The integration of Venezuelan citizens in Colombia: speech of immigrant leaders in Bogotá and Cúcuta

Abstract

As a result of the crisis facing Venezuela, thousands of Venezuelan citizens have entered Colombia; migratory movement that supposes a series of challenges so much for the government as for the civil society. This article analyses the configuration of the social imaginary of the integration of Venezuelan immigrants, based on interviews with eight immigrant leaders living in the cities of Bogotá and Cúcuta. The imaginary is analysed from the axial concepts of the work of M. A. Baeza and the integration as a process in three levels from the approach of F. Aliaga Saéz. Hermeneutical analysis was done of the discourse and semantic fields have been identified in the corpus that the leaders describe as key aspects to impulse the integration process: need for guidance and information, attend job insecurity and informality, the link between Colombia and Venezuela, characterize the immigrant population, awareness of the phenomenon and avoid conflict situations.