VOICES AND LOOKS OF BRAZILIAN MIGRANTS IN EUROPE ¹

ABSTRACT

Despite the increasing migration of Brazilians to Europe, little space has been given for these individuals to textualize their life experiences, since they are, in general, represented by official “spokespersons” (experts and government agents, among others) or reduced to numbers and statistics. Against this trend, this paper aims to examine and compare in the light of French Discourse Analysis, with incursions in Dialogical Discourse Analysis, three life stories produced by Brazilian migrants that live or have lived in France and/or in Portugal and/or in England, so as to find out their discursive representations (of themselves, of the others, of the world). Since each individual is unique and their story is particular, the results reveal differences in the way of telling and evaluating the migratory experience, but they also allow us to apprehend shared aspects, such as the definition of Brazil as a lack: lack of opportunities, lack of life quality, lack of a favorable political situation, which leads people to displacement and turns Europe into a “safe harbor” for them, making a return project impracticable.

migration; life stories; Brazilians; Europe

RESUMO

Apesar da migração, cada vez maior, de brasileiros para a Europa, pouco espaço tem sido dado para que tais indivíduos textualizem suas experiências de vida, uma vez que eles são, em geral, representados por “porta-vozes” oficiais (especialistas, agentes governamentais, entre outros) ou reduzidos a números e estatísticas. Na contramão dessa tendência, o presente artigo tem como objetivo examinar e comparar, à luz da Análise do Discurso Francesa (ADF), com incursões na Análise Dialógica do Discurso (ADD), três narrativas de vida de migrantes brasileiros que vivem ou viveram na França e/ou em Portugal e/ou na Inglaterra, a fim de apreender as representações (de si, dos outros, do mundo) que eles constroem no/por meio do seu dizer. Considerando que cada sujeito é único e seu relato, singular, os resultados obtidos revelam diferenças na forma de contar e avaliar a experiência migratória, mas permitem também apreender aspectos comuns, tais como a definição do Brasil pela falta: falta de oportunidades, falta de qualidade de vida, falta de uma situação política favorável, o que leva os sujeitos ao deslocamento e faz da Europa um “porto seguro” para eles, inviabilizando um projeto de retorno.

migração; narrativas de vida; brasileiros; Europa

Introduction

The word “immigration” (from Latin immigratio ) must be conceived as the act of a foreigner coming into a country for permanent residence. It is a historical process that binds countries in a process of dependence: the society that “exports” their emigrants and the one that welcomes them, thus turning them into immigrants. Migratory movements are more than a geographic phenomenon; they are a universal feature in the history of humankind and date back thousands of years, assuming increasingly greater diversity ( LAACHER, 2012 ; BARTRAM et al. , 2014; BLANCHARD et al ., 2016).

Until the 18^thcentury, populations moved regularly without many obstacles. The rising of the Nation-States in the 19^thcentury turned the management of migratory flow into a problem, since the “invention” of borders (taken as the official line that divides territories) distinguishes the national from the non-national: foreigners/migrants² , fostering mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and becoming a key element in the constitution of identity and alterity ( LAACHER, 2012 ; BOUDON, 2018 ; BARTRAM et al ., 2014). In other words, the perception of the condition of foreigners is an essential component in the concept of migrants.

Opposing the legitimacy of us (national) to the illegitimacy of them (the others/non-national) gives rise, especially in moments of economic and/or political crisis, to issues concerning the social cost of migrants, frequently associated to an increase in delinquency, reduced job openings, lowering of wages, briefly, a threat to national identity and cohesion. Notwithstanding, researchers such as Laacher (2012) and Portes (2019) strive to demonstrate that such accusations are, to say the least, exaggerated by pointing to the positive impacts of migration (such as filling specific gaps in the labor market) – which has not prevented discriminatory and xenophobic attitudes from manifesting nor made migratory policies any less restrictive.

Even if migrating is not a recent phenomenon, it is possible to notice a significant increase in migratory movements in the world for the past two decades. According to data from the World Migration Report 2020 ,³ released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), there are nearly 272 million international migrants in the world today. In 2019, 80 million of these people were forcibly displaced due to factors such as conflicts, persecutions, violence or human rights violations, as reported by the Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2019 ⁴ . In addition to forced displacement, to which the so-called “refugees” are subjected, many people move to other countries in pursuit of conditions for better life (professional or academic opportunities) and/or to join their already immigrated relatives, thus becoming “economic migrants” or, simply, migrants.

Although the words refugee and migrant are frequently used as synonyms, they have very different meanings. Calabrese (2018) , for instance, claims that refugee is part of the legal jargon and, as such, it constitutes a social category that grants access to protection, whereas migrant is deprived of judicial definition. Therefore, from a legal perspective, a refugee is any person who moves from a country to escape armed conflicts, persecutions (political, ethnical, religious etc.) or human rights violations (Geneva Convention, 1951), whereas migrant is any person who moves voluntarily even in the attempt to escape poverty or to find better living conditions. Many researchers ( CLOCHARD, 2007 ; BARTRAM et al. , 2014; AKOKA, 2018 , among others) have questioned this dichotomy and proposed a continuum between the terms (and the categories these terms represent).

It is important to consider that Brazilians who recently moved to Europe are not subjected to any forced migration. During the 1960s and 1970s, there were the “political expatriates” from the military regime in Brazil, however nowadays moving abroad is done voluntarily for reasons that go beyond the political issue. And even if we cannot claim a condition of vulnerability for these individuals – considering, for instance, people living in camps with little to no infrastructure or attempting risky crossings to reach their destination –, the decision of migrating still remains a painful “uprooting” that involves several (familiar, cultural, geographic, economic) factors rather than being a random or impulsive choice ( BERNARD, 2002 , p. 161). Furthermore, migrants, above all the irregular ones, frequently subject themselves to precarious living and working conditions, which is a way to make them fragile.

Hence, our aim with the present article is to analyze the discourse of Brazilians who migrated to Europe, in particular, to Portugal, France, and England – countries chosen for their linguistic and cultural differences as well as their migratory policies. If the public debate on contemporary migration has often been limited to mentioning numbers, graphs or percentages – falling into what Bréant (2012) names a “census rhetoric” – and has underscored what experts, governmental agents and journalists have to say rather than the claims of migrants themselves, it is our goal to provide these subjects with the opportunity to tell their histories, textualizing their life experiences and expanding their speech beyond the private sphere.

