Citizenship Studies

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Operation shelter as humanitarian infrastructure:

material and normative renderings of Venezuelan
migration in Brazil

Carolina Moulin & Bruno Magalhães

To cite this article: Carolina Moulin & Bruno Magalhães (2020): Operation shelter as humanitarian
infrastructure: material and normative renderings of Venezuelan migration in Brazil, Citizenship
Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13621025.2020.1784643

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2020.1784643

Published online: 03 Jul 2020.

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CITIZENSHIP STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2020.1784643

Operation shelter as humanitarian infrastructure: material

and normative renderings of Venezuelan migration in Brazil
a
Carolina Moulin and Bruno Magalhãesb
a
Faculdade De Ciências Econômicas, CEDEPLAR/FACE, Universidade Federal De Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil; bInternational Relations Institute of the Catholic University of Rio De Janeiro (IRI, PUC-Rio), Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article stiches together a conceptual discussion on ‘humanitarian Received 25 August 2019
infrastructure’ with research amid Venezuelan migrants, asylum see­ Accepted 15 June 2020
kers, army personnel, governmental officers and envoys of humanitar­ KEYWORDS
ian agencies responsible for implementing ‘Operation Shelter’ – Asylum; humanitarian
described by the Brazilian government as a large humanitarian task infrastructure; Venezuela;
force offering assistance to Venezuelans entering Brazil’s province of migration; border control
Roraima. The article’s goal is to explore the material and normative
renderings of humanitarian infrastructure that enables migrants’ desire
to move, while also governing and making sense of Venezuelan
mobility. We suggest that the bureaucratic split of Venezuelans into
two temporally different migration figures – asylum seeker and huma­
nitarian migrant – is illustrative of an ambivalence of enacting control
and freedom. We explore how such ambivalence is manifested in
attempts to discipline migrants’ bodies and movements along built,
technological and logistical humanitarian infrastructure, with conse­
quences for engagements between border authorities and migrants.

Introduction
Since 2015, an estimated number of 4.6 million Venezuelans have left the country on
account of its ongoing economic and humanitarian crisis. Brazil currently ranks as
the second most important destination for Venezuelan asylum seekers. It is also the
sixth Latin-American location in which most residence permits are issued. Initially,
a survey carried out by the Brazilian government revealed that no more than 10,000
Venezuelans crossed into Brazil in 2016 (Simões 2017). By 2019, however, the migrant
population had escalated sharply: over 220,000 Venezuelans had arrived in Brazil as of
December 2019. Once in Brazil, those Venezuelans that apply for regularization were
classified as asylum seekers, temporary residents or under other bureaucratic categories
(R4V 2019).
Venezuelan migration into Brazil has given rise to vigorous disputes over the social
and material conditions of reception. International agencies and demographers had been
warning authorities about the likely increase in Venezuelan migration within South
America since at least 2015 (Cerrutti and Parrado 2015; Prieto Rosas and López Gay

CONTACT Carolina cmoulin@puc-rio.br Moulin Aguiar Faculdade De Ciências Econômicas, CEDEPLAR/FACE,

Universidade Federal De Minas Gerais, Brazil
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 C. MOULIN AGUIAR AND B. MAGALHÃES

2015). Still, little was done to prepare the local reception systems in advance. As
predicted, the increase in Venezuelan migration hyper-strained unprepared local food
supplies, healthcare and educational systems, producing a volatile – and eventually
explosive – scenario. During 2018 and 2019, resentment and hostility translated into
a series of xenophobic attacks carried out by Brazilian nationals against Venezuelans.
Meanwhile, federal, provincial and municipal authorities still struggled to ascertain
who should be responsible for the reception of Venezuelans. Between 2015 and 2018,
there were calls for closing off the border from the Brazilian side – a request ultimately
turned down by the Brazilian Supreme Court –, followed by closures by the Venezuelan
government under Nicolás Maduro on two occasions in 2018 and 2019. In 2018, under
mounting social pressure, the Brazilian Federal Government set up a task force to
superintend operations in the area.
Led by the Brazilian military, ‘Operation Shelter’ is formally described as a ‘large-scale
humanitarian task force’, executed and coordinated ‘with the support of UN agencies and
more than 100 civil society entities’.1 ‘Operação Acolhida’, as it is known in Portuguese,
has led to the construction of – what we will call and develop further here – a massive
‘humanitarian infrastructure’ consisting of built reception and triage posts (Figure 1),
shelters, partially digitalized information and data exchange systems, and logistical
nodes. The operation has the ostensive goals of improving ‘border planning’, which
includes documentation, vaccination and control operation carried out by the Brazilian
Army; reception, understood as the provision of shelter, food and health care; and
interiorization and ‘voluntary displacement’, defined as the replacement of
Venezuelans from Roraima to other provinces in Brazil’.
This paper stiches together a conceptual discussion on the notion of ‘humanitarian
infrastructure’ with vignettes collected during research carried out amid Venezuelan
migrants and asylum seekers in their encounters with army personnel, governmental
officers and envoys of local charities and humanitarian agencies responsible for imple­
menting Operation Shelter at the street level. The article’s aim is to examine the co-
production of the normative and material aspects of humanitarian infrastructure that
enables migrants’ desire to move, while also governing and making sense of Venezuelan
mobility.2 In particular, we are interested in how attempts to discipline migrants’ bodies
and movements have given rise to engagements between border authorities and migrants
that operate, ambivalently, to enact both control and freedom. We suggest that the
bureaucratic split of Venezuelans into two temporally different migration figures –
asylum seeker and humanitarian migrant is illustrative of this ambivalence.
The article’s argument unfolds in three moves. We start by tracing the particularities of
choreographed humanitarian operations and reviewing a few key concepts for those con­
cerned with the intertwining of humanitarian and border control practices. This allows us to
position our use of the notion of ‘humanitarian infrastructure’ in relation to the rich and
multidisciplinary literature emerging at the interface between the study of science and
technology, humanitarian government, migration and humanitarian infrastructures. Next,
we look at the mundane practices involved in implementing Operation Shelter, with an eye to
the shaping of a humanitarian infrastructure of reception. We suggest that the governmental
bureaucratic split of Venezuelans into two temporally different migration figures – asylum
seeker and humanitarian migrant – is illustrative of an ambivalence of a politics of categor­
ization which serves as the instituted embedding for the humanitarian infrastructure of
 CITIZENSHIP STUDIES 3

