Today is party day: the construction of the social and cultural identities of the immigrant in the celebrations of the origins¹

Abstract

This paper is about a peculiar aspect of the organization of the immigrant groups – the cultural repertoires – and their relationship with the communicational substrate inherent to the current globalization process, marked by intense human mobility and the advancement of ICTs. It considers cultural mediations and symbolic exchanges mediated or not in the construction of subjective spaces and identities and explores processes of re-signification and re-symbolization based on concepts of transnationalism, ethnicity, diasporic community and interculturalism. Among the applied research techniques, of qualitative approach, are semi-open interviews, discourse and content analysis, systematic observation and bibliographic research. The main results point out the immigrant subject, by using artistic and cultural activities, become more aware of the social forces and interests that shape him/her as well as his/her role in the process of social change.

Keywords
Migratory identities; Exchange, cultural re-signification and re-symbolization; Immigrant organizations; Parties and celebrations; ICTs

Resumo

Este artigo trata de um aspecto peculiar da organização dos grupos de imigrantes – os repertórios culturais – e sua relação com o substrato comunicacional inerente ao atual processo de globalização, marcado por intensa mobilidade humana e avanço das TICs. Considera as mediações culturais e trocas simbólicas midiatizadas ou não na construção de espaços subjetivos e identidades e explora processos de ressignificação e ressimbolização a partir de conceitos de transnacionalismo, etnicidade, comunidade diaspórica e interculturalismo. Entre as técnicas de pesquisa aplicadas, de abordagem qualitativa, estão entrevistas semi-abertas, análise do discurso e de conteúdo, observação sistemática e pesquisa bibliográfica. Os principais resultados apontam que, ao recorrerem a seus repertórios culturais, os sujeitos imigrantes se tornam mais conscientes das forças sociais e interesses que as moldam, bem como seu papel nos processos de mudança social.

Palavras-chave
Identidades migratórias; Trocas, ressignificação e ressimbolização cultural; Organizações de imigrantes; Festas e celebrações; TICs

Resumen

Este artículo trata de un aspecto peculiar de la organización de los grupos de inmigrantes – los repertorios culturales – y su relación con el sustrato comunicacional inherente al actual proceso de globalización, marcado por una intensa movilidad humana y avance de las TIC. Se considera las mediaciones culturales y los intercambios simbólicos midiatizados o no en la construcción de espacios subjetivos e identidades y explora procesos de resignificación y resimbolización a partir de conceptos de transnacionalismo, etnicidad, comunidad díaspórica e interculturalismo. Entre las técnicas de investigación aplicadas, de abordaje cualitativo, están entrevistas semi abiertas, análisis del discurso y de contenido, observación sistemática e investigación bibliográfica. Los principales resultados apuntan que, al recurrir a sus repertorios culturales, los sujetos inmigrantes se vuelven más conscientes de las fuerzas sociales e intereses que las moldean bien como su papel en los procesos de cambio social.

Palabras clave
Identidades migratorias; Intercambios, resignificación y resimbolización cultural; Organizaciones de inmigrantes; Fiestas y celebraciones; TIC

Introduction

This paper is about the identity constructions of the immigrant subjects and their spatio-temporal relations with the communication substrate inherent to the current globalization process, marked by intense human mobility and the advancement of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It intends to deal with a peculiar aspect of the organization of immigrant groups – the cultural repertoires from festive, folkloric and cultural manifestations produced by immigrants in the host country. It considers cultural mediations and symbolic exchanges mediated or not in the construction of subjective spaces and identities; besides, it explores processes of re-signification and re-symbolization from a relation of otherness, from the recognition of the “other”.

In a practical way, we propose to research: 1) how cultural, ethnic, social and national identities are constructed, expressed and projected in situations of migration and spatial displacement; 2) what are the meanings of belonging, identification and loyalty (‘allegiance’) of the individuals and groups displaced in the temporality of the current civilizational and organizational framework marked by economic and cultural globalization, human mobility and the acceleration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs); 3) what are the discursive (mediatic and non-mediatic) strategies undertaken by these groups and individuals in the effort to construct and express their new identity configurations; and 4) what is the purpose of these social and subjective investments.

