Post/Colonial Reconfigurations. The Disregarded, Renewed Arrival of Spaniards in Rio De Janeiro

Abstract

Given the renewed arrival of Spanish migrants in Brazil since 2008, I analyze how post/colonial power relations are re/configured and contradictions produced when legal and economic precarity question status hierarchies based on origin, race, and class. Brazil currently hosts the largest number of illegalized Spaniards worldwide. Illegality and precarity contest the favorable effects of nearly unconditional whiteness in Brazil and globally racialized, colonial power hierarchies. Derived from 2.5 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro since 2014, my interlocutors' trajectories show how they struggle with and embrace the urban fabric and its structural post/colonial configuration.