The Law and its Others:
the production and negotiation of the "good" ("legal") and "bad" ("illegal") migrant among Brazilians in London
Keywords:
Brasileiros em Londres, ilegalidade, migrante, lei, Estado, deportabilidadeAbstract
This article explores the role of the state in the production and negotiation of difference in a “world on the move”. In particular, it is concerned with the consequences of the divide between the “legal” and “illegal” migrant, at both a material and symbolic level, for how Brazilians live and structure their lives in London. Although political discourse about immigration often works to homogenize “the migrant” as a symbolic figure in opposition to “the citizen”, immigration policies also work to split migrants into different types of actors for reasons of entry (student, family reunion, refugees, temporary worker, highly skilled and business migrant), or for legal status (“legal”, “illegal”). These administrative migration categories are often taken as natural, neutral and descriptive, reflecting person’s identity (“the illegal”), rather than referencing and shaping particular types of relation. Moreover, categories employed by the state for its own administrative purposes are volatile and do not map onto the realities of the lives of people who move. Nevertheless, these categories affect how people can live and plan their lives, what rights they have, how they imagine themselves and what forms of socialities they construct in their daily lives. The article draws on empirical research that combines an 18-month ethnography in places of leisure with 33 in-depth interviews with Brazilians in London.
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