Figure 1. Reception center, Boa Vista. Sept.2018. Author’s archive.

Operation Shelter. We describe and discuss the material and normative dimensions, pre­
mised on built, technological and logistical architectures manifesting such politics of categor­
ization. Finally, we dwell on the articulations between built, technological and logistical
architectures and the management of migration, stressing the consequences of the
Brazilian response to issues of protection and to the increasing global policing of circulations
in the context of South-South forced mobilities for migrants as political subjects.
4 C. MOULIN AGUIAR AND B. MAGALHÃES

From humanitarian government to humanitarian infrastructure

Responding to the increased flow of migrants to the state of Roraima, the Brazilian
government created the Federal Emergency Assistance Committee for Venezuelan
Immigrants. Brazil’s Ministry of Defense was designated as the head agency and an
army lieutenant general was appointed operational coordinator. Since February 2018,
Brazilian military troops have been coordinating the humanitarian operations at the
Brazilian and Venezuelan border under the umbrella of a logistical task-force.
Operation Shelter (our translation, Operação Acolhida, in Portuguese) - alongside
Operation Control -has a major border security component. The Brazilian government
has expanded the presence of troops along the Brazil-Venezuela border for security,
especially in the area around the town of Pacaraima. The higher number of Brazilian
soldiers in this area has also made it possible to increase border inspection operations
explicitly portrayed as part of the fight against cross-border crime.
Still, although the concern to bring order and increase security at the border are
central to the operation, the program’s humanitarian nature is emphasized the most in
governmental press releases. As governmental press releases want to emphasize, the
Brazilian military has been working in close cooperation with the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration
(IOM), the UN Population Fund and a range of other law enforcement, government and
nongovernmental organizations, religious and philanthropic institutions. The orche­
strated demonstration of Operation Shelter as a humanitarian operation might be
a form of avoiding resistance to militarization. The delivery of humanitarian aid, as
opposed to enforcing border control, also might be assumed to make it easier to sell
policy, as it appeals to moral sentiment. One way of understanding the notion of a ‘moral
sentiment’ is to take it as emotions that prompt us to pay attention and to try and remedy
the suffering of others.
In order to reflect on what is at stake when looking at Operation Shelter as
a choreographed humanitarian operation, we, firstly, explore the particularities of ‘huma­
nitarian government’ and continue to examine the normative and material aspects which
come together, while also taking into account the operational particularities of ‘huma­
nitarian infrastructures’.
The appeal to moral sentiment seems to be a trend in the legitimization discourse of
border security practitioners, and moral sentiments are increasingly important to con­
temporary politics of migration and border control. French sociologist Didier Fassin
(2012) coined the notion of ‘humanitarian government’ to refer to ‘measures, initiatives,
and forms of government [. . .] that have been brought into operation, at the end of the
twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries, to manage populations and
individuals faced with situations of in equality, contexts of violence, and experiences of
suffering.’ (idem: 05). As William Walters sums it up, ‘humanitarian government’ ‘can be
defined as the administration of human collectivities in the name of a higher moral
principle which sees the preservation of life and the alleviation of suffering as the highest
value of action’ (Fassin 2007, 151, as cited in Walters 2011b, 143). This way of under­
standing the notion of humanitarianism dovetails with its understanding as a ‘liberal
diagnostic’ (Pallister-Wilkins 2018). At their most basic, what all these considerations
share is a call for treating humanitarianism not as a set of ideas and ideologies. They
 CITIZENSHIP STUDIES 5

caution against reducing humanitarian work to the activity of nongovernmental actors

