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Paper short abstract

Starting from ethnographic category of being ‘seco’, this paper examines the simultaneous co-existence and entanglements of mobilities and immobilities in the suspended hopes and modes of persistence in the case of precarious migrants from Venezuela in the city of Cali, Colombia.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the simultaneous co-existence and entanglements of mobilities and immobilities in the suspended hopes and modes of persistence in the case of precarious migrants from Venezuela in the city of Cali, Colombia. Based on a long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Cali, it examines the particular story of Ibrahim, which illustrates a broader pattern of precarious work trajectories and experiences of movement and stasis for many precarious migrants in Colombia. As Venezuela’s social, economic, and political crisis diminished the possibilities of socio-economic and existential viability, many migrants were forced to project their social hopes and imagined survival strategies elsewhere. Focusing on the cases of precarious migrants in the city of Cali, the article examines how their social, physical and existential mobilities intertwine with co-existing immobilities. This entails ethnographically exploring their experiences of movement and stuckedness (both temporally and spatially) in relation to processes of rapid downward social mobility prior to migration, work experiences and stuckedness in their migration destinations situated within multi-layered diasporic social space. The article shows how the possibility, promise of salir adelante and process of regularisation and obtaining the Special Permanence Permit (PEP) with its work permit in Colombia generate hopes for socio-economic (and other types of) mobility in contrast to other migratory destinations. This article examines what happens to migrants' hopes and bodies when obtaining legal status and taking on multiple jobs does not translate into better conditions and opportunities and instead produces suspension, contradictions, ambiguities, weariness and hopefulness for imagined elsewhere.