The article analyzes the historical changes in the formulation of migration policies between the 19th and 21st centuries, summarizing the emergency of an "age of migration crisis". The first section discusses why international migration poses a destabilizing problem for the Nation-state political conceptions. The second section emphasizes the intrinsic articulation of the global changes in human mobility and their political governance between the 19th and 20th centuries, identifying the four prevailing political paradigms on migrant cultural diversity that shaped public policies in the 20th century. The third and fourth sections deal with the emergence of the fifth cycle of international migration policies, which is characterized by the generalization of a global discourse that criminalizes migrants and refugees. The above will be followed by a critical perspective of the way migration has been treated in some Latin American countries.