Abstract
What does immigrant racialization look like in a context of legal inclusion? Although scholars have given notable attention to racialization in the face of illegality and exclusionary immigration regimes, less well understood are dimensions of racialization in inclusive legal contexts. Over the past decade, Brazil has experienced three major influxes of forcibly displaced people—from Haiti, Syria, and Venezuela. For each, Brazil radically expanded its asylum and immigration policies in their favor. At the same time, these groups have been disparately racialized in the public sphere. Using a content analysis of media coverage from 2010 to 2020, this paper examines the varied public racialization of Haitians, Syrians, and Venezuelans. Juxtaposing representations sheds light on the relationality of migrant racialization. It finds autonomy and capacity, belonging, and national ramification as key dimensions through which migrants are variably racialized. By interrogating these racial dimensions in the face of legal incorporation in Brazil, this study complicates the relationship between racialization, Othering, and legal status.
Over the past decade, Brazil has experienced three major and unprecedented influxes of forcibly displaced people—from Haiti, Syria, and Venezuela. For each, Brazil reconfigured and expanded its asylum and immigration policies in their favor. Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Brazil began enacting resolutions to grant Haitians’ humanitarian visas and permanent residency in 2012. For Syrians, the government adopted an open-door policy in 2013, offering asylum to any willing to come. It gave travel visas, extended prima facie 1 refugee status, and fast-tracked their asylum claims. In response to Venezuelan forced displacement, Brazil similarly extended prima facie refugee status in 2019, an international milestone in protection. Although the policy change varied, Brazil regularized legal statuses and provided pathways to citizenship for Haitians, Syrians, and Venezuelans alike.
Yet, while Brazil enacted new legislation expanding the boundaries of legal membership for each major arrival, at the same time, these groups have been distinctly racialized in the media regarding their perceived autonomy and capacity, their possibilities for national belonging, and what their presence means for the nation. Even though the government responded to Haitian, Syrian, and Venezuelan forced migrants with policies of inclusion, meaningful differences appear in how those groups have been racialized in the public sphere.
What is the relationship between racialization and legal inclusion? A rich literature has examined the role of public narratives in the production of immigrant racialization (Bleich et al., 2015; Chavez, 2013; Eberl et al., 2018; Santa Ana, 2002). These studies have made significant contributions to our understanding of how immigrants are constructed as outsiders and threats to the nation in contexts of exclusion. At the same time, by concentrating on the racialized coupling of legal exclusion and social Othering, research has often overlooked continued global variation in immigration regimes and left us with a limited understanding of how racialization operates in alternative contexts. Examining the racialization of forced migrants in Brazil offers a valuable lens to investigate how nationalities are racialized—and variably so—even as the boundaries of legal membership are expanded in their favor.
By juxtaposing the racialized public narratives of different migrant groups in a context of expanding legal membership, this study makes three contributions to research on immigrant racialization. First, it furthers our understanding of racialization in contexts of legal welcome. By focusing on political and social racial ideologies of exclusion, research often implicitly assumes the absence of racialization in such contexts. Second, attending to multiple groups exposes relational complexities of racialization otherwise missed, as varied racial meanings are produced and attached to different migrants. Even when the legal sphere welcomes, racial ideologies can configure disparate attributions of worth and belonging in the public sphere. Third, examining the multidimensionality of migrant racialization builds upon our understanding of the intertwining of migrant inclusion/exclusion, as migrants are racially framed in ways irreducible to that binary.
This paper proceeds as follows. Next, we discuss the existing literature on immigrant racialization, highlighting the need to further examine such processes in contexts of legal inclusion, and address immigration and the racial order in Brazil. Following, it details the data and methods employed, a content analysis of newspaper coverage of major forced migrant groups in Brazil, before exploring their varied racial representations across the axes of autonomy and capacity, belonging, and national ramification. In the conclusion, we address what findings suggest for scholarship on migrant racialization broadly and offer suggestions for future research.
Racializing Migrants: Beyond Illegality and Exclusion
Public representations are fundamentally constitutive of immigrant racialization. They not only help make sense of and reproduce racial logics but are themselves central to the extension of racial meanings and the production of migrant constructions entailed in such racialization (Hall, 1995). Research has examined the media’s role in constructing immigrants as dangerous outsiders and national threats in hostile contexts. Focused primarily on the United States and Western Europe, scholars have shown how the media portray immigrants and minorities as security, demographic, economic, and cultural threats (Caviedes, 2015; Chavez, 2013; Eberl et al., 2018; Flores, 2003; McConnell, 2011; Romero & Zarrugh, 2018; Yazdiha, 2020). Discursive frames and tropes can be powerful tools in the production of racist ideologies and form an important part of the context of immigrant reception (Menjívar, 2016). Work has increasingly focused on a particular intertwining of race and legal status: the racialization of illegality (García, 2017; Gómez Cervantes, 2021). Studies have explored the importance of illegality in mobilizing anti-Hispanic stereotypes (Brown, 2013) and constructing Latino immigrant criminality (Brown et al., 2018). As such, (il)legality refers not only to a political status, with attendant rights and restrictions delineated, but a social status replete with racial meanings.
