Internationalization of Higher Education for Development: Blackness and Postcolonial Solidarity in Africa–Brazil Relations 9781350045460, 9781350045491, 9781350045477

Table of contents :
Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Illustrations
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Series Editors’ Foreword
Introduction
Racializing assemblages
Race as blackness
Outline
Notes
1 Portuguese Colonialism and its Aftermath
Portuguese colonialism
Postcolonial education in the Lusophone world
Note
2 Internationalization of Higher Education for Development
Expanding higher education in the Lusophone world
Brazilian South–South cooperation
The developmental university
Notes
3 Racialization Through Time, Space and Rank
Objects of intervention
Unsettling UNILAB’s Middle Passage narrative
Notes
4 Solidarity and Blackness in the Institutional Unfolding of UNILAB
Everyday politicking
Affirmative action
South–South solidarity
Notes
5 Historical Consciousness
Teaching history
Emancipation through culture
Emancipation through race and blackness
Dialogue across differences
Notes
6 Producing, Performing and Evading Integration
Teaching integration
Performing integration in classrooms
Evading integration
Notes
7 International Students’ Lives
Networks of everyday survival and wellbeing
Sharing resources in multi-national networks
The ability to pass (or not)
Notes
8 Conclusion
Race, development and Afro-Brazilian emancipation
Thinking and writing with race critically
Notes
Appendix I
Appendix II
References
Index

Citation preview

Internationalization of Higher Education for Development

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New Directions in Comparative and International Education Edited by Stephen Carney, Irving Epstein and Daniel Friedrich This series aims to extend the traditional discourse within the field of Comparative and International Education by providing a forum for creative experimentation and exploration of alternative perspectives. As such, the series welcomes scholarly work focusing on themes that have been under-researched and under-theorized in the field but whose importance is easily discernible. It supports works in which theoretical grounding is centred in knowledge traditions that come from the Global South, encouraging those who work from intellectual horizons alternative to the dominant discourse. The series takes an innovative approach to challenging the dominant traditions and orientations of the field, encouraging interdisciplinarity, methodological experimentation, and engagement with relevant leading theorists. Also available in the series Resonances of El Chavo del Ocho in Latin American Childhood, Schooling, and Societies, edited by Daniel Friedrich and Erica Colmenares Affect Theory and Comparative Education Discourse, Irving Epstein Forthcoming in the series Education in Radical Uncertainty, Stephen Carney and Ulla Ambrosius Madsen

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Internationalization of Higher Education for Development Blackness and Postcolonial Solidarity in Africa–Brazil Relations Susanne Ress

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © Susanne Ress, 2019 Susanne Ress has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. x–xi constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN:

HB: 978-1-3500-4546-0 ePDF: 978-1-3500-4547-7 eBook: 978-1-3500-4548-4

Series: New Directions in Comparative and International Education Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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To Ursula Ache (my maternal grandmother) and Bettina Bruchholz (my mother)

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Contents List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Series Editors’ Foreword

Introduction 1 Portuguese Colonialism and its Aftermath 2 Internationalization of Higher Education for Development 3 Racialization Through Time, Space and Rank 4 Solidarity and Blackness in the Institutional Unfolding of UNILAB 5 Historical Consciousness 6 Producing, Performing and Evading Integration 7 International Students’ Lives Conclusion Appendix I Appendix II References Index

viii ix x xii 1 21 33 47 61 75 99 123

147 159 161 163 177

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Illustrations Figures 0.1 UNILAB campus in Redenção, Ceará 3.1 Monument in Redenção 3.2 Mural of freed slave, titled ‘Liberty Started Here’ 6.1 Student chairs organized in rows 6.2 Seating chart agronomy in 2012 (classroom observations, 1 October 2012) 6.3 Seating chart agronomy in 2013 (classroom observations, 19 February 2013) 6.4 Seating chart engineering (classroom observations, 5 March 2013) 6.5 Seating chart teacher education (classroom observations, 18 January 2013) 6.6 Model of the university restaurant 8.1 Someone makes a second entrance

2 48 48 106 108 109 110 111 117 152

Tables 2.1 GER in relation to GER by region 2.2 Number of stipends by type and nationality (January 2013) 2.3 Anticipated institutes and disciplines 4.1 Student enrolment by country, over time 5.1 General education courses 7.1 Sample timetable of third trimester education

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34 43 44 69 76 136

Abbreviations CPLP

Community of Portuguese-language Countries

PROUNI

Programme of University for All

REUNI

Programme of Restructuring and Expansion of Federal Universities

SHC

Society, History and Culture of Lusophone Spaces (course in the general curriculum)

TI

Intercultural Topics (course in the general curriculum)

UNIAM

University of Amazonian Integration

UNILA

Federal University of Latin American Integration

UNILAB

University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony

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Acknowledgements I thank all the many people who have made this book possible. My first thanks goes to those, who engaged with my ideas and whose ideas have relentlessly challenged mine, time and again, to reroute the analysis of events. Any misrepresentations that still linger in the text are entirely my fault and in no way due to anything on their part. I thank Miriam Thangaraj and Nancy Kendall, with whom I share a deep friendship that hopefully will last forever. I thank Miriam Thangaraj in particular, our conversations over the years and her insights into the subject have been absolutely essential to pulling the themes of the book together. I am deeply indebted to her intellectually thorough yet loving willingness to call out the very last of my assumptions. I also thank Upenyu Majee, Miye Tom, Jasmin Blanks, Lesley Bartlett, Rebecca Tarlau and Tristan McCowan (colleagues from the comparative and international education community), Gay Seidman (sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin) and Alex Shankland, Katia Taela, and Lida Cabral (Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex) for introducing me to critical theories in development and education. I thank my colleagues at HumboldtUniversität Berlin (Florian Waldow, Nadine Bernhard, Vera Centeno and Kathleen Falkenberg) for pushing me to refine my conceptualization of race. I thank Tom Popkewitz in particular for his merciless and unwithering intervention, and Ebony Flowers for making me understand and write texts in a way that opened an entirely new world for me. Although our companionship did not withstand the test of time, hopefully she knows how incredibly grateful I am for her intervention. Most importantly, I thank UNILAB students and professors for allowing me to partake in their lives and the early days of this university, which set out to provide a different kind of education. Friends and family, people who hold me in place, Heiko, Kilian and Antonia Ress are the centre of the universe for me. I thank Heiko for sticking with me even when I wanted to leave. I thank him for his endless support and patience over more than fifteen years of marriage, and for not doubting me even when I doubted myself. On top of that, he seemed never to get tired of covering for me in the bits and bobs of home making, placing food on my desk, and giving me time to write. He holds me in place. He moves me along when I am incapable of x

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moving along myself. Kilian and Antonia are the best people who ever happened to me. Without them I am nothing. They too hold me in place with their hugs and kisses and their many stories, which hopefully remain as imaginative as ever. Bettina and Hans-Peter Bruchholz (my parents), who have accepted the fact that I am a notorious know-it-all, loving me nonetheless. Axel Bruchholz and Rüdiger Hendel (my brothers) for being who they are with their diametrically opposing outlooks on life. Peggie Hansen, the world’s best day-care mom. Tomas, Gabriel and Ceci, for holding Nancy in place and for the friendship of our families. Ligia Regina Sansigolo Kerr and Carl Kendall for extending the comforts of their home in Fortaleza. The research has been supported financially by the following departments and programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: Department of Educational Policy Studies, Development Studies Program, Department of Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies, and the Program of Global Studies. External funding has been provided by: Comparative and International Education Society, Brazilian Studies Association, Mellon Foundation, and the German Academic Exchange Program (DAAD).

Series Editors’ Foreword The field of comparative and international education requires its researchers, teachers and students to examine educational issues, policies and practices in ways that extend beyond the immediate contexts with which they are most accustomed. To do so means that one must constantly embrace engagement with the unfamiliar, a task that can be daunting because authority within academic disciplines and fields of study is often constructed according to convention at the expense of imagination and creativity. Comparative and international education as an academic field is rich and eclectic, with a long tradition of theoretical and methodological diversity as well as an openness to innovation and experimentation. However, as it is not immune to the conformist – especially disciplinary – pressures that give academic scholarship much of its legitimacy, we believe it important to highlight the importance of research and writing that is creative, thought-provoking and, where necessary, transgressive. This series offers comparative and international educators and scholars the space to extend the boundaries of the field, encouraging them to investigate the ways in which under-appreciated social thought and theories may be applied to comparative work and educational concerns in new and exciting ways. It especially welcomes scholarly work that focuses upon themes that have been under-researched and under-theorized but whose importance is easily discernible. It further supports work whose theoretical grounding is centred in knowledge traditions that come from the Global South and welcomes perspectives including those that are associated with post-foundational theorizing, non-Western epistemologies and performative approaches to working with educational problems and challenges. In these ways, this series provides a space for alternative thinking about the role of comparative research in reimagining the social. Internationalization of Higher Education for Development: Blackness and Postcolonial Solidarity in Africa–Brazil Relations is the third volume in the New Directions in Comparative and International Education series and its presence accentuates the scope and purpose of the series in important and compelling ways. Susanne Ress explores the contours of South–South international higher education relations with a sensitivity and intimacy that is unique, grounded in substantive ethnographic work completed over a number of years. Studies xii

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addressing issues of political economy and their effect upon the international education landscape are numerous within the field, although most emphasize the ways in which Global North institutions impact students who come to study from Global South countries. Many of these studies tend to be empirically grounded rather than theoretically robust, and few approach issues of identity, power, and marginalization with Dr. Ress’s degree of insight. It is especially significant that her analysis involves the effects of problematic constructions of ‘the other’ for both Brazilians and African students who come to study at the University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (UNILAB). Her use of theory to help her readers better situate and appreciate the reasons why the Brazilian project has become problematic for all of the educational actors involved raises larger questions about the global meaning of international development. But above all, it is her discussion of race from the perspective of critical black studies and its application to the Brazilian context that marks this study as being ground-breaking. This critical lens on race is used to do more than supplement or displace conventional critiques of international education development efforts. Instead, its presentation is interwoven into an analysis of Brazilian political and social relations that elucidates the ways in which the colonial mindset continues to impact international development practice. For all of these reasons, we believe that this work can serve as a future model for scholars interested in expanding the boundaries of comparative and international education research. Irving Epstein, Stephen Carney and Daniel Friedrich

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Introduction

Students from African countries have long been going to Europe and North America for their university education. Lately, they have also been turning more and more to Latin America for their studies. Moreover, in recent decades, higher education as a mechanism for development has re-entered international policy debates, and internationalization plays a considerable role in these debates (Mihut, Altbach and de Wit 2017). Middle powers like Brazil, with global aspirations, rely on educational exchange for domestic development and as a diplomatic strategy for building alliances across the Global South (Abdenur 2015). In addition, Brazilians claim that they practise international development cooperation differently, based on solidarity, mutual benefit and with respect to sovereignty. Although South–South relations have always been a part of the international development landscape, they have been largely under-studied. Current shifts towards a multipolar world demand that we pay more attention to players like Brazil in the arena of international development education. This study chronicles the beginnings of an international university – University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira, or UNILAB) – located in the rural interior in Northeast Brazil. UNILAB is a government-funded university and one of many Brazilian South–South cooperation projects (Milani 2015). Figure 0.1 shows the main campus of the university. Initiated in 2008 under the presidency of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–10), the Brazilian government entrusted the university with bringing together students from Brazil, Mozambique, São Tomé e Príncipe, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and East Timor to foster cultural and educational integration. The government at the time imagined integration as a means by which to strengthen Africa–Brazil relations and to support domestic and international development. By April 2015, approximately 30 per cent of UNILAB’s nearly 3,000 undergraduate students were international students, of whom the majority (approx. 90 per cent) came from African countries.1 1

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Internationalization of Higher Education for Development

Figure 0.1 UNILAB campus in Redenção, Ceará.

I became interested in UNILAB after years of studying critical literatures on development. These readings made me painfully aware of the colonial legacy and current limitations of North–South development relations. For centuries, Western-centric notions have portrayed Africa as underdeveloped and backward (Ferguson 2006). European colonial powers relied on these representations to justify the exploitation of the continent’s human and natural resources through triangular trade regimes fuelled by transatlantic slavery and the plantation economy in the Americas, followed by colonization of African territories in the aftermath of the Berlin Conference in 1884–5. After the Second World War, African anti-colonial movements demanded the independence of countries, which European governments granted reluctantly and not without violence. Today, political and economic dependencies persist, maintained by uneven flows of global capital and (human) resources, shaped by political conditionalities and capital-intensive debt regimes as well as being perpetuated through theories of cultural and economic modernization. Until now, development regimes have arguably resulted more often in benefits for so-called donor countries than in lasting improvements for so-called recipient countries. As these historical entanglements have become widely dismantled, critical scholarship has given way to a deep suspicion of international development efforts. The impression even arises that the international community might be

Introduction

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eager to abandon these efforts altogether, although no adequate form of redistribution has ever been achieved.2 The mounting criticism of North–South relations created an opening in which South–South relations appeared as a more egalitarian alternative.3 Coupled with the Brazilian government’s claim that it pursues solidarity cooperation (a slogan reminiscent of the Non-Alignment Movement,4 which left me nostalgic for my socialist childhood), this rhetoric prompted me to examine South–South cooperation as a ‘site of possibilities’; that is, places, situations and practices that would lean towards more equitable solutions in development cooperation. I wanted to see how the Brazilian discourse of South–South solidarity was put into practice. I was particularly interested to explore to what extent international students from African countries felt that claims of solidarity were being realized. The political idea of Africa–Brazil relations under the Lula presidency was radically new in its decolonizing vision.5 The claim of solidarity with African countries coincided with a remarkable shift in state discourses from ‘racial democracy’ to ‘affirmative action’ (Htun 2004). At the beginning of the 2000s, after decades of holding on to the false perception that socioeconomic disparities were not also racial disparities, the Brazilian government introduced a number of affirmative action policies to democratize access to public employment and higher education (Paschel 2016). Reforms included a change to the national curriculum mandating the teaching of the history and culture of Africa and the Afro-Brazilian diaspora at all levels of education. The aim was to acknowledge the economic role of enslaved labour in the emergence of the Brazilian nationstate, and to value the African heritage in Brazilian culture. Lula himself celebrated South–South cooperation as a form of redemption, a promise to repay the historical debt of slavery. After his seventh visit to African countries in 2007, he said: ‘We have to overcome the cruel past of slavery, which has made us unhappy on both sides of the Atlantic. We have this historical bond.’6 During one of his frequent visits to the university, in 2013 Lula da Silva stressed that UNILAB was an effort to develop the rural interior and to pay Brazil’s dividend to Africa and Afro-descendants even if it could only be a small token of appreciation.7 Overall, Lula’s efforts to revitalize Africa–Brazil connections carried a strong symbolic value for Afro-Brazilian movements as they struggle to establish blackness as a meaningful political basis for emancipatory claims (Paschel 2016; Silvério 2017). The creation of UNILAB marked an innovative stride of inclusive development in four ways, if not five: domestically it promised to redress nonwhite underrepresentation in higher education and to support under-resourced

