Olga Onuch writes on a potential crisis looming for Venezuela

Olga Onuch, an alumna of the department (2014) currently at the University of Manchester, has co-written an article for the ‘Monkey Cage’ blog of The Washington Post (25 May) entitled ‘Venezuela’s latest elections are likely to trigger a regional migration crisis’.

The article states that “On Oct. 15, Venezuelans went to the polls to elect state governors, amid a desperate economic crisis, manipulation of democratic institutions (including packing the supreme court and dissolving the legislature), and widespread allegations of electoral fraud.

[…] Opinion polls had suggested that Maduro’s governing Socialist party would be turned out of office in many states. However, official results announced that the party won 17 of 23 governors’ seats. The U.S. State Department declared that the election was neither free nor fair, and questioned the result. The Venezuelan opposition bloc Democratic Unity denounced “systemic manipulations” and called for more protests.

We have researched (with sociologist Sorana Toma) the dynamic relationship between protests and migration. That leads us to predict that Sunday’s evidence of electoral fraud will lead not to more street protests but to a wave of migration out of Venezuela.”

The full article is available to read here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/10/19/venezuelas-latest-elections-are-likely-to-trigger-a-regional-migration-crisis/?utm_term=.d0bdc591078f