From tourists to (im)migrants: intimacy mobility chains between Europe and Brazil

Abstract

The construction of intimacy quite often implies fluxes and mobilities. Building upon this premise, the article delves into the chains of dislocations associated with the transnationalisation of intimacy led by European men and Brazilian women who find themselves in the tourism meeting ground of Ponta Negra (Natal-RN, Northeast Brazil). The primary aim presupposes an understanding of transatlantic configurations of mobility and intimacy that emerge in passionate Euro-Brazilian relationships, while adopting a critical stance towards the notions of ‘sex tourism’ and ‘marriage migrations’, conceptual constructions which are common in the social sciences, yet profoundly reductive and with little empirical support. This analysis draws on elements provided by a multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, encompassing various physical and digital research sites. The gathered data allowed the comprehension of the pluricausality, interconnectedness, and plasticity of Euro-Brazilian mobilities, alongside their intrinsic association with polymorphic transnational configurations of intimacy, in the framework of which relations with different places are (re)defined and flexible links of conjugality, family, residence and citizenship are generated.