VKII room 68 was the place where Katherine Jensen, assistant professor of Sociology and International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, presented her book “The Color of Asylum. The Racial Politics of Safe Haven in Brazil“(“The Color of Asylum: The Racial Politics of Secure Refuge in Brazil”) to be published in September by the University of Chicago Press.
The paper proposes an ethnography of refugee experiences in Latin America’s largest country: it focuses on exploring testimonies of Syrian citizens who fled the war to Brazil, giving way to the need to create an open-door policy.
During the activity, Jensen commented on some of the stories that make up the book and the reasons for the exodus. Thus, in the case of one of the testimonies, the departure from Syria was “because of the conflict, the government, fear of the consequences, and also the military service to be done in the country”.
The expert pointed to racial differences in the processes of applying for and also receiving refugee status because “the experience of obtaining asylum is very different for black and white refugees in Brazil, which leads them to feel very different about the country and its policies.
“Racial discrimination of migrants and refugees is seen as intimately linked to their legal and territorial exclusion. This means that racism is sought and indicated in how the State turns migrants into someone without rights, someone to be excluded,” he explained.
Jensen holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, with a minor in African and African diaspora studies. She has completed postdoctoral fellowships at Tulane University’s Inter-American Policy and Research Center, was a Fullbright Scholar in Brazil. His work has been published in academic journals such as “Ethnic and Racial Studies”, “Qualitative Sociology”, “American Behavioral Scientist”, “Social Currents”, “City & Community”, and “Contexts”, along with book chapters from various university publishers.
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.
