Neither Natives nor Nationals in Brazil: The ‘Indianisation’ of Bolivian Migrants in the City of São Paulo

Aiko Ikemura Amaral

doi:10.1111/blar.13287

Abstract

Bolivian migrants in Brazil are commonly categorised as ‘indians’ who are ‘enslaved’ in São Paulo's garment industry. Simultaneously, self‐identified indigenous peoples in Brazilian urban centres are constantly challenged as to the authenticity of their claims to indigeneity. This article explores the racialisation of migrants based on an ethnography of two Bolivian street markets in São Paulo, as social and spatial mobilities articulate race and class hierarchies. It proposes that such racialisation is entrenched in colonial socio‐spatial hierarchies that continue to represent indigenous peoples as excluded from humanity, modernity and the city, reinforcing their subaltern insertion in the labour market.

Highlights

On a grey Sunday morning, I arrived at a quiet cul-de-sac in the eastern fringes of São Paulo’s city centre, where stands were being assembled for one of the weekly markets at the heart of the Bolivian migrant community in South America’s biggest metropole
By highlighting how Bolivians’ South–South migration makes them ‘more indian’, this article contributes to the debate around how indigeneity is racialised and indigenous peoples are subjected to racism, both intimately and structurally, as it highlights the coloniality that underlies the representation of an ‘urban indian’ as an oxymoron
The indianisation of Bolivian migrants in Brazil can be seen both as a mirror and as a mirage of how urban indigenous peoples are addressed there

Summary

AIKO IKEMURA AMARAL

Bolivian migrants in Brazil are commonly categorised as ‘indians’ who are ‘enslaved’ in São Paulo’s garment industry. By highlighting how Bolivians’ South–South migration makes them ‘more indian’, this article contributes to the debate around how indigeneity is racialised and indigenous peoples are subjected to racism, both intimately and structurally (see Warren, 2001; Milanês et al, 2019), as it highlights the coloniality that underlies the representation of an ‘urban indian’ as an oxymoron Following this introduction, I present the notion of racialisation to highlight how the notion of the indian is created in and through the intersections among different forms of exclusion. It addresses how the indianisation of Bolivian migrants in Brazil, along with their representation as slaves, is incompatible with these women’s narratives of social and spatial mobility. These narratives reinforce an anachronistic, and colonial, process of racialisation

Racialisation as an Intersectional Process

Conclusions