forthcoming in Tomo

Repertórios sensoriais de migrantes internacionais no Rio de Janeiro

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Resumo

Migrantes internacionais que chegam à cidade desigual do Rio de Janeiro se deparam com diferenças e hierarquias étnico-raciais, de classe e gênero, que constituem a paisagem urbana e os corpos que nela circulam. A etnografia com migrantes senegaleses e espanhóis chegados na década de 2010 analisa como estes se envolveram de forma diferenciada com as atmosferas afetivas e estéticas coletivas proporcionadas pelos espaços urbanos e seus habitantes. A partir de uma abordagem fenomenológica e crítica, os registros urbanos visuais estão concebidos como parte de repertórios sensoriais. Ao analisar os repertórios sensoriais emergentes das trajetórias locais e transnacionais dos migrantes, o artigo revela como os recém-chegados se sintonizam nas densas paisagens urbanas e nas contradições e contingências entre experiências e sensibilidades, oriundas de privilégio e racismo, medo e curiosidade. A heterogeneidade dos repertórios dos migrantes reflete e co-constitui esse mundo urbano denso, multifacetado e desafiador.

Fine-tuning differences upon arrival in the city.

Sensorial repertoires of international migrants in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

International migrants arriving in the unequal city of Rio de Janeiro encounter ethno-racial, class and gender differences and hierarchies that shape the urban landscape and the bodies that circulate within it. This ethnography with Senegalese and Spanish migrants who arrived in the 2010s analyses how they engaged differently with the affective atmospheres and collective aesthetics own to urban spaces and their inhabitants. Within a critical phenomenology, visual registers are conceived as part of sensory repertoires. By analysing the sensory repertoires emerging from the local and transnational trajectories of newly arrived migrants, the article reveals how newcomers tune into dense urban landscapes and the contradictions and contingencies between experiences and sensibilities, arising from privilege and racism, fear and curiosity. The heterogeneity of migrants' repertoires reflects and co-constitutes this dense, multifaceted, and challenging urban world.

Experiencing Rio de Janeiro upon arrival

forthcoming in July 2026

International Sociology

Abstract

How do newcomers to Rio de Janeiro engage with difference and inequality in the urban landscape and the bodies circulating within it? In the 2010s, recently arrived Senegalese and Spaniards unevenly engaged with the affective atmospheres and collective aesthetics which urban spaces and their inhabitants afforded. Combining critical phenomenology and performativity, I conceive of repertoire as the conceptual lens to account for the newcomers’ struggles with and specific ways of relating to the countless hierarchies that pervade urban life. More specifically, their sensorial repertoires articulate how newcomers attune to dense urban landscapes mediated by their embodied experience that ranges from privilege and racism to desire and fear. In sensorial repertoires, newcomers continuously modulate the racial, gendered, and classed reifications and prejudice which they situate within transnational and local trajectories. More broadly, repertoires echo and co-constitute the challenging everyday of dense, unequal, and multifaceted urban worlds.

Link to fulltext when available via LIRIAS (KU Leuven)

Handbook article in German!

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2027, forthcoming, in Handbuch Stadtanthropologie, Springer

Zusammenfassung

Stadträume sind weitgehend und meist implizit gegendert, wobei sie auch das Verständnis von Gender und Sexualität prägen. Welche städtischen Sozialitäten und Materialitäten rücken in den Blick, wenn Gender und Sexualität und andere Differenzkategorien in der stadtethnologischen Forschung zentral werden? Zunächst werden Gender und Sexualität im städtischen Raum kontextualisiert, danach wichtige Erkenntnisse aus deren Zusammenspiel mit anderen Differenzkategorien diskutiert, bevor neue epistemologische Horizonte für städtische Infrastrukturen und Natur eröffnet werden.

Schlüsselbegriffe

Gender, Sex, Sexualität, queer, trans, Intersektionalität, Macht, Verlangen, urbane Natur, Infrastruktur

Gender and Sexuality

Abstract

Urban spaces are largely and mostly implicitly gendered, whilst they also shape the understanding of gender and sexuality. Which urban socialities and materialities come into focus when gender, sexuality and other categories of difference take centre stage in urban anthropological research? Firstly, I contextualise gender and sexuality within the urban space, I then discuss key insights arising from their interaction with other categories of difference, before opening up new epistemological horizons for urban infrastructures and nature.

Keywords

Gender, sex, sexuality, queer, trans, intersectionality, power, desire, urban nature, infrastructure

Forthcoming book!

Diálogos sociopolíticos sobre convivialidades urbanas a partir das cidades latino-americanas

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Resumo

Convivialidades urbanas na América Latina provocam diálogos e debates sociopolíticos relevantes acerca do mundo contemporâneo. Os processos urbanos são um terreno fértil para compreender a coconstituição entre convivialidade e desigualdade. Eles nos permitem abordar a díade convivialidade-desigualdade como um repertório analítico compartilhado para pensar a vida urbana contemporânea e suas formas de coabitação, sensíveis tanto a assimetrias, limites e clivagens, bem como a colaborações, negociações e conflitos entre agentes humanos, não humanos e mais que humanos na definição e na produção do mundo urbano comum, disputado, descontínuo e desigual. Os processos urbanos latino-americanos e suas especificidades nos oferecem elementos para elaborar comparações translocais. Assim, a partir da América Latina, surgem contribuições para teorias sociais e para debates políticos que circulam globalmente.

forthcoming as

Heil, Tilmann, Ramiro Segura, and Bianca Tavolari. 2026. “Diálogos sociopolíticos sobre convivialidades urbanas a partir das cidades latino-americanas.” Pp. 9–26 in Convivialidades urbanas: debates sociopolíticos a partir da América Latina, Coleção Convivialidade em Disputa, edited by T. Heil, R. Segura, and B. Tavolari. São Paulo: Hucitec.

Sociopolitical dialogues on urban convivialities grounded in Latin American cities

Abstract

Urban convivialities in Latin America give rise to significant sociopolitical dialogues and debates concerning the contemporary world. Urban processes provide fertile ground for understanding the co-constitution of conviviality and inequality. They allow us to approach the conviviality-inequality dyad as a shared analytical framework for thinking about contemporary urban life and its forms of cohabitation, sensitive both to asymmetries, limits and cleavages, as well as to collaborations, negotiations and conflicts. Human, non-human and more-than-human agents together shape the common, contested, discontinuous and unequal urban world. Latin American urban processes and their specificities provide rich ethnographies to spark translocal comparisons and conceptual insights. We introduce the contributions to social theories and political debates that emerge from Latin America and circulate globally.