{"id":229050,"date":"2017-01-02T16:30:04","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T18:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/?p=229050"},"modified":"2017-01-02T16:30:04","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T18:30:04","slug":"the-invisible-foreigner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-invisible-foreigner\/","title":{"rendered":"The invisible foreigner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"New

Spencer Platt \/ Getty Images<\/span>New York, May 1, 2010: hundreds of Latinos protest a law that required immigrants suspected of being illegal to provide documentary proof of residenceSpencer Platt \/ Getty Images<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Brazilians who settle in the United States, usually with plans to return to their home country after a few years, tend to maintain invisibility and make an effort not to be confused with Hispanics, except in places and situations in which such connection would be beneficial.\u00a0 In contrast, the children of Japanese who were born in Brazil, having been rejected by the traditional Asian society when they migrate to Japan, assume Brazilian identities and habits.\u00a0 They march in Carnaval parades and exhibit jarring behaviors such as speaking Portuguese loudly in public, according to analyses made by both foreign and Brazilian researchers.<\/p>\n

In the United States, the first move is to refuse to accept an undesired identity.\u00a0 \u201cWhen you arrive in the United States the first thing Brazilians learn is to say: \u201cI\u2019m not Hispanic and I don\u2019t speak Spanish,\u201d because in general the Americans think Portuguese is spoken only in Portugal, not in Brazil,\u201d says anthropologist Maxine Margolis, professor emeritus from the University of Florida.\u00a0 Author of a book that serves as reference among those who study the subject, Little Brazil: Imigrantes brasileiros em Nova York <\/i><\/em>(Little Brazil: Brazilian Immigrants in New York), published in 1994, she began a series of lectures about patterns of migration among Brazilians at the Museum of Immigration in S\u00e3o Paulo on June 16, 2016.\u00a0 The lectures were sponsored by the Migration Observatory, located at the Population Studies Center at the University of Campinas (NEPO-Unicamp).\u00a0 According to Margolis, most Americans still draw no distinctions among the various Latin cultures although more than three decades have passed since the famous 1982 trip to Brazil by President Ronald Reagan, who proposed a toast \u201cto the people of Bolivia\u201d at a state dinner in Bras\u00edlia.<\/p>\n

Hispanics currently represent almost 80 million of the 310 million residents of the United States, while Brazilians themselves probably form a contingent somewhere between the 350,000 found by the 2010 U.S. Census and the 1.4 million estimated by Itamaraty, Brazil\u2019s Foreign Ministry.\u00a0 They are not, however, always separate worlds.\u00a0 Margolis observed that an affinity with Latin food and music, the latter rarely heard in Brazil, emerges in cities like Miami, a Florida city with a high percentage of South Americans where Brazilians feel at ease and can pretty easily find restaurants that serve rice and beans.\u00a0 \u201cBrazilians have told me: \u2018We came to Florida and discovered that we are Latinos!\u2019\u201d the researcher says.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the Brazilian who arrives in the United States, being recognized as Hispanic comes as somewhat of a shock,\u201d observes sociologist Ana Cristina Braga Martes, a professor at the Get\u00falio Vargas Foundation.\u00a0 She came to this conclusion when she interviewed other Brazilians in Boston during the 1990s as part of her doctoral studies under the guidance of anthropologist [and later First Lady of Brazil] Ruth Cardoso (1930-2008).\u00a0 She reiterated that view in her later studies about the subject.\u00a0 According to Martes, Bolivians, Colombians, and other Latins also experience a diminished national identity on being lumped together in a single ethnic group called \u201cHispanics\u201d along with everyone else who comes to the United States from Latin America.\u00a0 That classification, albeit not desired, can facilitate access to public benefits and policies.\u00a0 \u201cSome Brazilian immigrants have told me that they took advantage of the Hispanic quota in order to enroll their children in school or get a job,\u201d Martes says.\u00a0 \u201cDepending on the context, national identity is flexible.\u00a0 Being Brazilian becomes less important when one\u2019s priority is to secure a better economic or social position in another country.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her book New Immigrants, new land: A study of Brazilians in Massachusetts<\/i><\/em>, the sociologist describes the strategies employed in building an identity and surviving in the labor market.\u00a0 In general, Brazilians are willing to accept simpler work\u2014the women cleaning houses and the men working in construction or restaurants \u2013 but the loss of status is partly offset by higher incomes and the more formal social relationships, according to Martes.\u00a0 \u201cThe immigrants I interviewed say they feel they are treated well and that it is possible to achieve dignity and a better life, even as cleaning ladies and janitors.\u201d\u00a0 In a study done in 2012, she confirmed that Brazilians in Boston preferred the American health care system, in which they were served by programs designed for low-income patients, to the Brazilian one.<\/p>\n

A distant land<\/strong>
\n\u201cIn Brazil, your identity is simply assumed.\u00a0 It is something abstract that is rarely expressed and is recognized based one one\u2019s city or state of origin, economic class, and occupation.\u00a0 In the United States\u2014and also in Portugal\u2014Brazilians are regarded essentially as foreigners from a far-off and exotic land, without differentiation among them,\u201d Maxine Margolis says.\u00a0 \u201cI noticed this in New York, and later other researchers saw the same thing in cities in Florida and California.\u00a0 Consequently, a lot of people ask themselves: \u2018Who am I?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 In her most recent book Goodbye, Brazil: Emigrantes brasileiros no mundo<\/i><\/em> (Goodbye Brazil: Brazilian migrants around the world), the American anthropologist comments that the children of Brazilians who emigrated may perhaps accept more readily than their parents the fact that they are Latinos, thus joining groups that are better organized.<\/p>\n

In Japan, also examined in this book, Brazilians who are descendants of Japanese, called nikkeijins<\/i><\/em> in that country, are also coldly received by the locals.\u00a0 \u201cEthnic pride deteriorates when, after being regarded favorably in Brazil because of their Japanese heritage, they are treated as inferior in Japan because of their Brazilian heritage,\u201d Margolis says.\u00a0 The reaction by Brazilian migrants in Japan\u2014in numbers estimated at about 250,000\u2014is peculiar.\u00a0 \u201cInstead of becoming more Japanese, as they had intended, the nikkeijins<\/i><\/em> are becoming more Brazilian, wearing green-and-yellow, parading in Carnaval events, and speaking Portuguese loudly in public.\u00a0 Their Japanese neighbors in residential buildings complain that the nikkeijins<\/i><\/em> play loud music, don\u2019t know how to recycle and, especially, engage in public displays of affection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Books<\/em>
\nMARGOLIS, M. L. Little Brazil:\u00a0Imigrantes brasileiros em Nova York.<\/em>\u00a0 Papirus, 1994.
\nMARGOLIS, M. L. Goodbye, Brazil: Emigrantes brasileiros no mundo.\u00a0<\/em> Contexto, 2013.
\nMARTES, A. C. B.\u00a0New immigrants, new land: A study of Brazilians in Massachusetts.\u00a0<\/em>Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brazilians in the United States avoid being regarded as Hispanics","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[261],"coauthors":[5968],"class_list":["post-229050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-sociology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229050"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=229050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}