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rural regions; internationally it fostered alliances across Southern countries and strengthened the role of the post-colony in global politics.8 And fifth, UNILAB founders had a vision for the role of higher education in development that is profoundly different from most accounts on global higher education, one that does not begin with ‘world-class’ or ‘privatization’ narratives. Instead, founders hoped to build a public university that would transfer state resources directly to historically disadvantaged populations in Brazil and African countries. What is more, UNILAB proposed a model of knowledge sharing that underscored collective efforts and aimed to inspire local solutions for local problems, for instance in the fields of agro-ecology, popular education and sustainable energies. However, in spite of UNILAB’s unifying approach, university actors – students, professors and administrators – had many different, sometimes contradictory ideas about the enactment of solidarity. Furthermore, they had to confront the realities of sedimented structures of domination, shortage of resources, and deeply engrained sentiments regarding the inferiority of black9 people as they endeavoured to put the utopian vision into practice.10 Consequently, rather than providing a sweeping account of a ‘site of possibilities’, this study describes a much more ambiguous set of relations. To examine the everyday practices of Brazilian South–South cooperation, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork organized into repeated visits to Ceará between 2012 and 2015. The research included hundreds of hours of observation in classrooms, on campus and in the local community.11 I carried out numerous formal and informal conversations to learn about students’, professors’ and administrators’ experiences.12 Repeated visits and long-term observations allowed me to follow the intense negotiations and shifting power constellations among professors, of whom many also held administrative positions. I witnessed the challenges that professors faced as they were trying to prepare syllabi and course materials that would be meaningful to all the students in their classrooms. I saw students from African countries – many came to Brazil in pursuit of better futures – struggle to find and afford housing in a small, rural town that was not prepared for their arrival. I watched the emergence of intercultural friendships and support networks as race, class, gender, language, nationality and other forms of differentiation were shaping social relations. In the end, it became clear that tremendous struggles over racialized disparities in Brazilian higher education were at the core of UNILAB’s ambiguities. On the one hand, these struggles are not surprising given the hyper-inequalities in terms of law, wealth, access to opportunities and cultural discrimination that affect Brazilians the most, who are perceived to comply the least with the racial mixedness considered

Introduction

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to be the Brazilian norm (Telles 2004).13 On the other hand, this meant that the kind of solidarity and integration the Brazilian government had envisioned when creating the university, while never completely absent, happened in ways that were reflective of the powerfully racialized class hierarchies inherited from Portuguese colonialism and still prevalent in Brazilian society today. When I began this research, I did not anticipate that race would be at the core of understanding Brazilian South–South cooperation. I certainly did not want to write about it out of fear to essentialize Brazil by reducing UNILAB to a discussion on culture, a racializing gesture by itself as it relegates potential variations between North–South and South–South development relations to the realm of cultural differences and thus beyond the possibility of reason.14 But mostly, I had convinced myself that conceptualizing Africa–Brazil relations through the analytical lens of race would readily accept the presumption of ontological difference, a logic by which humans are sorted into hierarchies of belonging via the faculty of vision. I had to figure out new aspects of my positionality before I realized that excluding race from the inquiry became possible only because my situated imagination enabled me to envision solidarity as something that exists outside and beyond racialism. In other words, I conceptualized solidarity as an object of knowledge that is analytically distinct from race. Yet, the data refused to fit this distinction. Only after reconsidering events within registers of critical black studies, the contours of the stories recounted here emerged. So far, critical development studies have treated race, taken as an object of knowledge, primarily as a cultural phenomenon, casting it as an unintended consequence of otherwise technologically brilliant and benign development interventions. According to this logic, development as a discursive regime constructs postcolonial subjects as those who inhabit ethnicity and tradition, busying themselves only with the ethnographic particularities of their very local circumstances. Development experts, on the other hand, have been viewed as imbued with reason, capable of objective knowledge and universal insights that benefit everyone, including postcolonial subjects.15 Although the racializing gesture performed by such binary constructions has been acknowledged,16 racism and racial inequality continue to be seen mostly as expressions of local power relations in the context of underdevelopment. Such analyses, however, fall flat because they miss that the very idea of reason presupposes the existence of an ontologically different, unreasonable other. By bringing critical black studies’ theorizations of race and blackness to bear on the understanding of UNILAB, this study illuminates that development efforts

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(in education and elsewhere) most of the time gloss over the fact that the possibility to think in racial terms was foundational to conceiving notions of reason in the first place. Taking note of race – in theory and in practice – can never, so it seems, fully escape essentialism. It can never fully evade the possibility of re-inscribing the difference that it claims to write against. At the same time, circumstances were infinitely more complex. Sedimented assemblages of forces that called on categories of difference – expressions of belonging or not, such as nationality, religion, gender, language, class and otherwise – constantly folded into each other to the extent that they could no longer be disentangled. Even as it appeared as the most generative analytical category, race is but one of many fault lines of difference that overlapped, intersected and intermeshed in expected and unexpected ways in the making of UNILAB. To understand Brazilian South– South cooperation thus requires an approach that unearths the workings of assemblages, how they shape and are shaped by official rhetoric, and how they then, in turn, mould and are moulded by everyday struggles over influence, survival and wellbeing in the rural interior of Northeast Brazil.

Racializing assemblages This study’s thinking with race, as an analytical lens, is deeply indebted to Alexander Weheliye’s (2014) intellectual project of disarticulating the notion of the human from the occidental/heteronormative/white Man, which since the Enlightenment has constructed himself as the universal norm of what it means to be human. According to Weheliye, race must be placed front and centre in understanding systems of oppression not ‘as a biological or cultural classification but as a set of socio-political processes of differentiation and hierarchization, which are projected onto the putatively biological human body’ (5). In his theory of racializing assemblages,17 Weheliye describes race and racism as the mundane inscription of difference into human flesh. Racializing assemblages are sedimented power structures solidified by real historical events (e.g., segregated colonial schooling) over time, and which require the constant re-articulation via ‘institutions, discourses, practices, desires, infrastructures, languages, technologies, sciences, economies, dreams, and cultural artifacts’ (3) to bar nonwhite subjects from the category of the human. These sedimentations are neither fully determined (or fixed) nor are they indefinitely fluid as though they were forever free-floating and unpredictable. Rather, frames of reference that draw on

Introduction

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the past – such as the Brazilian government’s recourse to slavery – do not escape the mournful meaning inherited from colonialism/slavery even as they promise to usher in another future. Building on critical black feminist studies, especially Hortense Spiller and Sylvia Wynter, Weheliye offers a profound critique of biopolitical conceptualizations of what it means to be human. He shows with great eloquence and rigorous attention to detail (leaving no stone unturned) how the concepts of ‘bare life’ and ‘biopolitics’ function as racializing assemblages. According to Weheliye, Foucault and Agamben identify the Third Reich and Nazi racism as analytical starting points from which to infer the theory of society as a biopolitical apparatus according to which the exercise of state power is defined as taking hold of the biological health of the national population – make live and let die. Both authors identify the Nazi death camps as a prime case of disciplinary power. Agamben disavows racialization, whereas Foucault places race and ethnicity ‘always already beyond the administrative, ideological, and conceptual precincts of Europe’ (62), locating the unethical practice of mundane and structural racism in an always already primitive elsewhere. What is more, racism figures prominently only in Society must be Defended Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76, whereas in the rest of Foucault’s work racism as an object of knowledge is mostly absent except for the use of ‘ethnic racism’ as an ominous point of comparison for biopolitics.18 In other words, Foucault’s and Agamben’s analyses miss (or push to the side) that racism precedes biopolitical conceptions of difference. As the idea of race, as a sedimented assemblage, according to Weheliye, has become pinioned to human physiology over time, the possibility of theorizing the biological as political already represents a racializing assemblage. Weheliye strongly critiques Agamben’s and Foucault’s use of Nazi racism as ‘the apex in the telos of modern racializing assemblages’ (59) as they bracket different forms of genocide – indigenous genocide, racialized indentured servitude, racial slavery – which preceded the Third Reich historically and served as laboratories for the sort of power later to be perfected in the death camps. Why is it that colonialism is allowed to remain in the shadows in Foucault and Agamben’s analyses? Rather than casting the Nazi death camps as the case that represents them all (to which all other cases must be compared), the concentration camps, the colonial outposts, and the slave plantations should be seen as: ‘three of many relay points in the weave of modern politics, which are neither exceptional nor comparable, but simply relational’ (37). Foucault’s and Agamben’s conceptualizations of biopolitics miss how violent systems of subjugation (colonial systems of exploitation, transatlantic slave trade, plantation regimes, the industrial-prison complex, torture, rape, murder) imposed the distinction

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between humans and non-humans upon the natural fact of physical variation, into a quasi-biological phenomenon of visual distinction (‘hieroglyphics of the flesh’ – ‘cultural seeing by skin color’ Spillers 2007, cited in Weheliye 2014: 40), allowing bare life and biopolitics discourse to imagine an indivisible biological substance anterior to racialization. Perhaps placing racism outside the confines of Europe is not a ‘mistake’, accidently performed by biopolitical discourses? Perhaps it is the condition of the possibility of conjuring biopolitics as a theoretical framing for notions of society from a post-war European perspective? Continental French philosophical thought’s disregard of racism and racialization – and its simultaneous self-regard as critical scholarship – repeats the dehumanization of those perceived to be other as it has been performed by European Enlightenment thinkers of the eighteenth century (Wischmann 2018). Fatima El-Tayeb’s scholarship provides a clue in this direction. In European Others (2011), she chronicles how the geopolitical identity of Europe (and Germany) as the continent of purity and reason hinges on excising race as always already happening in the ‘philosophical, geographical, and political quicksand of an unspecified elsewhere’ (Weheliye 2014: 58). Mirroring Weheliye’s deconstruction of Foucauldian analysis, El-Tayeb captures how this sees ‘Europeans possessing the (visual) marker of Otherness [as] eternal newcomers, forever suspended in time, forever “just arriving,” defined by a static foreignness overriding both individual experiences and historical facts’ (2011: xxv). According to El-Tayeb, the Second World War, particularly the Holocaust, ended the innocence of Western modernity. Afterwards, the European West was faced with the task to recover and modify the Enlightenment project to re-establish itself as the universal norm (i.e. human rights, 8). I am intrigued by this curious conjuncture of events by which one situated set of ideas (biopolitics, governmentality), which happened to offer redemption for the no longer innocent/pure Europe by casting the Third Reich and Nazi death camps (the cause of impurity) as the apex of a new form of reasoning (biopolitics), which, as a logic, has gained sufficient traction to order human interrelations in spaces from the prison, hospital, schools and including in the university classroom. To provide only anecdotal evidence, students conversant in Foucauldian vernacular (by virtue of their university education) have found a new way to evade classroom discussions by marking them out as ‘new forms of governmentality’. One need not wonder anymore about the intricacies of race or gender or class (and otherwise) as governmentality provides a new form of reasoning about state power. Nowadays everything can be interpreted as power in service of the state. Everything individuals do, how they feel, and make sense is read within the logic of biopolitics.

Introduction

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Just as minoritized traditions of thought are making headway into the university, they are divested of their voices since the subject, who would have formerly carried this voice, has become suspect. While the idea that teaching serves governmentality should not be readily discarded, the possibility of the (in)ability to master biopolitics-speech is remaking the terrain of the classroom in its own way, as we speak. It remains to be seen what principles emerge by which to cut reason from unreason (Popkewitz 1998) once teachers, who were trained in the language of governmentality, arrive in schools. But let’s return to the discussion at hand. What if Weheliye’s analysis holds? What if El-Tayeb’s analysis holds? What if both analyses read together suggest that Foucault’s marred use of racism is not a slippage, not a lapse of the lazy mind, not an epiphenomenon, but foundational to his argument as it imparts the dishonoured idea of Europeanness with new meaning, one that rectifies past wrongs by showing how it had overcome history and by anticipating a future in which Europe projects itself once again as the universal norm; resurrected as the centre of reason, calculability and rationality? The idea of past wrongs being overcome is central to postmodern, European understandings of diversity. The Brazilian government’s reliance on the historical connection between African countries and Brazil aiming to repay the debt of slavery via South–South cooperation represents a similar gesture. From the perspective of the Brazilian government, this framing posited a reinterpretation of the past to alter social and geopolitical relations in the present. It projects Brazil into a multicultural future. However, it also assigns students and faculty, who bare the mark of colonial racism inscribed in flesh, the subject position of ‘former slave’. It places them forever in the past yet simultaneously calling on them to serve as an icon of Brazil’s future. The use of race as an analytical lens in this study refuses to gloss over the colonial origin of the very possibility to think with race because ‘[t]o think about the danger of what is useful, is not to think that the dangerous thing doesn’t exist’ (Spivak 1993: 11). To describe Brazilian South–South cooperation in a way that does not re-affirm the status of non-white subjects as beyond the grasp of the human requires that the subject (people of colour) be disarticulated analytically from the object of knowledge (race). Deploying race as an analytical lens does not foreclose any singular meaning of this category. It does, however, treat the idea of race as an empirical question, one that needs unpacking of the multiplicity of meanings as the grand narrative of solidarity between people bound by history unfolds. Rather than taking race for granted, this study aims to observe when, where and how it emerges as an idea, and what functions are performed

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by the idea. My analyses bring insights from critical black studies’ theorizations of race and blackness to bear on the understanding of the UNILAB project in its multidimensional potentialities, good and bad. They point to the colonial core of UNILAB’s founding narrative showing how it reverberates in the everyday experiences of international students without immediately betraying the university’s decolonizing potential. The study destabilizes binary perceptions of race as either cultural or biological system of classification by showing that it appears as a frame of reference by which students and professors make sense of the university, as a political technology, and as a subject position that defies singular meanings as it travels across times and spaces with international student mobility offering yet another moment of reinterpretation.

