Abstract While there is a growing literature on the trend towards international student mobility, few if any studies have focused on the relative impact of student exchange for promoting national interests and relationship building between specific countries. This study seeks to address this gap through an in-depth analysis of Brazil’s Science Without Borders programme and its implications for the country’s relationship with Canada. The study reveals that student mobility between the two countries effected by this programme provide significant advantage to both countries, not least of which will likely have positive implications for Canadian-Brazilian interaction.

As ONGs/AIDS desde o início da epidemia são lugares de acolhimento e de pressão política, propiciam alternativas de convivência social para as pessoas que convivem com o HIV/AIDS. Através da experiência dos participantes de uma ONG brasileira e de outra canadense, este estudo teve o objetivo de discutir a participação política como um processo em constante construção, condicionada por fatores psicossociais, contextualizados histórica e culturalmente. Através da análise de documentos, questionários e entrevistas baseado na Hermenêutica de Profundidade de John Thompson (1995), pudemos perceber que em ambas as ONGs desencadeia-se um processo de politização da AIDS a partir da ajuda ao próximo e das troca de experiências. Todavia na ONG brasileira este processo acontece através de um envolvimento mais intenso com a dinâmica institucional e comunitária, tendo como objetivo a conquista e consolidação de direitos, enquanto que a ONG canadense constitui-se um espaço através do qual cada participante individualmente acessa direitos já consolidados no país.

Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have been important places for harboring people that live with HIV/AIDS because they feel welcomed and supported to fight for their rights. By studying the experiences of participants of a Brazilian NGO and a Canadian NGO, this study discussed the political participation as a process which is associated with psychosocial factors, historically and culturally contextualized. We could perceive that, in both NGOs, the politicization process of AIDS started from the perspective of helping other people and sharing experiences related to HIV/AIDS, through the analyze of documents, questionnaires and interviews, based on Hermeneutic of Depth by John Thompson (1995). Yet, in the Brazilian NGO the politicization process occurred through a more intense institutional and community dynamics, with the objective of achieving their rights, while the Canadian NGO represents a setting through which the participants individually accessed their rights already consolidated in the country.