Although most studies examine the circulation of racist and xenophobic narratives, a few have interrogated the relationship between pro-immigrant frames and racialization. Research has found that even seemingly positive and supportive discourses can contribute to Latinx immigrant racialization and reinforce existing racial hierarchies (Estrada et al., 2020). Similarly, other scholars argue that by grounding arguments in widespread racism and discrimination rather than economic or human rights logics, pro-immigrant news stories contribute to racialization (Brown et al., 2018). This recent scholarship suggests how positive frames can also reproduce the construction of certain immigrants as racial Others.
Another line of research has captured how immigrants and communities of color can be subject to racial Othering and social exclusion in the face of legal membership. When racially and culturally marked as outside the nation, immigrants can experience acute tensions and contradictions between formal promises of membership and actual practices of exclusion (Espiritu, 2003). Scholarship has investigated how varied forms of inclusion can be undergirded by racial exclusion and subordination in the socioeconomic milieu (De Genova, 2013). In such contexts, migrant racialization produces what Yến Lê Espiritu refers to as “differential inclusion”—at once integrated and marginalized in the national landscape, whereby “the process of inclusion…simultaneously means legal subordination, economic exploitation, and cultural degradation” (Espiritu, 2003, p. 48). And it is through these paradoxical functions of migrant subjects—as they are present in a given territory, ideologically demonized, and economically exploited—that national hegemonic membership and belonging are integrally forged (Lowe, 1996; Ngai, 2004). Detailing the exclusionary contradictions found in the political and cultural production of differential citizenship exposes, as De Genova (2013) attests, “the frail ideological dichotomy of ‘exclusion’ and ‘inclusion’” (p. 1181) as a “superficial and incomplete language” (p. 1186). In Brazil, scholars have similarly shown disparate forms of racial inclusion and exclusion to be dialectically interconnected (Holston, 2008; Telles, 2004). Altogether, this work has troubled the inclusion/exclusion binary by capturing how the forms and meanings of “inclusion” vary across societal spheres and for migrant communities.
By examining how different nationalities are variably racialized in the face of broad legal welcome, this study builds upon this literature in three ways. First, it complicates the relationship between legal status, racialization, and Othering. Despite a rich literature on how immigrants are racialized in the public sphere, existing work has focused on political and social contexts of exclusion. Although understanding immigrant racialization in such environments is clearly a worthy endeavor, this has left underexplored continued global variation in contexts of reception, as well as how immigrants may be racialized and sociopolitically welcomed. Turning to a formally favorable context, and how racial signification can happen beyond legal precarity, nuances the relationship between racialization and national membership.
Second, addressing the public representations of three divergently racialized groups contributes to understandings of the complexity and relationality of migrant racialization. Because research tends to investigate a single national or ethnoracialized group, scholarship has interrogated relatively little variation in the racialized narratives to which immigrants can be subject (Molina, 2014). As such, we may miss other racialized meanings ascribed to migrants, as well as other frames through which that ascription occurs. Juxtaposing public perceptions of multiple groups brings into stark contrast varied patterns and configurations of racism and racialization not otherwise readily apparent. Interpretive practices of public racialization can be flexibly constitutive of social denigration, outright welcome, and contingent inclusion in the same time and place.
Third, attending to the discursive axes of autonomy, belonging, and national ramification demonstrates the variegated ways migrants can be productive of and incorporated into national racial hierarchies. Such dimensions capture racializing narratives of illegality and criminality while extending beyond them. We contribute to scholarship on the intertwined nature of inclusion/exclusion by addressing processes of racial production that binary can prove too unwieldy to capture.
Race and Immigration Policies in Brazil
A rich historical literature has addressed how racial ideologies and hierarchies were constituted through policies and discourses surrounding immigration in Brazil. Though later obfuscated through a national discourse of racial democracy—a myth asserting racial fluidity and mixture signaled the absence of racism—migration has historically been decisive in and intrinsic to the construction of Brazilian racism (Fitzgerald & Cook-Martín, 2014). Whitening immigration policies were central in Brazil’s nation-making project in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Whiteness signaled modernity and progress, while blacks, ascribed racial and cultural inferiority, were seen as incompatible with civilization and economic development (Loveman, 2014; Telles & Flores, 2013). Examining immigration policies and representations thus provides a powerful conduit for understanding projects of race and nation in Brazil. Nonetheless, such scholarship has been historically truncated. Though Brazil has re-emerged as an important host country of immigration in the last decade (Cogo, 2018; Wejsa & Lesser, 2018), we know little about how public representations of migrants are productive of, refracted through, and intersect with racial ideologies of sociopolitical worth and belonging in Brazil today. Moreover, there is a paucity of research on the perceptions of and attendant privileges for white migrants in contemporary Latin America broadly (Freier et al., 2020, p. 148).
