Transnational Desires: Brazilian Erotic Dancers in New York

7. Transnational Ties

152 Chapter 7 Transnational Ties All the relationships in which the nine women involved in this project engage are affected by and have an effect on their material and emotional lives, both in the United States and in Brazil. Of these women, only two, Justine and Nadja, have gone back to Brazil to live on a more permanent basis, although the rest keep close ties to their family and friends in Brazil. The ones who have papers—documented legal immigrant status in the United States—travel home at least once a year, and the ones who do not entertain a trip home as a goal and sometimes an obsession. None of them are free from the social references, obligations, hopes, and dreams that span the two countries. They are often caught in the ambivalent spaces between them. One place is projected onto another , sometimes in unexpected ways. Real and imagined, the images we carry with us are filtered through constant comparisons and parallels between multiple spaces—spaces of wealth and poverty, material spaces, and subjective spaces between worlds. How do the politics of sexuality, gender, and nationality that these nine Brazilian women live in the United States find their reflection in the body politic back in Brazil? How is what they are and what they acquire in the United States translated into a Brazilian reality that they may no longer recognize as their own? Divided in their belonging between two nations, as is common to a transnational condition, the women project into one place what they are in the other. Their future is uncertain, and dancing does not guarantee an identity in terms of a desirable class or racial location in the United States. As we will see, even the women who got married “for real” and are immersed in the network provided by their husbands’ families and friends do not have their expectations in terms of social class mobility in the United Transnational Ties 153 States entirely fulfilled. What defines middle-class identity in Brazil is their prior location in a system of values that is not immediately translatable in the local/global context of New York. With the exception of Nana and Renata, their relationships are most likely to be with other migrants. Moreover, the men they meet are more likely to be from the working class and not to have the same values as the middle class back in Brazil, such as, for example, believing in the importance of a college education. The comfort Brazilian women from the middle class have among their kin in Brazil, in a familiar atmosphere and with the racial and class privilege that they enjoy, is of crucial importance in the construction of their subjectivity and expectations. If the initial goal of these women’s migration was to maintain their middle-class identity in Brazil and the lifestyles that were associated with it, have they been able to achieve this? Are they in fact able to return to Brazil and reclaim the location that they work so hard to sustain from the United States? Does the material capital that they accumulate in migrating and working as dancers in New York add to their symbolic prestige back home? Or do the mystery and silence that surround their lives overseas compromise their social location there?1 As time passes, which of these women are able to manage a position that is “flexible” (Ong 1999) enough to maintain a middle-class position in both countries, and which are more uncomfortably caught in between? Volatile Incorporations Clara Remember that the critical reason Clara decided to come to the United States was her inability to make the kind of living that would be compatible with her class expectations as a young lawyer. One of the main reasons she moved to New York was to save enough money to reinvest in her career and life in Brazil, including paying off an office space and a car. However, once in New York, instead of saving money Clara began to enjoy the lifestyle that the fast flow of cash allowed her. She rented a basement apartment on her own (a place that she would intermittently share with Barbara and Nana, and that ended up being rented by Ivana). Clara did pay off her office in Brazil, but there was no guarantee 154 Transnational Desires that she would have enough wealthy law clients to sustain the lifestyle that she...