Abstract
In this paper I analyze the definition and uses of the category “refuge” in Brazil to understand how it operates in legal terms on the one hand and in terms of the practice of everyday life on the other. I consider refuge to be a tense field of definitions that will impact the delimitation of other differences and political categories. In order to reach this goal, I turn to research on migration legislation in Brazil, which I have been developing since 2010, and a set of ethnographic research that is being developed under my coordination in the laboratory of migration studies of the Federal University of São Carlos on the experiences of refuge in Brazil. I intend to advance in an analysis of what I will call a “show of refuge” in Brazil, where the state and the media articulate certain definitions for refuge that tend to obscure the entire field of migration and producing a perverse effect of erasing migrations due to the prominence of the category of refuge.
Notes
1 For a discussion of the definition of refuge vis à vis other categories, such as "humanity", see Limbu (Citation2009); for a discussion of refuge categories and policies, see Bakewell (Citation2008).
2 For a discussion of the media and refuge, see Holmes and Castañeda (Citation2016) and Chouliaraki and Stolic (Citation2017).
3 Cf. https://noticias.uol.com.br/ultimas-noticias/rfi/2019/12/06/brasil-regulariza-situacao-de-mais-de-21-mil-refugiados-venezuelanos.htm. Acessed February 5, 2020.
4 The refusal was established by Normative Resolution 18 of CONARE.
5 Resolution 97/2012 of CNIg (National Counsel of Immigration).
6 Normative Resolution CONARE nº 17/2013.
7 Resolution 126/2017 of CNIg.
8 At this moment of writing, all the works are still in production. I cite here reports, qualifications, and unpublished texts, specified in the bibliography. A book with the texts of these authors was published recently in Portuguese (Machado, Citation2020).
9 Consider that between 2011 and 2017 the CNIg granted 57,230 residence permits to Venezuelans (Tonhati et al., Citation2018, 46). Data from the same report also indicate that since 2010, 28,991 Colombians have settled in the country (Oliveira, Citation2018, 63).
10 For a discussion of the growing politicization of the "refuge" category, see Zetter (Citation2007).