Previous studies of our authorship (ESCUDERO, 2007, 2014, 2016) have indicated that in situation of displacement, the recognition of the “other” enables that contact relations and symbolic and cultural exchanges take place in own spaces constructed from different forms of enunciation (media and non-media) of ethnic, cultural, national and social identities. In these instances of production of subjectivity and the defense of singularities, the production of the ethos of the immigrant (individual and/or collective) is re-elaborated in order to guarantee multi-belonging, connections and affectivities, regardless of a geographically located territory, a defined center and/or a continuous temporality.

In other words, we believe that the cultural repertoires of subjects and collectives of immigrants usually result in new forms of citizen participation that profoundly transform the lives of the displaced subjects, family members and those around them, in the host, reception or others territories. They involve traditional political and social spheres, but innovate in the establishment of spaces between physical and subjective boundaries, motivated, for example, by a feeling of solidarity and/or belonging. They are responsible for creating and maintaining a link between time – space – society, passing between one or more belongings, ‘neither here nor there’ – that influence perceptions and realities of vulnerability and marginalization, but also of symbolic exchanges and cultural enrichment.

Methodological aspects

In order to achieve the objectives described above, we made use of two main theoretical-methodological resources – transnationalism (BASCH; BLANC-SZANTON; SCHILLER, 1992; 1995) and interculturalism (GARCIA CANCLINI, 1998, 2005) – combined with the analysis of empirical material. For this, we applied six research techniques, all of them of qualitative approach: bibliographic research (STUMPF, 2011) and documentary (MOREIRA, 2011); semi-open interview in depth (TRIVIÑOS, 1990); discourse analysis (PINTO, 1999; FAIRCLOUGH, 2001); systematic observation (GIL, 2008); and content analysis (KRIPPENDORFF, 1990; BARDIN, 1977).

We determined as research corpus, the associations, civic entities and organizations involving Latin American immigrants dedicated to the realization and promotion of festivities that refer to their countries of origin in Chicago (United States) and Sao Paulo (Brazil), among them: musical, dance and folkloric performances; typical food and handicraft fairs; cinema shows; literature meetings and celebrations in general (Independence parties and commemorative dates of the countries).

Thus, our object of study was composed of three elements: 1) immigrant subjects; 2) their artistic, folkloric and cultural manifestations; and 3) their websites, Facebook pages, Twitter, Meetup and Instagram – the main virtual communication platforms used by the groups involved. In total, participated 45 immigrants of Latin American origin divided into 28 organizations: 15 Brazilians and 15 Mexicans established in Chicago, and 15 Latinos that live in Sao Paulo (three Paraguayans, two Chileans, five Peruvians, two Argentines and three Bolivians). All of them are in advanced stages of their respective migratory processes – they have lived in the host country for at least ten years²

The associativism in the constitution of shared spaces

It is known that the organizations, groups and communities of immigrants established in the host territory have an important role in strengthening ties of friendship, familiarity and unity of the group involved, as well as in the celebration of common origin. They usually have a central role in the construction and representation of the cultural identity of their members. “Being part of a collective identity is a primary need of the immigrant” (BRINKERHOOF, 2009, p.36). This “diasporic identity” is the result of a mixture of characteristics of the homeland, of welcome and life experiences of the immigrant. In the fixation society, the processes of socialization and integration are significant factors and result in a set of hybrid identities, not as a fixed end – they are constantly produced and reproduced within a system of representation.

We propose such concept of diasporic identity based on the definition of identity for Hall (2005) and Garcia Canclini (2005). The first author understands that identity, which he calls “cultural identity”, contextualized in postmodernity, is fragmented, provisional, sometimes contradictory, and composes a system of representation located in a space and a symbolic time. The second author adds to the identity the term hybrid to define the called “hybrid identity”, especially in the context of Latin America, the concept of socio-cultural identity, constructed from symbolic exchanges between traditional and modern, popular and erudite, massive and individual.

For Brinkerhoof (2009), immigrants show several motivations to explain why they mobilize around a diasporic identity and direct this mobilization to the homeland, the host society, or both. Among them, are: behavior, qualification and psychological motivation of individuals. In other words, the fact that this mobilization involves: 1) as a source of defensive identities that serve as a refuge and/or reaction to prevailing social tendencies; 2) as practices of solidarity actions and generosity that culminate, in the last instance, in an associativism with reflexes in other fields, besides cultural (political, economic, among others); and 3) as forms of organization around a specific set of values whose meaning and shared uses are marked by specific codes of self-identification and belonging. “National consciousness is inevitably marked by immigration” (PARK, 1922, p.49).

