Mañana será bonito: transit migration, encounters, and relations between migrants and locals in Necoclí

Necoclí, a small Colombian town near the Colombia-Panamá border, became a major transit spot for hundreds of thousands of migrants in the past decade. Here, the wounds of an ongoing armed conflict, historic marginalization, and state abandonment remain unhealed, and locals have had to relate and adapt to transit migration quite rapidly. As opposed to what traditional approaches might suggest, relations between vulnerable populations can hardly be classified as purely hostile or solidary. This study challenges simplistic views by asking how solidarity and hostility entangle and relate in the ways that locals from transit places, in this case, Necocliseñxs, perceive and engage to the transit migration phenomenon and population. All of this, while understanding that migration is yet another dynamic added to ancient ones. To explore these questions and deepen understanding on human interaction, I conducted ethnographic research, incorporating both participant and non-participant observations, as well as informal conversations with locals and transit migrants in Necoclí. I found that the presence of multiple actors and overlapping dynamics complexifies the ways in which locals perceive and react to transit migration. In a context where multiple vulnerable populations’ needs are unmet, state presence is limited, and criminal organisations exert influence, hostility and solidarity engage in a constant and interdependent relationship shaped by time, space, and specific events. This study underscores the need to historicise and contextualise local responses to better understand the fluid boundaries between hostility and solidarity in migration contexts.