INTRODUCTION

This article aims to question generic homogenising representations of ‘the migrant’, often present in the British media, political discourses as well as academic debates by providing an examination of the multivalent ways in which social differences contours migration processes through the experience of Brazilians in London. British politicians and elements of the British media have been reproducing narratives which often frame migrant as this ‘homogenous other’ who does not share British values and who migrated for economic gain, and is thus ‘imagined to be a parasitical drain and threat to scarce national resources’ (TYLER, 2013, p. 9). When migration is the object of study, scholars still tend to reproduce generic homogenising typologies of ‘migrants’, such as the two opposed migrant analogies ‘from the Global South’ (the transnational migrant) and ‘from the Global North’ (the lifestyle migrant).

Studies on globalisation have increasingly analysed how, since the 1970’s, people and things have been flowing ‘in a world on the move’, crossing national borders in a context of continual uprooting and displacement (URRY, 2000; Sassen, 1988; Castells 1996). Drawing on this, migration studies have begun to consider the transnational nature of migration phenomena, and the multiple social and economic factors that influence the transnational flows that connect the local to the global through the interaction of multiple ties (VERTOVEC, 1999). Moving beyond understanding migration merely as the result of global economic disparities, transnational scholars (VERTOVEC, 1999; LEVIT; JAWORSKY, 2007) have, then, provided important insights for the study of migration, such as taking into account migrants’ more complex and multidirectional interactions between countries of origin and arrival, as well as the role of social ties in migration process. Yet, as argued by Grosfoguel et al (2014, p. 644), despite the efforts to move from an economic determinism, the transnational migrant is, implicitly, a generic ‘Third World migrant who circulates between two nation-states and whose political, cultural and identity allegiances are divided between two nations’. This is due to the fact that there is often a lack of understanding of the transnationalist migratory experience in relation to colonial legacies and to the multiple differences existing among and between migrants (GROSFOGUEL; OSO; CHRISTOU, 2014). Furthermore, borrowing from Anthias (2012), there is also a need for transnational migration studies to be framed within a contextual, dynamic and processual analysis that recognises the interconnectedness of different identities and hierarchical structures relating to gender, ethnicity, ‘race’, class and other social divisions at local, national, transnational and global levels. These absences enable the reproduction of generic representations of migration as ‘the immigrant analogy from the South (from below)’ present in transnational studies. This particular generic type of migration is formulated in contradistinction to the ‘immigrant analogy from the North, which can be seen in the idea of ‘lifestyle migration’ (BENSON; O’REILLY, 2009).

Lifestyle migration (BENSON; O’REILLY, 2009; KNOWLES; HARPER, 2009) is a generic term used to discuss relatively affluent individuals of all ages from the Global North, who choose to migrate to places they believe offer them the potential of a better quality of life (BENSON; O’REILLY, 2009). Understood as transcending purely economic factors, their motivations are seen to involve ‘the (re)negotiation of the work - life balance, the pursuit of a good quality of life and freedom from prior constraints’ (BENSON; O’REILLY, 2009, p. 2). Thus, migrating for lifestyle reasons is identified as a distinct feature of ‘Global North migration’. In opposition, ‘Global South migration’ is still (implicitly) generically framed through the image of the migrant worker who flows through a transnational network in search of better (often economic) opportunities (FUSCO, 2002; GOZA, 2003; SASAKI, 2006). In this sense, these two approaches presuppose research questions often being framed around a specific notion of “a migrant” - an abstract category which implicitly presupposes an undifferentiated human subject.

The concept of journey (KNOWLES, 2014), allows us to transcend the homogenizing stereotypes of migrants flowing in the global world. According to Caroline Knowles, people and objects do not simply flow through migrant networks, as some migration and globalisation studies have suggested (URRY, 2000; SASSEN, 1988; TILLY, 1990). Rather, they constantly produce and negotiate their journeys as they ‘bump awkwardly along the pathways they create, backtrack, grate, [and] move off in new directions, propelled by different intersecting logics’ (KNOWLES, 2014, p. 7). In this sense, the concept of journey is a ‘thinking tool with which we can make sense of a world on the move’ since ‘lives are lived and narrated through journeys’ (KNOWLES, 2014, p. 9). Journeys, therefore, ‘describe the matrix of people’s coming and going in ways that lend them to cartography’ (KNOWLES, 2014, p. 9). They ‘draw people’s maps and in so doing provide a way of thinking about them’ (KNOWLES, 2014, p. 9). Thus, journeys provide a way of understanding the maps people live by, and at the same time, offers a way of making sense of their lives. In this sense, journey is not the same as trajectory, but rather, as will be demonstrated within this article, journeys are shaped by individuals’ trajectories, and also affect the continuous production of their social trajectories.

Nevertheless, despite Knowles’(2014) important insights on how migrants do not simply ‘flow’ in a uniform manner from country of origin to receiving country, but, constantly negotiate, produce and reinvent their everyday lives in a global world, she does not explicitly map out the structural conditions, as well as individual’s social markers, which differently shape their journeys. An examination of these processes is what I present in this article, taking into account the ways in which different social markers shape transnational migration journeys within specific structural contexts.

Drawing on empirical research that combined an 18-month ethnography in places of leisure with 33 in-depth interviews with Brazilians in London, I start this article by presenting a brief contextualization of Brazilian migration to the UK, highlighting several of the institutional, economic, political and social contexts, in both societies of emigration and immigration. I then present five different journeys developed by Brazilians in London through their personal narratives. These narratives focus on their lives in Brazil and on the rationale behind their decisions to migrate, moving to their arrival in London and later, to the development of their journeys further on. Through such discussions, I argue that Brazilians navigate different levels of constraints and constantly re-formulate their journeys due to their class, gender, nationality and documental status. Paying attention to the connections and contexts of both sending and receiving societies, as well as the diversity existing within the Brazilian population abroad, allows me to give a nuanced analysis of how the experiences of Brazilians in London are directly shaped by the intersection of multiple social markers. This process results in what I call ‘differentiated journeys’ - an analytical tool with which we can examine the connection of the micro and macro aspects of the everyday social production of the world on the move beyond homogenizing categories of the migrant.

BRAZILIAN MIGRATION TO/IN THE UK

Avoiding economic or structural determinism and generalization, in this section, I argue that it is still important to take into account the structural conditionings of the sending and hosting societies as well as its specific temporality. By contextualising Brazilian migration to the UK, within the economic, social and political context - of both societies, it is therefore possible to understand various structural constraints. My data suggest that these different contexts sets up the stage on which migrants’ journeys are performed, that which Bourdieu (2014) would call the ‘repertoire’ of possibilities - the space of possibilities that the system offers. This space of (different) possibilities also opens room to begin to understand Brazilian migration to the UK as a heterogeneous process, which is also shaped by individual, sets of factors.

COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL LINKS

Brazil’s colonial and post-colonial history is an important factor for framing migration trends to Europe. This is important not only because colonisation resulted in economic disparities between Western Europe and the rest of the world, but also because such a process also colonised, as suggested by Sayad (2004), ‘bodies and souls’ (65), by imposing a new social system, new cultural and social ways of organizing society and people’s lives. As noted by Beserra (2000), the politics of Western expansion (European colonialism and, later, American imperialism) has always been established through a belief in the superiority of the Western countries’ way of life. Brazil, for instance, has not had a direct colonial relationship with the UK. Nevertheless, Brazil, and the rest of Latin America, has a long history - which dates back to the eighteenth century of diplomatic, economic and cultural relationships with the UK (MCILWAINE, 2007; Gutierrez-Garza, 2013), which helped to reproduce such belief in its allegedly superior way of life.

In the 19^th century when Portugal and Spain had already lost their central power in the colonial world system, Brazil wanted to become a modern civilised nation and saw Great Britain and France as the modern/liberal references to be followed (GUIMARÃES, 2002). Not coincidentally, in 1911 a British newspaper registered the existence of Brazilians coming to London for the purpose of ‘learn(ing) to become English’ (ROBINS, 2014, p. 30), although at that time the numbers of Brazilians in the UK was practically statically insignificant. As Robins notes, the first appearance of Brazilians in the UK census data, registered in 1901, recorded 2000 people, of whom the great majority were of British ancestry returning home with their families (ROBINS, 2014, p. 29-30).

In the 20^th century, the UK continued to be perceived as a modern liberal country and was a destination for Brazilian exiles, such as individuals who were against the military dictatorship in the 1960s (MCILWAINEM, 2007; SHERINGHAM, 2011; ROBINS, 2014). In this period, the number of Brazilians in the UK was estimated between 2000 and 4000 - mainly students and political exiles (KUBAL; BAKEWELL; DE HAAS, 2011). 20 years later the number of Brazilians in London increased with the so-called ‘first wave of migration’.

FROM THE DISILLUSIONED MIDDLE-CLASS TO DIVERSIFIED BRAZILIANS

In Brazil in the late 1980s a series of political, economic and social changes increased dramatically unemployment, inequalities and economic instability. It was from this context of changes and disillusions that the first wave of migration emerged. Composed mainly of middle-class Brazilians, these migrants often talked about their ‘pioneering spirit’ (MARGOLIS, 1994; SASAKI, 1995; TORRESAN, 1994). Despite studies over focusing on the economic instability in Brazil as being a ‘push’ factor (MARGOLIS, 1994; SALES, 1995), in her study on Brazilians in London, Torresan (1994) includes other factors in her analysis. She shows that Brazilians in London were middle-class young people who wanted to keep their social status in a context of crisis, but also to have life experiences and try to construct new ‘personal’ and/or ‘national/ethnic identities’.

From the late 1990s, structural changes in Brazil, such as economic stability, credit facilities and cheaper airfares alongside the constitution of transnational networks, diversified the Brazilian population abroad in terms of class, gender and region (RIBEIRO, 1998; TORRESAN, 2012; DIAS; MARTINS Jr., 2017). It is within this context that the numbers of Brazilians in the UK increased, especially in the 2000s, being estimated, in that period, to be about 200,000 throughout the UK; and between 130,000 and 160,000 in London (KUBAL; BAKEWELL; DE HAAS, 2011).

Recent quantitative studies on Brazilians in London tend to portray similar findings (MCILWAINE; COCK; LINNEKER, 2011; KUBAL; BAKEWELL; DE HAAS, 2011). Brazilians in London are a young population, highly educated in relation to Brazilians as a whole¹ and coming from diverse regions. The states from the South and Southeast (the richest regions and with better life conditions) contribute the highest proportion of migrants, with the greatest numbers coming from São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro, followed by Goiás in the Central region of the country (EVANS et al., 2011).

Brazilians in London have also experienced a trend of feminization. According to the 2001 census, 61% of Brazilian migrants in London were women (KUBAL; BAKEWELL; DE HAAS, 2011). Regarding reasons to migrate, Brazilians often mention different and compound reasons for coming to London, such as studying and having a life experience, studying and working, and working to save money (EVANS et al., 2011). Yet, studies on Brazilians (EVANS ET AL., 2011; MCILWAINE; COCK; LINNEKER, 2011; KUBAL; BAKEWELL; DE HAAS, 2011), as Brightwell argues, take economic factors as ‘the leading cause for Brazilians coming to the UK’ (2012, p. 91). These studies also show that the majority of Brazilian migrants have been through an occupational downgrade, working, or having worked, in so-called ‘unskilled’ jobs in the service sector (EVANS et al., 2011). Although most hold at least secondary school qualifications or university degrees, they cannot easily find ‘qualified’ jobs in London due to their lack of English skills, their non-EU qualifications, which are rarely recognised in the UK, and the irregular migration status at the entrance (MCILWAINE, 2007; EVANS et al., 2011).

A high proportion of Brazilians in London tend to enter the country on a 6-month tourist visa and become irregular migrants when the visa expires (EVANS et al., 2011). In order to enter and stay in the country as a tourist (overseas visitor), according to the Home Office (2015), one must be able to show they have adequate funds for their visit and that they intend to return to their home country within 6 months. They must not work, conduct business, obtain public funds or receive free medical treatment from the National Health Service (NHS) whilst in the UK. Thus, overseas visitors already have their space of possibilities to enter and live in the country limited. Yet, the constraint increases when they become irregular migrants. Besides not having legal access to work, health service and public funds, their new migration status is considered a criminal offence that can lead to prosecution and removal from the UK (Home Office, 2015). This places these Brazilians in a vulnerable position in which they are often subjected to numerous precarious situations, such as being exploited by employers who do not pay the minimum wage or who retain their wages (MARTINS Jr., 2014).

The two main ways that Brazilians are able to stay in the country regularly is by having a European passport (ancestral links or marital relations) or a student visa (MCILWAINE; COCK; LINNEKER, 2011). However, the students visas also limits the space of possibilities for Brazilians, they don’t offer recourse to public funds and place restrictions on employment (HOME OFFICE, 2015). These restrictions have increased over the years. Until 2012, for instance, English students were able to work part-time on their student visas. Since then, however, only students in a UK higher education institution or a publicly funded further education college (GUTIERREZ-GARZA, 2013) are legally able to work part-time. Shifts in the institutional UK migration legislation, thus, are an important structural factor that helps us to comprehend the diversity of Brazilians’ journeys in London.

