Migrating Beyond the Wave: Continuities and Discontinuities in Biographical Accounts of Brazilian Migrants in Portugal

This work challenges the social hierarchies that define certain types of migrants as less “human” and less deserving of rights. Questioning and denaturalising such asymmetries contributes to paving the way toward a fairer world. The case in focus is the migratory flow of Brazilian nationals from Brazil to Portugal. In academic literature, this flow has often been conceptualised as comprising different “waves”, from the 1980s to recent years. Throughout these historical moments, migrants themselves have created narratives to describe their migration experiences and life in another country. It is in these autobiographical narratives that we focus our attention, aiming to identify narrative continuities and discontinuities that emerge in the mnemonic processes of migrants across distinct historical moments within this migratory flow.

This chapter presents an analysis of life stories from Brazilian migrants in Portugal, collected at different historical moments and under distinct research contexts: between 2010 and 2012, as part of the research project “Identity Narratives and Social Memory: the (re)construction of Lusophony in intercultural contexts”, and between 2020 and 2021, within the research “Immigration Narratives Between Biographical Accounts and Media Discourse: the case of recent Brazilian immigration in Portugal.”

We employed thematic analysis of the interviews, which resulted in a thematic division covering topics such as cultural ties between Brazil and Portugal, identity negotiation dynamics, linguistic issues, and experiences of prejudice and social discrimination. Among the findings, we observed the importance of emotional bonds and direct family connections with Portuguese relatives in the decision to migrate during the earlier “waves”. In more recent “waves”, weaker cultural ties may be a contributing factor to greater adaptation difficulties and unmet post-migration expectations. Identity dynamics have also changed, with more recent narratives showing greater assimilation of “Portuguese culture”. Regarding prejudice and social discrimination, there appears to be a shift in how such experiences are perceived, with phenomena such as the inversion of responsibility and the blaming of migrants themselves for the discrimination they face.

Reference:

Posch, P., Cabecinhas, R., & Macedo, I. (2025). Migrar além da Vaga: Continuidades e Descontinuidades em Relatos Biográficos de Pessoas Migrantes Brasileiras em Portugal. In J. Topa, V. Duarte, E. Silva, & A. Guerreiro (Eds.), Migrações Contemporâneas, Direitos Humanos e Justiça (pp. 179–201). Pactor.