Race as blackness The government placed UNILAB’s first campus in Redenção in the state of Ceará because Redenção was the first Brazilian town to legally abolish slavery in 1883. This choice of location supported the South–South cooperation narrative of redeeming a historical debt. It also signalled the cultural, political, social and developmental affinities between Africa and Brazil, which, according to official justifications, ensued from the history of slavery. Yet, rarely do Brazilians originating from Ceará perceive themselves as Afro-descendants or embrace these affinities (Miles 2002). Compared to other states like Bahia, Maranhão, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais or Pernambuco, Ceará was not a large slave-holding enclave. After abolition, Brazilian elites (including those in Ceará) promoted the ideology of racial democracy and miscegenation, neglecting the African heritage in Brazilian culture. Over time, the ethno-racial-cultural mixing of African, European and Indigenous populations blurred the distinctiveness of any one group’s phenotypical appearance, to the extent that scholars would come to claim that there were few blacks in Ceará (Girão 1962, cited in Miles 2002: 5). This perception persists today. During a birthday party, in 2012, in a wealthy apartment complex by the Atlantic Ocean in Fortaleza, Ceará’s capital, a guest expressed interest in my research. As I explained the university’s official purpose of co-educating Brazilian students and students from African countries in the name of solidarity, he responded in surprise: ‘There are no blacks in Ceará,’ in spite of the presence of three women who would be widely considered black in the sociocultural context of Brazil. It turned out the women were from Bahia and had come to Ceará for work.

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In the Cearense imagination, a person perceived to be black is always already placed elsewhere. This particular narration of blackness shaped people’s reactions to the arrival of international students in Redenção. People relied on perceptions of differences in appearance and cultural repertoire (e.g., language, clothing) to identify individuals as either Brazilian or foreign, almost automatically subsuming those whom they perceived to be black under the category of the latter. Professora Lourdes’, a (self-identified) black Brazilian professor, experience provides proof: 19 Since I got here I have already had many identities, Cape Verdean, São Tomensean, Mozambican. . . . One day I went to a beauty parlour. As I arrived, the girl called into the back: ‘One of the Africans is here’. Fieldnotes, 14 February 2013

Often enough (though certainly not always) these perceptions triggered xenophobic reactions to international students similar to those experienced by Joanna, a student in her late twenties from Guinea Bissau. Mockingly, she acted out the story of how in a supermarket a child would step in front of her saying: ‘I don’t like you, my dad doesn’t like you, you cannot walk in these streets’ (fieldnotes, 3 February 2013). What bothered Joanna the most was that the mother neither apologized nor did she encourage the child to make amends. Joanna was resigned. She felt sorry for the child, who must have learned such views from someone. From micro-aggressions to outright hostility, discrimination is part of African students’ everyday experiences in Brazil (Malomalo Fonseca and Badi 2015). Neusa Maria Mendes de Gusmão exposes the torn condition of being simultaneously foreign and African that gives way to such discrimination: To accept the Other for being foreign, and, at the same time, to negate him/her for being black implies to recognize the student’s presence coming from another country but also points to the significance of race in Brazilian reality, being seen through the color of one’s skin and through the relations that allow one to be called Other, Brazilian or foreign, however, black. 2011: 194, emphasis original

The rather widespread practice of labelling international students generically as ‘African’ regardless of their diverse social, ethnic, racial, national, linguistic and other backgrounds paired with a simplistic and folkloric notion of Africa, which is common among many Brazilians (Subuhana 2009), performs a homogenizing gesture. It represents a way of making the international students the same while

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keeping them at arm’s length as guests, who will leave eventually. In the context of Ceará, many people assume that if someone looks different, s/he must be coming from somewhere else. International students are perceived to be black and thus foreign. They are made black through the racializing gaze of the Brazilian imaginary, which tends to ‘think itself as white’ (de Gusmão 2011: 192). Gusmão’s assertion might be controversial since many Brazilians do not think of themselves as either black or white. Generally, they consider themselves to be of mixed race. Yet, Gusmão’s recourse to whiteness does not displace mixedness. It just shifts the tone since both perform the same function. Both carry a notion of national purity (‘white’ in the European and ‘mixed’ in the Brazilian sense), an invention that facilitated the emergence of nation-states during the nineteenth century (Europe) and at the turn of the twentieth century (Brazil). ‘Mixed’ is an expression within the racializing assemblage of racial democracy that carries the incitement for whitening achievable through racial mixing as a kind of racial purification, which simultaneously desires and derides the racial other as a symbol of nationhood (Pravaz 2012). Traces can be found in the genealogy of Brazilian understandings of race and culture embedded in the notion of ‘cordiality’ – the cultural inability to distinguish between private and public spheres, causing one to constantly intervene in the other – discussed by the Brazilian historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda in Raízes do Brasil, which first appeared in 1936, as well as in Gilberto Freyre’s Sobrados e Mucambos published the same year. Most contemporary interpretations of Brazilian cordiality attribute the concept to Holanda but rely on a Freyrean interpretation (de Castro Rocha 2000). Whereas for Holanda cordiality was not an exclusively Brazilian characteristic but a structural trait of societies that do not establish clear boundaries between public and private spheres of society, Freyre portrayed cordiality as a uniquely Brazilian trait embedded in historical processes of mestiçagem (miscegenation), which was first articulated as an ideal by the German historian Karl Friedrich von Martius. In his 1840 monograph, How the History of Brazil Should Be Written, von Martius described the encounter between Portuguese, Indigenous and African peoples in productive terms, while clearly delineating a leading role for the Portuguese:‘Portuguese blood, in a powerful river, should absorb the small tributaries of the Native and African Races’ (de Castro Rocha 2000: 77). For Martius, who has most probably been influenced by the Germanic strain of eugenic thought that marshalled genetic-hereditary rather than environmental explanations for variations in humans (Cleminson 2016), miscegenation was above all a racial phenomenon. At the turn of the twentieth century, Brazilian scientists subscribed to the idea that Caucasians are inherently superior to non-white people, proposing policies

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of whitening as a solution (Schwarcz 1999). Brazilian politicians and elites subsequently promoted European immigration to replace slave labour and heralded miscegenation to alter what they perceived as biological degeneracy in the Brazilian populace. Race mixture became a central feature of Brazilian national identity, later purportedly wrested, however, from the biological determinism of eugenic viewpoints and handed over to anti-racist sociological analysis by Gilberto Freyre. Freyre has been widely credited with fully developing the idea of racial democracy that dominated Brazilian race thinking from the 1930s to the early 1990s. Freyre claimed that Brazilian society was unique for its smooth blending of European, Indian and African people and cultures and free of the anti-black racism that affected the rest of the world. In Case Grande e Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves [1933] 1986), he characterized the extended patriarchic family of the plantations (latifundios) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a cauldron for interracial mixing that harmonized differences and diluted conflicts, thus enabling extraordinary assimilation, creating a new Brazilian people. Freyre’s doctrine of Lusotropicalism was later deployed by the Portuguese to justify the colonization of African territories. The Portuguese constructed themselves as benign colonizers and the only Europeans to create a civilization in the tropics, an accomplishment attributable above all to their racial tolerance.20 Ironically, Freyre’s anti-racist vision of miscegenation was contingent upon the process of whitening as developed by the earlier generation. Freyre acknowledged that miscegenation could only occur in modern times because of the population’s belief in white supremacist ideology of whitening. According to this popular notion, ordinary black Brazilians believed their greatest chance for escaping poverty was to marry whites and lighter-skinned mulattos. However, Freyre generally downplayed whitening and focused rather on miscegenation’s effects of diffusing racial differences (Telles 2004). In other words, upon arrival in Brazil, international students stepped onto the Lusotropical grid of intelligibility that conceptualizes race as skin colour, quasibiologically, with blackness as a deviation from the norm. While Weheliye made clear that race must be taken as an object of knowledge, Michelle Wright’s Physics of Blackness (2015) blazes the trail for understanding blackness as a multi-linear and multi-dimensional phenomenon. Most discourses on blackness in the United States and the Caribbean rely on the history of the Middle Passage, by which slavery has become the defining moment for black collective identities. However, understandings of blackness bound to Middle Passage narratives are rather exclusive, as they do not represent those who are not meaningfully linked to Middle Passage black communities, such as people of colour in the

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European context (El-Tayeb 2011). Wright finds Middle Passage narratives limiting in another sense. It makes blackness tangible only in relation to whiteness. To overcome the limitations, Wright proposes to rethink blackness as a multidimensional and multilinear phenomenon with the Middle Passage epistemology being but one form through which to make sense of black identity. To illustrate what she means by unthinking the linearity of the Middle Passage epistemology, Wright draws on the writings of James Arthur Baldwin. Baldwin (1924–1987) was an American novelist and social critic. In his writings he explored the intricacies of racial, sexual and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-twentieth-century North America. Wright comments on Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son (1955) to explain the entwinement of epiphenomenal and linear spacetimes: Baldwin recounts a year in New Jersey in which the unbearable limits placed on his spacetime – where he is allowed to be and when, and for how long – lead to the famous encounter that shows him that his very life is at stake if he does not escape these environs. Walking in and sitting down at a ‘whites only’ diner, he waits for the inevitable rejection from the waitress. When she does indeed tell him that they ‘don’t serve Negroes here,’ he hurls a glass at her and runs out in front of the angry white patrons and staff: ‘I could not get over two facts, both equally difficult for the imagination to grasp, and one was that I could have been murdered. But the other was that I had been ready to commit murder. I saw nothing very clearly but I did see this: that my life, my real life, was in danger, and not from anything other people might do but from the hatred I carried in my own heart.’ Wright 2015: 119

The array of responses from which Baldwin could have picked in the moment is neither limited to a singular response (i.e., anti-racism) nor is it infinite, given the confines of legal segregation at the time. Rather than confining Baldwin’s account to Middle Passage logic (linearly and alone), Wright accounts for epiphenomenal time in the form of the choice, which transcends the confines of the Middle Passage epistemology, as it does not cast Baldwin’s reasoning in opposition to anti-black racism (fear of death, killable other, hence object) but as a human response (not wanting to kill, personhood, hence subject). Imaginaries of blackness contain a multiplicity of meanings, none of which is exclusive but instead intersects and overlaps, shaped, however, by when and where blackness is being imagined, defined, and performed. Multi-dimensional and multi-linear constructions of race and/or as blackness foreclose the possibility of a singular

Introduction

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meaning or binary constructions (solely in opposition to whiteness). Instead they open up space for inclusive and non-hierarchical understandings that locate black collectives simultaneously in history and in the specific moment of ‘the now’ (14) in which blackness is being imagined. Wright’s conceptualization of the now in which blackness defies any singular meaning relates to Weheliye’s focus on assemblages in that the now can also be understood as a racializing assemblage that jells in a matter of seconds, relying on the faculty of the senses, rendering a person and/or situation other. Yet, it is in the eye of the observer that a non-white subject becomes other, objectified and racialized, whereas the subject maintains choices that often escape the narrow confines of any observer’s perception. In the context of UNILAB, international students could never really escape the racializing constructions of their subject positions. They had to navigate the discursive grid of Lusotropical imaginations of racial and cultural diversity, which they did by asserting their rightful belonging in the spaces of UNILAB.

Outline The Brazilian government under the Lula administration imagined UNILAB as the beacon of Africa–Brazil relations. It promised national development through the interiorization of public higher education, Afro-Brazilian emancipation, and internationalization of higher education as a soft-power tool to form South– South alliances. But the everyday making of the university also produces tensions not the least because the founding narrative relies on racializing construction of international students. In the following chapters, I examine how ideas of blackness and racialization shape the everyday practices of Brazilian South–South cooperation at UNILAB. In Chapter 1, I provide an overview on Portuguese colonialism and postcolonial education landscapes in Lusophone countries to contextualize UNILAB’s founding mythology of shared history and cultural affinity. In Chapter 2, I describe the developmental contours that link the internationalization and interiorization mandates of the university. Chapters 1 and 2 together provide basic information on the South–South cooperation narrative that subsequently leads to the tensions that faculty and students had to navigate in their everyday interactions. Chapter  3 outlines the abolitionist narrative and critically reflects on how it imposes itself on the diverse histories of African countries where anti-colonial, independence narratives were far more significant in configuring autonomous political and racialized identities. It

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problematizes the Middle Passage narrative by providing alternative interpretations from a multi-dimensional perspective. In Chapter 4, I illustrate the struggles of Afro-Brazilian activist professors to establish blackness as a legitimate political category in the context of UNILAB and Brazil more broadly. I show that Afro-Brazilian activist professors mobilize an understanding of blackness that instrumentalizes the presence of students and faculty from African countries, the latter questioning the subject positions that the abolitionist narrative assigns them with. Chapter 5 examines the ways in which professors aim to foster in their students a historical consciousness. It delves into the curriculum and moves into classrooms examining various messages on history, society and cultures embedded in the general curriculum. Together with Chapter 6, it looks at social interactions on campus in relation to the messages students receive through teaching. Chapter 7 focuses on students’ social relations outside the university and how they are shaped by race vis-à-vis solidarity. Chapter  8 draws the several themes together and closes with thoughts on thinking critically with race as an analytical lens in international development education.

