forthcoming in Tomo

Repertórios sensoriais de migrantes internacionais no Rio de Janeiro

-English below-

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)