Our field research revealed that once the group formed around the artistic and cultural manifestation involved, the structure formed for acting has numerous variations, being difficult to describe with all possible accuracies. From the found ones, we can organize them into three main types:

• Structured groups: with a high degree of professionalism and organization involved, they usually have formal register (whether business, statuary, as non-governmental organization), their own headquarters and a large membership (among employees, volunteers and/or collaborators in general) following particular hierarchy, usually with the idealizer of the group in the leading position. They are maintained through the management of financial resources obtained from the sale of tickets for presentations, the sale of products (in the case of handicrafts, food), given courses, and, in some cases, supported by sponsors, including large companies. They have communication vehicles, among them websites, pamphlets and magazines, mainly, and partnerships with local communication vehicles (newspaper and radio).

• Semi-structured groups: they are organized formally or informally and may or may not have their own headquarters (meetings, rehearsals, confection of products can take place in a small rented space and/or in the house of a member, a church or partner club). They have a modest membership, most of which are volunteers, and a hierarchical division from the functions (one member is the treasurer, the other is responsible for the disclosure and so on). They have, at least, one vehicle of communication (websites and flyers are the most used). They are also maintained with financial resources obtained from the sale of tickets for presentations, the sale of products (in the case of handicrafts, food), given courses; eventually, sponsored by a small local company.

• Unstructured groups: they are organized informally, in general, from the initiative of their leader. They do not have their own headquarters, being the meetings, rehearsals and productions carried out in a member’s house, in cafes, restaurants and even public squares. They only have volunteer members, being the role of the leader crucial to the activities. They use a page on social media (Facebook, for example) as a communication vehicle. The few financial resources for maintenance are obtained from the sale of tickets for presentations, the sale of products (in the case of handicrafts, or food, for example), given courses; in this case, it is very common for the members themselves to donate money for the group to use with transportation, raw material, purchase of instruments, costumes, among others.

In these arrangements, built from the participation of immigrants in artistic, folk and cultural festivities, multiple forms of multi-belonging appear, leveraging the expression of feelings (maintenance, revival or re-signification) of the connection between the subjects, showing the defense of shared interests and producing new meanings. In short, it is the life that follows shared in society.

Associativism and solidarity, in this sense, appear as a matter of engagement around a common good: preserving the diasporic identity in front of other realities. The result is politicized discourses, in which the artistic festivities and cultural repertoires involving the country of origin in the receiving society become base elements.

Thus, we seek to verify aspects that range from the practical organization of events, the mobilization of those involved, the preparation and presentation of activities, to subjective questions, since such activities and meetings are closely linked to identity constructions, not only the immigrant, but of the attending public (often, from the host society and others) and aspects of the city itself where the event is located.

As a theoretical path chosen (among many possible), we seek to determine these performances constructed from representations within the ideas of “social space”, by Bourdieu (1983, 1986, 1989), and “nostalgic space” developed by Sayad (1998, 2010). Here, briefly, social space is portrayed by Bourdieu (1983, 1986, 1989) as a field of struggles in which actors/actresses (individuals and groups) elaborate strategies that enable them to maintain or improve their social position, starting with (and also) cultural capital. Sayad himself (1998, 2010) indicates that, in the migratory process, it is very pertinent to reflect on the concept of space, since “social space” is at the center of the debate because it promises to specify the social place that immigrants occupy in their societies, marking the difference between these social territories constituted by the migratory process and the society strictly delimited by the borders of the nation-state. The author (SAYAD, 2010, p.17) classifies the social space “as a living space, a concrete space qualitatively, emotionally and passionately speaking”, loaded with affectivity, for this reason the nostalgic adjective.

We have identified that these artistic and cultural spaces created by immigrants should not be reduced to their traditional, static or vehicular physical dimension; political-administrative, founded on the arbitrariness of borders and bureaucratic authority; or, even less, to the univocal equivalence between geographical and identity records. The migratory space stands out, before, by the multiplicity of the modes of its social and symbolic ‘production’ (LEFEVBRE, 1974) and the intrinsically transient and fluctuating nature of both the sociality and the subjectivity of the immigrant.

