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This presentation discusses how migration public policies and discourses by the State and Civil Society have been reorganized in the aftermath of a comprehensive migration reform undertaken in 2017. This new legal framework approved by Congress, based on strengthening international protection standards towards migrants, refugees and stateless persons, faces continuous attacks by extremist political forces. Nevertheless, its implementation gives national and local authorities the legal powers they need to manage past and current migration crises spurring in Brazilian territory. The Venezuela situation, already declared by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as the largest crisis in the Americas, is then seen as a key episode in explaining the balance between crisis management and humanitarian protection in contemporary Brazilian migratory policy.

João Guilherme Casagrande Martinelli is a Public Federal Administrator, a researcher and Professor at the National School of Public Administration in Brazil and currently Migration Specialist at the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights in Washington, DC.