Heimat: migrações germânicas no Paraguai

Abstract

This thesis consists of an ethnography on the Germanic migrations to the Colonias Unidas, in Paraguay, which occurred during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. The research, from a socio-anthropological perspective, is dedicated to understanding the migratory reasons and the dynamics established by migrants in rural cities, founded by German-Brazilians in the first decades of the twentieth century: Bella Vista, Hohenau and Obligado. Such migrants, predominantly white, Protestant Christians, coming from the European middle and upper classes are incorporated into a conservative, sometimes fascist habitus, which guides both their life trajectories and their perceptions of the world. They start from a narrative that there is a civilizational decline in their countries of origin, presenting in their discourses rejections of health policies to combat the pandemic, migratory movements that reconfigure the European space, cultural pluralism, the fiscal state of European countries, and gender affirmative policies. In this way, their migratory projects of a colonial nature are directed to the reconstruction of a social and moral order in the Colonias Unidas that immigrants believe to be threatened in the European context. Paraguay becomes a space of ideological refuge and reaffirmation of racial and class privileges, an Edenic paradise. For the construction of this thesis, 50 formal interviews were conducted, in addition to participant observation, analysis of local publications and literature review. Debates around the methodological challenges inherent in ethnographic making with uncomfortable otherness, as well as discussions about Islamophobia, conspiracy theories, and the intersections between coloniality, race, and nation structure the thesis.