Venezuela The Caribbean Basin And The Crisis In Central America

The Continuing Crisis is a successor to the widely-used 1984 anthology Crisis and Opportunity. Nearly three-fourths of the essays are new. In addition to analyses from Foreign Affairs, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, and other prestigious journals, this volume contains the most significant original documents and official statements on the Central American crisis. Each essay is preceded by a brief introduction that points out main themes and relates complementary and opposing authors to one another.

This book, first published in 1984, presents a comprehensive survey of the forces of change that operate in the Caribbean, an area of political instability at the time. It examines the internal politics of the different countries and considers the roles of the United States, Cuba, the European and new Latin American powers in the political conflicts, coups and revolutions.

As a new migration crisis is unfolding in Europe because of the war in Ukraine, the purpose of this paper is to also highlight the ongoing migration crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) due to Venezuela’s economic collapse. The stock of Venezuelan migrants reached 5 million in 2019, most of which had settled in other LAC countries. Following a temporary halt during the pandemic, migration from Venezuela has resumed, with the stock of migrants reaching 6.1 million in 2021. These migration flows are expected to continue in the coming years, which can strain public services and labor markets in the recipient economies in LAC. This Departmental Paper focuses on migration spillovers from the Venezuelan economic and social crisis. It sheds light on how migration can raise GDP growth and affect fiscal and external positions in host countries. It also discusses policy options, including greater support for education and integration into the workforce, which could help migrants find jobs to match their skills and help raise growth prospects in recipient countries.