Notes 1 Fieldwork began when the first campus was inaugurated in Redenção in 2011. By the end of 2015, UNILAB had three campuses, two in Ceará and one in Bahia. It enrolled 2,666 undergraduate students: 73 per cent of them were Brazilian and the 27 per cent of international students came from Guinea Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé e Principe, Cape Verde and East Timor. It employed 173 professors, 87 per cent of them Brazilian and 13 per cent non-Brazilian (two from each of the countries of Angola and Guinea Bissau, and one each from Peru, Cape Verde, Congo, Costa Rica, Gabon, Mozambique and Portugal). It offered seven undergraduate disciplines including agronomy, engineering of sustainable energies, public administration, nursing, social sciences and humanities, teacher education in maths and science, and pedagogy. The students were organized into classes by cohorts according to date of entry and discipline (e.g., autumn 2012, agronomy). For the most part students stayed together in these disciplinary cohorts throughout their studies. Teaching lasted three regular trimesters, and an additional fourth trimester was reserved for cultural activities and extra-curricular learning. 2 During the post-war era, when modernization theories postulated an economic and cultural convergence between the so-called ‘First’ and ‘Third World’, it was assumed that so-called ‘developing countries’ were indeed developing. Development discourses, projects and practices promised that these countries would eventually

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4

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6 7 8

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‘catch up’, transitioning to models of society found in the so-called developed countries. This constituted a temporalized differentiation of countries and world regions. It is now well established that the wholesale transition is not actually what happens. Instead, traditional elements that used to characterize ‘backward’ regions endure alongside adopted and appropriated elements of modernity. Critical scholars and development practitioners have thus come to the conclusion that spatial variations – alternative modernities – explain persisting divergences (Ferguson 2006: 176–93). The thought that different world regions might never converge in their economic viability could suggest, deceivingly, that any effort in this regard would be futile. Gita Steiner-Khamsi (2009) provides a critical discussion to whether South–South cooperation is indeed an alternative or rather a continuation of North–South development relations. Following the Bandung Conference in 1955, leaders of the ‘Third World’ formed the Non-Alignment Movement in 1961. Principles such as non-intervention, noninterference and equal treatment provided the basis for South–South state relations. Controlling the production of knowledge, including knowledge about the ostensible other, was governing technology in the hands of Global North powers to maintain the subordination of countries in the Global South (Grovogui 2001). Alongside geopolitical objectives, the alliance aimed to cooperate in education and exchange knowledge to enhance human capital as well as to counter-weight neo-colonial knowledge production on their behalf (Abdenur 2002). The Brazilian government has relied on the rhetoric of the historical bond between Africa and Brazil already during the 1960s and 1970s (Dávila 2010). The main difference in Lula’s politics is that they are combined explicitly with measures to mediate the socioeconomic, cultural, and political discrimination of Afro-Brazilians through affirmative action policies rather than under the ideological banner of racial democracy. Cited in Barbosa, Narciso and Biancalana 2009, p. 72. Fieldnotes, 1 March 2013. See also Document no. 31 for similar comments during the inauguration of UNILAB’s campus in Bahia. Burges (2005) analysed Brazilian foreign policy under the Lula da Silva government through a postcolonial lens. He argued that Lula da Silva continued the foreign policy of his predecessor Henrique Fernando Cardoso (1995–2002), who sought to reverse Brazil’s economic dependency on countries of the northern hemisphere by emphasizing trade relations with southern partners, but that Lula da Silva went beyond mere politico-economic measures. Burges linked Lula da Silva’s foreign policy to Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial text Black Skin White Mask (1967 [1952]), in which Fanon eloquently deciphers the psychological effects of colonization as cultural inferiority complex that manifests in the psyche of the colonized. According to Burges, Lula da Silva’s foreign policy represented an attempt to transform the

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Internationalization of Higher Education for Development colonizer/colonized dichotomy and to instil in Brazilians a sense of national pride and emancipation. Translating ethno-racial categories from Portuguese to English is complicated. Therefore, a word on terminology: the Brazilian census distinguishes between branco (white), pardo (mixed-race or brown), preto (black, referring to the darkest Brazilians), amarelo (yellow) and indígena (indigenous). Furthermore, in everyday vernacular, Brazilians use mulata (mulatto, especially for women) and mestiço (mestizo) to refer to a person’s mixedness. Brazilians increasingly also use the term negro, especially if they are politically aware, which also translates to black. It includes both pretos and pardos (Paschel 2016). Classifying populations by race, through censuses or otherwise, naturalizes lines of difference – such as who is perceived to be black or white – while these are de facto sociohistorical categories that are ‘cultural impositions upon the natural fact of physical variation among human beings’ (Loveman 2014: xiii). Throughout the following pages, the terms black, white, non-black, non-white and mixed, are used only if pertinent for the argument whilst making every effort to do so not only for those, who are frequently called upon to represent the concept of race. Motter and Gandin (2016) and McCowan (2016b) have also discussed the ambiguities of Brazilian inter-regional universities (including UNILAB and UNILA). The authors emphasize challenges of governance and implementation, whereas my analyses focus on the discursive constructions of international students as Brazil’s racial other to legitimize the creation of the university. I borrowed the notion of ‘utopia’ from Motter and Gandin (2016). Classroom observations are detailed in Appendix I. I further conducted over 400 hours of observations on-campus (e.g., during general assemblies, faculty meetings, in library, hallways, university restaurant) and off-campus (e.g., at bus stops or in the market square), during activities organized and supported by the university (e.g., artistic performances, sports events) as well as outside the purview of the university including informal gatherings in students’ homes and in town, at birthday parties, and during church services. I also conducted repeated and in-depth interviews with twenty-four professors, twenty students, and five administrators (including in 2013 a thirty-minute interview with Paulo Speller, UNILAB’s first dean (reitor)). To get a sense of UNILAB’s self-representation, I collected official documents (including the founding document) and website contents that were designed to promote the university. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Redenção and Acarape (Ceará). I conducted 137 hours of participatory observation in classrooms in which I observed twenty-five professors (out of eighty-five) across sixteen classes; that is, different cohorts in different disciplines, nocturnal as well as diurnal (see Appendix I for details). At the beginning, I visited a range of classrooms to gain an overview on

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15 16

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contents and classroom relationships. Later, I concentrated on courses included in the mandatory general curriculum that covered the history, society and culture of Lusophone spaces, university life, introduction to research, and the Portuguese language (87 per cent). The general curriculum was designed to foster students’ intercultural capacities and historical knowledges. I anticipated that much of the work of building Africa–Brazil relations would be performed in these classroom spaces. The analyses reference twenty-eight hours of classroom observations in Society, History and Culture in Lusophone Spaces (SHC), forty-eight hours in Intercultural Topics in Lusophone Spaces (TI) classrooms, and forty-six hours in Insertion into University Life (VU) classrooms across cohorts and disciplines. Perceptions of race and related material consequences are highly complex in the Brazilian context. In the public opinion, the idea persists that there are no or very few racial disparities in terms of socioeconomic and cultural status. Meanwhile, vast research has shown that Brazilians indeed judge by an intricate matrix whether a person is black, and that these judgments have real material consequences. Bailey, Loveman and Muniz (2013) compared self- versus interviewer-rated measures of perceived blackness in a large sample study. They could prove that degrees of inequality between white and non-white Brazilians varied differently depending on the measure of blackness. Socioeconomic inequality was less pronounced when it was calculated using self-rated measures of blackness. It was graver when calculated using interviewer-rated measures. In addition, the authors showed that the discrimination against non-white Brazilians was even stronger in the higher socioeconomic strata, preventing black Brazilians from access to management positions, for instance. The idea of reason emerged from Enlightenment philosophers, most notably Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) whose ideas continue to be foundational to the field of education (Wischmann 2018), understood education as the operation by which rational subjects were formed to benefit humankind, the society, and themselves by becoming better versions of themselves. Achille Mbembe (2018) provides a masterful discussion of how the discourse of race emerged from this period in which science, philosophy and other disciplines, and social debates, constructed differences between people. This was driven by capitalist exploitation and the unwillingness to live with the unfamiliar. Simultaneously the unfamiliar provided the lens through which European thinkers identified themselves as the norm, establishing the logic of racial thinking, which persists in many modes of thinking about identity and belonging. For critical accounts of this logic see Ferguson (1994) and Escobar (1995). For discussions of racialization in the name of progress see for example Kothari (2006) and Wilson (2012).

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17 Assemblages ‘constitute continuously shifting relational totalities comprised of spasmodic networks between different entities (content) and their articulation within “acts and statements” (expression)’ (Weheliye 2014: 46). Assemblages comprise various elements, which become elements of this very assemblage only in as far as they are co-constituted in relational connectivity. 18 Weheliye points out that this absence becomes even more pronounced if one considers the unacknowledged influence of the Black Panther Party (BPP), especially George Jackson and Angela Davis, on Foucault’s work in this period. 19 Most proper names in this work are pseudonyms with the exception of Mr Lula da Silva (Brazil’s president, 2003–10), Mr Speller (first dean, 2011–13), and Mrs Gomes (second dean, 2013–14). I consider their statements and actions to be public and not representative of their opinions as private individuals. Otherwise, I use pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of individuals, who participated in the research. In some case this also required modifying other markers of their identity, such as changing disciplinary fields, gender etc. 20 Freyre believed that the Portuguese possessed a high degree of plasticity that enabled them to conform to and blend with other societies and cultures, especially in comparison with the cultural rigidness, seclusion and self-reliance found among other Europeans. Ruled by the Moors for more than 500 years, the Portuguese had developed a culture that was accustomed to and welcomed darker-skinned peoples, Freyre alleged. Indeed, miscegenation with the Moors had long been practised in Portugal (Telles 2004).

1

Portuguese Colonialism and its Aftermath

The Portuguese Colonial Empire, also referred to as the Portuguese Overseas Territories (Ultramar Português), was the oldest colonial empire and also lasted the longest. It began in 1415 with the capture of Ceuta (the North African territory that is today Spain) and ended with officially granting sovereignty to East Timor in 2002. It spanned many parts of the world, which now belong to fifty-three countries. Despite its longevity, the Portuguese Colonial Empire had been semi-peripheral, at once far-reaching yet always incomplete compared to the British Commonwealth and the French Colonial Empire. The Portuguese were less interested in establishing bureaucratic, state-like infrastructures than in finding navigation routes and building ports for trade and extraction of natural resources. In fact, as a small country, Portugal had lacked the capacity to effectively colonize the territories it occupied in political and economic terms. The irony is that Portugal held on to its colonies longer than any other country, in part because it depended on them economically and because they contributed to the country’s pride and national identity (Sousa Santos 2002). The colonial period under Portuguese rule shaped the education systems of Brazil, Mozambique, São Tomé e Príncipe, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and East Timor. Like other forms of colonial occupation in conjunction with exploitive regimes of the transatlantic slave trade and the plantation economy, Portuguese colonialism laid the foundation for the classification and hierarchization of people based on cultural and racial differentiation. Later this formed the base for the myth of harmonious racial mixing so foundational to Brazilian national identity. While in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe – most notably in Germany – ‘the cult of unmixed origin’ (Mbembe 2017: 58) proved vital for emergent nationalisms, in Brazil the ideology of racial democracy served the same purpose (Silva and Paixão 2014). Throughout the twentieth century, Brazilian political and economic elites denied or understated that stark racial inequalities lurked underneath the national narrative of racial democracy. National discourses shifted only at the turn of the twenty-first century when the 21

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government began to implement affirmative action policies because of domestic pressure (Paschel 2010) and to preserve its international image (Htun 2004). The legacies of Portuguese colonialism and ideologies of cultural superiority, which have been developed through scientific exchange with European thinkers, shaped the cultural and economic fabric of contemporary Brazilian society.

Portuguese colonialism In the early fifteenth century, Portuguese sailors explored the coasts of Africa and the Atlantic archipelagos in search of sea routes for the spice trade. They reached Madeira in 1420, the Azores in 1427, Cape Verde in 1445, the Gulf of Guinea in 1460 and São Tomé e Príncipe in the early 1470s. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and in 1498 Vasco da Gama reached India. By 1506, Ilha de Moçambique in the north of Mozambique had become a strategic port on the way to Asia. In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral landed on the shores of what is today Brazil. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese had built a web of naval outposts that ran along the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia. These routes connected Portugal’s capital Lisbon to the furthest corners of the colonial world and their wealth. The Atlantic economic system centred on the production of cash crops and colonial produce to be sold in Europe. The Portuguese traded in sugar, gold, tobacco, coffee and wheat for the mainland, and soon their cargo included humans reduced to slaves (Page and Sonnenberg 2003). From the seventeenth century onwards, the Portuguese Empire was under constant attack from its European rivals (the Dutch Republic, England and France). These attacks strained the small country to the extent that it became incapable of defending its overstretched networks of trading posts. After the Dutch-Portuguese colonial wars (1602–63) the Portuguese had to give up their trade monopoly in the Indian Ocean. In turn, the Dutch gave up their rights in the Americas, which made Brazil into Portugal’s most valuable colony. In 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars, the French invaded Portugal. The Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil and established Rio de Janeiro as the de facto capital of Portugal. The Portuguese created the institutional infrastructure that Brazil needed to function as an independent state. They also allowed Brazil to trade with other countries at will. After Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, King John VI of Portugal raised the de jure status of Brazil to an equal and integral part of the United Kingdom of Portugal, which included Portugal, Brazil and the Algarve.

