Labelling, hypersexualisation, and labour market exclusion: Understanding the socioeconomic integration of female Venezuelan migrants in Colombia

Abstract

This article examines how the process of labelling shapes the economic and social integration of Venezuelan migrant women in Colombia. Drawing on Howard Becker's Labelling theory and applying it to migration studies, the paper argues that institutional and cultural labels, such as 'irregular' and 'unqualified' migrant, as well as 'veneca’ and 'sex worker', create systemic barriers that constrain Venezuelan women's livelihood options and consolidate social stigma. Using the Free Association Narrative Interview Methodology, two rounds of interviews were conducted with ten female Venezuelan migrants aged 20–52 and from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, who do sex work, for a total of nineteen interviews. Findings reveal how gendered labels produce forms of social and economic exclusion that block access to formal labour markets, leading to unemployment and deskilling. This process often funnels women into informal and stigmatised work and leaves them isolated from their friends and families. Peer networks of other Venezuelan migrants serve as crucial mediating mechanisms facilitating entry into sex work while also providing mutual aid and collective resilience. Participants' accounts demonstrate how labelling operates as a self-fulfilling prophecy, creating conditions where migrant women's income-generating alternatives are severely constrained, ultimately channelling them into sex work, an outcome that further reinforces the original stigmatising labels in a cyclical process of marginalisation.