CONSTRAINTS OF UK IMMIGRATION LAW

Despite the recent increase in immigration levels, historically Britain has been a nation of emigration. During the 70s and 80s, for instance, Britain experienced considerable process of emigration, with an average outflow of 50 thousand people per year (SCHAIN, 2012). From 1901 to 1997, there was a net exodus of 15.6 million people from the UK (SCHAIN, 2012; DAVIES, 2015). During that time, many policies and immigration acts were made to attract - and regulate - migrants, especially those coming from the commonwealth. However, within the context of high emigration, these pieces of legislation were, generally speaking, not strictly followed (LOYAL, 2014). This context facilitated the entry and settlement of Brazilians who migrated during the 1980s and early 1990s (TORRESAN, 1994).

Nevertheless, from the late 90s and 2000s, new acts were made more restrictive in practice, following an increase in the net migration (DAVIES, 2015). Within the current times of crisis and recession, the British government has increasingly been - since 2008 changing their immigration law and increasing the control in their borders (ANDERSON, 2010). The Work Permit Scheme, for instance, was substituted in 2008 by the point-based immigration system, which produced different statuses or ‘tiers’ among migrants². The changes made it difficult for non-EU migrants to acquire visas and live in the UK regularly (RUHS; ANDERSON, 2008).

Not coincidentally, in the 2000s, the Home Office began to see Brazilian emigration as a problem. This is reflected in the figures presented by Robins (2014): in 2002 the UK had 130,000 Brazilians entering the country out of which 2400 were refused; in 2003, 127,000 entered and 4385 were refused. More recently Home Office figures place Brazilians as the second most likely ethnic group to be deported, by absolute numbers (GORDON et al., 2009). My data show that such structural shifts in migration law, which have increased the constraints to enter and to live in the country, such structural shifts in migration law, differently impact the ways in which Brazilians develop their journeys in London.

DIFFERENTIATED JOURNEYS

Now that I have briefly framed several of the social, political and economic contexts which shape Brazilian migration to and within the UK, it is necessary to understand how this diversity is actually lived through in migrants’ journeys. The general view described above serves as both the ‘site of meaning’ that the migrants use to construct their own narratives and to make sense of the different positions they occupied in Brazil as well as in London. Their narratives allow us to pay close attention to the meaning that migrants give to their experience, which is in constant juxtaposition with the objective conditions that helped framing their experiences. In the next sections, I present the journey of five Brazilians in London. The journeys of Leonardo, Tiago, Elza, Manoel and Maria not only differently represent the journeys of many other Brazilians that I interviewed in London, but they also highlight how social markers of class and gender, for instance, differently shape Brazilians’ journeys in and to London. Leonardo’s journey represents those of other upper-middle-class Brazilians who came to London as highly-skilled professionals to work in multinational companies. The journey of Manoel and Maria represent many other journeys of middle-class Brazilians who came to London to have life experiences and learn English, thus improving their cultural capital, but who went through an economic and occupational downgrade after their arrival. Tiago and Elza’s journeys are representative of those of other working-class Brazilians who migrated, at least in part, in order to improve their economic capital for a short period of time and go back to Brazil. While these categories of journeys are not fixed, they are drawn from the patterns found in my interviews and ethnographic notes and serve as a useful analytical tool.

BRAZIL AND DECISION TO MIGRATE

Motivations to migrate are never simple or straightforward. Similar to what Martes (2011) found with Brazilians in Massachusetts, it was difficult for me, in London, to find an interviewee who pointed to a sole reason to justify the decision to emigrate. Moreover, the decision is also always related to a set of circumstances (such as the end of a relationship), to life cycle, age (being single, young) and so on. Individuals’ class and gender differently position them in social space, opening up and/or closing down their possibilities for navigating within the wider political, economic and social context in Brazil. These markers also directly influence their decisions to migrate, as the following journeys show.

LEONARDO

Leonardo primarily viewed migration as a temporary life experience, a cultural investment and an opportunity to improve his - already high - cultural and social capital. This he thought would better position him in the high-skilled labour market. A descendent of Italian migrants, Leonardo was born in 1986, and grew up in Bauru, a countryside town in São Paulo State. The middle son of three, his mother was employed in the public sector, at a public bank, and his father was an entrepreneur. He lived among the upper-middle class, studying in good private schools, until he was 17 years old when his father’s company - a petrol station - went bankrupt. Talking about this period of his life, he said:

After that we went to live in Brasilia. My father got a job there and my uncle was also supporting us. My parents registered me to study in a public school, but I stayed just 3 months there. The school was very bad, we never had classes. I went back to a private school, finished my high school and started doing business and management at UNB [Federal University of Brasilia]. Because of the economic situation of my family had changed, I couldn’t have the experience of studying in another city.

Even though Leonardo’s family experienced economic problems, his family network provided them with support to start a new life, which included providing Leonardo with a good education in private schools that then resulted in him studying in a prestigious university. Despite having to live at home during his time at university, Leonardo’s cultural and social capital later helped him to have this experience abroad. Whilst doing his undergraduate degree, Leonardo began working as a trainee in a big and important company, through a contact of his brother. His brother, who had recently graduated in Economics, was also part of a student exchange programme through which he had gone to study and work in the USA for a few months. As his brother always wanted to live and work abroad, he knew the importance of not only speaking a good level of English, but also of having a European passport to facilitate his mobility. Thus, he requested his Italian citizenship, which facilitated the process for the other members of the family. After doing a one-year internship in a large multinational company in Switzerland, his brother was made permanent in the company and started realising his ambition of being a highly skilled international worker. His brother’s move facilitated Leonardo in also moving abroad, when the opportunity came in 2009. Leonardo had recently graduated when he followed in his brother’s footsteps.

I was already working in a big telecommunications company in Rio [de Janeiro]. It was a good job and I loved Rio. But I decided to register myself in a traineeship abroad, so I could have this cultural experience that would also be good on my CV, and I could improve my English. I ended up getting offered a traineeship at the same company that my brother was working at, in Switzerland.

Thus, aiming to have a short-term occupational and life/cultural experience, Leonardo then acquired his Italian passport, quit his job and moved to Europe.

TIAGO

Tiago came to Europe with a friend, Fabio, ten years before Leonardo, in 1999. He also had the same idea of ‘investing in himself’ by working in another country and having an experience abroad. However, the ways in which Leonardo and Tiago imagined this investment differs almost to the same extent as their social and family circumstances. Tiago was born in 1967, in a very small rural town in the countryside of Ceará, a state in the Northeast of Brazil, a poorer region in the country. His mother had 15 children, but due to the very poor sanitary conditions of the countryside at that time, four of them died. For Tiago, the youngest child of the family, learning to live a mobile life came to be intertwined with his earliest awareness of his own existence: ‘the first memory that I have is of me as a three-year-old packing everything we had to move to São Paulo’. His parents had decided to leave their rural life and try ‘an urban life in São Paulo’, the richest city in Brazil. After living in São Paulo for a year, his father decided he wanted to go back to their rural life. His mother, however, did not. They divorced and she stayed in São Paulo with their 6 youngest children working as a maid for a year, then she decided to go back to Ceará.