Spaces that can be both real and material as theaters, museums, squares, parks and other places where events occur, but also can be subjective, imaginary and existential (GUATTARI, 1992), produced from the processes and devices of enunciation of the identity of the group involved. This is what makes us agree with Barel (1986), when he argues that every social territory is, in its essence, an imaginary, immaterial and symbolic phenomenon; and that every component element of this territory – be it physical or biological, must necessarily go through a meticulous process of symbolization, in order to integrate it.

Conversely, the physical, social, cultural and subjective displacements of the immigrants impel them to mentally and corporately adhere to a multiplicity of places and territories, submerge sensibly and intelligibly in their realities, translate them and allow themselves to be involved and translated by them. Between paths and trajectories, in diversity and adversity, the migrant subjects is led to re-signify the material and symbolic references that challenge them in order to be able to project narratively the spatialities that contain them and to mnemonically sew the national, ethnic, cultural and social identities that cross them.

This constitutive characteristic of the migratory space is manifested at all levels of the immigrants’ life; from their daily routine and their immediate action in their social environment (via artistic and cultural practice or not) to their vision of the world and their broader existential engagements and investments. Whether on the social and cultural plane, as we have seen, whether on the subjective plane, their coordinates are inevitably plural; often shuffling the ‘here and now’ with the ‘elsewhere and other temporalities’.

It is truly a “nostalgic social space”, whose structure, form and configuration reflect the dynamics of social and symbolic relations between immigrants – individuals and communities, in their journey; interconnecting their place of destiny, their land of origin and the territories of transition or invested with their subjectivity. What means, first of all, that the cartography of this space does not correspond faithfully to a given “national social space”, nor can it be restricted to its national state parts and/or its politically-administratively (re-)known instances.

The subjectivity in the processes of re-symbolization or cultural re-signification

Faced with such a complex process, it is too simplistic to say that our initial hypothesis – that it is from the representation of artistic and cultural practices related to the country of origin in the country of destination, that the immigrant establishes a process of cultural re-symbolization or re-signification, in which the original and common idea of habits, customs, objects and beliefs is preserved at the same time as the meeting point between disparate elements generates new meanings – was confirmed.

We prefer to think about the subject from the very definition of subjectivity proposed by Guattari (1992, p.19). According to the author, subjectivity is not a dominant instance of termination that guides other instances according to a univocal causality. On the contrary, because it is plural, it translates into the set of conditions that makes it possible for individual and/or collective instances to be in a position to emerge as existential space, in adjacency or in relation of delimitation with an alterity, itself subjective.

Thus, in a certain way, we admit that in the studied field, of migratory cultural and artistic practices, each subject or group communicate its own representation system – based on an idea of common origin – in a unique model of subjectivity. In other words: taking advantage of the fact that we speak of territories and physical spaces, subjects draw a cartography not only from cognitive references, but also, mythical and ritual, through which they position themselves in relation to their affections, anguishes and all the pain that displacement can generate.

In fact, diasporas or cultural organizations expose and reproduce a more or less imaginary set of references, located beyond the borders of the host country by organizing its members in local communities that are extremely inserted in the social space of the host country and its fields, favoring the sociality. Thus, culture subsists, with its constant process of re-signification – which is neither bad nor good, but characteristic of a living space in transformation – and constantly threatened by “strong” national spaces that are reciprocally denied and which deal with the process migration as an ephemeral phenomenon that tends to lose cultural importance with the passage of generations and their “re-insertion” into homogeneous social spaces.

The role of ICTs

We know that the daily routine of immigrants is far from what Garcia Canclini (2005, p.205) calls “an oasis of non-belonging”. At all times, the condition of displaced subjects and their search for new forms of belonging are put in check by much more practical questions, for example, restrictive migratory laws, prejudice, xenophobia, discrimination among many other coercive human rights actions. But, by the time the immigrants invest in their cultural aspects, they have found creative ways to face the difficulties and everything seems to be fine – after all, they are talking about what they know best, about themselves, their homeland. In this sense, organized diasporas use ICTs to facilitate these agendas.

