Abstract

Venezuelan immigration to Chile grew exponentially from 2017 to the present. The last migratory wave in this country, when greater entry restrictions were imposed (2019-2023), increased the condition of irregularity, reaching historic highs during the pandemic with almost 100 thousand records before the Investigative Police (PDI). In this context and in the face of xenophobic outbreaks, churches and religious institutions have played a fundamental role in caring for migrants, in two ways: welfare and socially. The objective is to analyze the experiences in this interaction of Chileans and Venezuelans in the spaces of arrival (shelters and immediate care) and in those of incorporation (in churches as parishioners) in Santiago, Chile. Based on ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews carried out between 2022 and 2023, religion is revealed as an important dimension in the trajectory of migrants in the society of transit and reception, as well as the sociocultural clashes that emerge in these relationships. On the Chilean side there is a human and political learning in this wave and from the Venezuelan perspective it is a way of adaptation to the precariousness of the immigration status and the increase in xenophobia.