Then, we intend to analyze life stories – collected through interviews – of Brazilians who migrated to Europe. In the light of French Discourse Analysis (FDA) with incursions in Dialogical Discourse Analysis (DDA), we aim to learn the various linguistic-discursive strategies mobilized in the construction of these marginal voices, so as to answer the following questions:

1. how these other /Brazilian migrants present themselves in what they say (and even in what they do not say)?;

2. how do they evaluate their current situation (in a new country) compared to their previous one (in Brazil), their relationships to the natives and the (im)possibility of return?;

3. what (discursive) images do they allow us to see, after all, in their life stories?

Before answering these questions, however, we deem it important to discuss the complex and moving relation established between language and the world, between words and the objects/subjects that they designate. Based on that discussion, we will approach discourse and its (effects of) meaning.

From words to discourse (and discourse analysis)

The relation language/society implies a “double movement”: language registers what is social at the same time it acts upon it. Therefore, choosing a word among others usually points to a political position that influences the very meaning of the word ( CALABRESE; VENIARD, 2018 , p. 22).

Words do not have meaning in themselves. They get their meanings when they are used in discourses that circulate in a given society at a given time, that is, they are embedded in the complexity of the context in which they occur (acting upon it in response). However, in the course of the “social life of words”, they move from one discourse to another, conveying echoes of previous uses – a phenomenon that Bakhtin and the Circle call dialogism, dialogicity, dialogic relations.

The dialogic orientation that constitutes language, discourses, is a notion extensively theorized by Bakhtin in several of his works, including Problems of Dostoevsky Poetics (BAKHTIN, 2010b [1963]) and Discourse in the Novel (BAKHTIN, 1981 [1930-1936]). It must be conceived as “a property of any discourse. It is the natural orientation of any living discourse. On all its routes toward the object, in all its directions, the word encounters an alien word and cannot help encountering it in a living, tension-filled interaction” (BAKHTIN, 1981, p. 279).

Hence, discourses that emerge in a given society are products that circulate among social-historical subjects. That is, we are before “a conception of language, of making and producing meaning, that necessarily relies on discursive relations performed by historically situated subjects” ( BRAIT, 2006 , p.10, our translation)⁵ . Therefore, the notion of subject from the works of Bakhtin and the Circle, contemplated in this article, implicates action, events, facts and activities. In Toward a philosophy of the act (2010a [1920-1924]), Bakhtin develops the concept of act, related to the singularity of each individual, to the place they occupy and their answerable deeds in life. This philosophical perspective is developed in later works, such as the Author and Hero in the Aesthetic Activity (2003 [1924-1927]), among others, and features in Voloshinov and Medvedev as a component of notions that implicate identity/alterity, self-other, exotopy, language/life, discursive interaction . In all studies of the Circle, despite each author’s idiosyncrasies, the idea of the unrepeatable , the concrete act, in life, with its unique subject, joins the idea of the repeatable , susceptible to theoretical observation, that is, the deeds as activity, the common aspect to several acts that reveals the subjects in their collectively shared social, cultural dimensions.

It is this conception of language (and subject) based on (inter)discursive relations that is activated to analyze and to compare life stories of Brazilian migrants, in order to highlight the common aspects that connect one another (horizontal axis) without neglecting the elements that grant each one of them with their own singularity (vertical axis)⁶ . As mentioned in the Introduction, we elected as our theoretical basis the French Discourse Analysis (FDA), integrated with the dialogic orientation from the Bakhtinian studies. Because we deal with “real” texts, approached dialogically in relation to their context, to other texts and to other discourses, we claim FDA to deal with the issue of recognition, that is, the identification of discursive marks on the surface of texts to extract interpretations on the underlying systems of meaning (discourses).

In its early days, FDA focused on leftist political corpora and granted them with specific methodological treatment ( MAINGUENEAU, 2015 ). Nowadays, however, the scope of research sources, the methodological diversity and the multiplicity of interests have enabled a diversified development of its conceptual field, which now embraces not only “authorized” institutional discourses (political, mediatic, scientific, literary…), but also less prestigious discourses, such as the ones that involve minority groups or people in marginal situations. Consequently, FDA suits the analysis of contemporary Brazilian migrant discourse through their life stories, a concept to be presented and discussed next.

Life stories and the analytical framework/device

French Discourse Analysis does not own a particular method. Analysts, then, must select the categories to compose their own “individual analytical device” ( ORLANDI, 1999 , p. 27, our translation)⁷ and assume that discourse analysts do not examine works, but corpora , collecting the material they deem necessary to answer their research questions ( MAINGUENEAU, 2015 ). This means that each researcher conducts “a” reading among many possible readings, leaving the object open to other (new) investigations.

Let us begin with the concept of “life stories”, translated from “ récit de vie ”, an expression introduced in France, in 1976, by the sociologist Daniel Bertaux. The author argues that, unlike autobiographies, life stories are not about the totality of one’s life, nor do they assume a formal and an elaborated character; on the contrary, there is a “filter”: a more general question, followed by guidelines or a script with questions posed by the researcher regarding the object of investigation. This procedure, more spontaneous in nature, characterizes a “narrative interview” (BERTAUX, 2005, p. 11 and p. 60)⁸ . Therefore,

[…] there is a life story when a subject tells someone, a researcher or not, any episode of their experiences in life. The verb “to tell” (give an account of) is essential: it means that the discursive production of the subject has taken the form of a narrative . ( BERTAUX, 2005 , p. 36, author’s highlights, our translation).⁹

Through life stories researchers seek to analyze and to compare a series of cases that implicate multiple perceptions of reality, as well as to learn their similarities and their differences, prioritizing the social dimension: they investigate how a set of people who are in a given social situation deal with that situation ( BERTAUX, 2005 ). Presently, how Brazilian interviewees deal with migration in European territory.

