Goodbye, Brazil: Émigrés from the Land of Soccer and Samba

Maxine L. Margolis. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013. 308 pp., tables. $29.95 paper (ISBN 978-0-299-29304-8); $24.95 electronic (ISBN 978-0-299-29303-1).

Maxine L. Margolis's Goodbye, Brazil: Émigrés from the Land of Soccer and Samba is a keystone resource for studies on Brazilian migratory flows throughout the world. Margolis, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, has been researching the mobility of Brazilians for more than three decades and can be considered the most knowledgeable authority on Brazilian migration processes. Goodbye, Brazil is a follow-up of Margolis's (1994, 1998) earlier studies of Brazilian immigrants in New York City, whose commercial meeting point is located in a part of Manhattan, commonly known as “Little Brazil.” In her writings, Margolis does not only present insights into the lives of both legal and undocumented migrants, their desires, problems, economic activities, and religious practices, but she also provides details about visa procedures and other obstacles that can make the migrant's journey variously tortuous or triumphant, but rarelyroutine.

I must confess that like any other book reviewer, I am biased in my perspective: I am a cultural geographer of German nationality who has lived in Brazil for almost twenty years with an interlude to finish his graduate studies at an American university. Pure transnationalism, and Margolis's émigrés' experiences resonate with my own.

I would like to frame this review using an apt and very Brazilian metaphor—that of the rodízio, or the fixed-price restaurant where customers are served a great variety of grilled meats on skewers by ever circulating waiters. Although Margolis makes effective and abundant reference to Brazilian expressions, in describing Brazilian traditions, habits, and mentalities, the key role of food and feasting is curiously overlooked. She also fails to provide a glossary of Brazilian terms for the nonlusophone reader. The churrasco, the Brazilian folk barbeque that unites friends and friends of friends (and sometimes friends of friends of friends), has almost turned into an international trademark for an informal gathering of acquaintances who decide to put any kind of meat on the grill, frequently matched with ample alcoholic beverages. The performance of these markers of brasilidade (Brazilianness) provides cultural cement for diasporic Brazilians. On the other hand, the rodízio is a commodified version of the churrasco, placed in a restaurant setting. The overwhelming physical experience of a rodízio is of attentive waiters serving meat in an endless procession. Similar to the server, the reviewer must modulate between presenting enough but not too much commentary.

In a way, book reviews are metaphors of rodízios: You are served and then you judge the quality of the meat. Some cuts you skip, others you savor. It is rodízio science. So how does Margolis serve the meat? The book is divided into twelve “courses” in which the author presents answers to general questions about emigrants such as why they go, who they are, how they arrive, and where they are bound to. Four chapters address the peculiar situations of Brazilians in North America, Europe, the “Pacific Bounds” (Japan, Australia, and New Zealand), and destinations in South America itself. The part on “Doing America” is particularly informative because it shows regional peculiarities, ranging from the more austere conditions in New England to the social and geographical stratification in south Florida and the recent development in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Following these regional accounts, Margolis deals with two specific topics that are the strongest chapters in the book: the migration flows from and to the city of Governador Valadares in the state of Minas Gerais, considered Brazil's emigrant-sending capital, and the social function of Protestant congregations and the Catholic Church in offering services and spiritual support for Brazilians abroad, raising the question of whether there really are communities in the Brazilian diaspora.

The remainder of the book discusses issues such as the visibility of illegal immigrants, the shaping of Brazilian identities abroad, and future tendencies, with emphasis on transnationalism, the ever-changing economic conditions, and the destiny of the next generations. Margolis repeats the argument she had already pushed forward in her 1993 study on Brazilians in New York City. Different from many poor Central American immigrants, many emigrants from Brazil (with the exception of those in Paraguay and Bolivia) are not leaving their country because they do not have any financial resources or suffer political repression. They emigrate because they feel that Brazil does not offer them stable economic conditions to maintain the consumption level of the middle-class status they conquered through hard work (p. 20). In other words, many of them prefer menial work in a foreign country beneath their professional qualification to jobs in Brazil's topsy-turvy economy. When interviewed, many of these émigrés state that they only intend to stay in their host country until they gather enough money to return to Brazil and invest their savings or open up their own business, but I am not sure if this is a false nationalistic discourse or a real promise. Living abroad and looking at one's native country from a distance has become a status in and of itself.

In Margolis's otherwise impressive study, I found two minor interconnected points of critique that I would like to address: the theoretical framework and the critical assessment of the sources used in the book. As for the first item, I was looking for a deeper discussion of international migrations, transnationalism, and the shaping of identities, which are currently hot topics in social science research agendas, especially in geography. The contextualization of Brazilian migrations in the light of these theoretical frameworks would be a prime cut.

As for the second point, the stories and facts that Margolis presents are not always based on solid scientific findings. Journalistic sources such as newspaper and magazine articles and personal statements are mingled with scientific publications and indiscernible in the bibliographic reference section. There is nothing wrong with using these alternative materials, but it would be helpful if they were listed separately, just to distinguish the diverse kinds of sources.

Information on the different target countries for Brazilian immigration is of mixed quality. The Brazilian presence in France is reduced to one paragraph about the abundance of Brazilian transvestites in the country in 2000 (p. 119). No sources are mentioned and no updates are made. The two-page section on New Zealand heavily leans on magazine articles, personal communications, and hearsay statements such as, “Sandra Lobo, a journalist, notes that, when she lived in Auckland in 2006, a substantial number of Brazilians could be heard speaking Portuguese on the street” (p. 135). In the cases of neighboring countries to Brazil such as Uruguay, Argentina, and Bolivia, the “current” literature is more than ten years old.

By engaging more deeply with her bibliographic sources, Margolis could make a point about the lack and fuzziness of data on Brazilian migration flows and the necessity to do more field work with the migrants themselves. In this sense, the book is an invitation to do further research on Brazilians abroad.

These two points of critique, however, do not diminish this impressive and compelling study of Brazilian migrations. One of the greatest merits of Goodbye, Brazil is its comparative character. Margolis shows that there is a diversity of migration strategies, immigration laws, and mobility patterns in the world. It would be helpful to present a synthesized table of the international scene at the end of the book to sum up Brazilian emigration in a global perspective. A set of location maps could allow the reader to visualize the origins and destinations of migration flows. Not everyone knows how to spot Gort, Uruaçu, Criciúma, or Governador Valadares on a map. In conclusion, and speaking in terms of rodízio science, the reader is well served by Margolis. There are many prime cuts and very few pieces of less palatable quality, but you can be sure that the customer will leave the restaurant satisfied, eager to make a return visit.