization and widening of migratory flows between origin and destination. Therefore, the critical hypotheses that every migration system must have intermediary structural positions responsible for exclusive connections between different structural positions in origin and destination, was thoroughly tested. Such testing revealed that those intermediary positions should be filled empirically by particular actors that act in practice as brokers, i.e. people that facilitate transmission of migrants, information and resources through personal contacts and channels very exclusive in the wide system.Alongside the structural analysis and methodological considerations it is presented a critical review on the theories and concepts utilized traditionally by scientists of migration phenomenon. Through the conceptual archeology of the migration category it has been purposed a reflexive investigation of its nature, uses and effects on our daily perception (of scientists, policy-makers and common people) of the experienced phenomenon. It is argued that such perceptions (mainly those that inform scientific knowledge) of the human displacements depend decisively on the historical context in which migration takes place, as well as on the mental categories which are elaborated by individuals (migrants and nonmigrants) in action in such context. That is, arguably, the human displacements are supposed to imply some deep overlapping of individual and collective trajectories embedded in a wide and complex space, both physical and social. From such configuration of trajectories in a multidimensional space practical and theoretical sense of migration emerges.At last, while thinking critically about the practical and theoretical sense established by scientists, policy-makers and common people at regarding migration phenomenon, it is realized the existence of paradoxes inextricable to the very act of migration, that most of times remain obscured by conventional analysis and outside the focus of contemporary discussions on the human development.