Debates and decisions on migration in Mercosur and NAFTA 1990-2019

a reflection from the participation of Argentina and Mexico in regional integration processes

Abstract

This article aims to review migrations from a historical and comparative perspective, between 1990 and 2019, of the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mercosur and NAFTA are two of the most important regional integration models in which Mexico and Argentina participate. Although these initiatives have evolved differently, both conform to what has been called economic integration within the framework of the new regionalism, a product of the global political and economic transformations of the mid-1980s. The context and the starting point These agreements are some of the elements that they have in common, however, their ways of approaching immigration decisions have been different. In Mercosur, the inclusion of decisions on migration as part of the economic and political integration of the bloc was strengthened from 2000 to 2015; On the contrary, in NAFTA, there is a separation between an economic agreement and an immigration agreement; between the free movement of goods and merchandise and the free movement of people and workers.