Intergenerational social mobility and migrations of Indigenous people in Chile

This article examines the intergenerational migration trajectories of first-generation Indigenous university graduates in Chile. It shows how these trajectories are shaped by intersecting structures of ethnicity, class, gender, and territory rooted in internal colonialism, and considers what the Chilean case contributes to rethinking the concept of contained mobility. Based on in-depth interviews with thirty-two individuals residing in urban areas with the highest concentration of Indigenous people, complemented by Geographic Information Systems tools to reconstruct intergenerational migration trajectories across Chile’s territory. In the Chilean case, Indigenous contained mobility operates not at national borders but through internal colonial structures that simultaneously enable and bind Indigenous upward movement across generations, extending the concept beyond its original application to the managed mobility of cross-border racialized migrants. The findings show that Indigenous social mobility is neither an individual achievement nor a linear outcome of higher education, but an intergenerational and territorially rooted process shaped by internal colonization, territorial reduction, and racialized state formation. The article contributes to debates on racialization and mobility by demonstrating that containment structures the trajectories of internally colonized populations, not only those of cross-border migrants.