Transnational migrants and city-making: conflicts, counterpower and multiscalar processes in São Paulo

• Grant number: 19/13403-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): September 01, 2019
• Effective date (End): February 29, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Urban Sociology
• Principal Investigator: Vera da Silva Telles
• Grantee: Tiago Rangel Côrtes
• Supervisor: Ayse Caglar
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Research place: University of Vienna, Austria
• Associated to the scholarship: 18/05234-3 - The city and transnational migrations: a socio-political cartography of migrants in São Paulo in the 21st century, BP.DR

Abstract

This research is about transnational migrations, focusing on the city and the production of urban spaces. Assuming as main research procedure the reconstruction of the life trajectories of different groups of transnational migrants who arrived in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (RMSP) in the last decade, it is intended, in general terms, to understand the relation of these people to the urban space, highlighting them sociability and relationships networks built in the city. it is important to investigate the different possibilities of movement and access to city resources, as well as tensions, conflicts or accommodations with state or parastatal agencies involved in migratory issues. We work with the hypothesis that the presence of these migrants in the city, in the case of São Paulo (capital and metropolitan region), affects urban dynamics in modalities that are interesting to ascertain, at the same time that this presence implies in the construction of a multiform political field, as a field of action, intervention, conflicts and also accommodation, alliances and convergences (punctual or not) with other inhabitants of the city. We emphasize the importance of the city scale to think about the modes of emplacement of the migrants, bypassing an approach that falls to methodological nationalism. It also means dealing with the situated variation of scales inscribed in the modes of circulation and installation of these migrants; a variation of scales that is also part of the frictions, conflicts, demands and claims that shape the political landscape of these transnational spaces and localities that have come to form the city, in other words, it is to consider the transnational migrants as city-makers. (AU)