Our rationale for focusing on Haitians, Syrians, and Venezuelans in Brazil is three-pronged. First, they represented three major acute influxes of migrant newcomers to Brazil in the past decade, forced or otherwise (Wejsa & Lesser, 2018). The keen arrival of novel migrant groups can motivate and activate racial sense making, as such communities are made visible and discussed in the public arena. As racialization is flexible and contextually specific, ascribing racial meaning to varied elements, making sense of such processes requires empirical inquiry.
Second, the government responded to each with their own specific legislation of inclusion; Haitians were provided permanent residency on humanitarian grounds, while Syrians and Venezuelans have been recognized as prima facie refugees. These were the only major nationality-specific policy changes seen in the last ten years. 2 That such shifts occurred via asylum and humanitarian channels, rather than the broader immigration regime, is a consequence of the institutional discretion embedded in the former, providing more flexibility to adjust and respond to fluxes of forced displacement through targeted ad-hoc policies. Unfortunately, if and how racial ideologies configured these policy decisions falls outside this paper’s scope. Although the state’s responses were not uniform, each group was nonetheless extended legal membership, a shared outcome worth theoretical consideration.
Third, while the government opened legal pathways, these groups have been distinctly racialized in the public sphere. To be Haitian is assumed black in Brazil (Martínez & Dutra, 2018). Historically, Syrian–Lebanese were racialized as white as immigration policies affirmed all those not from Africa or Asia could whiten the nation (Lesser, 1994). That whiteness was intermittently fraught and contested during the twentieth century, as it unsettled the relationship between whiteness and Europeanness (Najar, 2012). Syrian–Lebanese racialization has entailed the ascription of innate economic qualities like commercial shrewdness, periodically disparaged but today venerated; their descendants’ figure prominently amongst the country’s political and economic elite (Karam, 2007). Finally, given national and regional ideologies of racial mixture, there is a recognition of ethnoracial heterogeneity with Venezuelans obscured for the other two nationalities. Conceptions of race and color overlap in Brazil, as color differences are imbued with racial hierarchy (Telles, 2004, 2012). Although the boundaries of race and color can be shifting and ambiguous, consistent has been the prioritization of whiteness and denigration of blackness (Wejsa & Lesser, 2018). Attending to public discursive signification surrounding these different migrant communities in Brazil expands upon the dynamism of racism and racialization.
Data and Methods
News media—central in the construction, reproduction, and dissemination of racialized meanings—is a critical site for the racialization of migrants and an integral part of the context of reception (Chavez, 2013; Bleich et al., 2015; Santa Ana, 2002; Menjívar, 2016). Rather than represent or distort reality, media portrayals play an active role in constituting it by shaping how we understand populations and attribute meaning (Hall, 1995).
To analyze the racialization of forced migrants in Brazil, we conducted a content analysis of media coverage of Haitian, Syrian, and Venezuelan asylum seekers and refugees from 2010 to 2020 in two Brazilian newspapers with the largest national circulation, Folha de São Paulo and O Globo. Focusing on the most popular newspapers enabled us to analyze representations of migrants prominently circulating in mainstream public discourse. They characterize different ideological perspectives (O Globo is more conservative), along which public narratives can vary in important ways. We reviewed coverage between 2010 and 2020 to consider possible shifts in media representations relating to changes in policy and political leadership. Nonetheless, we did not observe major shifts in representation in relation to our dimensions of racialization, nor across the newspapers.
We collected data through the Factiva database, searching key terms related to forced migration and the nationalities of interest (asylum, refuge, refugees, Syrian, Haitian, and Venezuelan). Next, we reviewed each article to determine whether it fell within the bounds of our study. This process was necessary to exclude irrelevant articles that discussed a nature refuge, for example. From this sampling procedure resulted 411 articles on Haitians, 280 on Syrians, and 593 on Venezuelans.
Dimensional Variations in Public Migrant Racialization.
Racializing Forced Migrants
Although Haitians, Syrians, and Venezuelans were all responded to with policies of inclusion in Brazil, an examination of how media represented each group reveals meaningful differences in racialization. Forced migrant portrayals varied across three particularly salient axes: autonomy and capacity, belonging, and national ramification. Although we conceptually distinguish between and explore each in turn, they are not mutually exclusive; these dimensions interact and configure each other in racial discourse. To foreground, media racialize Haitians as hapless victims of myriad challenges—taken as dependent and incompetent, they are seen as both outside the nation and at the bottom of the racial order, but of little consequence for the country. In contrast, Syrian racialization involves a radically different portrayal. Media depict Syrians as rights-bearing go-getters—productive and autonomous, legally deserving and ethnically belonging, and positive contributors to the nation’s economy and moral fiber. Finally, Venezuelans are racialized as a tenuously welcomed blight on the nation. Racially positioned between the black/white binary, with Venezuelans we find a more varied representation. Media portray them as struggling and exploitable, and as an acute threat to the health and morality of the nation; nonetheless, possibilities of belonging are contingently extended on the bases of legal merit and ethnic solidarity. Moreover, different depictions emerged in the face of commonalities across groups, like a lack of Portuguese or working as street vendors, underscoring their racializing nature.
Autonomy and Capacity
An important racializing distinction across Haitian, Syrian, and Venezuelan representations is the extent to which media portray each group as capable of being responsible for their own welfare.