Our work with life stories resumes the proposition by Bertaux (2005) in the field of ethnosociology with adjustments to the framework of FDA, assuming a qualitative-discursive perspective of analysis, as done by Machado (2016) , Machado and Lessa (2013) , Ducard (2015) and Turpin (2016) .

A life story, for FDA, must be conceived as one’s account of one’s life and relations to society and to the surrounding world. Therefore, the I that speaks/writes in the present enunciation, the one from here and now, (re)creates from certain events that they have experienced, one other , the one from there and then , thus providing through language a better outline for their life experiences ( MACHADO, 2016 ; MACHADO; LESSA, 2013 ). As a result, there is a slide from person to persona , as if subjects constructed a new version of themselves ( ARFUCH, 2010 ).

Those are, then, the “small stories” that thread the “great” history in the tension between living and reliving through memory, between the objectivity and the subjectivity of telling (oneself) ( MACHADO, 2016 , p. 13). Assuming that each migrant’s speech is unique and their experience is singular, we cannot fail to recognize the collective vocation of these speeches that, beyond individual differences, manifest some “powerful ideas” that respond to a shared discourse.

We resort to linguistic-discursive categories from FDA to analyze the “small stories” of Brazilian immigrants who are currently residing in Europe, in the search for the construction of the “great history” that they thread together, shedding light on these other “voices” that cross the “voice” of the one who is telling (oneself) as well as on the effects of meaning from the plurality of “voices” that dialogue, create controversy, complement, and respond to one another in the construction of life stories.

Generally speaking, we will employ the planes proposed by Maingueneau (2005) in the field of his “global semantics”, conceived as the system of restrictions that, in an integrated way, acts on the several planes of discourse, in the order of both utterance and enunciation. Such is the case of vocabulary (key-words, evaluation index, nominalizations), themes (imposed or specific), enunciative deixis (categories of person, time and space), manner of enunciation (the “tone” of discourse that points to the construction of ethos )¹⁰ . We believe this theoretical-methodological device can uncover, to a great extent, how Brazilian migrants who live across the Atlantic represent themselves, others and the world through their words.

Building the corpus

Based on procedures of narrative interview ( BERTAUX, 2005 ) adapted to FDS, firstly, the interviews with Brazilian migrants were recorded through the app “Voice recorder” on a smartphone. All interviewees signed an informed consent form that authorized the use of their information in publications and events as long as they remained anonymous.

The interviews lasted from 15 to 20 minutes and were conducted in cafés/restaurants in the capital cities of the selected countries, namely: Lisbon, Paris, and London on previously arranged date and time. The contact with the research subjects was established via e-mail or WhatsApp, mediated by a shared acquaintance. Our only demand was the minimum of six-month residency in the new country.

The general proposition: “ Tell me how you used to live in Brazil and how you live now in this country ” was unfolded in a script with five more specific questions:

1. what were your motives to migrate to Europe and, particularly, to the chosen country?;

2. in your opinion, what were/are the positive and the negative aspects of moving there?;

3. how do you evaluate the native’s perception of migrants, especially of Brazilian migrants?;

4. how is your contact with Brazilian and natives in this new country?;

5. do you have any plans to go back to Brazil?

Interviewees could approach the questions in the order and manner they wished, they could choose not to discuss a particular subject (their silence would be respected) and they could even include some aspects outside the script that they deemed relevant. Proposing a script allows the interviewer to interfere minimally with the narrative, so it can flow naturally, at the same time it prevents the interviewee from digressing ( BERTAUX, 2005 ; MOREIRA, 2018 ).

After recording the interviews, the next step was transcribing them according to the norms of the ICAR Laboratory at the University of Lyon (France) ( CALABRESE; VENIARD, 2018 ). Then, the interviews were edited for analytical purposes considering our main interest in the content of the texts. Although we agree with Barthes (1981) that transcribed speech lacks the “innocence” exposed in the living and immediate speech, as elements such as interruptions, hesitations, self-corrections, etc. cannot be recuperated, we deem it possible, in this “transcribed orality” ( DUCARD, 2015 ) to preserve the main ideas of each account, which sufficed for our objectives.

The interviews were conducted with ten people from each country in a total of 30 accounts. Among these, three were selected for the present article because their “narrators” share an important feature: they all have lived in two of the chosen countries. Both Clara and Gabriel lived in France for 11 years before they moved to Portugal, where Clara has been living for the past two years and Gabriel for six months. Mia, on the other hand, lived in Portugal for five years and has been living in England for four and a half years. By crossing their experiences in different countries, we aim to verify how they have dealt/deal with migration and the (discursive) images they build of themselves (as migrants), their home country (Brazil) and their destinations (Portugal and/or France and/or England), as well as their interaction to the “legitimate inhabitants” in these countries. It is important to mention that all interviewees are legal residents in Europe: Clara has dual citizenship (Portuguese-Brazilian); Gabriel has an Italian passport; and Mia a family and work visa. Further information on the interviewees are in Chart 1:

Chart 1
– Information on the research subjects

Fictional name	Birth State	Age	Education	Occupation in Brazil/ at present	Length of the interview
Clara	R. Janeiro	36	PhD	Journalist / college professor	32min54s
Gabriel	M. Gerais	36	Master’s degree	Photographer / student (doctorate) and photographer	29min43s
Mia	E. Santo	42	Incomplete Major	Salesman / coffee shop manager	13min33s

Source: Authors’ elaboration.

Let us hear the Brazilian migrants

Based on the questions from the script, three thematic axes were established to analyze these life stories:

1. motives to migrate and to a possible return;

2. positive and negative aspects of moving to another country;

3. the native’s perception of migrants, especially Brazilians.

As it can be seen, we combined questions 1 and 5 into a single axis (1) – since the reasons that make people leave Brazil are usually the same that prevent their return – and removed question 4 (about the interviewees’ contact with Brazilian and natives in European territory) which was little productive: Clara, Gabriel and Mia stated they did not/do not participate of any Brazilian associations in the countries they lived/live in and that they have personal relationships with both Brazilians and foreigners. Next, we present the three axes and the analyses.

