Humanitarian Reception and Migration Protection at the Brazil–Venezuela Border: Legal Challenges in the Pacaraima Experience

Abstract

Venezuelan migration has become one of the main contemporary challenges of human mobility in Latin America and has turned Pacaraima, on the border between Brazil and Venezuela, into a central site for the reception, documentation and protection of people in vulnerable situations. This article analyses the Brazilian institutional response to this migratory flow, with particular attention to the relationship between refugee protection, humanitarian reception, residence permits and the protection of vulnerable groups. It seeks to answer the following question: what are the limits and potential of the Brazilian model for ensuring effective protection for Venezuelan persons in situations of particular vulnerability at the border, especially children and adolescents and transboundary Indigenous peoples? Methodologically, it adopts a legal-descriptive and empirical approach, combining normative and bibliographical analysis, examination of public policies, institutional reports and a qualitative study of cases observed during five visits to Pacaraima. The article argues that Brazil has consolidated a hybrid model of migration protection, capable of expanding access to documentation, regular stay, institutional reception and public services. However, its outcomes remain conditioned by documentary fragility, difficulties in institutional coordination and the insufficient adaptation of state categories of parentage, nationality and social protection to the trajectories of children and adolescents and transboundary Indigenous peoples. It concludes that the coexistence of refugee protection, humanitarian reception and other residence pathways can strengthen protection, provided that it does not replace the individualized assessment of international protection needs or effective access to the guarantees inherent in refugee status.