The empirical research has revealed that the Internet can meet the practical needs of daily life of migrant cultural organizations: to publicize events, promote the organization and inform members and/or the general public about what is happening in the group, to have a voice, to transmit their information and knowledge about the cultural aspects of the country of origin and to be known locally.

At the same time, the content analysis has shown that the webdiaspora³ gives the opportunity for immigrants, when organized as a group, to continue to negotiate their diasporic identities, in an intercultural perspective, through stories, to promote consensus on shared understandings, to make sense, in a transnational space. It is very difficult to measure the true extent of the impact of ICTs on the lives of immigrants, especially in their subjective aspect. But it can be said that they provide support for the construction of diasporic identities, allowing subjects to incorporate new ideas, values and experiences into their frame of reference identity.

We highlight two examples of content found on virtual pages of the groups – chosen here, randomly for illustration purposes of the above argument. The first was a post about Forroloween, event organized by a group of Brazilian musicians in Chicago. They celebrate Halloween – one of the most popular festivities in American culture – typically, with costumes and sweets, however, include forró, a Brazilian rhythm. The second was a menu of a typical Peruvian food stand in São Paulo, which announced the sale of “Ceviche in Brazilian way”. In the dish, the traditional pepper aji, typical of Peru, was replaced by the pepper dedo de moça, much used in the Brazilian cuisine to “attract the Brazilians”.

In this context, we reinforce the argument that ICTs not only represent an instrumental tool of publication, transmission and/or representation, but connotations of social linkage, symbolic interaction and subjective production (APPADURAI, 1996; MARTÍN-BARBERO, 1991). And, if there is a conclusion to be drawn from this debate is that the social change is multilinear, and not unilineal. There is always more than one path that we can follow and, here, we highlight two, in particular.

The first is that after the creation of the typographic industry and the emergence of various types of electronic media, the interaction set of social life has changed. Of course, face-to-face interaction – the only one that was known at the beginning of time and which until then allowed the sharing of information, realities, knowledge – did not disappear, that is, it is still a fundamental component of daily life. However, it was complemented by other forms of interaction that assumed an increasing role in the process of self-formation of people and in the sharing of the common.

A second point to emphasize is that, no matter how strong the conflict or the affinity between ICTs and society today, it is not possible to affirm that new forms and social processes appear as a consequence of technological transformation. We believe that technology does not determine society. Neither society can write the course of technological transformation, since many factors intervene in the process of scientific discovery, technological innovation and social applications, so that the final result depends on a complex interactive and contextual scenario. Besides that, new forms and social processes do not always, necessarily, arise within an old and/or existing system.

Thus, the focus of the interaction and communication provided by the webdiaspora goes far beyond the objectivity of the transmission of a reality, favored, here, by the development and access to the ICTs. But, as proposed by Sodré (2006), it involves the understanding of communication in its broadest sense of interaction, of communion. From this idea, we seek to value the immigrant subjects who are surrounded by cultures and identities and who have a past and a present that goes beyond their own understanding.

Finally, we emphasize that the differential today is the distributive acceleration of the processes and not the massive presence of the technique in the processes. The modes of life produced in recent times have removed us from the traditional types of social order in an unprecedented way. And if until a few decades ago spatial and temporal mobility were a single constant and a situation of cause, today we need to take into account a fundamental inversion: time and space are organized from a multiple logic and a situation of effects, in which presence versus absence, belonging versus alienation, tradition versus innovation, visibility versus invisibility, rationality versus sensibility, global versus local, individuals versus groups are linked.

The question of identities as discourse

Celebrate the origins, retake the roots, strengthen ties of friendship and union of those involved... everything with many colors, flavors and joy. Apparently, these are daily activities. Which organized social stratum does not promote this type of activity? Insisting on the plural character of identities, potentialized in the migratory events studied, we verify that they are fruits of a model of social organization of the planet imposed by power relations anchored in historical processes. They are incorporated, transformed and recreated within a system of representations from the relation of the subject with the environment in which he/she lives (and all that implies). Thus, national, ethnic, social and cultural identities tend to surface in processes of displacement, that is, in the change of an environment, until then a point of reference.

The defense of these identities is not naive, although, in some cases, it is unconscious, at least scientifically speaking: the immigrants do not defend their identities by themselves. They defend them to achieve something, a purpose, objective or subjective. This position leads them to articulate their practical actions of daily life in private and family space, or of public and collective character, not necessarily in this linear order.