Haitians: Dependent, Incapable
Media depict Haitians as dependent on smugglers, the state, and civil society, and emphasize their suffering and vulnerability in Brazil. This portrayal perpetuates skepticism that Haitians are or could become autonomous citizens. By foregrounding and emphasizing smugglers, rather than migrants themselves, media depict Haitians as without agency in their flight and journey. Smugglers “feed” (Globo, 2012b), “promote” (Ferraz & Prado, 2014), and “profit” from (Folha, 2012b) the trafficking of Haitians, while migrants “fall” into the hands of smugglers (Globo, 2012b). 3 Portrayed as hapless pawns, subject to the will of criminal and exploitative others, media accounts elide Haitians’ control over their own migratory fates. Moreover, when reports discuss Haitian precarity in Brazil, they foreground the role of the government and church in providing basic assistance, including food, housing, and employment, thus framing Haitians as dependent on others for their survival. They are not imagined as agents capably responsible for their own lives.
Though Haitians come from varied socioeconomic backgrounds, and have educational attainment higher than Brazilians (Cogo, 2018), portrayals predominantly represent them as destitute poor unable to rebuild their lives. Prevalent accounts describe Haitians arriving in Brazil without money or qualifications, and failing to meet their basic needs. Articles describe migrants as forced to sell their clothing for food (Dantas, 2014), “use water from a church alter to shower” (Oliveira, 2015), and “bathe in the church’s urinal” (Bilenky, 2015). Rather than represent stories of economic perseverance, as with Syrians, the scant coverage of Haitian blue-collar professionals—electricians and bricklayers, for example—depicts them as forced to return home after failing to find employment, as in the case of Pierre, a 42-year-old electrician who decided to return to Haiti after failing to find work following 7 months in Brazil (Fagundez, 2015).
To explain such struggles, narratives focus on what Haitians themselves, rather than the government, fail to provide. This is the case even in articles that convey sympathy for their plight and advocate for better treatment of Haitians. In particular, there is repeated mention of a lack of proper documentation and Portuguese language skills; “without complete documentation, speaking no Portuguese, and in vulnerable situations, these immigrants become easy targets of trafficking, organized crime, and slave labor” (Arruda, 2014). Although none of the three populations are native Portuguese speakers, the racializing emphasis on language difficulties appears acutely with Haitians. Through such discourses, media yoke blackness with helplessness and incompetence, depicting black migrants as unable to adapt and make their own way.
Syrians: Autonomous, Capable
In contrast, media racialize Syrians as highly adaptive and entrepreneurial go-getters, able and capable of rebuilding their lives. In producing stories of Syrians who “succeed” in Brazil, media perpetuate a racist colorblind trope that, for migrants willing to take responsibility for their lives and make the most of opportunities, integration and upward mobility are possible (Campos, 2015). The socioeconomic exceptionalism entailed in white Syrian racialization obfuscates the structural causes of migrant suffering and effaces the difficulties Syrians acutely experience in Brazil (Jensen, 2021).
Seeming socioeconomic success stories abound in media depictions of Syrians. This includes Ali, a twenty-seven-year-old refugee, who arrived in Brazil knowing no Portuguese but now teaches Brazilians English (Médici, 2015). In contrast with Haitians, media admiringly describe Syrians as picking up the language quickly, interpretively venerating them as astute and capable of integration. Other articles emphasize that, once in Brazil, Syrians become businessowners, entrepreneurs, receptionists, accountants, and hairdressers. An especially prevalent narrative describes Syrians becoming successful and popular food street vendors, fabricating even experiences of labor informality as signaling economic prosperity.
Although media accounts rarely depict Syrians struggling to rebuild their lives, when they appear, coverage places fault firmly on Brazil—not the migrant, as it does with Haitians. For instance, media accuse the government of “abandoning” Syrian refugees (Oliveira & Éboli, 2014), or claim that Syrians are ill-fitted to violent and crime-ridden contexts like Brazil. One article reads, “Even though they have lived through a civil war, they are afraid of the crime in Rio…Syrians are a very educated people, in all the senses.…And even being in a state of war, they are not used to robbery and crime” (Globo, 2017). What is seen as causing challenges across national groups serves as an inflection point of racialization. In total, associating Syrians with achievement racializes them as having a unique capacity to regain their autonomy.
Venezuelans: Struggling, Exploitable
Representations of Venezuelans suggest important parallels with Haitians. Media similarly portray Venezuelans as dependent on others for basic services, and thus frame them as unable to be responsible for themselves. Coverage reinforces this by emphasizing challenges Venezuelans face in Brazil—including their inability to secure stable employment or protect themselves from exploitative work schemes—and depicting those as the migrants’ fault. Venezuelans are also racialized as lacking perseverance, as with an unemployed 31-year-old woman who tried to transfer her degree to Brazil but “gave up” after facing bureaucratic hurdles (Costa & Doca, 2018).
