Negociando diferenças culturais e de gënero essencializadas em um mundo global: Brasileiros em Londres (Translated Portuguese Version)

In the last decades, transnational scholars have analysed the role of social ties in producing connections link- ing people in different places of the world within a context of intense mobility of people and goods in the so-called ‘mobile era’. In discus- sions of ethnicity, nationality and the formation of ‘ethnic communi- ty’ abroad, transnational studies, nevertheless, often far too easily celebrate the ‘ethnic commonality’ constituting ties of affinity based on shared cultural experience. Yet, there is a lack of understanding of the transnationalist migratory experience in relation to colonial legacies and to the multiple distinctions existing among and between migrants. In this article I contribute to the discussion on transna- tional experience by demonstrating how Brazilians in London are constantly re-signifying and negotiating essentialised and stigma- tised representations of cultural differences, intersected with gender and ‘race’, when speaking about and interacting with each other as well to western European/British people. The findings are result of a mixed methods approach, which combines ethnography in places of leisure frequented by Brazilians in London, generated over 18 months (from July 2013 to January 2015), as well as 33 in-depth interviews with Brazilians in London.