Paper short abstract:

Here I will compare two large research projects on transnational movement between Australia and Brazil in order two show that movement may generate different kinds of symbolic and material value according to motivations and places of origin and arrival.

Paper long abstract:

Here I will compare two large research projects on transnational movement between Australia and Brazil in order two show that movement may generate different kinds of symbolic and material value according to motivations and places of origin and arrival. The first research project is the globalisation of a NRM headed by the Brazilian faith healer John of God. In this project, I followed Australians going to see John of God in Brazil in search of healing -- bodily, emotional, spiritual, of relationships, and the planet. Ultimately, their mobility is due to nostalgia for a pre-industrial world redolent of spirituality. The value of travelling is about connecting with the spiritual world, self-transformation, and turning back the clock - even if they do this using the latest technologies. The second project investigates the migration of young middle-class Brazilians to Australia. Since the early 21st century, they have arrived as international students in ever higher numbers (Brazil is among the top-five suppliers of students to Australia). Most are tertiary educated and enrol in English courses; many intend to migrate to this country. They travel in search of the opposite values. They seek the future: speaking English, becoming cosmopolitan, living in an industrialised society. In both cases, the value of mobility is deeply entwined with a power geometry in which the Global North is imagined as thoroughly industrialised and the site of the future, while the Global South lags behind as the site of the past in which all people are deeply spiritual.