Entre o retorno e a vida no aqui e agora

facetas da imigração haitiana em Porto Alegre

Abstract

The present work aims to discuss about the ways in which immigrants (women, adult men and children) are negotiating their lives in the cities of destination, building sociability, territoriality and daily life that also concern the production of the “return”. The objective is to displace the centrality of transnational theories and problematize the “local scale” and its meanings. This paper is an excerpt from my master’s research with some Haitian families in the northern area of Porto Alegre (RS). The trajectories and narratives of an accompanying Haitian couple and their businesses, enterprises, homes, dreams, family reunification and their achievements make room for dialogue with the work of SAYAD (2000) alongside Alba Bensa’s proposal ( 2006) of an Anthropology on a human scale as a way out of the macroexplications and the exoticisms created by the theoretical frameworks about otherness.