Brazil as a "Transit Country" in the Global Migration Regime.

• Grant number: 26/04720-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: May 19, 2026
• End date: May 18, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Bianca Stella Pinheiro de Freire Medeiros
• Grantee: Caio da Silveira Fernandes
• Supervisor: Glenda Garelli
• Host Institution: Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Leeds, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/07114-3 - Citizenship and inequalities: the everyday life of migrants in the city of São Paulo's periphery, BP.PD

Abstract

This research investigates the political implications of Brazil's recent classification as a "transit country" within the contemporary global migration regime. Its main objective is to analyse how this category links Brazil to broader mechanisms of migration control, particularly those aimed at governing routes, filtering mobilities, and extending bordering practices beyond the territorial limits of destination states. The project takes the São Paulo Metropolitan Area as a node within contemporary migration routes across the Americas. The central hypothesis is that the notion of a "transit country" is neither a neutral nor a merely descriptive category. Rather, it functions as a political technology that incorporates Brazil into a global border regime shaped by control practices first consolidated in Europe in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Theoretically, the project is situated at the intersection of mobility studies, infrastructure studies, and critical border scholarship. Within this framework, migration routes are not simply spaces through which migrants move, but sites in which mobility itself becomes an object of governance. Airports, shelters, and other urban infrastructures therefore play an active role in regulating, sorting, and containing migrant circulation. Methodologically, the project combines ethnographically inspired fieldwork conducted in Guarulhos since April 2024 with semi-structured interviews, fieldnotes, and the analysis of official documents and policy debates on migration governance. Its main contribution lies in advancing a critical understanding of how Brazil and Latin America are being repositioned within contemporary migration governance. By tracing the genealogy of "transit migration" and examining the role of infrastructures in the production of bordering processes, the project contributes to broader debates on how migration control is being spatially reorganised through strategic urban nodes and transnational routes. (AU)