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The King hoped that he could maintain the capital in Brazil and allay Brazilian fears of becoming a colony once again. However, in 1820 a constitutionalist reform movement in Portugal demanded that the King return from Brazil. He nominated his son Dom Pedro I as regent to govern Brazil in his place. Soon after, the Brazilians began to fight against the Portuguese. African slaves and freed people, who in many cases were freed intentionally so they could be enlisted as soldiers, fought on both sides. In September 1822, Dom Pedro I declared Brazil’s independence from Portugal. He became the Emperor of Brazil and reigned until 1889. The colonial economy relied heavily on forced labour originally provided by Indigenous people. Many of them had died by the middle of the sixteenth century due to European diseases and atrocious working conditions. To account for the loss in the labour force, the Portuguese expanded the practice of trading humans as slaves that was already common in Iberia and the Caribbean during the fifteenth century, bringing men, women and children from Africa under the dehumanizing trade regime of the Atlantic economic system. Portuguese territories such as Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe (a set of islands off the west coast of Africa) served as strategic ports for the triangular trade between Africa, the Americas and Europe. According to some estimates, between 1519 and 1867, 11.6 million Africans were brought to the Americas. About one-third of them went to Brazil (Behrendt 1999; Lovejoy 2011). Brazil abolished slavery only in 1888. After the abolition of slavery, the loss of its Brazilian territories, and following the Berlin Conference in 1884–5, the Portuguese intensified the colonization of African territories. They pressed into the hinterlands of the naval outposts of their trade routes expanding them into country-sized territories. They started establishing settler colonies, most notably in what today are Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau. The Portuguese monopolized the entire mostly agrarianbased colonial economy and its trading activities. They controlled prices of raw materials (e.g., cash crops) by holding them below market prices and used the territories as markets for goods manufactured in Portugal. The mainland’s economy strongly depended on the colonies to balance the Crown’s chronic deficit in terms of trade. At the same time, the Portuguese refused to even minimally industrialize colonial territories, and thus reproduced the agrarian monopoly that characterized Portugal’s economic systems at that time. They introduced new social hierarchies and systematically discriminated against local populations. To fuel the colonial economy, as in Brazil, they forced local populations to work not as slaves, but under equally repressive compulsory

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labour requirements. The Portuguese established social categories that distinguished between ‘civilized’ and ‘non-civilized’ people. The latter was reserved for the local population. Those who fell into this category had no civil rights unless they abandoned their cultures, religions and languages. Only then could they potentially become assimilados (assimilated, a category between civilized and non-civilized). This status however was rarely conceded. During the 1960s, rising global anticolonial sentiments and decolonization demands forced Portugal to revise its colonial policies and introduce reforms. As part of these reforms, the Portuguese officially banished compulsory labour, but worker exploitation nonetheless continued. Black African workers were paid much less than urban, mostly white workers. Even as the Portuguese began to fill positions in the colonial administration with assimilados and began hiring African troops (to fight armed resistances), they kept local groups’ professional statuses below the statuses of those of Portuguese descent, thus maintaining a two-tiered hierarchy in the entire workforce of the colonial economy. Portuguese reform efforts also targeted the mainland’s constitution. In this new constitution, the Portuguese re-labelled their overseas territories into autonomous provinces rather than colonies to bestow on them the appearance of politically independent entities. The provinces, however, were neither allowed to maintain diplomatic ties with other foreign powers nor enforce laws or elect their own governments. In 1961, Portugal granted citizenship to local populations in the colonies, including the right to vote. This right, however, was dependent on a person’s ability to read and write the Portuguese language. Very few people qualified (e.g., 1 per cent in Mozambique and 3 per cent in Angola at that time), in large part because the Portuguese had no interest in providing local populations with even a basic education. Ultimately, the reforms changed the appearance rather than the substance of Portuguese colonialism in Africa. While seemingly eager to let the provinces appear autonomous the Portuguese de facto continued the domination and exploitation of these territories until 1975. At a time when other European powers had at least begun to cede to anticolonial demands for independence (though not without violence and war), the Portuguese dismissed requests for peaceful transition made by liberation movements in their colonies (i.e., MPLA, PAIGC, MLSTP, FRELIMO).1 Instead, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, who had come to power in Portugal through a coup d’état in 1926, extended his authoritarian regime into the colonies and increased military presence. The Portuguese reasserted their colonizing efforts by deploying large contingents of troops to ‘defend’ the provinces against the insurgence of liberation movements. The Portuguese also concentrated local

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populations in reservation-like, military-controlled villages, and removed peasants and semi-nomadic pastoralists from their homes, placing them in settlements. Basil Davidson described Portugal’s practices against independence movements as ‘colonial warfare on a rising scale of destruction of people and property, and an ever-greater dislocation of social life’ (1974: 19). The Portuguese backed their colonial activities through references to the ideology of Lusotropicalism borrowed from Brazilian social theory. Drawing on this ideology, the Portuguese could herald their colonial extension as a civilizing mission as the mixing of races allegedly contributed to the assimilation of Africans bringing them closer to the perceived ideal of Europeanness. Only after thirteen years of ferocious anti-colonial wars, at the end of Salazar’s military dictatorship in 1974, did African national liberation movements succeed. The countries gained independence 150 years after Brazil; São Tomé e Principe in 1972, Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau in 1974, Cape Verde in 1975. East Timor was also granted independence in 1975 but within ten days Indonesia invaded the country and occupied it until 2002. Portuguese colonialism, along with the transatlantic slave trade, produced different realities in the Americas and on the African continent. In Brazil, it created the racialized foundation of a nation. In Africa, the growing need for slave labour disrupted societies and shaped new global socio-economic relations. The continent’s diverse nineteenth-century experiences of missionaries and early settler colonialism, and twentieth-century experiences of widespread bureaucratically-enforced colonialism following the transatlantic slave trade, deeply transformed African societies and cultures, crafting new nation-states and reshaping the role of Africa as the producer of raw materials and markets for European and American goods. For a long time, Brazil presented itself as a (much desired) extension of Portugal, mostly in cultural but also in economic, social and political terms. At the national level, Brazil constructed itself as close to Europe, which it saw as the beacon of modernity. It purported a political stance of non-interference refraining from openly opposing late Portuguese colonialism (Abdenur and Rampini 2015). In the international arena, Brazil never voted publicly against Portuguese colonialism. Brazilian police even raided the FRELIMO office in Rio de Janeiro in 1964 (Taela 2017). Surprisingly though, the government was quick to officially recognize the newly independent African countries, even being the first to do so in the case of Angola. Four years later, Petrobrás, a large Brazilian petroleum company, started its operations in Angola, which underscores Brazil’s overall ambiguous role in Portuguese colonialism (Ribeiro 2011).

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Postcolonial education in the Lusophone world In Brazil, Catholic mission schools (run by Jesuits) dominated the colonial education system beginning in the sixteenth century. Until the twentieth century, Brazil was a very large, mostly rural country that depended primarily on agricultural production consisting of a mostly unskilled, but continually increasing, labour force of slaves, former slaves and immigrants. Like the Portuguese colonizers that came before, the independent Brazilian state showed little interest in expanding educational opportunities into rural areas, or indeed, for former slaves and the poor in the cities. The dominant classes increasingly feared that freedmen would gradually earn the minimum income that was required to earn the right to vote (Bethell 2000). In response, the government established a law that made literacy a new requirement for voter registration. In 1889, six decades after independence, only 20 per cent of the population could read and write. When the government finally began to expand the public education system, triggered by a period of rapid economic growth during the 1930s, it focused first on post-secondary education, neglecting primary and secondary education. This resulted in a small number of internationally renowned public universities and relatively low-quality public primary and secondary education, characterized by low enrolment and high drop-out and repetition rates. At the same time, private education expanded for the wealthy. It was not until the mid-1990s that reforms started to take place at lower levels of public education when Brazil’s growing industries required bettereducated workers. To meet the demands, government (at state and federal level) reintroduced performance tests of schools to monitor educational quality: they also increased overall funding and redistributed federal funds towards municipalities where education was underfunded. As a result, more students enrolled and more students actually completed primary and secondary levels of education. Between 1980 and 2000, school enrolment for children aged 7–14 grew from 80.9 per cent to 96.4 per cent. For youths aged 15–17, the rate rose from 49.7 per cent to 83 per cent. Illiteracy rates decreased to the extent that it became mostly a phenomenon among older generations (De Castro and Tiezzi 2004; Castro 2004). In Lusophone African countries, postcolonial education emerged precisely as these countries became the locations of brutal and bloody proxy wars for the Cold War. When colonial occupation of African territories finally ended in the mid-1970s, the majority of Portuguese settlers fled the colonies, migrating to Europe (e.g., Portugal) and the Americas (e.g., the US and Brazil). When they

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left, they took with them almost the entire professional capacity because, as in Brazil, the Portuguese had only minimally invested in educating the local population. Education under colonial rule was highly segregated. In urban areas, private and government schools served the settlers and assimilados, whereas local and rural students attended Catholic mission schools built with the primary purpose to ‘civilize’ the ‘barbarian’ natives. Consequently, illiteracy was extremely high and educational structures were virtually non-existent (Ferreira 1974). This was especially true in Mozambique and Angola – caught between ideological frontiers as their own aspirations for (socialist) self-determination were perceived as a threat by Western ‘liberal’ powers, which led the countries into brutal ‘civil wars’ (a term often deemed misleading) given the global circumstances of the Cold War. These wars lasted until the early 1990s when the fall of the Berlin Wall shifted global power dynamics yet again. They destroyed most of the educational infrastructures, which the independence movements had built as a mechanism to mobilize local populations against Portuguese colonialism. Mozambique, as a case study, serves to illuminate the dynamics of postcolonial education in Portuguese-language African countries. In Mozambique, the anti-colonial war began in 1964 and ended with a ceasefire in 1974. Throughout, education across all levels played a vital role. FRELIMO leaders were highly educated. Most of them had studied abroad (Englund 2002; Hall and Young 1997; Johnston 1990; Silva 2001). They aimed to educate a politically conscious ‘new man’ (homen novo) able and willing to support the revolutionary struggles. FRELIMO leaders focused on the provision of basic education in areas liberated during the anti-colonial war, in part to inform the local population of the purpose of the war and to secure effective participation. Between 1969 and 1972, FRELIMO established about 160 primary schools that served about 20,000 to 30,000 students. FRELIMO also invested in higher levels of education to form a cadre of highly trained professionals. By 1974, the movement supported 500 secondary and seventy post-secondary students in institutions abroad (e.g., South Africa, former East Germany). During summer breaks, (post-)secondary students returned to the liberated areas to teach adult literacy. Despite these resounding successes at expanding educational opportunity during anti-colonial wartime, the existence of FRELIMO schools was precarious. They had to relocate often or stop entirely at times. Still, the provision of education secured the movement’s popular base (Johnston 1990). After independence, FRELIMO developed a national strategy and doubled primary enrolment between 1975 and 1979, without ever achieving universal coverage. The implantation of education policies was partial and hasty. The

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system lacked adequate infrastructure, teachers were ill-prepared, and students’ academic performances were low. Drop-out and repetition rates were high. To address these issues, FRELIMO began to rationalize education. It shifted the focus from adult education (alphabetization for broader segments of society) to secondary and vocational education. The goal was to train an educated workforce to spur industrialization. From the perspective of the FRELIMO leadership, this strategy was considered more conducive to economic growth and national prosperity than teaching peasants how to read and write. This shift was in line with modernization theories (heralded on both ends of the socialist–capitalist spectrum), which viewed subsistence farming and traditional agricultural production as backward and prone to continued underdevelopment. Consequently, by 1982, adult education massively declined and secondary education for appropriately-aged students expanded (Johnston 1990). In 1983, the civil war gained momentum and brought Mozambique’s education system into complete disarray. RENAMO (Mozambican National Resistance (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana)) was founded in 1975 as an anti-Communist political organization (and represents until today FRELIMO’s most ardent rival). RENAMO frequently attacked rural communities, specifically schools and health centres, as these were considered to be signs of (FRELIMO) state influence. By 1985, 1,900 schools had closed and 5,000 teachers and 314,000 students were displaced. War-affected and unsafe roads had made teacher mobility and the transportation of teaching materials impossible. Students and teachers were kidnapped or harassed. Land mines posed deadly hazards and prevented children from commuting daily to school. Government support withered and enrolment rates declined, especially in rural areas, as traumatized children and unemployed teachers retreated to urban areas, where primary education subsequently expanded (Englund 2002). By 1990, more than 50 per cent of Mozambique’s already partial primary school system was destroyed. In 1992, FRELIMO and RENAMO agreed to democratic elections (Castiano 1997; Johnston 1990). Since then, Mozambique has concentrated its efforts on primary and adult education (MOE 1998). It has been able to steadily increase enrolment and decrease illiteracy rates. Adult illiteracy declined from the former 72 per cent to about 47 per cent during the 1990s after opening up to bilateral and international funding schemes provided by organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF, which then subjected Mozambique to the conditionalities of Structural Adjustment Programs (Francisco and Nhacune 2000). As in Brazil and several African countries, Catholic mission schools dominated East Timor’s formal education system during Portuguese colonialism.