A prevalent narrative presents Venezuelans as trapped in informality. Articles frame migrants as forced to “survive with minor jobs as street vendors” and some “resort[ing] to prostitution and begging” (Folha, 2017). Media attribute these struggles to a lack of Venezuelan capacity, as “without education they are forced to beg on the streets, sell food, or wash car windows at traffic lights” (Uribe, 2018a). The racializing discourse of migrant ability leads street vending to be championed for Syrians as a marker of their economic capability and entrepreneurship. Yet, when Venezuelans and Haitians participate in the same work, it is presented as signaling their economic failures and hardships.
When covering Venezuelan formal employment, media frame Venezuelans as vulnerable to exploitation. Accounts describe migrants promised work but never compensated, falsely accused of owing their employers money (Maisonnave & Kelly, 2018), and forced to work in “slave-like” conditions (Sassine, 2018). Altogether, representations of Venezuelan struggles construct them as unable to gain autonomy and find dignity in Brazil. Racialized outside the bounds of whiteness, Venezuelans are not ascribed the tenacious spirit and ingenuity that Syrians are. At the same time, they are racialized differently from Haitians, as they are more likely to be seen as trying and struggling, rather than fundamentally incapable.
Belonging
A second dimension through which media differently racialize migrants concerns belonging: whether and to what extent a population belongs in Brazil, how and why. In addition to variation in the extent coverage imagines migrants as belonging to the nation, our results suggest meaningful differences in the legal, ethnoracial, and social frames used to mark belonging.
Haitians: Excluded, Subordinated
Despite their legal inclusion, media inaccurately frame Haitians as “illegal” and “irregular” immigrants, questioning the legal basis of their belonging. Although coverage recognizes the precarious conditions from which Haitians fled, accounts emphasize that Haitians do not qualify for refugee status, describing that “the problem of Haiti is not political persecution” (Rossi, 2012). Haitians, it is relationally framed, “are not like Syrians who are fleeing from war” (Sanches, 2015a). Several accounts refer to the “persistence of irregularity” (Folha, 2012a) and foreground migrants who lack “complete documentation” (Arruda, 2014). By framing Haitians as “illegal” or “irregular” migrants, even after policy changes, and despite the fact that neither irregular entry nor a lack of documentation are criminalized in Brazil, reports challenge the legal basis of Haitian belonging.
At the same time, narratives foreground the anti-black racism Haitians—described as “poor and black human beings” (Folha, 2014c) and often grouped with Africans—experience, underlining the existence of a Brazilian racial order and signifying where Haitians fit in it (see also Martínez & Dutra, 2018). In an article that criticizes the government’s treatment of Haitians, a state secretary asks, “If they were white North Americans or Italians how would it be?” (Folha, 2014c). Another speculates that racial prejudice is to blame for backlash after the government’s decision to grant Haitians’ humanitarian visas (Globo, 2012c). Still another describes a banner from a protest organized by migrants following the murder of a Haitian which reads: “Brazil, a country of immigrants. Only black people aren’t welcome” (Folha, 2015). Such references to anti-black racism suggest race forms a central basis for Haitian exclusion, showing an important instance where discourses highlighting racial discrimination can also contribute to racialization (see Brown et al., 2018).
As such, Haitians are both marked as foreign Others, with seemingly illegitimate claims to legal membership, and readily made sense of through local racial prisms. Taken as having a fate paralleling the struggles of Africans and black Brazilians, media frame them as belonging at the bottom of the Brazilian racial order. In coverage, Haitians both do not belong and belong alongside black Brazilians (on the ontological impossibility of black Brazilian citizenship, see Alves, 2014).
Syrians: Included, Embraced
Although references to immigration status question the legitimacy of the Haitian presence in Brazil, in contrast, for Syrians and Venezuelans, media employ legal status to affirm and signify their belonging. At the same time, important differences emerge in the portrayal of these latter groups. In contrast to Haitians, representations of Syrians assume they qualify for and deserve refugee status. Articles present a desire and urgency to help Syrian refugees; “the rising number of asylum claims reinforces the importance of offering help so that people can rebuild their lives and regain their autonomy” (Arruda, 2012). Rather than trigger threat narratives, perceived Syrian whiteness leads rising numbers to signify a need for solidarity. After adoption of the open-door policy, media convey support for the decision, reinforcing the “legal and moral obligation” to offer Syrians safe haven (Bouckaert & Canineu, 2015). Representations also uniquely emphasize the legal rights and protections that Syrians receive and deserve. One article highlights how the government is “required to provide Syrians with healthcare and education and provide documentation to travel and work” (Folha, 2014b). Though entitlements all asylum seekers obtain in Brazil, media racialize Syrians alone as rights-bearing political subjects.
