Haitian mobility and territorial dynamics: hypermobility and immobility within racial capitalism

• Grant number: 23/05169-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: January 10, 2024
• End date: December 09, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Amelia Luisa Damiani
• Grantee: Thauany Vernacci Brewer Pereira Freire
• Supervisor: Ruth Wilson Gilmore
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: City University of New York (CUNY), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 20/06119-3 - Migrants of Haitian origin in the Guaianases neighborhood: labor mobility and the territorialization of contemporary migration in São Paulo, BP.DR

Abstract

The Research Internship Abroad (RIA) aims to deepen theoretical and empirical research fronts that have been central to the development of my Ph.D. research entitled Haitian migrants in the Guaianases neighborhood: labor mobility and territorialization of contemporary migration in Sao Paulo. The Research Internship Abroad will be composed of frequent participation in the Center of Place, Culture and Politics (CUNY-NY)'s weekly seminars and the development of a research project under the supervision of Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore. The project also proposes other activities, such as a bibliographic review, fieldwork, attending academic events at the host University and other partner universities, and building up an international network of researchers and scholars. The theoretical gains and the empirical findings I will achieve during this period will be embedded in the final writing of my thesis and future academic productions. Given that Haitian migration to Brazil is part of a broader set of spaces of mobility - which include the origin country and flows to Mexico, the United States and even, at times, Dominican Republic, French Guiana, Canada, etc. - this Research Internship Project will focus on how race and racializations process have turned Haitian population into a world labor force between hypermobility and immobility. Such processes enfold both the expulsive set of mechanisms acting in the Haitian territory under the historical overdetermination of the territorialization of capitalist's social relations there established (which entails colonization, slavery, the U.S. military occupation, and authoritarian political regimes) as also processes that, according to the racial grammatical of each country, act to deteriorate the living conditions of Haitian migrant population in the different spaces of their migratory mobility. (AU)