(Re)creating places and spaces in two countries: Brazilian transnational migration processes

Abstract

Brazilian immigration to the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon that gained momentum in the 1980s in unprecedented numbers. Today an estimated 1.2 million Brazilians live in the United States. Brazilians (re)create transnational places and spaces through social, cultural, and economic practices, within the immigrant receiving communities of Marietta, Georgia, and Framingham, Massachusetts, in the United States. They also incorporate and add new elements to their livelihoods in the respective sending communities of Piracanjuba, in the state of Goiás, and Governador Valadares, in the state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. How are these Portuguese-speaking Brazilian immigrants shaping and (re)creating new places and spaces? In what ways and spheres do transnational exchanges affect two places of destination in the United States and two places of origin in Brazil after migration occurs? Using multiple methods, which include in-depth interviews and participant observation, this paper addresses these questions by evaluating the changes incurred by migration. I use a framework perspective that is largely from outside the Latino/Hispanic context. Migration processes are just as much about those who leave Brazil for the United States as it is about those who return to Brazil (i.e. returnees) and what happens to those respective receiving and sending communities in both countries.

Keywords:

• Brazilian immigration
• Brazil
• transnationalism
• cultural geography
• ethnic geography

Notes

1. For example, after initial contact in the field, I would ask an informant if he/she could provide me with two or three other names of contacts who I could also interview. Like a ‘snowball,’ interviews increased (hence the name of the technique), and as Margolis notes, “snowball sampling can be very credible when combined with qualitative ethnographic techniques” (1994, p. xxi).

2. The following community leaders and scholars were extremely helpful to me while I conducted research: Richard Wilkie, University of Massachusetts; Maxine Margolis, University of Florida; Ilma Paixão, Framingham; Sueli Siqueira, Universidade Vale do Rio Doce, Governador Valadares; Cassandra White, David and Angela McCreery, and Sheldon Schiffer, Georgia State University; Wilma Kruger, Elizabeth T., Atlanta; Walter and Cida Valtuille, Goiânia; Adair and Joana D'Arc, Piracanjuba; and Helen Marrow, Harvard University.

3. In fact, the mayor's office of Governador Valadares has inserted a plaque in a major city plaza, treating emigrants as ‘heroes.’ It reads: “The tribute to emigrants brings justice to the dignified work of these heroes for their contribution to the development of Governador Valadares.” The unlikely date of the plaque inauguration, July 4, coincides with the city's official Dia do Emigrante (Day of the Emigrant).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alan Patrick Marcus

Alan Patrick Marcus is Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Planning, Towson University, Towson, Maryland, USA