Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the challenges posed to the identity of contemporary São Paulo in recent years as a result of newer waves of migration to the city and the new debates and the new forms of diversity that has accompanied this migration.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I will consider different visions of São Paulo's contemporary identity in the light of newer waves of international migrants arriving in the city in recent years. It argues that although Brazil, and in particular São Paulo as Brazil's largest and most culturally diverse city, projects an image of itself as open, hospitable and cosmopolitan, more recent waves of migration since the 1980s have revealed the exclusions in these self-representations.

Drawing on different ethnographic moments and narratives, the paper demonstrates how, for example, these recent migrants are not a part of the official narrative of São Paulo's diversity, which is instead based on the city's historical experience of immigration; that there is a selectivity in the discourse about immigration which portrays some kinds of migrants as more 'desirable' than others; and that migrants experience exclusions on the basis of language, as well as on the basis of race, as an emergent discourse on racism and xenophobia reveals. The paper also investigates the limits of national and municipal policies to address the everyday needs of low-income migrants and refugees.

Through these examples, the paper considers the ways in which migration and mobility in the contemporary period are destabilising questions of identity and belonging in Brazil's most diverse city. It examines a crucial moment as the Brazilian government and civil society debate possible changes to the legislation concerning immigration and how this is being expressed in the urban space of São Paulo.