It is no coincidence that such practices are much more visible and proliferate in large urban centers, as seen in Chicago and São Paulo. They go against the context of reception and what the metropolises offer in terms of infrastructure (access to means of transport, communication, health, education, work) and of political will of local governments to recognize and support new structures of civil society. The sociability that the contemporary cities induce must be conceived as the capacity to interact with the multiple international symbolic offerings from own positions.

It is not by chance that festive, artistic and cultural events permeate all types of immigrant activity in the host territory. Although the practical objective of defending identities is to fight for political rights (voting possibility, for example) or labor rights (better working conditions), feelings of recognition and belonging have in artistic, folk and cultural practices its best form of materialization and externalities. Not only because it allows the use of identity elements – they can be used in a political demonstration or in a strike rally – but, because it affects the immigrants’ deepest affective feelings, provoking them with sensations from an aesthetic and nostalgic experience.

An essential condition for them to occur, at the different levels we describe in the course of our study, is the collective action. Such activities only appear and gain visibility in the host society when organized into groups, associations, clubs, communities, although from an individual initiative. Formal or informal, professional or amateur, commercial or non-profit, old or recent, the fact is that these collectives are fundamental in building ties between the immigrants who share a common origin in the host territory. They are still relevant for the construction of bridges with the country of origin and, in some cases, bridges with immigrants of the same origin, but established in other territories.

As the transnational perspective revealed, they are active and connected subjects in the country of origin or destination, who work and expose their contrastive identities in the most varied forms of cultural practices. We risk saying that, in the case of migration, there is no community without parties and celebrations of the origins, just as there are no parties and celebrations of the origins without the community.

In these practices, immigrant subjects cling to their collective and create ethnic-national-cultural social spaces as a form of resistance to the excessively individualistic conviviality found in the host society. They choose, adapt what will be shown within their possibilities, but also, according to what local receivers can hear, see and understand. We can say that in them there is a hegemonic pretension around a linear and cumulative culture that collapses if the past cannot be stored, preserved (BAUDRILLARD, 1991).

And this goes beyond celebrations, festive meetings, performances or even a way of working and subsistence. They involve political, economic and social actions anchored in multiple migratory identities responsible for building social networks and boosting the belief in a better quality of life in more than one geographical area, combining local, urban, national and transnational.

This explains the difficulty we had during the work of classifying, determining and systematizing whether such manifestation is of a religious, political, economic or cultural order, as mentioned above. Such actions provide us with empirical evidence that the contemporary social relations, in the case of migration, have become multi-dimensional, multiscale and fluid. Their forms are the result of space-social interactions that have more to do with the quality of cultivated social capital than with their density.

Perhaps the explanation for the fact that cultural, folkloric and festive manifestations, despite bringing innovations in the form of creation and presentation of content – as shown by the intercultural perspective –, insist on perpetuating stereotyped, repetitive and few original practices that refer always to the common sense about the image of the country of origin. No matter how much, in the speeches, the concern to use certain performance, event or party to reveal another aspect of the country of origin involved in the host country appears, to an external receiver who, in theory, is not familiar with the subject, the presence of clichés in these environments is still very strong.

We must keep in mind that, as a discourse, such performances reveal constant alternating focus of particularity and are geared towards a wide diversity of ends. What is important is that, when they resort to such experiences, immigrants subjects become more aware of the practice in which they are involved as producers and consumers of those sensations: from the social forces and interests that shape them, from the power relations and ideologies that invest them, its effects on social, cultural, ethnic and national identities, as well as on symbolic interactions and their role in the process of cultural and social change.

Final considerations

The festivities studied in this paper revealed that the existence, in the case of immigrants, of a spatial framework for the enunciation of the created subjectivities and the preservation of the identity of the group involved gains a practical meaning. And it is precisely this sense that gives life to the concepts of “social space” and “nostalgic space”, by Bourdieu (1983, 1986, 1989) and Sayad (1998, 2010), respectively.