Between France and Portugal: Clara’s and Gabriel’s voices

Conceiving the theme as what intuitively answers the question “ what is this about? ”, Maingueneau (2005) explains that themes are semantically integrated to a certain discourse through the restriction system that rules it. They can be divided into two subsets: the imposed themes and the specific themes – inherent to a particular discourse. In the present work, the axes that are built from the wider theme of migration can be assumed as imposed themes. According to the postulate “every discourse that wishes to be accepted must impose upon itself a certain number of themes” ( MAINGUENEAU, 2005 , p. 88, our translation)¹¹ , we consider it necessary for a discourse that proposes to report migratory experiences to contemplate the motives for leaving one’s home country as well as evaluations made on the migrant situation itself, its positive and negative aspects (imposed themes). Other themes, however, rise in the accounts (not necessarily in all of them) to constitute the specific themes.

Regarding axis I, authors such as Góis and Marques (2015) claim that among the most frequent motives to migrate, cited in surveys with the Brazilian community in Portugal, are economic motives, followed by familiar/personal motives, professional opportunities and the wish to develop academically. Moreira (2018) discusses Brazilian migrants living in France and distinguishes three basic types of migration:

1. economic migration;

2. academic or professional migration;

3. affective migration (marriage or family reunion).

She highlights that these motives can overlap and a primary motive can turn into different ones in the course of one’s life.

Clara migrated to France, at first, moved by her wishes to continue studying (academic migration): she wanted to get a master’s degree in Political Sciences. Her report – with the repeated use of the verb abandon – confirms that, albeit motivated, leaving is never easy for migrants because it implies a series of ruptures (from work, family, friends). She says: “I abandoned everything: I abandoned my job, I abandoned my life with my boyfriend at the time, I abandoned my home, I abandoned everything.” (our highlights)¹² .

She revealed that she had never planned to stay for so many years in France (11 in total); she wanted to finish her master’s degree and return to Brazil, but then she decided to apply for a doctorate, this time in Social Communication. In Clara’s own words:

When I came for the master’s, I’d never planned to stay for so many years in France. I thought I’d get the degree and go back (…) and, after a year or so, I realized it wasn’t quite like that. I was getting involved, I wanted to stay in France; actually, that step into academia made me thirstier for academia, and after the master’s, I said: “I’ll apply for the doctorate”.

Once she defended the thesis in 2016, Clara once more wished to return to Brazil (“I thought to myself: after the thesis, I’ll go back.”). She applied for a post-doctor scholarship from CNPq unsuccessfully. Therefore, she decided to stay in France and develop two minor research projects (called “doctoral fields”), one of which took place in Lisbon in 2017. There, she learned of a faculty recruitment for the Journalism major at a private university. She applied, was accepted and hired, which made her move to Portugal (professional migration), although she had never planned to live in Lisbon.

Gabriel, in turn, was brought to France for personal motives: to become more independent (at the time, he lived with his parents in Brazil) and to experience a different culture/language. From a French course that would last a few months, he “skipped into” the master’s (concluded in 2010). Then, he started working as a freelance photographer but still hoping to continue his education. Gabriel came back to Brazil and, for three years, he applied for a doctorate scholarship. Like Clara, he was unsuccessful, which made him apply for a scholarship in cultural studies at a Portuguese institution. He was accepted and moved to Lisbon (academic migration).

A specific theme that appears in both Clara’s and Gabriel’s stories is the lack of opportunities in Brazil for those who aspire to an academic life: the difficulties/the impossibility to get a scholarship. This factor added to the social and economic dissatisfaction and, mostly, the country’s politics – Clara uses the metaphor of a “sinking ship” – led them to remain abroad, although both expected to return to Brazil at one point or another.

Currently neither Clara nor Gabriel wish to return – the former for having a good job, the latter for the on-going doctorate and his work in Lisbon – but they preserve affective relationships with Brazil due to relatives and friends they have left in the country. As Clara explains: “I think what Brazil has always lacked is what keeps me from going back now: is the structure, the Estate, the quality of life, the social status ”.

Another specific theme, mentioned more directly by Gabriel, is the integration to a new country. In the case of France, the word difficulty (and similar ones) are frequently part of his report on the first months of his life there. Such a word ( difficulty ), from a lexical perspective, is given a privileged statute constituting, in a certain way, what Maingueneau (2005) calls a “semantic crystallization point”. Let us hear Gabriel:

Negative points of having moved to Paris at that time, I guess adapting wasn’t so easy, it was quite hard, with actual problems of adapting to another country, the climate, the cultural differences because French people, at first, are more reserved, and I didn’t have as many friends in the beginning, in the first year, the difficulties with the language also (…) it was hard to express myself. And I had another difficulty because I became independent and had to work (…). Before, In Brazil, I lived with my parents, so I didn’t have to deal with paying the bills.

Clara, who already spoke the language and had a strong connection with France since her childhood (her father is a philosopher of the French perspective), seems to have adapted more easily than Gabriel. However, her evaluation of France, as we will see in the next axis, shows that her life in a different country was not without obstacles. In Portugal, due to the common language and cultural affinity to Brazil, both claim to have adapted more easily.

The second thematic axis is the one in which subjects evaluate their migratory experience. It is, mainly, in this moment that the words (vocabulary plane) assume either a positive or a negative axiology in the qualification (and comparison) of countries/cities and their inhabitants. According to Maingueneau (2005 , p. 83-84, our translation), “words themselves do not constitute a pertinent unit of analysis”¹³ . On the other hand, we claim the importance of observing how, regarding use, words behave in discourse: calling one another, leading to controversy, opposing one another, in short: creating a “chain”.

Therefore, living in Paris, for Gabriel, was stimulating because of the cosmopolitan nature of the city: the possibility of meeting people from all over the world. He underscores that, after the initial adaptation to France, which was characterized by difficulties, as seen above, the migrant can “enjoy a country with quality of life, a social system that works, the issue of safety, access to things”. A backwards reading means that Brazil lacks all these elements. Lisbon, however, represents a “callous” phase of his life, in which he is searching, above all, for “something more fixed, more stable”. He admits that today the “relationship of curiosity” he developed with France would tire him.

