Next Thursday, July 13, at 5:00 p.m., the presentation in Spanish of the book “El libro “The Color of Asylum. The Racial Politics of Safe Haven in Brazil (“The Color of Asylum: The Racial Politics of Safe Refuge in Brazil”) published by the University of Chicago Press and written by Professor Katherine Jensen, who will discuss the main details.
Registration link here.
The work elaborates an ethnography of the difficult experiences of refugees in Brazil. In 2013, when the millions of Syrian citizens were desperately fleeing a brutal war, the Latin American country took the step of instituting an open-door policy for all those refugees.
In the book, Jensen offers an ethnographic look at the asylum-seeking process in Brazil, documenting in detail the various forms of treatment of asylum seekers, and evidencing its underlying racial logic. The analysis focuses on Syrian and Congolese refugees, two of the largest and most successful groups in asylum processing. Although both groups have more or less equivalent rates of obtaining asylum, the transition to asylum status could not be more different: both at the moment of entry into the country and in the subsequent stages, Brazilian officials impose significantly greater difficulties on Congolese refugees.
Meanwhile, Syrian refugees are subject to better treatment given their recognition as white migrants by the Brazilian state, in a nation that has historically privileged white immigration. And yet, regardless of their country of origin, both groups of migrants, including those who manage to obtain asylum status, find their lives remain extremely difficult, marked by struggle and discrimination.
Jensen is an assistant professor of Sociology and International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, with a minor in African and African Diaspora Studies. Prior to joining the University of Wisconsin, he completed postdoctoral fellowships at Tulane University’s Center for Inter-American Policy and Research. She was also a Fullbright scholar in Brazil. As an ethnographer, her research interests include race/racism, refugees and immigration, political sociology and forced migration in the Americas, with a focus on Brazil and the Southern Cone.
His work has been published in various academic journals such as “Ethnic and Racial Studies”, “Qualitative Sociology”, “American Behavioral Scientist”, “Social Currents”, “City & Community”, and “Contexts”, as well as in book chapters from various university publishers.
The activity is convened by the Faculty of Economics, Government and Communications and organized by the Max-Planck – UCentral Group in Economics and Society, and will be held in the Vicente Kovacevic II building, Santa Isabel 1278, in room 68.
Registration link here.