and organizations that deliver humanitarian aid. Instead, the notion of humanitarianism
is reconceived ‘as a complex domain possessing specific forms of governmental reason’
(Walters 2011b, 142).
This way of conceiving humanitarian operations as an art of government has the great
benefit of highlighting an inescapable tension between compassion and repression in
practices carried out under a humanitarian governmental rationale. That security and
humanitarianism can walk hand in hand without major constraints is a relatively well-
established point amid the multidisciplinary literature on migration and border control
(Huysmans 2006).
What the literature on humanitarian government brings back to this discussion is not,
therefore, yet another argument to denounce the relation between care and control as
manipulative. Rather, it calls attention to the many (ambivalent) forms that the tension
between care and control can assume at liminal spaces. As Walters summarizes it sharply,
thinking the humanitarian as an art of governing encourages us to think of it as “a
complex assemblage, comprising particular forms of humanitarian reason, specific forms
of authority’, as well as technologies of government, like ‘mechanisms for raising funds
and training volunteers, administering aid and shelter, documenting injustice, and
publicizing abuse.’ (Walters 2011b, 142).
Research building on the concept of ‘migration infrastructure’ has provided us with
useful insights about the benefits of looking into the material and normative aspects of
infrastructure in the context of migration. The notion of ‘migration infrastructure’
developed by Biao Xiang and Johan Lindquist (Xiang and Lindquist 2014) refers to the
‘systematically interlinked technologies, institutions, and actors that facilitate and con­
dition mobility’ (idem: S124). Here, we emphasize the relevance of the notion of hetero­
geneous engineering developed by Science and Technology scholars. The work of
building technology entails engineering ‘social’ as well as ‘technical’ phenomena to put
together an environment in which favoured artifacts can function and can be seen as
viable (Law 1987, 107): ‘technological stabilization can be understood only if the artifact in
question is seen as being interrelated with a wide range of nontechnological and specifically
social factors’ (idem). A basic insight here – which also needs to be taken into account
when reflecting on ‘infrastructures’ – is that the success and stabilization of technologies
involve tinkering not only with technology, but also with the social, political, and
economic context within which these devices are successfully located.
It is at this point that the notion of migration and humanitarian infrastructure
becomes germane, we believe. From Biao Xiang and Johan Lindquist (Xiang and
Lindquist 2014) we learnt about how ‘the humanitarian’ is proving as a purpose for
demonstrating successfully an art of governing by studying the diffusion of this hetero­
geneous array of practices, professionals and technologies used to do humanitarian
work – what they referred to as ‘migration infrastructure’. Pascucci (2017, 249–251)
building on migration infrastructure (Xiang and Lindquist 2014) develops a notion of
‘humanitarian infrastructure’ ‘as the ensemble of technologies and spaces through which
refugee migration and its governance are mediated and reproduced’. She is interested in
exploring the material aspects of the mundane geographies that concretely ‘make up’
refugee aid and migration governance and the links to networks and institutions of
knowledge production.
6 C. MOULIN AGUIAR AND B. MAGALHÃES

A growing literature on the material and technological infrastructure of border

controls shows the extent of these entanglements, highlighting the ways in which
mobilities are increasingly intertwined with the production of data identities, large
information systems and logistical circuits of containment and circulation (Pallister-
Wilkins 2018; Salter 2005; Tazzioli 2017; Pollozek and Passoth 2019).
Here, we locate our argument in the literature about migration/humanitarian infra­
structures and humanitarian government and in the literature about enacting citizenship.
Our goal is to push forward the application of the notion of infrastructure with a focus on
its built, technological and logistical dimensions to the study of humanitarian practices
by drawing attention to the making-of, construction and constant improvisation of
humanitarian infrastructure. We particularly look at how ‘humanitarian infrastructure’
prefigures migrants’ abilities to enact themselves as political subjects. As migrants’ agency
takes place within structures that are materially constituted and that ‘may affect the
formation and enactment of political claims’ (Hughes and Forman 2017, 677), we explore
how migrants respond as political subjects to the control mechanisms of humanitarian
infrastructures.

‘Operation shelter’ as humanitarian infrastructure

Venezuelan migration into Brazil has given rise to vigorous disputes over the social and
material conditions of reception. The debate has also turned to the wider political
landscape of mobility, humanitarian assistance and emergency response. Poor connec­
tion between Brazil’s northern border and the rest of the country contribute to keep the
Venezuelan population trapped in the region. Roraima, the Brazilian province which
adjoins Venezuela, is a poor and distant member of the federation, having only been
recognized as a province in 1988. Its borders span across 2,000 kilometers, and 70% of its
territory are currently demarcated for indigenous populations. Roraima’s revenue is
determined by public funding and by the outcome of rice plantations. Roraima’s capital,
Boa Vista, can only be reached by land from Venezuela through Santa Elena de Uairén.
From Brazil, the nearest city is Manaus, Amazonas’ provincial capital, nearly 800 kilo­
meters away.
Alongside Boa Vista, the Brazilian border town of Pacaraima has become a nodal
point in migrants’ journeys and assistance network. Pacaraima, with an estimated
population of 17,401, showed the highest geometric population growth rate in the
country during 2019 – an 11.7% growth rate against the country’s 0.79% yearly average.
Boa Vista, with its 399,213 inhabitants, also showed the highest geometric population
growth rate among all Brazilian capitals – a 6.35% growth, according to Brazil’s Institute
of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). Whether by choice or for lack of alternatives, the vast
majority of the over 200,000 Venezuelans entering Brazil crossed Santa Elena de Uairén
and then passed through or remained in Pacaraima and Boa Vista.
The response given by Brazilian authorities has oscillated from promises to guarantee
Venezuelans rights to rather explicit defenses of restrictive border control. The mayors of
Pacaraima and Boa Vista, the governor of Roraima and Roraima state Senators have
stated here and there their intention to comply with the Brazilian law and respect
migrants’ rights (Oliveira 2017). At the same time, it is not hard to spot in their
discourses implicit attempts to associate the arrival of Venezuelans with the alleged
 CITIZENSHIP STUDIES 7