Regarding life in Portugal, Gabriel highlights the easiness of adaptation and qualifies his day-to-day as “a tranquility”, in spite of initial bureaucratic issues (finding a place to live, a guarantor, etc.). Living in Europe (France or Portugal) gives Brazilian migrants, among other things, quality of life, tranquility and safety (positive aspects) but it means dealing with more reserved people, who are more austere and formal, especially the French (negative aspect), which disagrees with Brazilian spontaneity.

Clara also mentions the cosmopolitan nature of Paris which she qualifies, however, as “something heavy”, that “drains” one’s energy. Between France and Portugal, she qualifies the former negatively as “a distant culture, very cold, badly tempered people, bad climate, lack of solidarity, lack of attention to one another, lack of care to one another”, whereas Portugal is described in more positive ways. It is a “stronger culture” that makes Clara feel more at home culturally and in her daily interactions, although she admits having learned more in France, which includes academia. Similar to Gabriel, she claims that “Europe, in general, gives you safety, quality of life, a state of social welfare, and we have never seen all this in Brazil”.

The words safety and quality of life seem to be key-words (or semantic crystallization points) in Brazilian migrants’ discourse when they compare life in Europe and in Brazil. In other words: although it is easier for the subjects to live in Portugal than in France, a (sub)theme – or specific theme – that clearly emerges in this second axis is the superiority of the European context concerning the welfare of the population.

From the perspective of enunciative deixis, widely understood as the projection of person, time and space in discourse, Clara’s and Gabriel’s life stories are constructed in three steps: a here-now in Portugal opposed to a there-then , which divides life into two moments: life in Brazil and life in France (first migration), the former being more distant in time and space. According to Maingueneau (2005) , deixis, in its dual modality, space and time [here-now vs. there-then], “actually defines a legitimate enunciative stance and delimits the scene and the chronology constructed by the discourse to authorize its enunciation” ( MAINGUENEAU, 2005 , p. 93, author’s highlights, our translation)¹⁴ . Therefore, it is noteworthy that underlying Brazilian migrants’ current life stories is the entire history of migration, constructed in the time-space of the history of humankind.

Regarding the category of person in both stories, an I who tells (oneself) to another is predominant, which was expected given the nature of the speech genre. The occasional slide from I to We , either explicit or implicit (Brazilians = we, Brazilians) was also observed. On the other hand, you features in two situations: a) when there’s the simulation of dialogue in direct speech (frequently, with a native); b) when it assumes a generic value to refer to anyone in the same situation. Some examples are listed below (our highlights):

1. Here [Portugal] we are living a process of change, actually. (Clara)

2. I don’t know if the relationship with them [Africans] is that different from the one with Brazilians . (Gabriel)

3. And then he [a Portuguese man] looked at me and said: “Ah, you are Brazilian? […] Ah, then you speak many languages?” (Clara)

4. The city [Paris] is stimulating: you meet people from all over the world. (Gabriel)

Such uses are more evident in the third thematic axis, in which, inevitably, the (sub)theme of prejudice and discrimination against foreigners appears and points to the stereotypes present in the other’s (native) perception of migrants (mainly, Brazilians).

According to Clara, the fact that the French see Brazilians – especially Brazilian women – as “exotic” has never made her feel any sort of prejudice, unlike other nationalities that, in her opinion, are discriminated against in France. She states:

In France, this exotic look has never made me feel like an Arab, like someone from Maghreb. I’ve never occupied that place, never felt targeted by prejudice in France. I was more targeted for exotic, which can also be negative, but not pure and simple discrimination because I’m Latin-American. Actually, I’ve never felt like that, I’ve never been branded like that. But what I’ve seen the Arabs and the people from Maghreb suffer was really bad for me. It’s part of the heavy side of Paris. The daily xenophobia was bad for me. It wasn’t directed to me but to others and that weighed on me.

Clara also claims she has never experienced any discrimination in Portugal, but mentions cases of Portuguese-Brazilian friends, who used to hear as children: “No, go back to your country. What are you doing here?”. Or worse: “Ah, it’s the whore; ah, it’s that sold out Brazilian girl…”. These statements support the research by Keating (2019) , that points to sexual and gender discrimination against Brazilian female migrants in Portugal, since Brazilian women are often seen as sexual objects or prostitutes abroad.

Nonetheless, Clara makes two observations about Portugal that we deem noteworthy: one of them is that prejudice/discrimination depends on the social position of migrants. As a college professor that circulates mostly in academia, she would hardly be treated in the same way as a woman from a lower social class, who, in turn, would have “more chances of being called a whore, or any other gender stereotype”. The second observation is that things seem to have changed recently, as a result of a third wave of Brazilian migrants who are “prepared, well educated, who speak languages, etc.”.

It is important to explain what Clara means by this third wave of migration. According to Peixoto et al. (2015, p. 2-3, our translation), “studies on Brazilian migration to Portugal identified, generally, two great fluxes”.¹⁵ The first wave (1970s-1980s) involved mostly upper-middle-class, highly educated Brazilians who were moving to Portugal due to political or economic reasons. The second wave (after the 1990s), bigger than the first, was mostly composed of less educated and less qualified Brazilians, in a typical economic migration, to fill in less privileged job vacancies in the Portuguese labor market. The global economic crisis, started in 2008, initiated a new phase for Brazilian migrants whose profile is still unclear. Clara’s speech, beside the data collected in our research (with other Brazilian migrants in Portugal), leads us to believe there is a third wave predominantly of younger (average 30-year-old) Brazilians, with elevated education (many with master’s or doctorate degrees) who take jobs in sectors such as cafés/restaurants and stores (trade).

This positive image of the so-called “third wave” Brazilians (“prepared, well educated, who speak languages, etc.”) is reversed when they face direct competition with the Portuguese, whether for college applications or for specific jobs. One example is the headline “Portuguese students offer stones to be thrown at Brazilian students”¹⁶ . In this case, as Clara said, what used to be a “mass of incoming Brazilians” becomes an “invasion”, generating fear and xenophobia-inspired situations.

