Diáspora Africana em Fortaleza no século XXI: ressignificações identitárias de estudantes imigrantes

Abstract

This academic production aims at evaluating the migration, presence and permanence of students in Brazil from different African countries, specifically in Fortaleza-CE, according to developments that I designate as the "African Diaspora in Ceará in the 21st Century." This Diaspora is the result of the international migration of African students who travel to Brazil to obtain a university education in public and private institutions (IES). I am engaged in understanding the processes of identity-related re-signification in the trajectories and paths of these students in this Diaspora, focusing on their daily life, from a triple dimension configuration: being black, being African and being a "temporary" immigrant. This study has as an innovative aspect the fact of investigating, not only the daily life of African students enrolled in public universities, receiving scholarships, within the scope of the agreements, such as the Programa Estudantes Convênio – Under-graduation (PEC-G), and the Programa Estudante Convênio –Graduation (PEC-PG) and other agreements, but also the experience of a large contingent of Africans enrolled in private colleges, depending on the financial assistance of relatives and relatives residing in Africa and other parts of the world. This group of students, the largest now, presents precarious insertions in the context of Fortaleza, facing economic and financial difficulties to guarantee the payment of tuition fees in private university institutions and to maintain their own survival in the metropolis. Thus, this segment of African students has to engage in informal and precarious jobs, considered "irregular" by Brazilian authorities, subject to violations of labor rights, with long hours and low wages. In this sociological study I explore different spheres of life of these subjects who are distinguished for their diaspora-related journeys, namely, daily life, insertion in the university context, job, Interactions with public and private bodies and institutions to access goods and services, integration with student associations, use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and virtual social networks on the Internet, health and illness processes, the conjuncture of urban violence and even gender violence that culminate in the death of African students, leisure forms, sociability between Africans and Brazilians, African celebrations, besides sexual and affective interactions. The study reveals how students from Africa are subjected to prejudice and racial discrimination because of their color and African origin. In this analytic process, I use as a guiding thread, the idea that, in diaspora-related trajectories and journeys, African students stand for multiple identity shapes, forged in Africa and in everyday life in Brazil that on the one hand, tend to affirm, but on the other hand, tend to deny Africanism and blackness. Identities are re-signified, particularly, in the contact with racial and cultural alterity in the context of Ceará, in the midst of multiple forms of racial inclusion and discrimination. Re-signified identities are expressed in behaviors, attitudes, ways of life, and ways of being. These processes are mediated by objective dimensions such as clothing, costumes, shoes, braided hair, as well as by symbolic dimensions such as the languages spoken in everyday life, especially Creole, cooking and eating modes, religious expressions, sexuality and speech. In this evaluating analysis, I use as theoretical contributions, post colonial studies, from the ideas of William Du Bois, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, among others. At the methodological level, I use investigative resources as systematic observation, open in-depth interviews mixed with informal conversations, both face-to-face and in virtual space, always recorded in the "field notebook".