The second Brazilian migration wave: The impact of Brazil’s economic and social changes on current migration to the UK.

Abstract

This article explores the effects of Brazil’s recent economic growth and the narrowing of the inequality gap on the second Brazilian migration wave to the UK over the last two decades. Migration-related research has emphatically argued that this ongoing international mobility results from transnational networks developed by pioneers who encouraged fellow citizens to travel. Although this paper considers social networks as an important factor shaping the movement of Brazilians abroad, we propose to debate contemporary Brazilian migration by shedding light on the national socio-economic policies implemented since the late 1990s. Thus, through a rigorous literature review of Brazilian transnational migration studies and multi-sited ethnography in Brazil and London, we focus particularly on how the opening up of the Brazilian economy to international capital flow, and the implementation of social programmes followed by the enlargement of its domestic consumer market, helps to explain the current increase and diversification of Brazilians abroad.