Media frame Syrian refugees as naturally belonging members of Brazilian society through references to historical Syrian immigration to Brazil. Accounts describe how “Syrian migration to Brazil is old” (Arruda, 2012) and “Syrians already have a tradition of closeness with Brazil” (Oliveira & Éboli, 2014). Other articles reference preexisting Syrian and Islamic communities in Brazil, represented as well positioned to welcome newcomers. Accounts cover how the established Syrian community in São Paulo has “organized to receive its co-nationals” (Arruda, 2012). The emphasis on historical Syrian migration to Brazil and the presence of existing Syrian and Muslim communities fabricates a powerful narrative that Syrians belong in Brazil on an ethnic basis. However, while media point to Islamic communities as evidence of existing ties to Brazil, historical Syrian migration to Brazil was overwhelmingly Christian, a fact largely ignored. Nonetheless, framed as part of an existing community, portrayals racialize Syrians as not just legally deserving of membership but ethnically part of Brazil. In contrast, though Brazil is a majority-black country, media construct no such ties of racial affinity with Haitians.
Media also represent Syrians as feeling welcomed into the social fabric. Articles present, for example, a Syrian mother who says her children’s Brazilian friends “make them feel at home” (Folha, 2014a), and another Syrian refugee who “doesn’t get tired of complementing the solidarity he’s experienced” and claims “nobody discriminates against me for being foreign” (Médici, 2015). Moreover, while accounts of xenophobic attacks appear to different extents with all groups, only for Syrians does coverage show Brazilians expressing outrage, mobilizing in solidarity, organizing protests in support, and even physically embracing them in response (Ramalho, 2017). Producing such narratives of Brazilian receptivity signifies Syrians have a place in Brazil.
Thus, whereby media discursively racialize Haitians as excluded and subordinated, white Syrian racialization constructs them as inside the national community—legally, ethnically, and socially. Moreover, while media name and recognize how anti-black racism informs Haitian struggles in Brazil, narratives constructing Syrian belonging are colorblind. Syrian whiteness—and how that impacts the reception they purportedly receive—goes unnamed. Although a discourse of Brazilian hospitality has infused local perceptions of immigration throughout its history, it has only served so-called racially “desirable immigrants” (Campos, 2015).
Venezuelans: Contingent, Proximate.
Like Syrians, Venezuelans are framed as legitimate victims and refugees. At the same time, discourses relationally create distance between the two, noting that “Venezuela doesn’t live a bloody war like Syria” (Caldas, 2018) and focusing on documentation Venezuelans need to regularize their statuses and establish lives in Brazil. Coverage emphasizes requirements of personal identification and proof of vaccination, for example, that Venezuelans seemingly face to be able to gain employment and relocate to other cities in Brazil. By foregrounding such requirements for Venezuelans, while obscuring them for Syrians, media racialize Venezuelan inclusion and belonging as contingent, rather than unconditional or assumed.
Although media construct Syrian belonging through imagined ethnic ties, Venezuelan belonging is framed in terms of geographic proximity, familiarity, and solidarity. Media describe Venezuelans as coming from “a neighboring and brother” country (Figueiredo & Fernandes, 2018), and construct a sense of closeness by emphasizing how people have long moved easily and openly across the border. This is further reinforced through references to shared identities, cultures, and histories that connect the region (Globo, 2018d). Such claims of shared Latin American ties mark the ethnic possibilities for Venezuelan belonging. At the same time, accounts use political ideology to mobilize solidarity towards Venezuelans fleeing. Articles present Venezuela as a politically threatening place with frequent descriptions of Maduro’s “increasingly totalitarian regime” and its “violent” response to the erosion of support for Bolivarianism (Globo, 2016).
Nonetheless, despite narratives of regional bonds, media represent their belonging as contingent by portraying Venezuelan appeals for acceptance, such as: “I hope the Brazilian people give me the opportunity to show that I am a good person with talent, prepared and committed to bettering myself” (Globo, 2018b) and “Let’s show the world…that Venezuelans are good and resilient people willing to work” (Globo, 2019). Presenting requests for inclusion and promises to belong constructs a contested inclusion. Thus, whereas media take Syrian belonging for granted, and present Haitians as excluded and racially subordinated, Venezuelan belonging is signified as possible yet not a given in portrayals.
Other articles emphasize xenophobic attacks against Venezuelans. These include graphic accounts of Venezuelans being violently attacked with “homemade bombs and sticks” (Folha, 2018a), their homes burnt down (Salvador, 2018), harassed because of false rumors circulating on social media (Folha, 2018b), and even beaten to death (Globo, 2018c). However, while media highlight the support for Syrians shown following xenophobic attacks against them, coverage of solidarity for Venezuelans is far more muted and limited. Altogether, this constructs Venezuelan welcome as tenuous in Brazil.
National Ramification
In addition to differences in how media construct belonging across groups, important distinctions emerge in the perceived ramifications of migrant presence for the nation—whether they are benefits, threats, or inconsequential—and the economic, moral, and health frames through which that impact is interpreted.
Haitians: Inconsequential, Cheap Labor
Although coverage presents Syrians and Venezuelans as having important yet opposing impacts on the nation, Haitian black racialization lends to media imagining them as having comparatively less significant ramifications. Articles do not frame them as substantially contributing to or detracting from the nation. Haitians, branded as hapless and incapable, and incorporated into the bottom rung of the racial order, are not depicted as posing a threat to the nation as Venezuelans are. Racially portrayed as powerless and with little to offer, media interpret them as having a minimal impact.
