Racial Borders and Indigenous Migration in Latin America. How Colonial Legacies Shape Indigenous Mobility in Latin America
A blogpost by Anna Amendt
Pre-colonial Indigenous mobility
Migration has deep historical and cultural roots among Indigenous peoples in Latin America.1 Long before colonization, movement was an essential part of their life, especially in hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies.2 A map in Encyclopaedie Britannica illustrates the distribution of Indigenous cultural groups across South America and Caribbean region before colonization.3 These groups inhabited their own distinct territories, with their own borders, seasonal movements, and patterns of land use.4 Since the existence of modern nation-states in the late nineteenth century however, Indigenous mobility has been increasingly restricted. National borders now fragment their ancestral lands, creating difficulties regarding movement and belonging.5
Contemporary Indigenous migration
Today, Indigenous migration tends to show in two forms: internal migration, primarily from rural to urban areas; and cross-border migration, mostly to neighboring countries.6 Economic pressures such as poverty, land loss, and environmental degradation are among the main drivers of forced migration.7 Next to that many are forced to move due to armed conflicts, human right violations, or natural disasters.8 This non-voluntary migration is a survival strategy in response to systemic disadvantages and reflect colonial and postcolonial structures that marginalize Indigenous communities.9
“Racial borders” by E. Tendayi Achiume

Blackboard drawing from the seminar, Innsbruck (Levke Harders, 2025) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DE
E. Tendayi Achiume understands racial borders as invisible lines shaped by colonial hierarchies. She argues that modern mobility, migration, and citizenship are still racialized, which means they are still deeply structured by historical systems of race and colonial power.10 For Indigenous peoples, this means experiencing ‘invisible borders’ even within their own countries, in areas such as healthcare, education, and employment.11 Internal migration – such as moving from a rural village to an urban area – can be seen as a form of non-physical border, that reflects patterns of exclusion despite formal national belonging.12
Invisible citizens
A key critique raised by Achiume is directed at the concept of citizenship itself. For many Indigenous communities, national identity does not replace their own territorial and cultural affiliations. Indigenous migrants are structurally excluded, even when they hold passports or formal citizenship.13 This is particularly evident in nomadic or semi-nomadic groups – such as some Amazonian peoples – who move through landscapes where national borders are irrelevant or even unknown to them.14
Through this lens, national borders and migration regimes reproduce colonial inequalities and limit the mobility of Indigenous peoples – due to structural exclusion. The concept of racial borders exposes how citizenship itself is racialized and used to define who may move freely and who may not.
The invisibility of Indigenous migrants
The migration difficulties of Indigenous peoples in Latin America remain largely overlooked in migration research.15 Many Indigenous migrants are undocumented or statistically invisible, making it difficult to capture their experiences in data.16 This invisibility undermines efforts to construct a multi-ethnic and inclusive concept of citizenship in Latin America.17 Moreover, the presence of an ethnic perspective in migration research and political discourse is needed to establish a more accurate understanding of the unique challenges Indigenous migrants face.
Toward a decolonial migration policy
Migration research and policies are based on a Eurocentric model of citizenship, that overlook Indigenous mobility patterns and their socio-cultural legitimacy. What is needed is a decolonial migration policy: one that recognizes Indigenous territorial rights, cultural identities, and acknowledges their mobility beyond the colonial-national framework. Indigenous mobility can be seen as a reflection of structural exclusion, or potentially also as a strategy of cultural resilience.18 A decolonial migration policy should center territorial rights of Indigenous peoples, uphold their cultural identity, and honor Indigenous mobility as a legitimate form of cultural expression.
At the beginning of the summer semester, Anna Amendt started the Master’s program Gender, Culture and Social Change at the University of Innsbruck after undergraduate studies in psychology. This text was written as part of the seminar “History of Gender Relations: Gender, Migration, Borders”.
Diesen Artikel zitieren: Amendt, Anna: Racial Borders and Indigenous Migration in Latin America. How Colonial Legacies Shape Indigenous Mobility in Latin America, in: Migration and Belonging, 24/10/2025, https://belonging.hypotheses.org/6292 [Abrufdatum].
- Oyarce, Ana María / Popolo, Fabiana del / Pizarro, Jorge Martínez: International migration and indigenous peoples in Latin America: the need for a multinational approach in migration policies, in: Revista Latinoamericana de Población, 3 (2010) 4-5, 143-163. [↩]
- Ibid. [↩]
- Faron, L.ouis C.: South American Indian, in: Encyclopedia Britannica online, 2024. [↩]
- Ibid. [↩]
- Oyarce / Popolo / Pizarro 2010. [↩]
- Ortiz, 2024; Rodríguez, Migración interna de los pueblos indígenas: Sistematizando y analizando información censal relevante para actualizar las imágenes, mejorar el conocimiento y fortalecer las intervenciones. Cuenca, 2008. [↩]
- Oyarce / Popolo / Pizarro 2010. [↩]
- Ibid. [↩]
- Ibid. [↩]
- Achiume, E. Tendayi: Racial Borders, in: The Georgetown Law Journal 110 (2022) 3, 445-508. See also these blogposts on Achiume’s concept: Glatter-Götz, Doris: Rassifizierte Grenzen verstehen: Was zwei sehr unterschiedliche Texte gemeinsam zeigen, in: Migration and Belonging, 05/09/2025, and Ribitsch, Nikola: Vererbte Privilegien und rassifizierte Grenzen. Ein Vergleich von Ayelet Shachar und E. Tendayi Achiume, in: Migration and Belonging, 19/09/2025. [↩]
- Oyarce / Popolo / Pizarro 2010. [↩]
- Achiume 2022. [↩]
- Oyarce / Popolo / Pizarro 2010. [↩]
- Ibid. [↩]
- Ortiz 2024. [↩]
- Oyarce / Popolo / Pizarro 2010. [↩]
- Ibid. [↩]
- Oyarce / Popolo / Pizarro 2010. [↩]
OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Anna Amendt (24. Oktober 2025). Racial Borders and Indigenous Migration in Latin America. How Colonial Legacies Shape Indigenous Mobility in Latin America. Migration and Belonging. Abgerufen am 6. Februar 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/151bd