Gabriel, in his turn, tells that he felt more of “a veiled discrimination in France, as a Brazilian, than in Portugal”, since the Portuguese are more used to living with Brazilians (although, it does not prevent occasional xenophobic incidents). Particularly in the work environment, Gabriel claimed to feel some distrust from the French, as if he was not capable of performing a task properly. In his words:

In France, I felt it [prejudice], in a sense more of distrust (…) when I started working there, I had been in the country for a little less than a year, about nine months, I worked at a restaurant, I had worked at McDonald’s, I took jobs like that, and I felt discrimination in this sense of distrust, as if I couldn’t handle something, or I couldn’t understand them. Then I felt it in some other ways, but I think it was mostly related to my work. Then, when I started working as a photographer, I also felt people weren’t very trustful; in college, I also felt that, sometimes, it was a matter of knowing as in “Ah, he’s not following, he can’t keep up”, but not a racial issue. It’s a discrimination that I think is related to coming from a different country and they think this person can’t handle the job.

Gabriel attributes this behavior to “this thing that they [the French] have of categorizing foreigners”. So, comments like “Ah, he’s Brazilian” (before having a name) show that Brazilians are seen as a separate category, judged superficially based on stereotypes such as “Ah, Brazilians like parties, samba”, which contribute to the cited distrust. Nevertheless, he admits having witnessed episodes of discrimination toward other people, mostly of African (inhabitants of French former colonies), Jewish and Arabian origins.

Concerning Portugal, Gabriel claims not to have felt this categorization, this negative perception of him, although he recognizes that it may be due to his lack of time to “notice more subtle aspects of [Portuguese] society” (Gabriel has been in Lisbon for less than a year) and to his predominant circulation in the international academic sphere. Similar to Clara, he mentions cases that indicate a positive (cultural) image of Brazilians, when the Portuguese say, for example “Ah, you’re Brazilian? I’ve seen ‘Cidade de Deus’, I’ve seen a movie, I’ve seen a soap opera”. Nonetheless, he admits that he has heard of prejudice/discriminations against Brazilians in previous times and argues that the profile of Brazilians may have changed more recently, after this “last great wave […] coming in for the last few years” (corresponding to the third wave). In short: Gabriel concludes that he cannot claim to have been the target of discrimination in Portugal, as he was in France, indirectly, with the distrust, a word that mitigates but does not erase the negative judgment on the other/foreigner/migrant.

Finally, we must mention the manner of enunciation, that is, “a specific manner of saying” ( MAINGUENEAU, 2005 , p. 94)¹⁷ , manifested in the “tone”, in the choice of words, in the arguments etc. Although the predominant tone in both reports seem to reveal a certain objectivity in the description of people and situations, at some points, they assume a tone of satisfaction and optimism that demonstrate an image (an ethos ) of confidence and determination, or a tone of sadness and disappointment that points to a more fragilized ethos . Clara, for instance, reveals through her tone (and through what is said) her disappointment with Brazil:

I’ve never had social status in Brazil. That’s what I’m thankful for in France and Portugal, with all flaws France might have (…). What is this state? What is this structure? If my life progressed here, it was because of that. I think if I had had social status in Brazil, I’d never have left, or if I had, I’d have returned.

Gabriel’s account of his current situation in Portugal and his expectations for the future reveal a more trustful and hopeful tone. His use of the adjectives satisfied (twice) and optimistic , intensified by the presence of the adverb very (evaluation indexes), calls our attention:

I’m very satisfied with the teaching system, with my program, so I was welcomed here (…) I think I like it better here than I liked it in Paris in the first months (…) I didn’t understand things. It seems easier here. (…) Well, I’m very optimistic here, I’m very satisfied.

Between Portugal and England: Mia’s voice

Mia was the interviewee who spoke less (see Chart 1 ), but we respected the talking time of each interviewee (either for more or for less) even if they were warned that they had 15 to 20 minutes to tell their stories. Starting with her desire to migrate (axis 1), Mia says that “Life in Brazil wasn’t very easy financially speaking”. This led her to move to a small town in the North of Portugal, since her children’s father is Portuguese, in search for better living conditions (economic migration). A specific theme that emerges in her account (regarding, mostly, Portugal) is the exploration of migrants’ work force:

When I first got to Portugal, I had a hard time because I worked in trade in Brazil and I went there to do hard work. In Portugal, there’s no kidding. You’re going to work in restaurants for nine, ten hours and it is a lot of work. (…) with the economic crisis, I worked (...) six days a week, from 6 p.m. till 3 a.m. and I was paid four hundred twenty Euros a month.

After five years, Mia separated from her husband and had the opportunity of a new economic migration: she was offered a job in England, where she currently lives. She reveals the abundance of opportunities (“the opportunities I have here, I’d never had in Brazil”) and the quality of life, although she admits she also works hard. The difference from Portugal is that England seems to recognize the efforts of migrants (also in terms of wages), but “you need to be well-documented, because coming here illegally is a crazy life”. This (specific) theme – illegal or irregular migration – only appears in Mia’s account, perhaps because her less elitist environment compared to Clara and Gabriel (Mia manages a Portuguese coffee shop in England) has allowed her to meet people in such a situation.

Despite the fact that Mia had distinct motives to migrate and that she also has a different kind of life in England, comparing her account to the accounts of the two other interviewees brings out some common points: the emphasis on the quality of life of migrants in Europe and the lack of opportunities – of employment, in this case – in Brazil.

Therefore, Mia is emphatic in stating that: “There’s no way I’ll ever go back to Brazil. Maybe [to] Portugal, I’d go back when I have better [financial] conditions (…) But back to Brazil, unfortunately, I don’t want to go back. I don’t want” (our highlights). It is noteworthy the repetition of the negative ( don’t, no way…ever) , which reinforces the infeasibility of returning, despite the fact that Mia admits to like Brazil and to miss relatives that stayed behind. Another theme she shares with Gabriel, in particular, is the difficulty of adapting – starting with the language – to England in the first months there, which, for obvious reasons, she didn’t experience in Portugal (although he had other kinds of difficulties). She states:

At first, when I arrived [in London] I couldn’t even say “Look, I want to go to the bathroom”. Because we are taught at school in Brazil, but I never cared much, right? (…) So, I got here, and I’d stay, I’d lock myself in my bedroom and I’d study for four hours. I’d go to the supermarket with a translator, and I wasn’t worried about people staring. I translated everything; I started to study on YouTube by myself. I think it took me six months to start speaking a little. It was by myself really. (…) I struggled and cried and said to myself “I’ll never learn this language, I don’t know anything, it’s going to be tough”.