At the age of 9 Tiago was living in Ceará with his mother when another family asked to help ‘raise’ him, so he could have a better life, with food, housing and education - a common practice in the past found in many unequal cities of Brazil. Tiago lived with and worked for this family at their local restaurant doing domestic activities until he was 14, when he moved back to São Paulo to live with his sister . There he also ‘worked’ doing domestic services and babysitting his nephew. At 17, when he was about to finish high school, he got his first paid job in a supermarket. He worked in this supermarket for few years, saving money and taking hairdressing courses in the evening. Wanting to have his own salon, Tiago left his job at the supermarket and worked as a full-time hairdresser for 13 years. It was here that the opportunity of coming to Europe arose:

The idea of coming here [London] actually was a mix of many things. I always wanted to speak English, I loved English. I found it chic, it was my dream - since I was very young - to live in a country where I could speak English, like chic people. My idol was Elvis Presley. I was fascinated by him. I had applied for a visa to go to the US but they refused it. Three years later [1999] my friend, Adolfo, who was living in London, called me and said he would help me come here. The idea was to come for one year, learn English, make some money, and go back. People back home used to say that hairdressers make a lot of money here.

Tiago embarked to London, following the steps of his friend, with the initial project of living abroad for one year. Initially fitting with the representation of the ‘economic migrant’, the aim was to make some money, have a life experience, and to try and learn the language that he had always found ‘chic’.

ELZA

Despite being born in the same year as Leonardo (1986), Elza has a similar background to Tiago. She also saw coming to London as an investment, however, she would (initially) fit more with the classic image of the ‘economic (female) migrant’. The youngest daughter of a working-class, domestic worker, single mother, Elza is a black woman born in Goiania, the capital of the state of Goiás. Like Tiago, Elza learned to be mobile at a very young age, navigating many different informal jobs to bring her mother extra money. She managed to finish high school in public schools (which are considered of less quality than the private schools), whilst working in a small factory that made confectionary. There, when she was 18 years old, she started dating the man who would be her husband and the father of her first daughter. The factory belonged to her husband’s aunt, who had set it up with the money that she earned working as a migrant in the US. After two years of being married, working and earning the Brazilian minimum wage in the factory, Elza and her husband decided to go to Europe, work for a short time, save money and open a small business in Brazil, as his aunt had previously done.

My husband came first. His aunt was illegal in the US and things were getting harder there. So she went from the US to Italy to request her Italian citizenship. She got it, and took her nieces and nephews to Italy to also claim their citizenship. They then came to London with her, because she was the one who looked after them. This is how my husband managed to come here, in 2006.

Following in his aunt’s footsteps and receiving her support, Elza’s husband worked and saved money for one year in order to buy Elza’s ticket to London. Elza came to London in 2007 with her daughter, aiming to stay for two years.

MANOEL

Manoel also saw migration as an investment, an investment in himself and a means to change his lifestyle and leave the past behind. Manoel first saw his life change due to the economic downgrade of his family in the 1980s. Manoel was born in Santos, on the coast of São Paulo state, in 1976. The middle son of a Spanish mother who came to Brazil with her parents when she was 16 years, Manoel grew up in a wealthy, upper middle-class environment until he was 12 years old:

We had a very good life in Santos. My parents had a good accountancy business. My grandparents had money as well, so they used to travel to Europe every year. But everything changed with their divorce and then with my dad’s bankruptcy. My father was very violent towards my mum and us [brothers]. My mother left the good life that we used to have and we moved to Bahia [in the Northeast] to live with my aunt. My mother managed to start everything over from scratch she started working in a hospital there but not with the same life we used to have.

With the help of his mother’s sister, Manoel grew up amongst upper-middle class people in Salvador/Bahia - a city that attracts many tourists. Wanting to have money to be able to emulate the lifestyle of his friends, Manoel began working on the beach drawing fake tattoos on tourists. He kept studying and working in other informal jobs related to tourism, until he was 18 years old, when his girlfriend got pregnant. They got married and he started doing a technical course in accounting and later undertook a two-year traineeship in a bank. In 1994, he got a job in a hospital where he worked for four years in the IT sector. In 1998, he had the idea of coming to Europe:

Financially I was doing well. I even had the salary of someone with a higher education. But I was feeling completely lost. I was dissatisfied with my job, there was too much corruption. Also, I had just divorced. I was too young, with a baby, and my friends were all single. I just wanted to party and take drugs with them, and for my family this was complicated. We divorced. Everyone used to criticise me saying that I would be no one. They wanted me to do a BA in law. I didn’t want to. My life was shit. Since the divorce, I never managed to settle my mind, everything was wrong. I had to get out of that, change my lifestyle.

With the aim of changing his lifestyle, getting over the end of his relationship and escaping the pressure from relatives and friends to ‘become someone’, Manoel gave his notice at work. With the previous month’s paycheck, he embarked to Portugal in 2003, where his younger brother and a friend were already living.

MARIA

Maria also said she was unhappy with her lifestyle and family pressure in Brazil and that migration was a way to culturally invest in herself, while getting away from the pressure and deciding what to do with her life in Brazil. Maria was born in São Paulo, in 1962, the granddaughter of Spanish and French immigrants who came to Brazil at the beginning of the 20^th century. Maria, the third of four children, grew up in an upper middle-class environment. Her father had a good job in a multinational engineering company, while her mother stayed at home looking after the family. Maria had always had relationship problems with her mother, who by ‘being submissive in a sexist family’ would have reproduced the same model of dominance among her children.

[My mother and I] had a lot of conflict, real conflicts, because my brother was the prince of the house. On weekends, my mother used to wake us up early, screaming, ‘Let’s go to the kitchen!’ We [the women] used to spend the whole morning cooking, and the prince slept. After we finished eating, my brother used to sit on the couch and we had to clean everything. It was the mentality that the women do the housework and men do nothing. My mother was an extremely hard woman with us, with her Catholic moralism.