increase of crime rate (Correia 2017). Calls for closing the border and expelling
Venezuelans have been aired frequently and defended as necessary to reestablish an
idealized social order assumed to guarantee control and stability (Marques 2017).
Supported by the discursive rendition of Venezuelans as a source of insecurity, the
Federal Police office in Roraima has carried out en masse deportations of Venezuelans on
at least five occasions (Macedo 2017). Between September 2015 and November 2016, 395
Venezuelan migrants were charged of undocumented entry or overstaying and handed
over to Venezuelan authorities (Toledo 2017). On December 2016, a new attempt to
deport 450 Venezuelans – 180 of which were children – was called off by court order at
the last minute, forcing police buses to make a U-turn at the border (Leal 2016).
Since 2018, a more comprehensive approach – albeit hardly a less violent one – has
been adopted. Operation Shelter (Operação Acolhida) and the Logistical-Humanitarian
Task Force were set up in July 2018. Spearheaded by the federal and provincial govern­
ments and by UN agencies, and coordinated by the Brazilian Army, these initiatives are
part of a larger effort to maintain border control and extend humanitarian assistance to
Venezuelan migrants. Before portraying the built, technological and logistical compo­
nents of Operation Shelter, we continue to outline the legal and administrative orders
classifying Venezuelan migrants which become further manifested in the humanitarian
infrastructure of reception.

Naming people and politics of categorizations for ‘humanitarian reason’

The humanitarian infrastructure shaped around Operation Shelter was accompanied by
a normative grammar of an administrative and legal order, aimed at processing and
classifying people and attributing status and rights and thus producing and modulating
migrants’ identities.
From 2015 to 2018, when Venezuelan migration to Brazil grew exponentially, debates
revolved around whether Brazil should receive and assist this population. As the numbers
of asylum seekers increased, a red light sounded in the federal government. In mid-2018,
there were 60 thousand asylum claimants to be processed, 80% of which of Venezuelan
origin. In 2019, the number reached a staggering 120 thousand for a country that counts
with 11 thousand recognized refugees (Table 1). Most Venezuelans applied for asylum in
the absence of alternatives for regularization. The National Committee for Refugees
(CONARE), responsible for processing and judging asylum cases, counted with
a limited budget and small staff, and was therefore completely uncapable of dealing
with Venezuelan cases.
In March 2017, the Ministry of Labor issued Resolution 126 allowing Venezuelans to
temporally stay in Brazil (up to 2 years). Those wishing to apply for temporary residency
had to enter by land, pay a small fee, present a series of certified documents and give up
their asylum application, should they have submitted one. Resolution 126 was an
improvised response to a potential complete overhaul of the migration and refugee
system in the country. It was a rather unsuccessful one as well, since most migrants
did not have3 all documents, were in situations of extreme poverty and famine and
unable to attend to all bureaucratic requirements.
In March 2018, the government issued a new ordinance (Portaria Interministerial n. 9)
reducing documentation requirements, expanding the possibility of residency to all ports
8 C. MOULIN AGUIAR AND B. MAGALHÃES

Table 1. Asylum requests (2010–2018).

90000
80000
70000
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Other nationalities Venezuelans

Source: CGPI/DIREX/DPF, UNHCR Presentation, September 2019.

of entry and allowing for residency to be postponed for an indeterminate period after two
years. Resolution 126 and Ordinance 9 are examples of legal-administrative experimen­
tation with regularization in contexts of humanitarian ‘crisis’. Brazilian law tried out (see
Moulin and Thomaz, 2016; Silva 2017) and later on institutionalized the figure of the
‘migrant for humanitarian reasons’ as a quasi-refugee – one that has fled for human
rights violations but falls short of well-founded fear of persecution. It modeled schemes
of subsidiary protection (Zetter 2007) aimed at responding to unprecedented migration
flows in the subcontinent, while ‘protecting’ the refugee statute from bogus claimants and
administrative misuse.
The category of ‘migrant for humanitarian reason’ was created out of a situation of
excessive demand for migrants’ regularization which governmental responses were
unable to manage, partially due to an insufficient pre-existent humanitarian infrastruc­
ture. By not being able to accommodate the volume of demand and to resolve the limited
administrative capacity to process and organize migration flows, the Brazilian govern­
ment's response was the invention of a legal category as a solution to a ‘problem’ of what
Star and Bowker (2007) have referred to as ‘residual category’. A residual category
collects all those who do not fit – or who are made not fitting – existing categories.
Migrants were residual because the credibility of Venezuelan migrants as being “legit­
imate„ asylum claimants tended to be contested, or in Bowker and Star words (2007,
274): “the subject of lived experience [was] disbelieved by the data collector“. Hence, the
introduction of the category of ‘migrant for humanitarian reason’ to process ‘residual
people’ came from choices which normatively divided people in deserving rights and
protection differently. Overall, very few Venezuelans were recognized by the Brazilian
government as refugees. CONARE insisted that the majority of Venezuelans entering
Roraima chose to migrate for economic reasons and were thus outside the remit of
refugee law.
 CITIZENSHIP STUDIES 9

