Brasileiras residentes em British Columbia: uma discussão sobre imigração, corpo e gênero

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze how the immigrant condition has been embodied in Brazilian women residing in British Columbia and to investigate whether these immigrants perceive identification as Brazilian as a marker of discrimination and exclusion or of appreciation and favoritism in the social relationships they establish with Canadians. and with other immigrants in their different contexts of action and interaction. In this work, I reflect on how “migrant bodies” make a difference and change the environment, how they change and re-signify themselves in this process of arrival and residence in a new place, including the phase of this trajectory that precedes the change of country. To carry out this research, in addition to a bibliographical review on international migrations, multiculturalism/interculturalism, sociology of the body and gender studies, I interviewed, remotely, twelve Brazilian women residing in Canada for at least one year. The semi-structured interviews were all recorded, and the collected data were analyzed qualitatively. The Dissertation is divided into three chapters, in which I gather information about Immigration, Body and Gender, in that order. Canada and British Columbia are presented as places that are defined by multiculturalism, the concept of “migrant body” and its use as a tool for analyzing the data obtained in this research is presented and discussed from excerpts of the interviewees’ reports and categories of gender studies are articulated to immigration and race before reflections on stereotypes related to Brazilian women abroad, also in dialogue with interview data. The analysis and discussion of the data obtained in the research suggest that the migrant trajectory experienced by the participants in the Canadian Province of British Columbia is composed of changes that are bodily objectified (incorporation process) and that the identification of immigrant women as Brazilians can be perceived ambiguously by them. That is, sometimes it produces discrimination, sometimes it is seen as a way of valuing and favoring the social relations that these Brazilian women establish with Canadians and with immigrants from other countries, considering the different contexts that make up their migrant experience.