According to Maria she had always been considered the ‘black sheep of the family’, and besides rebelling against her mother, she also used to have problems with the sisters from the Catholic private schools she attended, as ‘they were very strict and hypocrites’. After numerous conflicts, she convinced her parents to let her study in a public school, a new reality that, due to her family class positioning, lasted for just a short time. After being caught with marijuana, she went back to private school and was grounded by her parents, only being allowed to leave her house to go to the church. Maria did not go to university, as her siblings and friends did. At the age 22, the opportunity to come to London appeared, unexpectedly, when she was feeling lost compared to the ‘well-planed middle-class life’ of her friends and relatives.

Coming here was a mix of things, it was not planned. This relationship with my mother indeed contributed to it. I wanted to live my life, make my own mistakes, and my mother was always very impeditive. I was also a little lost. I was young, 22, and had not studied. I was only working voluntarily [with homeless children] without money. I didn’t know what to do. My friends and siblings were having their normal life, finishing university, dating, with their planned little life. Then this Brazilian journalist’s wife called me from London, asking if I wanted to look after their kids - 4 years old and 8 months - because they wanted someone who could speak Portuguese to look after them for a while. The journalist is a cousin of my sister-in-law. She told me I was going to live with them, and I could study English.

Maria came to London in 1985. Like the others, she was also ‘following the steps’ of a family member, her brother, who had lived in London for a year in 1981. He had come with his girlfriend, to have a life experience, learn English and travel around Europe. This was Maria’s project, stay for one year, learn English, work to travel in Europe, then return.

REVISITING THE DECISION TO MIGRATE

From the stories above, we can see how different groups narrate dreams and expectations of success within the ideological boundaries of their (classed and gendered) possibilities (Bourdieu, 1984; Beserra, 2000). The five journeys above illustrate how institutional, economic, political and social context, alongside subjective, emotional and personal reasons - shaped by their classed and gendered experiences - intersected in the individuals’ complex decisions to migrate. Firstly, these decisions are inextricably linked to the differential political economies between the countries of origin and the destination, which influences the migrants’ personal dreams and aspirations. Every Brazilian that I interviewed in London saw migration as a way to improve their lives. Improving their lives meant going to a place where they could accomplish some of the ideals of material and cultural consumption of the Western ‘modern’ lifestyle, where they imagine they can achieve ‘their dreams of wealth, respectability, and autonomy’ (APPADURAI, 1996, p. 63). As Margolis (2013) argues, in Brazil there is a widespread common sense that all that is ‘modern’ is located in the United States and in Western Europe, since Brazil still has not metaphorically shifted into what is thought of as ‘modernity’. Going to Europe also means leaving behind a place where ‘capitalist development has disrupted prior systems of production and diffused values and positive expectations about “modern” ways of life’ (BESERRA, 2000, p. 19). While all the migrants I spoke to share a desire to improve their lives by accessing a ‘modern’ lifestyle, this desire was shaped in distinct ways by their specific classed and gendered positions.

For Leonardo, for instance, in Europe he can pursue work experience which will further increase his possibilities in the high skilled labour market, acquiring more cultural, social and symbolic capital to add to his CV; he will improve his English, meet more people, acquire more knowledge by working in a valued, multinational Western company. For Tiago and Elza, migration was a means to improve their class situation. Tiago saw it as an investment that would allow him to quickly improve his economic capital. But, it was also an opportunity to improve his cultural and symbolic capital, by living in a place where people and their language are ‘chic’ and where he might learn to speak that language. For Elza, Europe was a place to make a quick economic investment, even though she came to London because her husband decided to. On the other hand, Manoel and Maria said they saw migration as a way to deal with family pressures, which were shaped by class and gender expectations that according to them they were not able to manage in Brazil. Both wanted to change their lifestyles. Manoel felt he had failed as a father and a husband. Even though he was doing well economically, he said he had lost his wife and daughter because of his lifestyle of parties and drugs. According to him, the feeling of failure was emphasised by the fact people claimed he would never ‘be someone’, as he was not following the middle-class family path of going to university and being a responsible father and husband. Migration was a way to leave the past behind and reinvent himself. Similarly, Maria also saw migration as a way to change her lifestyle, moving away from a sexist society, from the conflicts with her mother and from the (middle-classed) pressure to have, as she said, a ‘planned little life’. Therefore, Europe is seen as the (modern) place that concentrates the different capitals necessary for improving one’s life, be it through ‘reinvention’ or self-investment. These migrants’ diverse capital - economic, cultural, social and symbolic - differently shaped their decisions to migrate, and continued to shape their journeys in London.

DEALING WITH THE BORDER

Migrants’ experience of arrival in the UK is also dependent upon some of their social markers, like class and nationality, as well as on the ‘repertoire’ of possibilities (BOURDIEU, 2014) that the system offers. In other words, when dealing with immigration control, their entrance is shaped by the level of constraint in the legislative framework of immigration laws, which gives more or less possibilities to the ways in which migrants can use their different types of capital or resources to navigate such constraints. Thus, alongside the legislative framework at the time of their arrival, nationality as well as the volume and composition of their capital, differently shape the way in which their arrival in the UK happens. Speaking the language (cultural capital), having money to pay for a student visa to show at the immigration control (economic capital), having a partner/family visa or an invitation letter (social capital), or a European passport (nationality), for instance, all direct the movement of their journey past the first boundary abroad, immigration control.

LEONARDO, MANOEL AND MARIA

Leonardo and Manoel both arrived in Europe with their European passports and did not have any problems getting into the country. Maria did not have a European document, but the time frame of her arrival, as well as the conditions in which she arrived, made her entrance easier. Maria travelled to London in the 1980s when immigration control was not so restricted, especially against Brazilians, and her economic and social capital provided her an easy entrance. Even though she did not speak any English, Maria’s brother advised her about how to prepare for her journey. As she told me, she ‘had everything that was needed: 1000.00 dollars, an invitation letter from the family receiving me in the UK, my return ticket to Brazil and an English course paid for one year’. She made sure that she met all the requirements, as she ‘didn’t want to do anything outside of the law, even though they were not that rigorous with immigration control at that time’.

ELZA AND TIAGO

Elza and Tiago arrived in a different time frame from Maria, and under different circumstances. When Elza first arrived in London in 2007, coincidently or not, she who is black and did not speak English - was held at customs for six hours in an interrogation room. This was despite the fact that she had documents proving that she was married to an Italian citizen resident in London. After being interrogated, Elza was provided with a tourist visa and told to apply later for a partner visa.

Tiago was the one who struggled the most in the process of entering the country. As noted, he came in 1999, with his friend Fabio. Following the advice given by their friend who was already living in London, they paid an English school, rented accommodation, and brought enough money to show at immigration control. However, they had problems at Heathrow:

They took us to a room, like prison, terrible. I was feeling very sad. They got a translator there and started asking a lot of questions. I said I had my salon in Brazil and was here to learn English. They asked me what I would do if I didn’t learn English after one year. I said I would renew my visa. They stopped the interview: how come a man who has business in Brazil claims he will stay abroad two years? They held our passports there and said they would let us in but we should go back next day to take a plane to Spain where we had made the connection. I left the airport feeling like a loser. When we got outside my friend came to hug me, I told him to keep walking because I felt they were following us.