The two instruments – asylum and temporary residency for humanitarian reasons –
have been strategic in organizing the response to Venezuelans in Roraima and thus
became substantive pillars for the humanitarian infrastructure. These categories have
structured much of the architecture and functional lines within Operation Shelter, with
UNHCR responsible for asylum seekers and IOM for temporary residents. Lines have
been set up (blue for asylum and red for residency) in the triage and reception posts.
Biometric data and databases have been connected to different administrative systems
and new software have been developed to better handle cases.
One interesting case of the reactive (and precarious relationship) of governmental
responses regards the different processing mechanisms established for the two categories.
At the federal police headquarters (Figure 3), temporary residency permits were pro­
cessed through computational systems, with data directly submitted online. But asylum
requests were all manual, with Venezuelans filling the twelve-page long questionnaire
that had to be later digitized and sent to the National Committee for Refugees in Brasilia.
A large pile of forms and documents mounted in the ‘refugee’ backlog room (Figure 4)
where one contracted employee and two interns of UNHCR manually scanned each page
of the individual asylum requests to be later emailed to Brazil’s CONARE. The hard
copies were sent whenever possible by governmental mail.
The experience with Venezuelan asylum claimants (and the difficulties in manually
processing cases) led CONARE to accelerate the creation of a national database
(SISCONARE) and to make all procedures for asylum digital. Implemented in 2019,
SISCONARE4 will gradually substitute all paper documents related to asylum requests
and require that all asylum claimants have access to computers and internet connection.5
UNHCR and civil society associations have criticized the full digitalization of refugee
processes, arguing that many claimants have little or no access to reliable internet, that
control over signature (who will login and provide information) and personal data are
fraught with potential dangers and that direct links between government and asylum
claimants can have deleterious impacts on protection (not knowing how to properly
respond to questions, provide adequate documentation – roles usually provided by
mediators and rights-brokers in the refugee system).
In June 2019, CONARE also decided to recognize Venezuela as a country facing
serious and grave violations of human rights, thus enabling an expedited processing of all
cases of Venezuelan asylum seekers. The belated decision fell short from conceding
prima facie status to Venezuelans but will increment capacity for processing claims. It
soundedlike a delayed and reactive response to a protection predicament produced by
migrants’ presence in the territory and reframed, by sovereign authorities, as an admin­
istrative clog in the logic of migrants’ circulations.

The making of built, technological and logistical humanitarian

infrastructure
At first, military and humanitarian personnel had to deal with an average of 300
individuals daily in Pacaraima, a city 150 kilometers away from Boa Vista with extremely
limited transportation and logistical setup and insufficient public services. Faced with
overwhelming numbers of migrants and a logistical chokepoint, the task force began to
build a reception and triage post by the border (Figure 2). With the help of local
10 C. MOULIN AGUIAR AND B. MAGALHÃES

Figure 2. Reception center, Pacaraima, Sept.2018. Author’s archive.

contractors, a massive structure was erected in two months, composed of aluminum

barracks, a transit center, an emergency health center and lodging for military and
humanitarian staff.
The reception and triage posts (PRI and PTRIG, respectively) were designed to enable
the circulation of Venezuelans according to functionally established lines. Each room was
taken by one of the agencies, and services such as documentation processing, needs
evaluation, data collection, sanitary control and humanitarian aid provision were offered.
The posts were occupied by the Federal Police (in charge of immigration processing and
verification), the UNHCR (asylum seekers), the IOM (temporary residents), the ANVISA
(the national agency for sanitary security, responsible for controlling travelers’ diseases
and history of vaccination), as well as by a plethora of partnered NGOs and local
government agencies which control the perimeter, issue work permits and distribute
food and basic supplies.
This multi-branched complex was expected to enhance administrative capacity,
improve processing efficiency, and reduce both the homeless population on the streets
of Pacaraima and Boa Vista and the long waiting lines that formed daily by the border.
There was hope that, with a smoother emergency response, tensions would also be
defused within governmental and social quarters. In short, PRI and PTRIG installations
represented a reactive logistical architecture designed to respond to unprecedented
transborder migration flows. Despite the impressive tents and buildings, which
 CITIZENSHIP STUDIES 11

Figure 3. Biometric scanning. Boa Vista, Sept. 2018. Authors’ archive.

contrasted with the surrounding poverty and the absolute lack of governmental presence
in other regions of the province, particularly in the border town, problems soon arose.
The Federal Police needed electricity and a reliable internet connection to collect and
submit information on migrants. The UNHCR and the IOM required similar technology
to process biometric data and scan the written questionnaires filled in by asylum seekers
12 C. MOULIN AGUIAR AND B. MAGALHÃES

Figure 4.

and other migrants. Yet, until then, other than a broad coverage of 2 G mobile network
services, Pacaraima had had to manage with an unstable 3 G signal provided by a single
telecommunications operator. Internet connection was offered via satellite.
In light of this situation, private companies, such as Ericsson and Vivo, and the
Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade (MDIC) signed an agreement to
strengthen mobile networks in the cities of Roraima that were receiving Venezuelan
immigrants. With allegedly no public money involved, the project aimed to implement
3 G and 4 G technologies in the city of Pacaraima, and to improve 4 G connectivity at
strategic points in the city of Boa Vista. Its overarching goal was to support reception-
related public efforts, with an emphasis on those undertaken by the Federal Police, which
were responsible for the registration of asylum-seeking immigrants. The precarious, low-
speed internet connection hindered police officers from sending immigrants’ data to
Brasília and, thus, from controlling who was entering the country. The new partnership
set out to equip local officials with mobile broadband for registration and processing
purposes and to extend e-government services to Venezuelan migrants and local citizens.
In September 2018, the first reliable internet cables were being installed by PRI and
PTRIG.
It should also be noted that the whole province of Roraima is reliant on Venezuelan
energy. With the deterioration of Venezuelan energy plants and increasing diplomatic
tensions, Pacaraima and Boa Vista routinely suffer the consequences of 6 to 8 daily power
 CITIZENSHIP STUDIES 13