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Missionary education was made available to the small number of Portuguese citizens, complying local elites, and assimilated mestizos. Similar to FRELIMO’s pursuit of education, FRETILIN (Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor (Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente)) ran schools and literacy programmes from their mountain and forest retreats throughout the 1970s. East Timor gained independence in 1974, which lasted for only ten days before Indonesia foiled all efforts of self-determination. The Indonesian government forcefully invaded East Timor, killing hundreds of thousands of people, destroying livestock and crops, and building concentration camps. They destroyed the former school system and banned the speaking of Portuguese, introducing Bahasa Indonesia as the language of instruction in a compulsory primary education system. During Indonesian occupation, the number of schools expanded exponentially. By 1985, almost every village had a primary school. By the 1990s, almost two-thirds of students were enrolled in primary education. This expansion, however, was flawed. The quality of instruction was low and transition into secondary and post-secondary education was limited. The curriculum was centralized and focused primarily on the education of Indonesian citizens as a means to control the local population (Millo and Barnett 2004; Nicolai 2004). Indonesian occupation lasted for almost three decades before the Asian economic crisis during the mid-1990s forced Indonesia to reconsider. In a referendum in 1999, 78 per cent of the people in East Timor voted for independence. The voting period and the Indonesian exodus afterwards were accompanied by violent attacks on the East Timorese population by Indonesian militias, resulting in the death of 1,500 people, the displacement of 250,000 people into West Timor, and the destruction of the country’s infrastructure, including the school system. After a transition period under UN governance, in which the Brazilian government played a key role as a UN consultant (Nieto 2012), East Timor became fully independent in May 2002. Young people played an important role in the resistance against Indonesian occupation (Millo and Barnett 2004). They resisted their teachers and organized public protests in the months leading up to the popular consultation. Many of them were killed and ‘disappeared’ (Nicolai 2004). Subsequent international efforts focused on education in refugee camps and the rehabilitation of the national (mostly primary) education system, including the building of primary schools and training teachers. The rebuilding was accompanied by much political debate, which included disagreements over language policies (Millo and Barnett 2004). Today, Portuguese and Tetum are the official languages. Curriculum policies

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mandate Portuguese as a language of instruction from Grade 1 to 6 (TaylorLeech 2008). Throughout the Lusophone spaces, Portuguese colonialism, independence wars and post-independence conflicts left insufficient educational infrastructures behind. Even as education systems have systematically improved since the mid-1990s, the countries continue to be characterized by equal and insufficient educational structures. During the twentieth century, Brazilian elites upheld the idea of racial democracy portraying racial relations in Brazilian society as harmonious and tolerant. They celebrated miscegenation and considered racial categories as fluid along a colour-continuum (especially in comparison to segregation and colourline thinking in the US, cf. Lafer 2000) creating an anti-black racism that is more determined by inclusive domination than by segregation, meanwhile obviating the lack of economic integration of former slaves after the abolition of slavery. Beginning in the early 1950s, social scientists began to systematically debunk the racial democracy myth. Since then numerous studies have shown that nearly every sphere of Brazilian life, including education, employment, income, housing, health, mortality and exposure to police violence and incarceration are marked by stark racial inequalities. Scholars have documented the unequal access to economic and political opportunities and showed that on average, non-white Brazilians were less educated and had lower levels of income than white Brazilians (Hasenbalg and Silva 1988; Henriques 2001). Colour prejudice is widespread (Lovell 1999). Educational structures served to maintain these inequalities. Historically, the educational system is two-tiered, combining private and public schools in an inverse status position across different levels of education. At the primary and secondary levels, upper-middle class and high-income families often can afford better quality education (mostly private schools), whereas lower-middle class and low-income families can access lower quality (mostly public) schools. In contrast, at the tertiary level, public universities (federal and state institutions) that do not charge tuition fees rank among the most elite in the country. Access to these public universities has historically been limited through competitive entrance examinations (vestibular). Better-educated students at the primary and secondary level have been more likely to pass these examinations. Less-prepared students have been left to the less competitive and mostly less prestigious private universities, if not excluded altogether (McCowan 2007; Schwartzman and Paiva 2014). Long-standing patterns of racialized socio-economic inequalities have thus led to the systematic exclusion of non-white students from higher education (Bailey and Peria 2010). For instance, in 2006, 20 per cent of white college-age

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students attended university, whereas less than 6 per cent of their non-white peers were enrolled (Paixão and Carvano 2008). Even though the creation of UNILAB serves many purposes, as we will see in the next chapter, it was motived in large part by these inequalities. As a development project, it contributes to domestic as much as to international development, which, however, given the distinct narrative of transatlantic slavery and abolition as the shared history of Lusophone spaces, provides the ground for considerable tensions among the various actors involved in the everyday making of the university.

Note 1 MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola), FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique), PAIGC (Partido Africano da Independencia da Guiné e Cabo Verde), MLSTP (Movimento de Libertacção de São Tomé e Príncipe).

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Internationalization of Higher Education for Development

When UNILAB was created, the Brazilian government envisioned an international university that simultaneously served domestic and international development needs. It charged the university with the dual mandate of fostering South–South cooperation through cultural and educational integration as well as to democratize Brazilian higher education. UNILAB was to become a centre for the production, exchange and dissemination of knowledge deemed relevant for development as the following quote from the book published to commemorate the university’s fifth anniversary shows (UNILAB 2013: 7): The University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony expands the provision of higher education in underserved regions. The university seeks to build a historical and cultural bridge between Brazil and Portugueselanguage countries, especially in Africa, sharing innovative solutions for similar historical processes. It also hopes to strengthen international networks respecting the sovereignty of partnering countries, allowing the realization of actions and interventions of technical, academic, scientific, cultural, and humanitarian support.

UNILAB was written into law in 2008 and established in 2010 by the Implementation Committee (Comissão de Implantação), which included politicians, professors and university administrators. The founders designed a university that, through its location, faculty, student population, curriculum and extra-curricular activities, would become a state-of-the-art institution – not the shiny, world-class university global policy makers might have had in mind (Salmi 2009), but one that deliberately focuses on and addresses the needs of students and communities in postcolonial contexts. By doing so, founders hoped to accelerate innovation, economic growth and educational equality. UNILAB should ultimately serve as a landmark of Brazilian development and of South–South cooperation. Indeed, from the founders’ perspective, these 33

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would be complementary interests, as the developmental needs of the Brazilian Northeast and African countries were viewed as similar. In this chapter, I describe the two cornerstones of UNILAB as a developmental university: the expansion of public higher education into the rural interior of Brazil and the internationalization of higher education for development.

Expanding higher education in the Lusophone world UNILAB founders identified as a shared feature between the Brazilian Northeast and partnering countries the lack of higher education and unevenly distributed access. Table 2.1 shows that almost all of the countries from which UNILAB students have come enrol fewer students in higher education than the average gross enrolment ratio (GER) of their respective regions, with Cape Verde being the only exception. By the early 2000s, the Brazilian higher education system had more than 2,000 institutions and enrolled more than four million students. In 2005, the gross enrolment rate was 25 per cent, compared to 30 per cent in China, 44 per cent on average in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 89 per cent in the US. Historically, Brazil’s higher education system has been greatly stratified preventing the majority of college-age Brazilians from accessing public higher

Table 2.1 GER in relation to GER by region* Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Brazil Mozambique Angola São Tomé e Príncipe Guinea Bissau Cape Verde East Timor

43.7% (2013) 25.5% (2005)

Sub-Saharan Africa 8.2% (2013)

East Asia and the Pacific 33% (2013)

5.2% (2013) 7.5% (2011) 7.7% (2012) 2.6% (2006) 22.9% (2006) 17.7% (2010)

*Data source: UNESCO. (According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics the gross enrolment ratio (GER) in tertiary education across all sexes represents the total enrolment within a country in tertiary education, regardless of age and sex, expressed as a percentage of the population in the official age group corresponding to this level of education, which usually includes the five year age group following on from secondary education, for example for the age group of 18–24 years old in Brazil. The number of students studying abroad is not reflected in this number.)

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education. Public universities provide free tuition and rank among the most elite universities in the country. They provide the better part of graduate education (82 per cent). Brazil also has a growing sector of private universities, which provide most of the undergraduate education (72 per cent). Even though the Brazilian higher education system has been established rather late (compared to other countries in Latin America), it has been systematically expanded ever since. During the 1930s, the Brazilian government used funds secured from an expanded tax-base to increase access to public higher education, in part to accommodate the growing demands of the middle class (Schwartzman 2012). Higher education, both private and public, continued to grow steadily under the presidency of Getúlio Vargas (1945–64). The focus, however, like in earlyestablished professional schools, was mostly on teaching rather than research. During the second half of the 1950s, students demanded the phasing out of private institutions and the expansion of public higher education. During the military dictatorship (1964–94), when public universities became a stronghold of resistance against the regime, the government began to reform these universities following the model of the US American research university, introducing departments (rather than chairs), a credit system and the division between basic and professional education (Durham 2004). The goal was to stimulate research activities to spur national development and to improve the quality of university instruction (Schwartzman 1997). In general, access to public universities remained limited. They enrolled only 10 per cent of the eligible age cohort. Meanwhile, the private sector expanded more rapidly maintaining its focus on teaching rather than research. By the end of the 1970s, a three-tiered Brazilian higher education system had emerged. It consisted of research-oriented, yet exclusive, public universities; non-profit private universities, which aligned their interests with the first-rate public institutions; and entrepreneurial private universities without commitment to research or high-quality instruction (Durham 2004). The 1980s were marked by stagnation of the higher education sector displaying high drop-out and repetition rates. Most of the demand for postsecondary education was absorbed by private-sector night schools and vocational courses with low admission requirements (De Castro and Tiezzi 2004). During the 1990s, the Brazilian government began to systematically invest in education across all levels. It expanded access to primary and secondary education and improved the quality of teaching. Subsequently, the pool of qualified applicants for higher education increased, which required to further expand tertiary education to accommodate the demand (Schwartzman 1997). As a consequence, the private

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sector expanded even more rapidly, although unevenly across regions. Whereas in the south of the country there are many private universities, public higher education is almost the only option available in the Northeast of Brazil (Castro 2004). Already under Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Brazilian president from 1995 to 2003, the government aimed to expand the tertiary sector. Under Lula da Silva these efforts continued and UNILAB emerged as part of them. Reforms in African countries have similarly focused on the expansion of higher education systems. Until 2009, Agostinho Neto University was the only public university in Angola. By 2010, Angola had twenty-three institutions of higher learning, seven public and sixteen private universities. In Mozambique, until the mid-1990s, only three public institutions of higher learning existed in the country – Eduardo Mondlane University, the Higher Educational Institute and the Institute for International Relations. By 2010, Mozambique registered twenty-one private and seventeen public institutions of higher learning. Most of them are polytechnic and professional schools rather than full universities. Cape Verde had no public university until 2006, when various post-secondary institutes for professional training were combined to form the University of Cape Verde. After that, the higher education sector expanded rapidly. By 2010 it had one public and eight private institutions. Together they enrolled 10,000 students (about 2 per cent of the total population of 570,000), with private institutions enrolling more students than the public university. As a consequence, Cape Verde has a higher than average gross enrolment ratio compared to other countries in the region. São Tome e Principe had no public university or institute until the mid-1990s, thus students went abroad (e.g., Portugal) for their postsecondary education. In 2005, the University Lusiada of São Tome e Principe was created. By 2012, the country had two additional private universities for professional training. Guinea Bissau has no public university, mostly due to consistent political instability with constantly changing political regimes and conflicts between opponents since independence. During the 1970s, the government created eight professional faculties (institutes) to train students in law, pedagogy, administration and medicine. In the 1990s, some private institutions started operating in the country. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the Guinea Bissau government, together with a private Portuguese university, attempted to create a public university but failed (Langa 2013). In East Timor, the first university was established under Indonesian rule in 1992. The National University of East Timor officially opened on 17 November 2000 after great efforts from East Timorese. It soon enrolled over 5,000 full-time students (Bollag 2001).

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Despite the impressive expansion, the demand for higher education still far exceeds the supply, besides the fact that expansion itself is often not sufficient to guarantee equitable outcomes (McCowan 2016a). In most of the countries, universities charge at least minimal fees. Given the accumulated costs of secondary and tertiary education (i.e., fees, uniforms, transportation, housing, loss of earnings while in education), many young people cannot afford to participate in any form of formal advanced education. Even in countries where public higher education is free of charge, access to universities is controlled by competitive entrance examinations. As is the case in Brazil, upper-middle class and high-income students are often better prepared and thus more likely to pass these exams. As a consequence, in all of the countries the availability of higher education is limited and access is restricted in ways that benefit socio-political and socio-economic elites (McCowan 2004). The creation of a university like UNILAB – publicly funded, enrolling underserved populations, and with the explicit task to democratize access to public higher education – provides students from both sides of the Atlantic with an opportunity they may not have had otherwise. Before detailing the development framework of the university, I make a brief excursus into Brazilian South–South cooperation more broadly.

Brazilian South–South cooperation Much of the literature on Brazilian South–South cooperation has come out of political sciences and international relations studies. This literature provides primarily a macro-level perspective centring on Brazilian politics as an object of knowledge. It portrays South–South cooperation mainly as a foreign affairs strategy that builds on the intensification and diversification of modes of exchange between Brazil and other Latin American countries, other countries of the Community of Portuguese-language Countries (Comunidade dos Países da Língua Portuguesa, CPLP) – including Lusophone countries in Africa, East Timor and Portugal – as well as China and South Africa. Brazil pursues bilateral, multilateral, subnational and informal cooperation agreements to enhance its geopolitical potential and economic competitive advantage. Between 1999 and 2007, import and export relations between Brazil and African countries increased by 45 per cent, with South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Angola as major trading partners and Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and Libya with smaller trading capacities (Barbosa, Narciso and Biancalana 2009). The countries import raw materials (e.g., sugarcane, beets) and basic manufactured goods (e.g., cars and

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chickens) from Brazil. At the same time, Brazil invests in large-scale enterprises including Petrobrás (gas), Medabil (construction materials) and Vale (mining) companies that rely on the raw materials available in African countries. The transfer of public policies (mainly in education, health, and agriculture), especially since they have acquired an international reputation as ‘best practices’ (Morais de Sa e Silva 2005), is another important dimension of Brazilian South– South cooperation. In the education sector, activities include alphabetization programmes, collaboration between universities, international student scholarships, professional training, institutional capacity building and engagement in multilateral forums such as the India–Brazil–South Africa Forum (IBSA; Ullrich and Carrion 2013; Abdenur 2015; Milani et al. 2016). UNILAB, UNILA – the Federal University of Latin American Integration (Universidade Federal da Integração LatinoAmericana) located in the southern city of Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná at the tri-national border shared by Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay – and UNIAM – the University of Amazonian Integration (Universidade de Integração da Amazônia) created in Santarém – were born out of this foreign policy interest (Robertson 2010; Pinheiro and Beshara 2012). Military interventions and the promotion of human rights, for example, peacekeeping missions in Guinea Bissau, Haiti and East Timor (Nieto 2012; Abdenur and Neto 2013), represent other areas of Brazilian South–South cooperation. Across these modes of engagement, Brazil enacts its role as global middle power, undoubtedly pursuing geopolitical interests though not necessarily at the expense of others (Almeida 2007). Strengthening South–South relations has been a way for the Brazilian government to solicit other countries’ support, for instance, for restructuring the UN Security Council so Brazil could gain a seat as a permanent voting member (Christensen 2013). South–South cooperation certainly represents a revived aspect of Brazil’s emancipated foreign policy vis-à-vis the global north. Yet, some scholars refuse to reduce South–South cooperation to a geopolitical one-way strategy in the interest of Brazilian hegemony. It is as much about expressing a newly gained self-confidence (Burges 2005) as it is about presenting southern countries with a new partnership model. The Brazil that projects itself as an ‘emerging donor’ (Cesarino 2012) promises to practise development differently compared to ‘donors’ that have traditionally controlled the majority of aid (e.g., the US, UK, Germany, France). It claims to reject imperialism and to respect the sovereignty of its partners. As a reflection of this model, Brazil’s diplomacy towards its southern partners employs a rhetoric that emphasizes ‘solidarity, no interference in domestic issues of partner countries, demand-driven action, acknowledgement of local experiences, no imposition of conditions, and no association with