On the second axis, Mia evaluates Portugal as a beautiful country with little criminality (unlike Brazil) and cheaper to live than England. She claims that if, one day, she can afford a small house, it will be in Portugal (mostly due to her two children’s heritage). Paradoxically, she admits that her experience there was not entirely pleasant: “I had to learn to do heavy work […] I met people who were nice to me […] but I also met people that treated me like garbage”. We underscore the choice of the word “garbage” to express all degradation migrants can suffer abroad, starting with “taking any job that appears”, which emphasizes their vulnerability.

Mia’s report on England, as we noted, highlights the opportunities offered by that country. She claims that life might even be stressful – due to the workload – but the “government helps with everything”: it offers welfare, pays for schools, helps with housing and health assistance etc., which makes her consider the country “very well organized”. Portugal’s government, on the other hand, is not helpful at all, which makes life harder even for its citizens, who are qualified as “a suffering people for whom nothing comes easy”. Comparing the countries, Brazil diverges from Portugal and England negatively since the “politics we see nowadays, the difference of social classes […] and criminality” generate fear and insecurity.

By comparing Portuguese and English citizens, Mia evaluates the former negatively: “they are much more close-minded, more traditionalist and prejudiced”, in addition to disliking Brazilian competition. Her opinion ratifies the episode of the stones at the Lisbon University Law School in 2019 (see footnote 18). She also chooses words of a positive axiology for the English, described as patient and tolerant. The fact that England is “more free”, “a country of business” makes natives more focused on finding “good workers”, which seems to indicate they do not dispose of time for additional concerns (such as – we suppose – stigmatizing or xenophobic ones).

Regarding the third axis, Mia reports that in England, she has never been targeted for prejudice/discrimination, contrary to her experience in Portugal. She claims that the Portuguese “discriminate against Brazilians a lot, especially the women”, which she assumes to be related to the Brazilian expansiveness: “we chat, we talk, we sometimes touch people while talking and they see it differently”. She reveals that she needed to change how she behaved, talked and even dressed to escape the stereotype of the “easy woman” who comes to Portugal (and other countries in Europe) to become a prostitute, thus confirming the research by Keating (2019) . On the other hand, we must recall what Clara and Gabriel said: the social position of migrants and where they circulate can make a difference on this matter.

The enunciative deixis in Mia’s account presents the same temporality/spaces as the other life stories. It was no coincidence that it was chosen together with Clara’s and Gabriel’s accounts as corpus of the present article. The predominance of I is preserved as well as the occasional slide into we (as seen in the paragraph above). In Mia’s report, however, you assume a generic character, as seen in: “If you don’t show you can work, you don’t show that you’re willing [to work], who’s got your back?” (our highlights). The use of you in the dialogue (direct speech) appears only once, unlike in Clara’s and Gabriel’s accounts, where this resource is largely explored.

Finally, regarding the manner of enunciation, Mia’s story shows a shift between two ethe: a more suffered ethos , that reveals frailty, and a more determined and confident ethos . Both can be seen in the excerpts above, but also in the following, in which we highlight the use of the metaphor “sow and harvest” to express one’s effort throughout the process of migration that is positively rewarded (at least, in the case of our interviewees):

I sowed, I harvested and I saw the results. […] It’s been four years here and you can see the results of that effort I had, I made. So, this is gratifying. At first, because I didn’t speak the language – I’m not saying my English is perfect, that I’m learning every day – but even then, I’m happy about myself because I have to move on and […] achieve my objectives, my goals. And that’s it.

Final considerations

After analyzing three life stories, what is left to say is that, beyond any differences, there is a common history that, from the thematic perspective, defines Brazil by lacks: lack of opportunities (either academic or professional), lack of quality of life, lack of a favorable political situation, which leads individuals to migrate. Even if adapting to a new country/new countries has not been easy, the interviewees do not wish to return anymore. If there ever was a project of returning to Brazil, it has been abandoned in favor of the “safe harbor” that Europe represents for the three of them, independently from the country/countries they have chosen to live in and from the negative aspects this/these country/countries may have presented, as shown by their accounts. Therefore, in spite of any affective bonds to Brazil, where they have left family and friends, none of them considers a definite return, with Mia being the most emphatic of them all in expressively denying that possibility.

Another noteworthy (thematic) aspect is how Clara, Gabriel and Mia evaluate the native’s perception of the Brazilian immigrant. There seems to be a gradual increase in discrimination: from the relative lack of preoccupation of the English (more business-like), to the French distrust and the most explicit discrimination of the Portuguese in regard to college applications and the labor market or to women. This confirms the results pointed by Keating (2019) , although the social position of migrants and their social circulation can, under certain circumstances, minimize that discriminatory attitude (as noted by Clara and Gabriel in their accounts).

On the vocabulary plane, beyond the several indexes of evaluation activated to characterize the country of departure and the country/countries of arrival, we underscore the presence of the word difficulty (and similar) that constitute a sort of key-word or “point of semantic crystallization” in/from discourse, especially to refer to the first moments of the migratory experience: it conveys with excellence the obstacles migrants had to overcome to adjust to a new reality – not knowing the language, finding a strange culture much different from one’s own etc. Nonetheless, the words safety and quality of life point to advantages of the European context compared to Brazil that seem to compensate or, at least, to mitigate the negative aspects conveyed in difficulty .

The enunciative deixis of the genre life stories displays an I that tells themselves in the here/now and recovers a there/then , divided into two moments: life in Brazil and life in the country of their first migration. Albeit closer in time (and space) to the subjects, the latter leads them to search for memories and recollections whose “reconstruction” is constantly crossed by porosities and gaps. Hence, the result is the production of a complex and heterogeneous story that resumes so many experiences migrants have lived (and will live) throughout history.

Finally, the manner of enunciation – taken as a “way of saying” that refers to a “way of being” – shows that, despite the effort towards objectivity in their reports of events, the subjects actually oscillate between a confident and assertive ethos , especially on reporting their current situation and their future expectations, and a more vulnerable ethos when they report sensitive issues (past hardships or even present ones, how they miss their dear ones that stayed in Brazil, etc.).