outages. Frequent disruptions rendered the information system unstable and dependent
on generators (oil and gas are also both provided by Venezuela).
One of the first NGOs to establish itself in the reception and triage posts was Telecoms
sans Frontières, a French-based organization whose mission, among other things, is to set
up temporary mobile networks in emergency situations and provide portable satellite
terminals for Internet access, telephony or both. TSF provides mobile phones for
migrants and asylum seekers at the posts in Pacaraima and at strategic locations in Boa
Vista, allowing them to place short phone calls or send messages.
As of 2019, there were 620 military officials working in the Operation. Over 25,000
meals were provided daily; plus, since July 2018, 300,000 vaccination shots have been
administered and 50,000 work permits have been issued. An estimated 400 million reais
(100 million dollars) have been spent by the Brazilian government alone – a sum roughly
equivalent to 70% of Roraima’s provincial net income. There is little transparency,
however, as to how much has been spent on personnel, technologies and buildings and
how much has been devoted to refugee and migration provision.6
Alongside the reception, triage and data processing infrastructure, a network of
shelters has sprawled in Pacaraima and Boa Vista. Pacaraima contains one shelter for
indigenous Venezuelans and a transit center; Boa Vista, conversely, has witnessed the
emergence of 12 shelters, which can house over 8,000 migrants altogether. The govern­
ment refers to these dwellings as ‘transit houses’, but newspapers often describe them as
‘camps’.
In addition to the military, charities run by evangelical, Mormon, Catholic and other
missionary and secular groups are actively involved in building and organizing shelters
and offering assistance. UN agencies sent envoys to the area to coordinate the delivery of
humanitarian aid. American and European money funded much of the work. It helped to
build and maintain shelters and was used to buy medicine and food. It was also used to
pay the wages of workers, Brazilian nationals and non-nationals, hired to sort people out
in categories, such as temporary resident migrant and refugee. During our fieldwork, we
counted more than 50 different agencies, governmental and non-governmental, national
and international, directly working in the reception and emergency response.
Shelters have been designed to serve a two-pronged function: to contain and discipline
migrants’ bodies and routines and to provide a hub for the processing and circulation of
migrants through Brazilian territory. Most shelters have been upgraded by military
personnel (with new kitchens and bathrooms and enhanced mobility control) or built
from scratch. This is the case of the largest ‘camps’ (Rondon II - Figure 5 - and Rondon
III), designed with the participation of the UNHCR, which has provided tents built by
IKEA. Tents, according to local informants, came from a refugee camp in Northern
Africa and were transported to Roraima, despite being ill-suited for the tropical climate:
temperatures inside can reach over 40 degrees Celsius. Windows were shortened to avoid
entry of strangers (due to cases of sexual assault in the previous camp) and ventilation
was dramatically reduced. Most Venezuelans stay outside the tents during daytime, using
the shade the tents provide (rather than the tents themselves). Routines and access to
basic rights (schools, hospitals, health centers etc.) are either outright regulated by shelter
workers or mediated by them.
14 C. MOULIN AGUIAR AND B. MAGALHÃES

Figure 5.

Infra-structuring mundane life

The manner in which Venezuelans’ routines are organized in shelters in Boa Vista offers
an example of how humanitarian infrastructure governs the mundane life of migrants by
enforcing discipline in alimentation and cleaning is responded by the appropriation of
routines which reclaim some autonomy and self-determination. The remarks below are
comments made by Venezuelans concerning their routines in the public shelter:
[Mr. F] They feed us three times every day: once in the morning at 7 o’ clock, once at
noon and once 6 o’clock at night.
[Mr. K] They give us brooms and other things we need to clean the shelter and we keep
a rotation on who is going to clean what and when.
[Mrs. Q] Today I’m cooking rice, beans and minced beef. We keep a rotation to decide
when we cook, when we clean and when we take care of maintenance. Today I’m in the
kitchen.
[Mr. F] We have lunch every day at noon. We always pray before eating. It’s our way of
saying thanks for the food we are receiving.
Access to the shelters are also regulated and, after 5pm, only those who have been
listed as workers can enter. Cases of violence, small thefts, drug trafficking and disobe­
dience have been systematically reported and disciplinary measures have usually revolved
around stricter controls. Curfews are a common trait in the disciplinary array of instru­
ments established by local authorities. The next snippet is extracted from an interview
given by a senior officer of Boa Vista’s civil defense department, in which he justifies the
 CITIZENSHIP STUDIES 15

