Kinship and differentialities: alternatives to identity and to ethnic frontiers in the study of migrations

Abstract

Based on work undertaken by the Laboratory of Migratory Studies, focused on research in the Valadares region of Minas Gerais State and on studies about the Japanese presence in Brazil, I sought to discuss alternatives to approaches that focus on the binomial identity-ethnic borders. The development of another perspective, critical of the concept of identity, arose at the interlacing of the relationships between migration and kinship with a perspective influenced by the work of Tim Ingold.