Estudantes Africanos dos PALOP em Redenção, Ceará, Brasil: Representações, Identidades e Poder

This paper discusses the representations inscribed in the experience of african students in Redencao – city localized in the countryside of Ceara, Brazil – as part of a social reality promoted by the public policies of integration and inclusion which emerged with the International University for the Luso-Afro-Brazilian (Unilab) in 2010. The investigation was possible through observation and participation that allowed connections between images, discourses and local situations. The differences that are felt and lived by the foreign students are understood as part of the identity construction organized through ethnical and racial biases in a particular and situational context (BARTH, 2003). Through the conflicts and an interexchange of communication almost inexistent between foreigners and locals, the article identifies the heritage of dominant regimes of representation of the black people (HALL, 1990) in Ceara and aims to establish connections between the identitary processes, racism and the exercise of power in the contemporary world.