recent imposition of stricter security checks, including a curfew for migrants’ staying at
the shelter: ‘From now on, we will be closing the gates at 10 pm for those who want to
sleep in. We are strengthening the security in the shelter to avoid people who don’t live
here from entering, to curb violent episodes and to avoid the consumption of alcohol and
drugs.’
A sort of a third sector bureaucratic system was put in place in Roraima to ‘facilitate’
migrant’s access to public services and benefits. Such additional bureaucratic layer
prompts and prescribes the rhythm of the humanitarian infrastructure on migrants’
lives. As in the case of the organization of migrants’ routines, these agencies attempt to
mediate migrants’ contacts with the Brazilian state through ‘referrals’, presented by
workers in these agencies as a way of protecting migrants. The decision to involve
these civil society agencies in the asylum and immigration processes is justified on the
grounds that they help to organize requests, avoiding common mistakes made by
migrants when filling forms, for instance. Much of the work carried out by the agencies
in Boa Vista pivots around ‘referrals’. For instance, referrals to medical appointments,
which in theory could be booked directly by migrants at the hospitals, are now mediated
by the Boa Vista’s ‘Social Management Office’.
In Pacaraima, Venezuelans requiring information on how to apply for asylum or
temporary residency permits, seeking medical appointments or hoping to apply for work
permits, among other public services, are steered through the “Centre for Migrant Care’,
a Catholic charity. In all these practices, migrants are forced to surrender power over to
agencies that retain the authority to determine who has to wait and who can speak (to the
state).
Haas (2017) notes that asylum seekers lives are structured around mandatory bureau­
cratic activities, as appointments with case owners, legal representatives, and predeter­
mined deadlines for the collection and submission of personal documents and other
paperwork required to support their claims (2017, 76). Asylum seekers temporarily
admitted in the United States are given formal liberty. Yet, Haas claims, their socio­
economic integration is continuously tempered through the enforcement of discipline, in
the form of bureaucratic timeframes. Asylum claimants are forced to wait ‘to hear back
from lawyers, to receive word of their court dates, to be scheduled for bureaucratic
appointments, or to be allowed to complete a work authorization application’ (Haas
2017, 80). The bureaucracy of status determination enforced discipline through ‘a
seemingly endless series of waiting events’ (Haas 2017, 80).
Perhaps the most consistent manner in which Venezuelan migrants seek to reinstate
their agency is non-compliance. This can come across mildly, in the form of late arrivals
to appointments at the ‘Social Management Office’ or more sharply, as flat out refusal to
attend meetings scheduled through referral. Non-compliance also comes across rather
explicitly as a flat refusal to partake in praying circles, to attend Portuguese classes or to
take part in the job rotations organized by shelter managers. However, even in those
extreme cases, a refusal to engage in planned activities is more often justified in non-
confrontational terms. Facundo (2017) proposes the expression ‘rebel obedience’ to refer
to this kind of behavior, when migrants reject instructions made by local authorities on
how to use their time while, at the same time, avoiding direct contestation, either by
feigning agreement (‘I just look down and say: ok, ok, ok’) or by justifying the lack of
16 C. MOULIN AGUIAR AND B. MAGALHÃES

engagement in conciliatory terms (‘Sometimes, when they tell us there is no money to

help, I know they are a lying. But I talk to them as if nothing had happened’).
The fact that many Venezuelan Warao7 families responded to the imposition of
curfew by opting to sleep outside the shelter, hanging their ‘redes’ (hammocks) to the
improvised reception centre in Boa Vista offers a rich example of how migrants might
resist attempts to govern their routines. At the same time in which they refused com­
pliance, the Waraos continued to make use of the facilities available inside the gymna­
sium and to relate to staff and other migrants without openly discussing their behavior.
This episode strikes us as revealing of the continuous play between resistance and
renewed attempts at control. Under heavy criticism of the human rights agencies for
the degrading living conditions of migrants sheltered there, Boa Vista municipality
started to reform the gymnasium. One of the first changes made was to remove all
‘redes’ hanged to the external walls and bring them back indoors.
Although not about the Brazilian case, the work of Andersson (2014) on the talk of
Spanish officers responsible for the reception of sub-Saharan migrants in Ceuta high­
lights a proclivity to associating order and timing discipline. A tightly controlled schedule
of medical exams, psychological tests, language exams, compulsory attendance to legal
advisory meetings, as well as the imposition of curfews at night, makes it virtually
impossible for migrants to leave the center without missing an appointment or violating
the curfew (Andersson 2014, 805). At the same time, each migrant is given a protocol slip
to be stamped, confirming attendance. This system is justified under the argument that
attendance control makes it possible for Spanish authorities to prioritize the reallocation
into mainland of those migrants who ‘play by the rules’, while ensuring that absent or
otherwise uncooperative migrants get sanctioned (idem).
Turnbull (2014) has arrived at similar findings, while studying the treatment of
rejected asylum seekers retained in immigration removal centres in the UK. Turnbull
points out that migrants’ daily activities, like eating, exercising and attending social visits,
follow predetermined timings over which migrants have no saying. Timing discipline
instils amid detainees a sense of boredom and monotony, making migrants’ bodies easier
to govern, she claims. Taking the argument one step further, Turnbull argues that timing
discipline constrain migrants’ ability to exert political agency. Time for socialization with
other detained migrants is strictly controlled. Detained migrants are only allowed to
interact under supervision at specific time-slots. The opportunity to build rapport over
time is also constrained by limiting the time spent together in the same detention unit. In
a closely related point, Griffiths, Rogers, and Anderson (2013) argue that strict time
control has a detrimental impact over detainees’ ability to present their asylum claims,
owing to the restrictions it imposes to interaction with legal representatives and civil
society supporters.
The humanitarian infrastructure of triage posts and shelters, information technologies
and logistic processes was created, as we have shown, as a response to the heterogeneity
and sheer scale of migrants arriving in Roraima, setting up mechanisms of control over
migrants. It depended on a massive investment of resources, personnel and coordination
between different agencies, national and global, civil and military, to make it possible for
state power to reassert itself in the context of a distant, poorly structured and highly
volatile social and political environment. Operation Shelter and its subsequent strategies
had to deal frequently with chokepoints (technological and disciplinary) and with its own
 CITIZENSHIP STUDIES 17

precarious arrangements, particularly in relation to its capacity of streaming flows and

making circulating bodies legible to the state apparatus.