Due to the feeling of being followed all the time, Tiago and Fabio decided to go back to Brazil the following day; they did not ‘want to stay here illegally, living in fear’. However, when they arrived in Spain for his flight connection, Tiago decided to stay: ‘I couldn’t go back to Brazil with that loss’. He gave his luggage to Fabio and managed to enter Spain claiming ‘they refused my entrance in the UK, but I had already spent too much money coming here, so I wanted to do tourism here’. After asking for a taxi to take him to a cheap hotel, Tiago started walking around Madrid, enjoying the city, but still thinking of a way to go to a place where ‘people speak English’.

WORKING, LIVING AND NEGOTIATING THE MIGRATION

As the following narratives illustrate, once in London, the intersection of gender, documental status and the diverse forms of capital that migrants have brought with them - plus the amount they acquire as they develop their journeys - differently impact on how they navigate within the possibilities and constraints offered by the city, in different contexts. Moreover, besides the fact of having to navigate different levels of constraints due to their gender and documental status, their economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital contour not only the ways in which their mobility is performed in the host society, but also the process of reformulating their migration project.

LEONARDO

Having a European passport, speaking English, arriving in the country with housing and work, as well as living and working at the same multinational as his brother, facilitated Leonardo’s arrival in Europe. After all the new experiences he had in only few months of his traineeship in Switzerland, Leonardo re-evaluated his initial migration project of living abroad only for one year. At a professional level, his salary ‘was very good and I was learning a lot’. On a personal level, being a highly skilled worker in Switzerland gave him the possibility of having a lifestyle marked by constant new experiences.

These sort of experiences I would never have in Brazil. I was challenging myself all the time with new things at work. Also, as many of the workers were international, we were always doing things together; travelling, getting to know new places, going to ski in the mountains, so I decided to stay longer.

Leonardo had been working and living in Switzerland for 3 years, when the opportunity to move to London arose. Coming to London offered new forms of social and cultural capital.

They asked if I would like to move to London. Economically, I would earn less than what I was earning in Switzerland. But, coming to London would be another opportunity to have different experiences, working in another country, with another culture. It wasn’t because of the money; it was an investment in myself. Also, as my brother was living in Switzerland when I got there, I didn’t really have that moment just for myself, that moment of having to do everything on your own, challenging yourself to face the difficulties of being alone in an unknown place.

Leonardo came to London in the end of 2012. He faced some of the difficulties that he wanted to have, such as finding a place for himself to live, learning how to move around the city and starting as an employee in a country with a different culture. Despite working more than 50 hours per week, without receiving payment for this overtime, Leonardo believes that he and the rest of his coworkers, of whom the majority are international, are the happiest workers in the company. He says this is because many of the team do not have family or friends in the UK. They ‘are here to work, we want to get the work done and we see it happening’. Their work/life satisfaction would come with the challenges they face in each project and with ‘the new experiences we have within the projects’, which are expressed in the final results. The results, for Leonardo, do not only represent a return of the investments for the company, but also a return on the investment of the workers themselves, which comes with the unique experience of being employed in a big multinational company in one of the world’s financial capitals.

MANOEL

Having a Spanish passport and family support upon arrival also made Manoel’s entrance and stay in Portugal in 2003 easier. The difficulties of his mobile life came later on, when he came to the UK without speaking English. He lived in Portugal with his brother only for two months. He had applied for a job in an agency that later called him to work in a turkey factory in the UK. He told me, ‘at that time a pound was worth eight times the real [Brazilian currency], so as soon as they offered me the job, I said yes. They took me to Norfolk. I didn’t speak any English, at all.’

Manoel went through a huge occupational downgrade, from an office job in a hospital in Brazil to work in a line production, in cold and precarious working conditions that he had never experienced before. The factory, he says, ‘smelled very bad, full of turkey blood, and we had to learn the whole 12 steps of the process of production’. Manoel quickly ‘understood the logic of the things and I became a trainer after six months.’ Manoel’s understanding of the logic of the work place was not only related to understanding how to work efficiently, but also how to navigate the ‘politics’ of the company. Many workers did not have regular documents to live in the UK, but as Manoel had a European passport, he started claiming his rights inside the plant. Every time he wanted to go to the toilet, for instance, and they refused, he would walk off and go to the toilet, threatening to call the union. ‘I had documents, I had rights, they had to respect me’.

Having the right to work and live regularly in the UK, Manoel knew that he needed to invest in his cultural capital and qualify himself in order to move on from these precarious work conditions. He registered himself at a learning centre, as ‘I would never grow in this country without speaking English’, which he attended every day after work. They offered computing courses as well as language courses. Manoel had taken many IT courses in Brazil and the owner of the centre offered him a job one day, after she saw him teaching a student how to do an activity on the computer. After taking courses for free in the centre and taking the required English and Maths levels to work there, Manoel started developing his career inside of the company. He was promoted to supervisor and later to assistant manager at a branch in another city. He continued to take courses for free in the learning centre, as he wanted to eventually go to University. After a fight with the son of the manager, he decided it was time to move again. Manoel moved to London with his older brother, Mario, in 2008.

Manoel arrived in London with an increased understanding of the ‘logic of living in the UK’, with more capitals to use - he spoke the language and had taken several IT courses. Seeking to take advantage of the capital that he had brought from Brazil as well as those he improved and acquired in the UK, Manoel applied for work in the NHS. He says, ‘I was trying to use my experience of working at a hospital - from Brazil - and my knowledge in IT’. While he did not get a job at the hospital, he got a job in a hotel, as a porter, through people he had met in the house he was living with his brother. This new situation was ‘terrible because I felt I downgraded again, I was the manager there [north England] and a porter here, I felt I had taken a step back’. Manoel kept applying to work in the NHS and, eventually, was offered a job. He happily accepted the offer, seeing it as an opportunity not only to develop his career, but also to prove to people back home that he could ‘be someone’.

I started at the hospital as an administrative assistant. After two years, I became a supervisor. When I turned supervisor, I got them to pay my university fees, BA in IT. I knew I needed a college degree to grow here. Also, I would not accept dying without having my BA. My whole family always wanted me to go to university. In the past, living in the middle of the elite of Salvador, many people judged me. My friends, girlfriends, girlfriends’ mothers, always said I was not going to get anywhere, I would have no future. I always had this with myself, charging myself. That was my chance to prove them wrong. I got my BA in IT at the end of 2012, out of my country, in another language what can give you more status and confidence than that?