When articles suggest an impact of Haitians for the nation, they largely frame ramifications in economic terms. Although they may be portrayed as taking jobs away from Brazilians (Globo, 2012a), more prevalent narratives present Haitians as reduced to and objectified as exploitable labor, described as “cheaper than the Chinese” and offering Brazilian companies an “opportunity to reduce the costs of production” (Sanches, 2014). As media depict Haitians as a largely inconsequential surplus of cheap manual labor, they reproduce and extend an anti-black ideology of dehumanization (Alves, 2014).
Syrians: Contributors to Economy and Morality
Of the populations studied, Syrians alone are presented as having a positive and constructive impact on the nation. Articles racialize Syrians as productive contributors to economic development. They are more likely to be shown as coming with venerated skills, as stories foreground their previous professions and educational backgrounds. As one article declares: “Syrian refugees, in general, have a higher level of education than the Brazilian population, and after a period of transition and adaptation, they would elevate the average productivity” (Filho & Zeidan, 2016). Another makes explicit their perceived superiority over black migrants, claiming “the profile of Syrian refugees is different than Africans” (Sanches, 2015b). Though Haitian migrants also have on average more schooling than Brazilians (Cogo, 2018), media accounts do not describe them as possible drivers of economic development like Syrians. Although blackness signifies Haitians as an exploitable source of manual labor, Syrian white racialization entails representing them as astute professionals signaling an economic boom for the country.
Media also racialize Syrians as reputable people with traditional family values and strong ethics, good for the nation’s soul. Compared to the other groups, media foreground Syrians’ family lives before and after displacement, including the experiences of women and children. Mourad, for example, is admiringly described as saving what he earned from his food business to bring “17 relatives, including brothers, nephews, and parents” to Brazil (Sanches, 2015c). Notably, such portrayals racially interpret Syrians not as a demographic threat but an unthreatening, family-oriented people. Articles further racialize Syrians through moral frames presenting them as law-abiding and rule-following. One such account highlights a Syrian who “carefully filled out all the requirements for family reunification and refugee status in accordance with Brazil’s migratory policy” (Globo, 2020). Another describes a Syrian businessman offering employment to refugees who says, “the first thing I do is legalize their situation, so they can start to have direction” (Mageste, 2017). Such representations racialize Syrians as embodying morality in ways absent in depictions of Haitians and Venezuelans. In total, media frame Syrians as serving the country well, economically and culturally.
Venezuelans: Threats to Health and Morality
Although Syrians are interpreted as having positive ramifications, media construct Venezuelan migrants as the greatest threat. A prominent narrative imbues Venezuelans with immorality and criminality, though not singularly so. Media emphasize individuals considered dangerous and marginal, including single men, prostitutes, and beggars. Other narratives blame Venezuelans for a rise in crime and violence, and associate Venezuelans with an increase in “weapons and drugs” (Coutinho, 2018). Nonetheless, of the groups studied, media depict Venezuelans as the most diverse socioeconomically. As one article claims: “Some people entering are criminals, drug traffickers, and individuals escaping from the justice system in Venezuela. But you also have highly educated people, including doctors, engineers, administrators, and professionals” (Folha, 2018d). Such variations in signification signal the complex and contested nature of migrant racialization.
Media commonly link the increase in violence with intense competition between Brazilians and Venezuelans for public services. A prevalent narrative exclaims that the greatest impact of Venezuelans has been to overload the healthcare system, warning that hospitals have run out of medications and are “overrun” (Urbim, 2018), “saturated” (Alencastro & Castro, 2018), and “overwhelmed” (Roxo, 2016) to the detriment of Brazilians. “High” birth rates among Venezuelan women are often blamed for “overcrowded hospitals” (Urbim, 2018). At the same time, articles express sympathy for the women and children forced back into precarious and “unhealthy conditions” once they leave the hospital (Camporez & Soares, 2018). Nonetheless, by framing Brazilian and Venezuelan use of public goods as a zero-sum game, media interpret the welfare of Venezuelans as coming at the cost of Brazilians. Although media frame Syrian access to public services as a legitimate entitlement, coverage portrays Venezuelan access as detracting from the nation and thus signifies they are outside of it (see Santa Ana et al., 2007). Moreover, media do not racialize Syrian families and children as threats, burdens, or objects of sympathy in the ways Venezuelans are. At the same time, that notions of threat sit alongside expressions of pity toward Venezuelan mothers and children, reveals important intersectional complexities in how media racialize Venezuelans.
In addition to blaming Venezuelans for overwhelming hospitals, media brand migrants themselves as a health threat to Brazilians. Numerous articles blame Venezuelans and the “sanitary and health risks they pose” for the return of previously eradicated diseases like measles (Globo, 2018a). Others urge that “all migrants are vaccinated and their exams up to date” (Folha, 2019), or emphasize Venezuelans should undergo a “quarantine period” before relocating within Brazil (Uribe, 2018b). Articles also suggest a lack of sanitation among migrants, arguing “migrant families [need to] receive personal hygiene kits…and toilet paper” (Folha, 2018c). Racialization of Venezuelans as “dirty,” disease carriers perpetuate xenophobic stereotypes of migrants as a national health threat. Indeed, media conflate the dangers Venezuelans are escaping from—including a collapsed healthcare system, massive medicine shortages, and increased levels of infectious diseases—with who they are. By framing Venezuelans as the sole culprits of outbreaks, described as “importing” diseases into Brazil, media obscure the structural issues—like inadequate vaccine coverage and healthcare infrastructures—that experts explain provide for such outbreaks (Globo, 2018e).