Final remarks
The material and normative renderings set up to incrementally deal with Venezuelans in
Brazil illustrate the ways in which migrants’ mobilities are productive of border controls and
strategies of discipline and containment. They also show how intertwined practices of
humanitarianism and control are setting a certain grid of intelligibility and legibility of
migration movements. The Brazilian response is illustrative of how political and adminis­
trative responses, justified under both humanitarian grounds and bureaucratic efficiency,
enable networks of power and discipline, that react to migrants’ bodies and projects but also
transform their subjectivity and circumvent their possibilities of autonomous decision.
Although we have identified a range of actions and attitudes on the part of the people on
the move including defiance, truculence, disobedience which we count as articulations and
enactments of political subjects, we wish to highlight the disabling prefiguration of migrants
by the humanitarian infrastructure. As Scheel aptly points, particularly given current tech­
nological developments, migrants’ bodies have become themselves subjected to biometric
controls that ‘alter the power relations between migrants and border control authorities to
such an extent that the general assertion of moments of autonomy [. . .] becomes, in fact,
highly problematic’ (Scheel 2013, 281). Even in contexts of technological precarity and
resource shortages, material assemblages have been able to create, partially, a network of
circulations of Venezuelans in Brazil with broad inflections on migration and refugee system
(as the implementation of SISCONARE attests).
As we finish writing this paper, news broke out that over 20 thousand Venezuelans
were granted refugee status in Brazil. Welcomed by UNHCR and civil society movements
as a historic and unprecedent decision, the large-scale status recognition is consequential
to the ways in which built-in and digital borders and practices of naming – described
above – have co-produced the conditions of possibility for migrants’ circulations and
permanence within Brazil. Unsurprisingly, the Brazilian Ministry of Justice and Public
Security stated that

the judgement of such large number of claimants was only possible thanks to new technologies
and recent normative resolutions of CONARE. The deployment of digital tools capable of
systematizing large amounts of data, transforming them into reliable information, allowed for
the cross-over of more than 129 thousand asylum requests by Venezuelans, optimizing the
work of CONARE members. (Rodriguez 2019, our translation)

As we have argued, the constitutive and interdependent nature of, on one hand, the
autonomous mobility of Venezuelans and, on the other, the normative/material infra­
structures of humanitarian management were central to set the scene under which
practices of circulation became legible to sovereign authorities. Socio-material entangle­
ments have thus been integral to reconsider the enabling and disabling political config­
urations for enacting migrant’s citizenship, ‘actively facilita[ing] and mediat[ing]
particular encounters that enable certain kinds of claims to be made’ (Hughes and
Forman 2017, 678). Attempts to discipline Venezuelans’ bodies and mobilities along
18 C. MOULIN AGUIAR AND B. MAGALHÃES

built, technological and logistical humanitarian infrastructure came with consequences

for engagements between border authorities and migrants.
We hope to have revealed the ad hoc, reactive and eclectic nature of built, technolo­
gical and logistical infrastructure in humanitarian work at the border between Venezuela
and Brazil.8 Adopting this perspective has given the possibility of attending to how
attempts to discipline migrants’ bodies and movements have given rise to particular
articulations of material and normative practices that operate, ambivalently, to enact
both control and freedom.

Notes
1. Operation Shelter [History]. Retrieved from https://www.gov.br/acolhida/historico/. Access
date: 7 March 2020. The following paragraph refers to the same source.
2. We conducted three visits to Boa Vista and Pacaraima, individually and as part of a team of
researchers, between July 2018 and February 2019. We held interviews with a dozen officials
and humanitarian workers, migrants and asylum seekers as well as local NGO and researchers.
We visited reception centers, shelters and police headquarters where we observed routines and
procedures during a total of 21 days spent in both cities. The ethics protocol has been approved
by the Research Ethics Committee of omitted, where the project was initially based.
3. And some could not have all documents. For example, all Venezuelan children under 9 years
old do not have a document a birth certificate with photo and information on parents.
Families with children under 9 could not fulfill the bureaucratic requirements of resolution
126, therefore applying automatically to refugee status.
4. Information on the new system can be found at https://www.justica.gov.br/seus-direitos
/refugio/sisconare.
5. 70% of Brazilians have access to internet connection, mostly though smartphones. More
data on internet in Brazil can be found at https://www.pagbrasil.com/insights/digital-in
-2019-brazil/.
6. For public information on the Operation, the website of the Ministry of Defense provides
press releases. Information on total number of Venezuelans included in the Operation, see:
https://www.defesa.gov.br/noticias/61414-governo-federal-lanca-nova-fase-da-operacao-
acolhida-para-acelerar-interiorizacao-de-venezuelanos.
7. The Waraos are described as an indigenous group living in Venezuelan territory. They
constitute an important part of migrants arriving in Brazil and present specific challenges in
terms of protection and regularization. See IOM (2019) for detailed legal aspects of recep­
tion of indigenous Venezuelans in Northern Brazil.
8. We are grateful to our editors and peer-reviewers for helping us to clarify this point.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
CNPq/Brazil (308023-2019/6)]

Notes on contributors
Carolina Moulin holds a PhD in Political Science by McMaster University. She is Professor at the
School of Economics and the Centre for Regional Planning and Development (CEDEPLAR) at
 CITIZENSHIP STUDIES 19

Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. She is Executive-Secretary of Brazilian
Association of International Relations (2019-2021) and Researcher for the Brazilian National
Council for Scientific Research CNPQ/Productivity (2020-2023). She is associate editor of Review
of International Studies (2020-2024).
Bruno Magalhães holds a Doctorate in Political Science and International Studies from
Open University and is currently professor at the Institute of International Relations, Pontifical
Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

ORCID
Carolina Moulin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4176-2234

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