Moving through status changes
South-South migration and post/colonial reconfigurations
The project addresses the trajectories of newcomers in Rio de Janeiro through status changes at the intersections of multiple systems of hierarchization. Interested in the particularities of the arrival of Spaniards, it reveals new socio-economic and legal precarity of large numbers of Spaniards, which questions their self-perception as privileged, while at the same time recognising the persistent power of whiteness in Brazil. Political orientation and ethical outlook are most relevant in determining whether the Spanish exploit such privilege or rather benefit from it against their will (Heil 2020, accepted).
A comparative article (Heil, under review) combines results from my research among the Spanish and Senegalese. It conceptually broadens the analytical frameworks at hand to understand the processes of evaluating difference by juxtaposing reflexive and sensory repertoires newcomers use to relate to the diversity of bodies that circulate in the city and the urban fabric itself. Inequality, racism, fear, and desire are among the forces that produce hierarchical orders that describe the dense configurations of urban difference and the partial trajectories newcomers take through them.
Two crucial conceptional pairs of valued difference regarding the arrival of Senegalese in Rio de Janeiro are blackness and Africanness (Heil 2019, 2020, under review), and gender and religion (Heil 2019).
Analytically, the historical and contemporary transformations in Brazil, Senegal, and Europe need to be thought together.
A comparative article (Heil, under review) combines results from my research among the Spanish and Senegalese. It conceptually broadens the analytical frameworks at hand to understand the processes of evaluating difference by juxtaposing reflexive and sensory repertoires newcomers use to relate to the diversity of bodies that circulate in the city and the urban fabric itself. Inequality, racism, fear, and desire are among the forces that produce hierarchical orders that describe the dense configurations of urban difference and the partial trajectories newcomers take through them.
Two crucial conceptional pairs of valued difference regarding the arrival of Senegalese in Rio de Janeiro are blackness and Africanness (Heil 2019, 2020, under review), and gender and religion (Heil 2019).
- The analysis of how gender and religion mediate local social relations and the resulting relative positionalities strongly considers the post-9/11 Northern hemisphere as a source of discursive resources, in particular the complex entanglements of islamophobia and homophobia.
- The contestations around blackness and Africanness explore an angle on the global entanglements and their local repercussions that centres on Africa. There are conflicts between the contemporary relations with, constructions of, and claims to Africanness of parts of the Brazilian population and the Senegalese ethical self-fashioning as well as their distancing mechanisms form black Brazilians. Decolonial as well as colonial/European historical and epistemological positions mediate these conflicts among both Senegalese and (black) Brazilians.
Analytically, the historical and contemporary transformations in Brazil, Senegal, and Europe need to be thought together.