It is undeniable that the multiple forms of conception of space depend not only on the general cultural political framework and the historical moment of its elaboration, but also on a sensorial perception. In the case of this research, we work, at all times, with a concept of space constructed from symbolic interactions and discourses marked by nostalgia intrinsic to the own temporal characteristic founder of this space. It is responsible for delimiting the social place that the immigrants occupy in the host country and affectively supporting them, after all, nostalgia, in the last instance, is the denial of a painful present.

In the current civilizational and organizational framework of the planet, marked by economic and cultural globalization in which the acceleration of means of transport and ICTs stand out, such spatial framework can arise from the sharing of a common physical space (usually located in the same neighborhood, church, the seat of a community association, a school) or a virtual space (the webdiaspora, for example).

Both are undoubtedly responsible for promoting the exercise of sociality (MAFFESOLI, 2006) and the creation and maintenance of a social network that, simultaneously, involves subjects physically located in the country of origin, destination or in others, that guarantees to the groups of immigrants all their dynamics with respect to their capacity for self-representation, recognition and production of activities organized from the idea of common identities.

Within these spaces, the groups of immigrants have the autonomy to impose their practices in the way they deem convenient and establish hierarchies and roles according to the operation and characteristics of ordinary activity. Certainly, it is the founding element of “being-together”, so valued in the studied manifestations, that in the transnational context it seems to be governed by instances devoid of the material dimension and inscribed in the temporality of an instantaneous diffusion. The key to its development – which ultimately reflects the (re)knowledge of the artistic and cultural production of the group involved – is not usually the arrival or departure of members, but the relationship between them.

Through these spaces, the immigrant groups are able to exert multiple forms of voices, loyalties and discourses that are generally expanded beyond spatial physical boundaries. That is, both the headquarters of the organization, the city, the state or the country, and the virtual environment to the real. This explains why, for example, new members often emerge from a virtual contact. Or more: to know and bring new perspectives that have been developed to the artistic and cultural manifestation in question in the country of origin and to apply them in the country of destination. Likewise, in a presentation in a park or square, to draw the attention of the people who pass by there, that regardless of the establishment of a closer relationship in the future, exposes, transmits and makes public facets, until then unknown, of a social reality.

Accompanying the cultural practices of these peoples in this paper, we have seen that it is in the place of sedimentation and intersection of diverse cultural currents and unresolved fusions between countries of origin and destination that immigrants, even in one continent, witness the contradictions of social history. Their festive manifestations do not cease to be democratic projects shared by all without become all equal, in which disintegration is elevated to diversity, and inequalities between ethnicities and groups are reduced to differences.

• 1
  A first version of this paper was presented at the International Association for Media and Communication Research – IAMCR Conference, in Cartagena, Colombia, in July 2017.
• 2
  At least one member of each organization studied participated in the research, between leaders and/or coordinators. The events, celebrations and festivities visited and observed during the research were: 1) In Chicago: Carnaval Brasileiro, Festa Junina brasileira, Feijoada brasileira, VI Mostra de Cinema Brasileiro, Roda de Capoeira do Quilombo Cultural Center, Festa de Sete de Setembro, Sarau Literário e Cultural de Língua Portuguesa, Exposición de Artesanías – Calpulli Ocelotl-Cihuaoatl, Dia de los Muertos, Pílsen Open Studios, XII Encuentro Cultural Guerrerense, Children’s Art Workshop – Book Reading and Making “Alebrijes”, 10^th Annual Folk Art Festival, Celebracion de Nosa Señora de Guadalupe, Downtown Sound – Millenniun Park, Mexican Fiesta – Mexican Dance Ensemble, Las Posadas, Encuentro Gastronómico TCEP. 2) In São Paulo: 21ª Festa do Imigrante, Feira da Kantuta – Cultura Boliviana, Feira da Kantutita; Fiestas Patrias Peruanas, Festa Fé & Cultura, Encontro Cultural de Imigrantes Cáritas São Paulo. All virtual communication platforms of all groups integrated the analysis corpus.
• 3
  We can relate the concept of webdiaspora to media practices involving immigrants on the Web, whether or not combined, whose purpose is, in general, to express positions based on transnational and intercultural situations caused by displacement. Some synonyms: e-diaspora, Webdiasporic (Webdiaspórica), Digital Diaspora, among others.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Oct-Dec 2018

History

• Received
  28 Apr 2018
• Accepted
  11 Nov 2018