Through such portrayals, media signify that Venezuelans can have dangerous ramifications for Brazil. Yet representations are mixed. The juxtaposition of sympathetic narratives of the plight of Venezuelan women, with descriptions of overwhelmed hospitals and prostitutes, for example, suggest the dynamism of migrant racialization as media variably consider and contest the meanings and possibilities of inclusion.
Discussion and Conclusion
Albeit with important distinctions, the Brazilian government responded to Haitian, Syrian, and Venezuelan forced migrants with policies of inclusion alike. Although each nationality was given a path to citizenship in Brazil, our study has explored key dimensions through which varied public racialization occurs in a context of expanding legal inclusion. This variation emerged as these populations were refracted through local prisms regarding race, nationality, and forced migration. By examining these differences, this study shows how migrants continue to be understood through and constitute racial ideologies of worth and belonging, formatively shaping racial meanings of nation and membership in Brazil today.
This paper has examined how racialization can operate in contexts of legal expansion, rather than contraction. In doing so, it complicated the relationship between racialization, legal status, and Othering exclusions. Although notions of race and nation in Brazil were historically constituted through selective and exclusionary migration policies (FitzGerald & Cook-Martín, 2014), racializing representations configure the social limits of legal inclusion today. We can find racialization in such contexts because, on the one hand, racialization is irreducible to exclusion. On the other, racialization can play out differently across political and social fields. As media constitutes its own societal sphere, with distinct but intertwining racial projects and logics through which racial meanings are performed and managed, public racialization may not neatly map onto processes in the legal arena.
It has also contributed to research on the relationality of migrant racialization by attending to varied public racialization across national groups. Diverse migrations can experience disparate racisms and significations, and juxtaposing the representations of various groups can expose racializing discourses not otherwise apparent. Racial notions can be constructed through and against other groups. Moreover, racialization includes but goes beyond instances of marginalization and the social production of outsider statuses. Although whiteness has often been invisibilized in contemporary immigration literature, white migrants are also racialized as the boundaries of national membership are actively produced and contested. Capturing the broad spectrum of migrant racialization brings experiences of racial Othering into stark relief, as they direly contrast with the inclusion and esteem provided for migrants racialized as white in the same time and place.
Finally, this research disaggregated and nuanced migrant racialization by capturing multiple intersecting dimensions through which racial meaning-making occurs. While Haitians and Venezuelans were similarly racialized as dependent and incapable, for example, media ascribed their presence with disparate national ramifications. This underscores the multidimensionality of racisms. Centered on draconian contexts of immigration, existing research has focused on “threat” as a primary dimension of racialization. Building from that literature, we find discursive ascriptions of threat, criminality, and illegality continue to be variably at work even in contexts of legal inclusion; at the same time, threat is but one permutation of how perceptions of national ramification can be racialized. And migrant racialization also operates through narratives of belonging and autonomy/capacity. This dimensional scheme may provide analytical leverage for addressing the racial apprehension of other migrant groups, forced and otherwise, in similar and disparate political contexts. Scholars could also examine its conceptual efficacy and utility for other arenas, including how the state and other societal institutions that encounter and consider migrants engage in racial signification.
Given the historical and contextual specificity of racisms, race is mutable. The racial meanings ascribed to immigrants can change. Although we found rather consistent portrayals for each group, the approach pursued here could capture possible shifts and what they look like. Foregrounding dimensions and mechanisms of racialization—rather than groups and racial categories—provides a fruitful avenue for capturing how racial formations can change and reconfigure over time and under shifting structural conditions (Yazdiha, 2020).
In total, this study signals the importance and theoretical fruitfulness of seeking out variation in research, calling us to carry out more studies in contrasting contexts and capture the experiences of more immigrant groups within the context under inquiry—including those legally included and socially venerated.
Supplemental Material
sj-pdf-1-abs-10.1177_00027642221083532 – Supplemental Material for Varied Racialization and Legal Inclusion: Haitian, Syrian, and Venezuelan Forced Migrants in Brazil
Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-abs-10.1177_00027642221083532 for Varied Racialization and Legal Inclusion: Haitian, Syrian, and Venezuelan Forced Migrants in Brazil by Katherine Jensen, and Lisa M. Sousa Dias in American Behavioral Scientist
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
We thank editors Wenjie Liao, Kim Ebert, and Lisa Park for organizing this special issue, and their thoughtful readings and guidance throughout the process. We also express gratitude to Elizabeth Aranda, Lisa Park, and Andrea Gómez Cervantes, and two anonymous reviewers, who provided generative feedback.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding was provided by the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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