Understanding Venezuelan Immigration and Education in Colombia
Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, downtown. Photo provided courtesy of author.
By Yecid Ortega
02 August 2021
Bogotá, Colombia, has become the home of many migrants from Venezuela in the past few years. I was in Colombia in 2018 to conduct doctoral dissertation research on peacebuilding education in a marginalized high school. I continued my relationship with one of the teacher participants of the study who has been concerned about how to better respond to the needs of incoming immigrant youth from Venezuela.
Almost 70 years ago, many Colombians emigrated to Venezuela to find employment in Venezuela’s burgeoning oil industry education. Currently, this trend seems to have been reversed: more than three million Venezuelans have immigrated to Colombia in the past six years to seek a better life for their families (Pineda & Ávila, 2019). In 2018, approximately 936,000 Venezuelans, as estimated by Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Relations, were arriving with the intent to stay. Further, migration escalated radically in the last two years: recent data from Migración Colombia demonstrate that additional Venezuelans have officially entered the country. Although Venezuelans can now apply for a special permit[1] to stay in Colombia and have access to health and education, they, like their Colombian counterparts, still experience economic and social unrest.
Today, this set of crises in Colombia continues and, with the pandemic, conditions have become more complicated for Venezuelan migrants. As such, to get a bit more from an insider’s perspective on this issue, I asked my former research teacher participant for an informal overview of her perceptions and concerns about this topic. Lorena, who works in a secondary public school, describes that the immigrant youth from Venezuela at her school face economic challenges as some of their parents have professional degrees but have found it difficult to find employment and are sometimes paid under the table, receiving less than the minimum wage.
She argues that although the Colombian government has not necessarily provided resources or designed any policy related to supporting Venezuelan students, some schools’ cultural and pedagogical initiatives have emerged. For example, along with the history and social studies teacher, Lorena created an activity called Circulos de Memoria (Circles of Memory), in which Venezuelan students share stories about their immigration journey and their lives back home with other students. Once a week, they invite Venezuelan students to share their culture or stories about their families with the goal of creating a safe space for them so other students respect where they are coming from.
Colombian students are asked to reply in the form of a reflection and to propose an action they want to carry out to support their Venezuelan peers. For example, one of the students decided to create a fundraising campaign to collect funds to buy new clothes for the current and incoming Venezuelan students. Lorena mentions that other students very often create welcoming posters and write gratitude message notes for those who arrive for the first time at the school. According to Lorena, both Venezuelan students and Colombian students have benefited from these circles because they learn from each other as they create an atmosphere of friendship and camaraderie.
Although some Venezuelan students seemed to struggle academically compared with the Colombian students, Lorena has seen how some Colombian students help them with their homework, projects or academic assignments. The circles of memory have not only helped Venezuelan students find support partners but also friendship. In the meantime, Colombian students have become more aware of the country’s internal sociopolitical conflict and found out both countries share similar historical struggles, therefore a sense of solidarity and bonding has emerged.
Lorena wishes she could do more for these students and reiterates that the government should provide more resources, training or professional development workshops to better support these students emotionally and academically. Learning from her responses and experiences, a few practical implications are evident. Teachers can create safe spaces for Venezuelan students by proposing projects in which everyone benefits by learning from each other’s cultural experience. Additionally, policymakers can propose not only temporary but long-standing policies that provide the necessary economic and educational resources for the immigrants to thrive and integrate to the sociopolitical system in Colombia.
Building from Lorena’s deep concerns about her Venezuelan students not only at her school but others, there are opportunities for teachers to receive professional development regarding pedagogical strategies to integrate and support refugee and immigrant students in the long-term to address the emerging rise of discrimination. It is then that Venezuelan youth can participate in the Colombian society in the present, while also drawing out their plans for the future.
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this publication belong solely to the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of REACH or the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
References
Pineda, E., & Ávila, K. (2019). Aproximaciones a la migración Colombo-Venezolana: Desigualdad, prejuicio y vulnerabilidad. Misión Jurídica: Revista de derecho y ciencias sociales, 12(16), 59–78.
Endnotes
[1] Permiso Especial de Permanencia (PEP).About the Author
Yecid Ortega finished his doctoral studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, in the collaborative program of Comparative, International, and Development Education (CIDE). His main research interest includes social justice and peacebuilding in education. He utilizes critical ethnographic case studies to understand how policy and teaching practices help or hinder the academic processes of youth with immigrant and refugee backgrounds. Connect with Yecid on Twitter, LinkedIn, or via email at yecid.ortega@mail.utoronto.ca.
To learn more about his work, visit https://www.andjustice4all.ca/.