His degree gave him status in Brazil, as well as changing his life in London. Once he graduated, Manoel started applying for positions inside of the NHS until he got the job he always dreamt of, an IT position in one of the biggest hospital of the country. Working sometimes over 60 hours a week, Manoel is proud of his lifestyle in London and how his journey developed: ‘My job is Band 6, which means that I am in the corporate level. I don’t even clock in; clocking in is not for the level of work I am on.’ For Manoel, what made the difference for him was his will and determination. As he noted, ‘because I wanted and went for it. You need to have an objective in life. It is this will that makes people different from one another, everyone will have a different life and different realisations according to that’.

MARIA

Like Leonardo, Maria also said she came to London with the idea of changing her lifestyle as well as to invest in herself for a while. Her idea was to study English for one year, have a life experience and go back to Brazil. But, just as many others, she had her objectives and plans changed while she was living her mobile life. However, her gender and documental status - alongside her diverse capital, shaped her mobile experience under conditions very different than those Leonardo experienced. After working for four months as a nanny for the photographer’s family, Maria, who had already met many people, decided to leave their home, find another job and live with friends. Even though her English level was still very poor, she never had problems finding work as there were many jobs for migrants when she arrived in London.

I went to the centre with my friend, looking for job. I went into a pizzeria and said, ‘Me look for job’ I did not speak English very well. He asked, ‘Now?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He gave me the key for the locker, a uniform and I started working. It was easy to get work in the 80s. If we didn’t like a job, we would just leave and find another one.

Maria then kept meeting more Brazilians, developing her network, and changing jobs and housing. She was enjoying a sense of freedom that she had not experienced in Brazil, due to her family pressure and the political context. As Maria said, she had not lived in a democracy in Brazil: ‘Everything was freer here. I was living in squats, partying, taking drugs. I was releasing myself.’

Despite living a lifestyle full of apparent freedoms, away from the social (class/gender) and political (dictatorship) constraints that she faced in Brazil, Maria also never stopped attending classes, as she knew ‘speaking the language would be a differential for my life here’. After a very intense year of partying, living in squats, working and studying, she had already overstayed her one-year visa. She had decided to stay in London for a while, ‘working and saving money to travel around Europe, just as the majority of Brazilians used to do at that time’. However, in the middle of her second year in London, her project had to change once again, as she became pregnant after a relationship with an English man.

I told him that I was pregnant. He told me, ‘I never thought I could get someone pregnant. Well, this is your problem. If you want to abort it, you abort it. If you want to have it, you have it.’ I had planned everything to have an abortion. I was crying every day because I wanted to have the baby, but I didn’t have a visa here and it would be a scandal in Brazil: me returning to Brazil, single mother. Then one day the police went to the squat because we turned the electricity on, and it wasn’t allowed. They took me to the police station, because my visa was expired. I wanted to kill myself. I was going back to Brazil, deported and pregnant! I said to the officer that my visa was expired because my intention was to go back to Brazil, but I wanted to travel first and my father always sent me money. He said he was going to let me stay, but I had to promise I was going to sort my [visa] situation out.

Maria left the police station, and the first thing she did was call a Scottish friend, who had previously offered to marry her so she could stay in the country. She had not accepted before, as she ‘did not want to do something wrong. But due to the circumstances that I found myself in, I got married in the same week’. After acquiring her visa, Maria still went through very hard moments. She says she was feeling completely lost, ‘pregnant, living in a squat in the winter, with no heating’. Moreover, she was feeling very depressed with the lifestyle around her: ‘Everyone was very high most of the time, not interacting with each other’. This was when she decided to call her mother, inform the family she was pregnant and go back to Brazil. She called because in the beginning of the 80s her brother’s girlfriend had gotten pregnant when living in London. They had gone back to Brazil and lived in a room at Maria’s parents’ house, being completely supported by them.

However, her mother’s response to her was different from what she expected. ‘She told me: “No! You stay where you are, you’re better off there.”’ Her mother ‘didn’t want a single-mother daughter at home, because that was the mentality. Man can do everything, woman nothing.’ This made her realise she was ‘alone in the world and would have to change my life, once again.’

She managed to realise this change with the help from friends and from the state. With her friends’ help, she moved to a proper house and got a job in a Brazilian restaurant. Things got better just before she had her son, in 1987, when she met a Polish friend who informed her that, as the wife of a British citizen, she had the right to claim benefits. This, ‘changed my life, completely, I had no idea what benefits were.’ She received £800 in benefits to buy the baby’s clothes, and they took her to a bed and breakfast. Once she had her son, she went to Brazil and stayed there for a while, but decided to come back she says it was ‘easier for me to be a single mother in London than in Brazil, because of the social pressure.’ Benefits continued to be her primary source of support as she improved her life conditions in London.

Besides all the material help, the benefits enabled her to always keep herself busy and get over her depression. She kept working part-time, started studying, took courses on landscape gardening and photography. One of these courses, she met the father of her second child, a daughter who was born in 1992. She continued to be single, doing many jobs related to gardening, selling food, and other informal entrepreneur activities until she decided to take a BA in Psychology. Two months before graduating, in 1999, her mother died in Brazil from cancer, which deeply affected her. Later, she decided to start working as a support worker for young mothers at a hospital. She was also working, voluntarily, in an association for Latin American women in London. Maria then decided to form a charity for Brazilian women who suffering domestic violence. According to her ,‘I had to understand how to deal with rejection. This is probably why I work with vulnerable people today. That Polish man changed my life, he had knowledge of the system and compassion for me’.

ELZA

One of the women whose life changed due to Maria’s work was Elza. As with Maria, documental status and gender issues also affected Elza’s journey in London. However, due to the differences in the political, economic and social contexts in which they arrived, as well as differences in relation to their personal capital, Elza navigated her journey differently. Elza came to London for the first time in 2007, but she came and went between Brazil and London four times. This movement delayed the process of acquiring her partner visa. She always struggled to adapt herself in London, feeling very lonely, as she did not speak the language and lived practically locked inside of a small room with her daughter in a shared house. Her situation of isolation was aggravated by her husband’s jealousy.

Everything was new for me, different language, didn’t have friends. My husband was working day and night, at a construction site and cleaning offices. He was jealous, didn’t let me work or live with Brazilians, so I wouldn’t talk to anyone. I spent the days locked in our room. Because of that, I went back to Brazil three times. But earning minimum wage to survive and support my daughter there on my own was very hard.