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commercial interests’ (ABC 2011, cited in Cabral et al. 2013: 3). Particularly in the realm of internationalization, the newly-established universities of UNILAB and UNILA resist commodification (compared to global higher education in general, cf. Torres 2011). Instead, they focus on inclusive development by expanding access to previously excluded populations, by offering courses that inspire local solutions for local problems (e.g., agro-ecology, popular education, sustainable energies), and by conceiving of new forms of knowledge delivery (McCowan 2010, 2016b). They facilitate cultural, social and scientific exchange between partnering countries through conviviality and solidarity, an effort that, so Paulino Motter and Luis Armando Gandin (2016) argue, far exceeds any political or economic interests the government otherwise has. Nonetheless, Brazilian South–South cooperation is not without its perils. Scholars have argued that many of the efforts are decentralized at best and often fragmented or incoherent. A close look at the internal scope and politics of these efforts reveals a multitude of organizations, policies, and political agendas that form a complex social field in which actors compete for resources and political traction to influence the directions of particular projects. Brazilian organizational and professional development capacities are sometimes described as unsustainable (cf. Milani et al. 2016). Projects face difficulties with Brazilian state bureaucracy, which can result in delays of funds and lack of infrastructure (Cesarino 2012). Michelle Morais de Sa e Silva (2005) describes a Brazilian literacy programme in Mozambique as a ‘package delivery’ that was neither adapted to the specificities of the Mozambican context (e.g., multilingual society) nor did it incorporate Mozambican expertise and experiences (e.g., in adult literacy education).1 It lacked Mozambican ownership and thus sustainability. Project planning in Brazilian South–South cooperation is often relatively openended, and implementation is slow and rather uneven. This supposedly provides local actors with the time and space to adopt the ideas and secure financial support as buy-in, meanwhile decentralizing the process and evading power imbalances commonly associated with donor–recipient relations, which could be interpreted as flexibility and signs of demand-drivenness (Cesarino 2012; Carolini 2015). Morais, however, concludes that one should not romanticize South–South relations as ‘horizontal and virtuous’ (2005: 7) since they are not immune to the kinds of donor–recipient power asymmetries widely observed in North–South development relations. Shifting and competing political agendas shape the implementation of projects and outcomes. Take, for example, the political and institutional landscape of agricultural cooperation in African countries. It involves more than twenty

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Brazilian organizations, most prominently EMBRAPA (a leading governmentfunded institute that focuses on agricultural research) and the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA). Both organizations have been key players in determining domestic strategies for agricultural development (e.g., More Food, Food Acquisition), which they have then rolled out into South–South cooperation with support from the national development agency (ABC). According to Cabral and her colleagues (2013), both organizations perpetuate divergent views regarding the best strategy for agricultural development. While EMBRAPA has been known to support large-scale agri-businesses, MDA has described itself as the ministry of family farming. These polarized positions reflect different ideological stances within Brazilian society. MDA has been responsive to social movements’ demands (e.g., Landless Workers Movement (Movimento Sem Terras)) to support the smallest and most disadvantaged farmers (e.g., women farmers). In response, wealthier (family) plantation owners (latifundios) have aligned themselves with organizations that lobby for large-scale farming. This has resulted in a highly polarized field of socio-political forces within Brazil, which, translated into South–South agricultural cooperation, has led to a lack of explicit government policies that could bridge the different political stances. In the end, putting the aspirational discourses of solidarity, integration and cultural affinities into practice occurs in a highly fragmented terrain in which divergent positions must be constantly negotiated. These negotiations are fundamentally national in nature; that is, competing domestic ideologies and political stances profoundly shape any given South–South project, or as Crain Soudien rightly put it: ‘the politics of the local assert themselves, sometimes imperceptibly, on the terrain of the interrelationship’ (2009: 237). Rather than taking fragmentation as proof of virtuous flexibility, Brazilian South–South engagements should better be conceptualized as power struggles in which the agendas, experiences, and, indeed, the imaginaries of various local organizations and individuals shape cooperation practices, potentially side-lining partner interests.

The developmental university Broadly speaking, Brazilian South–South cooperation is enmeshed in geopolitical and economic interests and educational programmes are but one mechanism through which to advance these interests. UNILAB, however, is somewhat unique in this regard as it benefits the Brazilian public more directly

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than purely international programmes by increasing the availability of higher education in a previously underserved rural area of Brazil. This process is also referred to as interiorization (interiorização, UNILAB 2010: 9) of public higher education. When Lula da Silva came to power in 2003, he devised programmes – the Programme of University for All (Programa Universidade para Todos, PROUNI) in 2004 and the Programme of Restructuring and Expansion of Federal Universities (Reestruturação e Expansão das Universidades, REUNI) in 2007 – to expand public higher education as a means for social justice and regional development. UNILAB (one of fourteen new campuses) was created from REUNI funds in the rural interior of Ceará. The Diretrizes Gerais, UNILAB’s founding document (2010) clearly links interiorization and internationalization as the main purposes of the university: The expansion of higher education in Brazil, from increased investment in science, technology and culture to the number of federal institutions of higher education . . . is a central axis of the educational policy of the Brazilian government. In this sense . . . REUNI is one of the most important and innovative programs aimed at recovering the public sense and social commitment for higher education, given its orientation to expand quality and inclusion. . . . The installation of UNILAB in the town of Redenção, in Ceará . . . [fulfils] the goals of REUNI to promote the development of regions in need of institutions of higher education – such as Maciço de Baturité. UNILAB [has to be understood] in the context of internationalization of higher education in the light of the government’s policy to encourage the creation of federal institutions capable to promote South-South cooperation with scientific, cultural, social and environmental responsibility. Actualizing [itself] in the perspective of solidarity cooperation, [the university] values and supports the potential for collaboration and learning between countries as part of Brazil’s growing effort to assume commitments for international integration in higher education. 5–6, emphasis original

The statement highlights the founders’ vision of UNILAB as an international university with global reach yet rooted in the developmental needs of a particular (Brazilian) region. Paulo Speller, who participated in the implementation committee and was later appointed as first dean, emphasized international integration based on solidarity as one of the foundational aspects. When asked what he understood as solidarity, he explained that solidarity cooperation takes ‘place between equals (se dá de igual para igual)’ (interview, 28 February 2013) in an atmosphere of mutual respect. To create this vision, UNILAB founders had to imagine Brazil’s northeast and the partnering countries, as similarly

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underdeveloped and rural, in need of state intervention. According to the founding document, Maciço de Baturité has a relatively low GDP per capita and higher rates of extreme poverty and illiteracy than other regions. It is in need of social services (e.g., social assistance and health) and educational opportunities (e.g., higher education), both of which should be provided by the state: ‘Maciço do Baturité/CE, where UNILAB will be installed, lacks scientific-academic institutions and the presence of the federal government’ (UNILAB 2010: 22). The same document frequently refers, much more abstractly, to similar issues in African countries, including the lack of an ‘organized system of higher education’ (UNILAB 2010: 24). In response, the founders created a university they imagined would cater to these development demands. UNILAB is an attempt to strengthen development relations by building direct relationships between actors from Brazil and Lusophone African countries. This goal is evident in the inter-institutional partnership structures it creates. Among other things, UNILAB established the PróReitoria de Relações Institucionais (Dean of Institutional Relations, PROINST), which is responsible for the initiation and coordination of cooperation with universities, networks and institutions in CPLP countries. For example, in 2012 PROINST started the Rede de Instituições Públicas de Educação Superior (Network of Public Institutions of Higher Education, RIPES) to foster the exchange of knowledge and the mobility of instructors, administrators and students across Lusophone countries. The network’s activities include visits to institutions and partners of higher education in Portugal, Mozambique, Cape Verde and Angola. Since September 2014, UNILAB has taken part in the administrative council of the Associação das Universidades de Língua Portuguesa (Association of Portuguesespeaking Universities, AULP). It also has an office at the CPLP headquarters in Lisbon and coordinates Brazil’s initiative for offering online university courses in Mozambique (document, no. 23). The inter-institutional activities show that, at least in theory, the Brazilian government and the university administration are interested in creating an inter-regional space of scientific integration (Robertson 2010). It should be noted that these efforts should not be viewed as profit-driven in the same way as many efforts by US or UK universities to attract foreign or online students. Thus, the logic behind these internationalization efforts should not simply be read through the neo-liberalization and commodification lens so often applied in the Western-centric literature on internationalization of higher education (Majee and Ress 2018). In fact, the recruitment of international students costs the government money. As a public university, UNILAB charges no tuition to either

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Brazilian or international students. In addition, eligible students can apply for financial assistance in the form of different types of stipends. The housing stipend (auxílio moradia) covered international students’ housing and other living expenses. In 2013, the university paid R$380 (roughly US$130) per month to students under this category. The installation stipend (auxílio instalação) supported beneficiaries of the housing stipend to acquire furniture, appliances and cookware. Students received this one-time stipend after providing receipts as evidence of their purchases. The amounts reported ranged between R$400 (university documents) and R$780 (by students). The food stipend (auxílio alimentação) supplemented the housing stipend with R$150 per month. Furthermore, students could apply for transportation stipends (auxílio transporte) ranging from R$60 to R$270 depending on the distance between their home and the university. Brazilian students could apply for social assistance stipends (auxílio sociale) up to the amount of R$380. Table  2.2 provides an overview of the number of stipends by type and nationality in relation to the total number of students. According to the statistical information provided by the administration, by January 2013, 70 per cent of the students received at least one type of stipend (703 out of 1,010 students). Nearly all the international students (93 per cent, 190 out of 204) and one-third of the Brazilian students (63 per cent, 513 out of 815) received some form of support. East Timorese students received a reduced housing stipend (R$190) because they also received a monthly stipend of US$500 (R$1,000) from their government. The first cohort of Angolan students received only the housing stipends since they also received support from the Angolan government.

Table 2.2 Number of stipends by type and nationality (January 2013) Students Stipends Funded Housing Install. Food Transp. Social Brazilian 815 International 204 Angola 25 Cape Verde 23 Guinea Bissau 58 Mozambique 3 São Tomé e 23 Principe East Timor 72 Total 1,010

513 190 17 22 58 3 21

63% 93% 68% 96% 100% 100% 91%

258 190 17 22 58 3 21

199 165 8 22 46 2 20

284 114 8 22 58 3 21

69 703

96% 70%

69

67

2

64 0

133 0

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This stipend system is not unique within the Brazilian public higher education sector; however, the deliberate effort to recruit and support international students through these mechanisms is not common at other federal universities. The Brazilian government put real financial resources into students so that they could complete their studies. Indeed, with the exception of the initial group of Angolan students and East Timor students with support from their governments, many of the international students who participated in the research could not have afforded to study at UNILAB without this support. Most of the students came from urban, middle-class families, in which family resources were severely strained by sending the student to study abroad in Brazil. UNILAB’s development orientation becomes most apparent in the initial choices of disciplines, which included agronomy, public administration, natural sciences, nursing and engineering of sustainable energies. These applied sciences are traditionally associated with technical (as opposed to political or sociocultural) aspects of national development and international development aid. Table 2.3 shows institutes (equivalent to colleges) and disciplines (equivalent to departments) planned in 2010. According to Professora Nascimento, a Brazilian professor and member of the implementation committee, this developmental curriculum represented the interests of Brazil and the partnering countries.2 Professor Torres, a Brazilian professor involved in the implementation of institutional structures, described agronomy’s focus on small-scale farming: ‘the peasant develops a small farm, which leaves him more sustainable. It doesn’t mean he does not know how to work on a large farm; he will work there, but our focus here is on rural development of small farms’ (interview, 5 February 2013). The official purpose of agronomy is to educate students in the ecologically and socially sustainable production of food. Other

Table 2.3 Anticipated institutes and disciplines (UNILAB 2010: 16) Year Institute of Institute of Social Institute of Agricultural and Human Teacher Sciences Sciences Education

Institute of Health Sciences

2011 Agronomy

Nursing

2012 Animal Sciences 2013 Agricultural Engineering

Public Administration Science of Economics Public Policies

Natural Sciences Pedagogy Social Sciences and Humanities

Institute of Technologies

Engineering of Energies Public Health Civil Engineering Medicine Computer Engineering

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course descriptions display similar developmental purposes. Engineering, for example, focuses on sustainable energies that would use the resources and technologies available in each country – falling in line with the trend of sustainability in international development discourses. Public administration has been designed to teach students about creating public policies that correspond with mechanisms of participatory democracy, transparency and social inclusion – all assumed to be the most appropriate, developmentalist approaches to governance. Nursing and teacher eduaction in maths and sciences aims to train professionals in the areas of education and health, in order to assure basic services in rural areas devoid of social service infrastructure (UNILAB 2010: 15). Until today, these applied disciplines represent the core of UNILAB teaching and the only ones that are offered during the day as on-campus and full-time courses. Disciplines that deviated from the developmental curriculum were added later as evening courses that were to serve the adult and working populations of the region. These courses also admitted international students. UNILAB’s developmental purpose is linked to the Brazilian state’s provision of social services, for example, healthcare (by promising to build a proper hospital) and higher education (creating a public university that accepts students free of charge), which would in turn, through the formation of locally knowledgeable development professionals, lift Northeast Brazil and African countries out of underdevelopment and into future prosperity.3 The goal is to produce and disseminate knowledge that is applicable to existing situations and problems in the countries involved. The students are the perceived carriers of this knowledge; indeed, Brazilian and international students alike were viewed as the people who would work with (and who may have been themselves) rural peasants to develop their home countries. This notion of development is firmly tied to the idea of the nation-state as the primary provider of development and as the entity that needs to be developed in order to ensure prosperity for the people. In fact, originally, UNILAB was envisioned as a multiparty, bilaterallyarranged CPLP university. By 2015, many of these relations existed on paper as written contracts and accords but had not materialized in terms of practised cooperation. Apart from short visits, for example by a group of Mozambican professors, and high-level administrators to partnering countries, limited bilateral exchange of knowledge had occurred. The plan was also that international students would receive additional funds from their respective governments. In reality, only the East Timorese government (probably with international financial support) and the Angolan government (only for the first cohort of Angolan students) actually received this sort of financial assistance.

