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In Colombia, the image of people coming from the neighboring country, Venezuela, has become more recurrent in the last seven or eight months. During that same time, even before, it began to be heard in the media in various parts of the world that the political crisis that the Venezuelan country was going through had triggered a massive migration of its nationals to various parts of the continent and especially to Colombia.
This is the first time that Colombia has faced a massive migration of people. It is impressive how on the Colombian-Venezuelan border, hundreds of people are waiting to cross and get food and things to survive. In Colombia there are at least one and a half million Venezuelans, who are concentrated in Bogotá because it is the capital, and in Santander because it is one of the busiest border points.
I immediately thought of the countries that every day receive twice as many people who are looking for a better quality of life, yes, I'm talking about the United States. One of the main countries that receives more migrants in the world. For example, the Hispanic migrant population in this country is at least 60 million, according to a Pew Research report Center¸ not counting those who migrate and of whom there is no record.
No doubt, I thought, everyone there must be used to hearing news and controversy about it. That's why I decided to work on my thesis on forced Central American migration to the United States, to stop putting the migrant population in numbers and data, and try to put them in a more human context. I decided to work on this in order to give a different view of the migrant than the one commonly given by the media; which, as the Jewish-born sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says, have been in charge of deconstructing and, in many occasions, criminalizing and stigmatizing migrant groups.
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However, the surprise came when I learned that in reality the number of people who know the true implications and effects of migration is very small. Well, in the municipality where I am, and especially at the University, I discovered that university students are somewhat disinterested in these migratory movements. Something very curious, given that anyone could believe that its inhabitants, and even more so its university students, are aware of current events on a topic that has been discussed for decades.
With all of the above, I came to the conclusion that this lack of knowledge and interest may be due in part to the education and upbringing that many of the students receive. Because they are in a privileged position, or simply because, and here is my second conclusion, contact with border areas is so far from their reality and their physical space that they are simply not concerned about what might happen, since their environment is not affected by this. Which I would like to link to a much used concept, and that is the naturalization of the situation.
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