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

Brazil does not have a long history of its citizens voluntarily immigrating to other countries, but within the last 30 years that has started to change. With the downturn of the Brazilian economy in the 1980s and early 1990s, the majority of Brazilian emigrants went to the United States, Paraguay, Japan, and Europe. By 2009, more than three million Brazilians were living abroad in 112 countries. Margolis (anthropology, emerita, Univ. of Florida, Gainesville) uses her own research and that of leading Brazilian immigration scholars to explore the "Brazilian diaspora." Her research includes a focus on the Brazilian city of Governador Valadares, known as an "immigrant sending community," where she interviewed many residents who were either getting ready to emigrate or had just returned. Margolis shows that the Brazilian communities, especially in the United States and Japan, have faced the same challenges, e.g., prejudice and hardships relating to housing and employment, faced by other immigrant communities. Overall, she generally concludes that these enclaves are part of a diaspora based on constant change, lacking community-based organizations as anchors in their adopted home countries.