Elza came back to London for the fourth time in 2010. Her husband was in a relationship with another woman and she went to live with her husband’s sister. After three months of being able to work - as a cleaner and enjoying more of the life in London. Elza got back together with her husband, on the condition that they lived with Brazilians. However, after ‘six months in the house with Brazilians he started being jealous again. I couldn’t talk to anyone or go out’. One day he came home, had a surge of jealousy and punched her in front of their daughter. Elza took the child and left the house, never to go back. She went to live with his sister again. As she was waiting for her visa, she could not legally work, so she worked two hours a day for a cleaning company and received the money in a friend’s account. Earning only £70 per week, with a child and debts in Brazil accrued from money she borrowed to buy her tickets to London, she started doing cash-in-hand cleaning, 15 hours per day. Her husband was still going after her, but as she was waiting for her partner visa, she never reported him to the police until the day when she was punched again and ended up going to the hospital.

I wanted to go back home after that, because I was without a visa. I was leaving my house at 4:30 in the morning to work, and coming back at 22:00 and having to manage looking after my daughter on my own. I didn’t have money to take him to the court, because the law here changed and they don’t provide free lawyers for family cases anymore. I heard about a charity that helps women in need here. I met Maria there and she changed my life. She registered my daughter and I in a GP - I didn’t even know that this existed. She got me some benefits for my daughter, only £13 per week, but it was very helpful, as I was trying to be independent here. After a while, my visa arrived, then things got better.

With the support from Maria and after receiving her visa, Elza was able to improve her situation. She gave up her benefits, started working legally, and found a room to live in with her daughter where she would not be threatened by her ex-husband anymore. She started meeting people and increasing her network and then found worked in several places. She continues to do cleaning jobs, since she understands, but does not speak, English. In one of these jobs, she met her current husband, a Brazilian man who also works as a cleaner. Although Elza still does not speak English, she says she likes her lifestyle in London now and does not see herself going back to Brazil very soon.

When I got the document, I said I would stay here working until I paid my debts in Brazil. But after I paid them, I saw how life here can be easier than in Brazil. I would earn the minimum wage there. What can we do with a minimum wage? I decided to stay, because of all the access to things, the education for my daughter. I also met my new husband. We had a baby together - 1 year old - and live in a house with other Brazilians. I am working as a cleaner two hours per day in a gym; I am also registered as self-employed, doing some manicure jobs at home. So I can stay at home looking after my baby while working.

TIAGO

Not only did his documental status play an important role in Tiago’s Journey, but he also changed his migration project after going back to Brazil for a while. After having his entrance denied in London in 1999, Tiago stayed in Spain for a short period. He met some Brazilians in Madrid, and started working in a Brazilian salon. However, he went back to Brazil at the beginning of 2000, as he had already learnt Spanish and his salary there was not that good. He lived in Brazil for one year, but he was feeling very down, as he had concluded that his ‘lifestyle had changed too much in Spain to live in Brazil.’ Tiago sold his salon and bought a ticket with the money to come back to the UK, as his dream of living in a place where English was spoken had not died. As Europe was not completely unknown to him anymore, he knew what he should and should not say at immigration control. After being interviewed for six hours in London, Tiago managed to enter the country.

Due to the support of a friend, Tiago already had a place to live and an interview in a hair salon arranged: ‘I did a test and I started working the following day.’ After that, Tiago started developing his journey in London, meeting more people, going out, increasing his network, changing jobs and improving his English. After three years working and saving money in London, Tiago was speaking some English and had opened his own salon with a friend. According to him, the only thing that was missing was a European document, since ‘having one would be pivotal for my life here.’ Receiving help from friends, Tiago borrowed £7,000 and went to Portugal to get married to a Portuguese woman who had offered him a deal. He paid her, got married, spent a few months in Portugal waiting for his visa, and came back to London once it arrived. However, after he came back from Portugal, he had a fight with his friend and partner in the salon, who ‘threatened me saying if I didn’t leave him the salon, he would denounce me to the immigration control, saying I bought a marriage.’ After that, Tiago had to retrace the paths of his journey. He worked in different places for five more years to be able to pay the debts of his arranged marriage and once the debt was paid, Tiago opened a salon.

CONCLUSION

The differentiated journeys I have examined in this article are marked by a permanent temporariness and negotiation, complicating attempts to create categories of migration. Examining both the sending and receiving contexts, focusing on the lives of Brazilians before migrating, as well as processes of displacement and working and living conditions in London, my study revealed that London’s Brazilian population is diverse, comprised of individuals from different class backgrounds, regions, and genders, which shape both their reasons for migrating, as well as how their journeys are performed. As a consequence, through these journeys, I have demonstrated why and how we need to understand migrant journeys as a process of constant maneuvering. This allows us to move beyond homogenizing categories of migration, such as the transnational migrant ‘flowing’ from the global south in pursuit of economic opportunities, and the ‘lifestyle migrant’ moving from the global north in pursuit of a better quality of life. My data showed that even for Brazilians who cited economic factors as, in part, driving their decisions to migrate, quality of life, including the negotiation of the work-life balance and freedom from prior constraints, was also important; to question the presumed dichotomy in which lifestyle migrants from the Global North are defined in opposition to the transnational migrants from the Global South. Yet, my data also revealed that relations of power at the global level - deeply imprinted with colonial legacies - play an important role in the production of the desire to travel to London for an improvement in life/lifestyle. Brazilians in London, I have argued, often believe that moving to the city will allow them to achieve the material and cultural ideals of the Western ‘modern’ lifestyle impossible to obtain in Brazil, which is seen as ‘not fully modern’.

My study revealed that migrants’ journeys towards a ‘modern’ lifestyle, as well as how their journeys are navigated, are facilitated and limited in distinct ways by markers of class, gender, nationality and documental status. Thus, I suggest that in order to further problematise how these journeys are differentially developed and negotiated, we need to understand the factors that shape them, proposing the use of the concept ‘differentiated journey’. Giving a structural dimension to the concept of journey (KNOWLES, 2014), I argue, provides us with an analytical tool with which we can examine the connection of the micro and macro aspects of the everyday social production of the world on the move. We can see how people differently negotiate their lives according to the desires and resources that they have to play with in particular structural contexts. Drawing on my empirical analysis, I suggested that ‘differentiated journeys’ are highly dependent on two sets of factors: firstly, on the economic, political and cultural contexts in which they are performed the ‘repertoire’ or space of possibilities offered by the system; and secondly, on the resources and attributes that differently configure an individual’s life chances, constructed in the intersections of multiple social markers of difference, including class, gender, sexuality, ‘race’ and nationality. These social markers not only differently shape their journeys by opening up or closing down their (structural) space of possibilities, but they can also affect (not deterministically) the differential subjective and experiential responses to their journeys, such as their desires and decisions to move along, stay or return.

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