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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how USAID funding cuts have affected Venezuelan migrant integration and reshaped humanitarian governance in Colombia, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork. It analyses shifting power relations, state responses, and the impacts on humanitarian workers and recipients alike.

Paper long abstract

In January of 2025, the Trump Administration slashed 83% of all USAID funding worldwide (approximately 54 billion USD), resulting in a loss of 309 million USD for Colombia. Much of this funding had gone towards projects supporting humanitarian assistance and integration efforts for Venezuelan migrants, as over the past decade, nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled economic and political instability, with about 3 million settling in Colombia.

One of these projects focused on migrant integration is the Intégrate Centre initiative. Created in 2023, the Intégrate Centres provide information and various migrant services relating to regularisation, mental health, entrepreneurship, employment, and women and LGBTQ+ assistance, amongst others. Though USAID stopped funding the Intégrate Centres entirely after the cuts, they are currently being operated by the Colombian Ministry of Equality and Equity.

Through ethnographic fieldwork in the Intégrate Centres in the Colombian cities of Bogotá and Riohacha, this paper examines the devastating financial and structural effects of USAID’s withdrawal on both the humanitarian workers as well as the migrants themselves. Furthermore, it analyses the shifting power dynamics of humanitarian governance– seeking to understand how the Colombian government has navigated the unprecedented withdrawal of USAID, shaped by national and local political motives.

This original empirical research is extremely timely and important, as it investigates an evolving humanitarian situation with limited coverage. In doing so, it interrogates how aid withdrawal reconfigures power and responsibility within humanitarian governance, raising broader questions about the future of humanitarian aid and Global South recuperation amidst geopolitical uncertainty.