Immigrating to New Orleans post-Katrina: An ethnographic study of a Brazilian enclave
This study focuses on the Brazilian immigrant network to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: How it was established, how it developed from 2006 to the present, and how Brazilians 'performed' their presence in New Orleans during the foundational years immediately following Hurricane Katrina. Brazilian immigration to New Orleans provides a unique context for studying the formation of an enclave community because, on the one hand, it was mostly a secondary economic migration bringing immigrants from established enclave communities in other parts of the country drawn by the usual economic lures of job opportunities. But on the other hand, these everyday activities of enclave formation (finding jobs, making friends, learning to navigate the new city) happened in the surreal post-Katrina environment, an environment that necessarily influenced access to resources, labor options, and social and gender interactions between Brazilians and the devastated local community and among Brazilians themselves in unusual ways In this dissertation I outline various ways in which the Brazilian community in New Orleans has created its sense of place within the city. I study the migratory routes between New Orleans and Brazil. I analyze the particular post-Katrina work environment and the cultural and racial landscape of New Orleans that suggests so many affinities with aspects of Brazilian identity. In doing so, I illustrate how the formation of Brazilian enclave spaces (stores, restaurants, churches, etc.) are inextricably linked to their local contexts in New Orleans. Finally, using participant observation, I examine how Brazilian national identity is performed in New Orleanian space by concentrating specifically on the local samba school, Casa Samba, and on Brazilian immigrants' interactions with local Mardi Gras culture and spectacle. This dissertation contextualizes Brazilian imaginings of their place in New Orleans within theoretical debates about transnationality, hybridity, and performances of the everyday. My study concludes that Brazilians are both recreating an enclave in New Orleans and finding ways to create hybrid Brazilian-New Orleanian cultural expressions