Race on the Move. Brazilian Migrants and the Global Reconstruction of Race by Tiffany D. Joseph (review)

Tiffany D. Joseph's new book consists of an introduction, six chapters, conclusion, appendix, notes, references and index. Joseph's publication is based on scholarly research that examines Brazilian migrants and the construction of race. Her research also looks at returnees and their interpretations of race and how they navigate race categories in both Brazil and the United States. Joseph conducted her fieldwork study in the city of Governador Valadares (in the state of Minas Gerais) Brazil, where she conducted interviews and made observations. She incorporated multi-methods into evaluating her results, and effectively demonstrated how the transnational racial optic is at work within Brazilian migration processes. Her research methods are clear and cohesive.

Transnational theory has become an effective theoretical framework for scholars to evaluate contemporary immigration in a global age. Cultural contradictions before and after migration occur, as well as loyalties and ties are sustained by various social and economic mechanisms. Joseph points out how transnationalism has economically and socially affected Brazilian cities and towns, particularly Governador Valadares, where most Brazilians immigrants have traditionally hailed from. Since the 1960s, Governador Valadares has become the largest sending community in Brazil, and especially during the 1980s, during Brazil's so-called "lost decade" (a reference to the economic downturn which prompted many Brazilians to migrate to other countries, mainly the United States, Portugal, Paraguay, and Japan).

One consequence of transnational migrations, as Joseph points out, is the rise in the cost of living in Governador Valadares and the exorbitant real estate prices artificially raised by the political elite—mainly because of financial remittances and transnational migration dynamics. Here Joseph looks at how race is incorporated into the identities of migrants, and how upon their return to Governador Valadares, those migrant identities may shift and change. She has used this data to show how immigrants and returnees have also shaped their perceptions on race as well. She has examined and explained her interviewees' racial self-classification before and after migration, and illustrated the contradictions at hand, at the same time. A strong point of her research, is that Joseph has expertly used critical reflexivity throughout her observations about interviewees' open-ended answers to her questions or to observations in general. I found this technique particularly useful to better understand the complex dynamics between interviewee and interviewer in fieldwork research. For example, Joseph states that she was stunned to hear positive admiration of black Americans but negative views of Brazilian blacks, which reflects the significance of social whitening and hyper-marginalization of black Brazilians (even if this topic of racialized relations in Brazil is not new, and has long been a topic of discussion among scholars for decades). Joseph's claim about the contradiction and paradox between Brazilians' expressed attitudes and actual practices is however, a compelling point, and illustrates the transnational optic at work. The examples she shared, particularly how interviewees viewed her as a black American and her higher social status, also underlined her point about the transnational optic at work.

Brazilian racial schema is based on fluid categories, where physical appearance appears to trump ancestry. Brazilian immigrants and returnees often retold Joseph their perceptions on how "real Americans were White." Joseph claims that hers is the first study to show that Brazilian immigrants use a hierarchy of Latin Americans to assert who is and who is not Latino/Hispanic.

There were a couple of problems, a few of them minor ones, but two bigger ones. One conceptual, the other geographical. One problem, on page 60 and page 61, Joseph claims that most "middle-class Brazilians are predominantly white"—which opens a can of worms in terms of a discourse used for racialized relations, and her constant usage of "typical Brazilians;" she is essentializing "whiteness" (or even essentializing "Brazilians") through a specific U.S.-optic of a binary white/black perspective, but not on Brazilian terms, and not...