Where are they and why did they go? 4 million Colombians overseas

(IOM in Colombia)

Over the weekend, El Tiempo covered the publication of an important study on Colombian migration. The study, "Colombia: migrations, transnationalism y displacement," was directed by National University anthropologist Gerardo Ardila, for the Centro de Estudios Sociales.

Besides shoring up data on the astonishing number of Colombians overseas (over 4 million of 44 million total), the study may also serve to alert the government to its responsibilities toward an exceedingly migrant populace, forced overseas for not purely economic reasons. Though the study won't be complete for another six months, the academics involved hope they spur a cohesive migration policy in a government that has yet to examine its international relations with its citizens abroad in mind.

Colombia's one innovation in the area (from the 1993 constitution) is to have a non-voting representative of "overseas Colombians" in the House, elected by popular vote. (There are other non-voting positions for ethnic minorities and one for women, though all elected positions are open to everyone.)

Says Ardila in an interview in the paper:

En el exterior no hay comunidades colombianas. La desconfianza mutua no permite que se constituyan. Si alguien tiene un negocio relativamente boyante, todos los demás sospechan de su origen.

There are no Colombian communities overseas. Mutual distrust does not allow them to form. If someone has a business that works, all the others suspect a dubious origin.

He also points out the poverty of a foreign policy that seeks to capitalize on remittances, as if the more than 3 million Colombians working in developed countries owed more than their share to a state where they no longer live.

A final point Ardila brings up: many of the Colombians in "receptor" countries are not learning their host language -- but this doesn't mean they are mono-lingual. On the contrary: they are picking up several languages: the languages of their immigrant barrios. In Europe, for example, Ardila points out, many Colombians are learning African languages.