Crossing borders: the lived experiences of Brazilians on the move

This research explores different aspects of Brazilians’ contemporary mobility.

Firstly, it looks at the history of mobility in Brazil and to the relevance of present-day (internal) mobility within the country. By doing so, it situates the intra- and international mobility of Brazilians in a broader perspective.

Secondly, the thesis focuses on the trajectories that Brazilians who currently reside in Belgium have pursued. Three aspects with regards to these trajectories are highlighted:
(1) International mobility of Brazilians often already starts within Brazil. The Brazilian case shows how unproductive it is to split up mobility in internal versus international movement, as their trajectories often imply both.
(2) The experiences of many respondents are, for a variety of reasons, marked by ongoing mobility.
(3) Trajectories cannot be explained by looking only at its physical aspects. The thesis shows how the virtual comes together with other facets of trajectories by investigating the roles social network sites play with regards to mobility.

Thirdly, the thesis explores how mobility influences daily life. It investigates the experience of crossing borders and how mobile Brazilians construct, view and transform boundaries between themselves and other residents of the local space they inhabit. Moreover, it looks at the welfare needs they experience due to their mobile lifestyle and the difficulties and opportunities they encounter when they turn to their (transnational) networks to ask for support.

The objective of this study is threefold. The first objective is an empirical one. By investigating the dynamics of trajectories of Brazilians and the influence of mobility on their daily life, this thesis challenges the classical picture of migration as an intentional movement from one place of origin to a single place of destination, including a perspective of ‘settling’ or ‘uprootedness’, and offers instead a more nuanced view on mobility. Instead of a simple journey from A to B, the respondents’ mobility consists of a multiplicity of potential trajectories, which are often unstable and may be accompanied by changes in status, thus forming a complex concatenation of destinations and positions.

The second objective of this study is to make anthropological migration research more sensitive for mobility and borders, not only as an empirical object but also as an analytical starting point. I hope to contribute to the further cross-fertilisation of migration, borders and mobilities studies.

Thirdly, by applying an ethnographic approach, I also attempt to critically enrich mobilities studies.

The central question that derives from the research objectives is as follows: What are the lived experiences of Brazilians that cross physical borders and metaphorical boundaries?