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Paper short abstract

This paper presents early findings on how dark-skinned Brazilian dancers navigated migration to work in Germany in the 1970s. Drawing on descriptive Brazilian sources, it examines imaginaries of the future formed within a context shaped by race, gender, class, exploitation, and authoritarianism.

Paper long abstract

This paper presents preliminary reflections on the imaginaries of the future among dark skinned Brazilian women, racialized as "mulatas" and "jambetes," who migrated as performers to Germany in the 1970s. Taking as an entry point a documented human trafficking case uncovered in 1970, the study examines how these women navigated intersecting structures of race, gender, class, and nationality while envisioning migration as a potential route toward alternative futures. Rather than offering definitive conclusions, it explores how aspirations were shaped by the constraints of authoritarianism, racial hierarchies, and economic marginalization in Brazil. In parallel, it considers the exoticizing media narratives and labour exploitation that framed their recruitment and reception in West Germany.

Methodologically, the work is grounded in ongoing archival research in Brazilian and German collections, with current findings relying primarily on descriptive Brazilian media sources. The analysis is also informed by Saidiya Hartman’s concept of critical fabulation, which provides a framework for engaging ethically and imaginatively with archival silences and fragmented traces.

Based on debates on temporalities, this paper examines how imaginaries of the future shape and are shaped by racialized and gendered conditions of mobility and agency. Such reconstruction also instigates us to problematize enduring dynamics of migration, racial profiling, and labour exploitation that continue to structure transnational circulations today. More broadly, the paper fosters an interdisciplinary dialogue across anthropology, history, gender and sexuality studies, critical race theory, and migration studies.