These recurrences, observed in the analysis of the three chosen life stories through the interaction of four planes: themes, vocabulary, enunciative deixis and manner of enunciation , allow us to reach the set of “restrictions” that globally affect the discourse of Brazilians (or these Brazilians) who moved to Europe. However, we must keep in mind that, despite their shared aspects, each history is unique and provides the narrator with space to maneuver in the construction of his account which explains their differences. Hence our agreement with Possenti (2005 , p. 8-9, our translation) in his introduction to the Brazilian translation of Genèses du discours [Discourse Genesis/ Gênese dos discursos ] from which the “hypothesis” of a global semantics is derived. The author emphasizes that Maingueneau’s work proposes a way of analyzing discourses that, without neglecting the historical aspects highlighted by Pêcheux and his group, “has added certain aspects that affect discursivity beyond the direct relation between history and language”¹⁸ .

Even if our results cannot be generalized regarding the stories that we selected and analyzed – that is, the results could be different if different stories had been selected – the most important, for us, was to make these “marginal voices” heard, the stories of ordinary Brazilians – “people like us” – who agreed to share a little of their migratory experience across the Atlantic.

Clara’s, Gabriel’s and Mia’s accounts interact with one another (dialogue, debate) and reveal different perceptions of the world. They also incorporate words and discourses, in the short/long time of migratory movements throughout the history of humankind, and establish with them the “living, tension-filled interaction” mentioned by Bakhtin (1981) and uncover the nuclear dialogism in/of the construction of discourse.

We expect that the present article (and the project from which it is derived) contributes to advance knowledge regarding contemporary migrations and the discourse they activate by developing research that is both socially useful and capable of prompting empowering (socio)discursive practices.

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• 1
  This article is a result of the post-doctoral research project “Brazilian emigrants in the European context” [ Emigrantes brasileiros no contexto europeu ], developed at LAEL/PUC-SP, from August 2019 to July 2020, supervised by Prof. Beth Brait. From October 2019 to March 2020 (six months), we were granted the Scholarship for Visiting Professor (PRINT-CAPES/UFMG) in France, under (co)supervision of Prof. Dominique Ducard (Université Paris-Est Créteil – UPEC). The article was translated into English by Larissa Cavalcanti.
• 2
  The consulted texts either use migration/migrant or immigration/immigrant, with great oscillation. In accordance with Calabrese and Veniard (2018) , from now on we will adopt migration (migrant) since it is a relatively neutral word that simply describes a process of mobility. Nonetheless, we will use immigration/immigrant when citing texts that use these words.
• 3
  Available at: https://publications.iom.int/books/world-migration-report-2020 . Access on: 22 June 2020.
• 4
  Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2019/#_ga=2.122483147.1574582187.1593550622-2147098473.15 84824246. Access on: 22 June 2020.
• 5
  Original: “ uma concepção de linguagem, de construção e de produção de sentidos necessariamente apoiadas em relações discursivas empreendidas por sujeitos historicamente situados ”. ( BRAIT, 2006 , p.10).
• 6
  For further detail on the method, see Campos (2018) .
• 7
  Original: “ dispositivo individualizado de análise ”
• 8
  Narrative interviews are close to semi-directive or semi-structured interviews ( MANZINI, 2003 ; MOREIRA, 2018 ).
• 9
  Original: “[...] il y a du récit de vie dès lors qu’un sujet raconte à une autre personne, chercheur ou pas, un épisode quelconque de son expérience vécue. Le verbe ‘raconter’ (faire le récit de) est ici essentiel : il signifie que la production discursive du sujet a pris la forme narrative ” ( BERTAUX, 2005 , p. 36).
• 10
  Maingueneau’s global semantics (2005) includes seven planes in total. In addition to the ones we cited – which, for us, constitute the most productive in the analysis of life stories ( LARA, 2018 , 2019 ) – there are intertextuality , the statutes of the enunciator and of the interlocutor and the cohesion manner . We must clarify that we are using the four chosen planes in a broader way than that of the author. However, we do not see any incompatibilities between his propositions and our “reading” of these planes. Actually, Maingueneau (2005) himself claims that the order of succession of the planes is arbitrary and that nothing prevents other planes from being isolated or the divisions being proposed differently, hence our “reading” is authorized.
• 11
  From the Brazilian translation: “todo discurso que quer ser aceito é obrigado a impor-se um certo número de temas ”. ( MAINGUENEAU, 2005 , p. 88).
• 12
  To facilitate our explanation and make reading more fluid, the reports of Brazilian migrants are presented in the English version only. The original lines in Portuguese can be consulted in the Portuguese version of the article.
• 13
  From the Brazilian translation: “ a palavra em si mesma não constitui uma unidade de análise pertinente ”. ( MAINGUENEAU, 2005 , p. 83-84).
• 14
  From the Brazilian translation: “ define de fato uma instância de enunciação legítima e delimita a cena e a cronologia que o discurso constrói para autorizar sua enunciação ”. ( MAINGUENEAU, 2005 , p. 93).
• 15
  Original: “os estudos sobre a imigração brasileira recente para Portugal identificaram, em geral, dois grandes fluxos”. (PEIXOTO et al., 2015, p. 2-3).
• 16
  Original: “ Estudantes portugueses oferecem pedras para atirarem em alunos brasileiros ”. Available at: https://www.otempo.com.br/mundo/estudantes-portugueses-oferecem-pedras-para-atirarem-em-alunestaos-brasileiros-1.2175034 . Access on: 10 Feb. 2020. The situation happened at University of Lisbon [Universidade de Lisboa], in April 2019, when Brazilian candidates filled most of the applications for the Law School [Faculdade de Direito] Master’s program, which led a group of Portuguese students to place a xenophobic poster at the entrance of the said School, offering stones for free to be thrown at Brazilian students.
• 17
  From the Brazilian Translation: “ uma maneira de dizer específica ”.
• 18
  Original: “ acrescentou certos aspectos que afetam a discursividade para além da relação direta entre língua e história ”. ( POSSENTI, 2005 , p. 8-9).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  27 May 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  20 July 2020
• Accepted
  10 Aug 2020