From Guangdong to Brazil: Itineraries of a Sino-Mozambican Community

Academia Letters, 2021

This short article arose from two intellectual provocations; the first is from the researcher Kamila Czepula, 1 who studied Chinese immigration to Brazil in the 19th century. Czepula says that Brazilian scholars tend to analyse the subject from national sources without necessarily attending to the Chinese view of the problem. This attitude is motivated both by language barriers and by the silencing of Chinese voices, as part of an Orientalist mentality, 2 Chinese actions are ignored, treated passively by Brazilian intellectuals. The second provocation was the lecture given by Eric Vanden Bussche at the 1th International Conference for the Study of Chinese Immigration to Brazil: Local Contexts and Global Perspectives [2018] in the city of São Paulo. Bussche showed the existence of Chinese migration projects to Brazil in the 19th century, revealing an aspect almost unknown in Brazilian historiography. 3 The thoughtprovoking aspect of these two reflections has inspired the construction of this small article, and we intend to give some indications for the continuity of the research. First of all, it is necessary to reconsider the situation of Qing Dynasty in the field of international relations. Despite the increasing precariousness of political and economic power, Qing rehearsed several internal reform projects and tried to ensure their continuity. Hun

2020

Alden and Chichava put together a team of multidisciplinary, multilingual and talented scholars who used multiple sources and methods to discuss

The China Quarterly, 2015

Chinese Migration to Brazil: History, Mobility and Identities, 2023

This book studies the History and the evolution of Chinese immigrant communities in Brazil, since 19th century up to the present days. It covers a range of topics, such as migration history, population, migration models, theoretical frameworks, migrants' newspapers, diasporic voluntary associations, migrants' religions, Chinese heritage language schools and immigrants' literary activities in Brazil. A rather comprehensive book, serving as a basic reference book for those who are interested in the studies of Chinese migration to Brazil and Latin America.

Global Society, 2022

This article brings to fore long-standing intricacies and dilemmas in Brazil's and China's international positioning. It reveals the complex discursive repertoires shaping the Brazilian and Chinese sense of Self in the world, in the Global South, and, more particularly, in relation to Africa. It engages with the concept of "liminality" to highlight how constructing South-South relationships and invoking Southern identities have been ambiguous, indeterminate-thus liminal-endeavors in these countries' international affairs. By dissecting their diplomatic and corporate narratives towards Africa, our analysis demonstrates, notwithstanding tensions and contradictions, how Brazilian and Chinese actors have creatively acted upon this liminality to pursue foreign policy goals and economic projects. In doing so, the article stresses the floating, ambiguous nature of powerful constructs such as "South" (and "West"), and binary oppositions between them. It concludes by discussing how a liminality perspective allows us to understand the unfixed and multifaceted nature of roles and identities in international relations.

How China is Transforming Brazil, edited by M. Hase Ueta, R. Pinheiro-Machado, & M. Alencastro., 2023

In this paper, I provide an account of the role of migrants of Chinese background in transforming Brazilian society over six distinct moments of migration spanning more than two centuries. Drawing from two deep ethnographies I conducted over 13 years along the transnational economic circuit between São Paulo (Brazil) and Ciudad del Este (Paraguay), I argue that overseas Chinese were key in fundamental yet unacknowledged shifts in Brazilian society regarding labor, race, national identity, multiculturalism, class, transnational businesses, informality, and geopolitics. One major transformation occurred as migrant networks spearheaded trade relationships between China and Brazil in the 1970s, which transformed popular markets across Brazil. Despite the precarious socioeconomic integration of migrants of the larger, more recent migration, overseas Chinese participate in multi-ethnic solidarity in the context of Brazil’s economic, political, and health crises to resist discrimination based on race, class, economic activities, and ideologized discourses about China. I conclude by defending that we gain a more nuanced perspective by centering the overseas Chinese in Brazilian society as well as Brazil and China in the global economy.

Portuguese Studies Review, 2018

Revista de Cultura (Macau) Nº 41, 2013

This essay discusses the 2002 Portuguese novel by Paulo José Miranda, O Mal, within the context of Portuguese literature in and on Asia, above all in the present-day context of late 20th-century and early 21st-century Macao and its continuing process of Portuguese colonial handover and subsequent decolonisation. Representations of interpersonal relationships and sexuality serve to underscore the ambivalence nature of ending not only an intimate and physical attachment to another person, but also to the spaces that serve as a backdrop and cultural context for that relationship. How do the unequal dynamics of power predicated by the colonial experience set the stage for any number of other examples of the unequal exercise of power, whether in the educational sphere or simply in the ongoing circulation and usage of languages and culture? And as these power dynamics of cultural interaction continue to shift in the postcolonial age, with Macao articulated today increasingly within the complex milieu of a globalising Greater China and East Asia, how do these possible literary trajectories of return and departure also exhibit a comparably broad range of intensified flows and interactions?

Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology …, 2012