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Portraying Northeast Brazil in terms of development needs reflects a longstanding pattern of constructing the region as the Brazilian periphery in relation to the country’s south (Weinstein 2015). In fact, that the region has historically been perceived as culturally and economically backwards is what enabled the relational construction of Africa as equally backward to begin with, thus providing the grounds on which to reconcile domestic demands for development with broader foreign affairs interests. Visits to partnering countries, multinational meetings, and consultations with multilateral organizations preceded the creation of UNILAB. The goal was to establish bilateral agreements regarding the university, thus strengthening the relationship between governments and increasing the visibility of the Lusophone region (writ large) on the geopolitical and economic world map. In return, the Brazilian government hoped that these countries and other potential southern partners would support Brazil’s bid for global influence. In interviews with university administrators, leaders (some of whom were government-appointed, high-profile politicians) and professors, these broader geopolitical efforts were rarely mentioned. Instead their interpretations centred on historical and cultural parallels, which in some cases included the symbolic value of Brazil–Africa relations for broader national efforts of Afro-Brazilian emancipation. Chapters 1 and 2 provided the general lie of the land in terms of UNILAB’s situatedness in history and in development discourses. Over the next chapters, I examine more closely the discursive landscape of UNILAB, what kind of subject positions it produces and how it shapes actors’ everyday interactions. I tease out the tensions that arise in the making of this doubly purposed university showing the many ways in which actors either evade or adapt to the various social, cultural and economic realities of this particular project.

Notes 1 Michelle Morais de Sa e Silva (2005) studied the transfer of AlfaSol (Solidarity in Literacy Program (Alfabetização Solidária)), an adult literacy programme. 2 Classroom observations, 16 January 2013. 3 Fieldnotes, 1 March 2013.

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In the middle of the road stands a rectangular concrete monument, as tall as three adults and as wide as the length of a medium-size car. The rectangle is missing a portion of its upper left corner almost like a window through which one sees the green hills surrounding Redenção and the sunny, blue sky. A large chain is draped over the window. It is made from iron, and looks heavy, like an anchor chain. The monument is decorated with a painting, exhibiting the image of a woman. She is brown-skinned, naked, and has wavy hair. She sits on her knees resting her buttocks on her heels. Her arms are stretched out away from her body. One reaches toward the sky and the other toward the chain. Her fingers are spread. She looks up. The background of the image is painted light blue with a star-like, white shadow framing her body. This image of a mulata displayed on the main road at the entrance of Redenção is no coincidence (Figure 3.1). Related representations can be found all over the town. In the central square in front of the church stands a statue that depicts a male body with features similar to those of the woman. The man wears calflength trousers and is shirtless. He stands strongly with his legs slightly spread as if to stabilize his posture. He holds his arms before his body. Two ends of a broken chain hang loosely from his wrists. Wall paintings across town show similar images (Figure 3.2). The history of slavery, and more specifically of its abolition, is omnipresent in Redenção. The Museu de Abolição (Museum of Abolition) is located across from the campus. The road that separates the university from the museum is called Avenida da Abolição (Avenue of Abolition). The museum is a fazenda (farm) with the typical casa grande (main house, placed above ground) and senzala (slave quarters, placed below ground), so vividly described by Freyre in Casa Grande e Senzala ([1933] 1986). The museum’s exhibition displays machinery used for sugar production and artefacts of daily life on the farm such as furniture and pottery. The walls of the main house are filled with documents and newspaper 47

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Figure 3.1 Monument in Redenção.

Figure 3.2 Mural of freed slave, titled ‘Liberty Started Here’.

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articles that display the farm’s economic activities and describe Redenção’s history. The walls of the slave quarters are covered with paintings of men and women of African descent working at the sugar mill or held captive in shackles and iron bands screwed to the wall, as though they belonged to the house like artefacts rather than as human beings. One is left wondering why there are no such paintings of Brazilians of European descent on the walls of the main house. The monument, names and depictions commemorate Redenção’s role in Brazilian history. Redenção was the first town to legally abolish slavery, in 1883, five years before the country as a whole. Moreover, the mulata symbolizes Lusotropicalism’s mythology of racial and cultural mixing as a ‘racially democratic’ (i.e., without racism) cornerstone of Brazilian nationhood. The mulata, an image embodied also, for example, by samba dancers, represents a seemingly timeless yet ambiguous icon of Brazilian national identity. She ‘came to figure as a sexy Brazilian not only because she danced the samba (the Afro-Brazilian-turned-Brazilian art form) but also because her skin color and other phenotypical characteristics deemed archetypal, such as small nose, light-colored eyes, and wavy sometimes straightened (not “kinky”) hair, were read as the perfect embodiment of mestiçagem, a mixing that enabled the “whitening” of African traits (Pravaz 2012: 117). The image of the ideal-type mulata reduces women of colour and their bodies to the exoticism and eroticism of the colonizing gaze, writing them into the religious and cultural history as the less desirable mythic figure of Brazilian national identity, divested of properly belonging to the modernizing (i.e., Europeanizing, whitening) Brazil of the twentieth century. Being recognized as mixed has its perils as well. It superimposes an anti-African, anti-black identity, which denies participation of a different kind as Professor Lourdes explained: If you have an education system that denies a child her black identity, makes it history-less by calling her ‘mulata, you are not black,’ while she is the descendent of a black family. When I was young, I didn’t like to look in the mirror because I saw something different than what I saw on TV or around me. I thought, no wonder people don’t like me. I am so different. I had to learn to be proud to be black. Interview, 11 February 2013

As an icon of national identity in conjunction with the racial democracy myth, the mulata preserved racialized, gendered hierarchies. In the context of UNILAB, her constant presence in front of the main building generated divergent responses among students and faculty alternating between Ceará’s triumphant role in the abolition of slavery heralded by the founding narrative and international students’ renunciation of the prescribed role to represent a narrative of Afro-Brazilian emancipation.

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Objects of intervention Placing UNILAB in Redenção marked the beginning of a number of decisions that linked the university’s development mandate to the history of the transatlantic slave trade. In fact, UNILAB’s official representations are saturated with references to history including in the Diretrizes Gerais (founding document): The installation of UNILAB in the town of Redenção, in Ceará, a national landmark for pioneering the liberation of slaves . . . also points to the encounter of Brazilian society with its history because it will become a center of research and training for young Brazilians in interaction with students from countries where Portuguese is also spoken. UNILAB 2010: 5

At the beginning of 2011 and early 2012, UNILAB’s website featured a picture of the monument described above. Today the website no longer displays this image. It is decorated with an abstract 3D graphic ball made from colourful strips where each one symbolized one of the participating countries Brazil, Mozambique, São Tomé e Príncipe, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and East Timor. Whereas the picture of the monument disappeared, the idea it represents remained. It reappeared, again in a book published in 2013 to celebrate UNILAB’s fifth anniversary in which various dignitaries took pride in Ceará’s heroic role in the abolition of slavery.1 The State Governor of Ceará for instance said: For us, people of Ceará, the installation of [UNILAB] makes us proud. There were, in fact, reasons for this to occur. Ceará, everybody knows, anticipated the movement of liberation of slaves during the 19th century. . . . It is therefore natural that Brazil, extending its hand to the African people as a gesture of peace and as an invitation for cooperation, happens in Ceará, more precisely the city of Redenção, a pioneer town in the abolition of slave labor. UNILAB 2013: 38

The campus names are also designed to reflect this positive image of Ceará’s role in the abolition of slavery. The Campus da Liberdade (Campus of Liberty) located in Redenção undeniably references abolition. The names of the other two campuses refer to famous struggles for freedom. The Campus dos Palmares (Campus of Palmares) in Acarape, which opened in 2013, alludes to maroon communities, who made a living in the outskirts of urban centres and the backlands of Brazil during the nineteenth century. It references the powerful and often-related mythology surrounding Zumbi, the leader of one such community

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which was able to defend itself against the Portuguese for an extended period of time before Zumbi was defeated in 1694–5. The Campus dos Malês (Campus of Malês) established in 2013 in São Francisco do Conde in Bahia, commemorates the insurgence of Islamic slaves in Salvador de Bahia in January 1835. In 2015, the same small stand-up calendar with photographs and quotes decorated almost every administrator’s desk. The photographs showed UNILAB hallways and classrooms. The July sheet displayed a picture of Lula da Silva during one of his frequent visits to the university, this time to the Campus of Malês in Bahia on 13 May 2014. The image shows him surrounded by students and then-dean Nilma Gomes. In the speech he gave that day to celebrate the campus’ inauguration, he recalled: UNILAB grew out of a dream that transformed into an extraordinary reality. We wanted this university to be a humble gesture of appreciation for all those, who left Africa against their will, submerged into this brutal form of human domination that is, slavery, came to Brazil and contributed to make this a free and sovereign nation.

This rhetoric emphasizes Ceará’s role and lauds the abolition movement in Brazil as key to ending slavery. People can imagine the woman depicted in the monument successfully escaping slavery through the green hills surrounding Redenção. The broken chains highlight the struggle she has overcome. The founders chose Redenção as the location for the first campus not because Ceará was famous for its large slave-holding economy. If it were for that, other states, for example Bahia (which became a campus location only in 2014), would have been a better choice. The founders decided in favour of Ceará because the state legally abolished slavery before any other state in Brazil. This choice drafts a very particular narrative of slavery. It purports postcolonial development as postslavery emancipation. It further signposts the official government rhetoric according to which Brazil accrued a historical debt from transatlantic slavery that it hopes to settle at least symbolically through South–South cooperation (Cicalo 2014; Cesarino 2017). Yet Tomas, a student from Guinea Bissau, walking by the statue on the central square, once said: ‘All this talk about slavery. I am not a slave. My ancestors were not slaves’ (fieldnotes, 10 January 2013). Many (though certainly not all) professors and students from African countries refuted the subject position of former slaves assigned to them by the founding narrative that simultaneously celebrates Brazil’s overcoming of history and anticipation of a future of Afro-Brazilian emancipation in which blackness no longer appears as the marker of undesirability in Brazilian self-perception.

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In an effort to reconcile domestic demands for development and foreign policy interests, Northeast Brazil and Africa were transformed into ‘objectives of intervention’ (Popkewitz 1998). The Brazilian government imagined UNILAB into being through the rhetoric of underdevelopment and revisionist history, which co-assign Northeast Brazil and Africa distinctive temporal (Povinelli 2011), spatial (Said 1978) and hierarchical places (Ferguson 2006) in the world. The world, in this sense, ‘refers to a more encompassing categorical system within which countries and geographical regions have their “places”, with a “place” understood as both a location in space and a rank [and time] in a system of social categories (as in the expression of “knowing your place”)’ (Ferguson 2006: 6). The developmental university legitimized with recourse to history coconstructs Northeast Brazil and Africa as other in time (backward), space (rural) and rank (underdeveloped). This co-construction is imbued with misconceptions. While many Brazilian students originating from Ceará might have had experiences that are in some ways related to the presumed rural, small-scale agricultural lifestyles described in the previous chapter, these assumptions are less true for international students. Most of these international students come from urban centres. They belong to urban, middle-class families. The students might not be the very wealthy urbanites who can afford to study in Europe or North America, but they have enough connections, and the social, political and financial capital that come with it (Subuhana 2009), to learn about UNILAB, navigate the bureaucracy and paperwork involved in applying and enrolling (e.g., passports), and in some cases even securing government support. Despite the fact that these students do not belong to the most elite families of their countries, they were also not the students the Brazilian government had imagined. Many of them had neither spent much time in rural areas nor did they expect to be involved in ‘development’ work (e.g., agriculture). Thus some of these students, when they arrived in Redenção, were quite disappointed with the courses that were offered. They would have preferred, instead, to study international relations or law, or at least to learn English, in an effort to position themselves for international careers.2 Many students, at UNILAB and elsewhere, view higher education as an opportunity for global mobility. They are neither attached to their countries in the ways the developmental architecture of the university assumes, nor do they view their careers as spatially constrained. Thus, gaining expertise in rural farming methods, for example, represents the opposite of the kinds of mobilities they hope to create for themselves. When they spoke of development, the

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students mostly referenced personal opportunities and opportunities for their families rather than the national or communitarian model assumed by the founding rhetoric of the university. In other words, the Brazilian government’s developmental imagination did not comfortably map on to realities of most international students. In addition to the paradoxical construction of international students as rural and nationally oriented in their developmentalist urges, the founders relied on an image of Africa that emphasized the continent’s absences rather than contemporary realities and offerings. While this is true for the Northeast as well, the epistemological violence that had to be done to imagine Africa in this way was much more acute. For example, the Diretrizes Gerais (UNILAB 2010) highlights the lack of institutions of higher education in African countries and the high rates of student mobility to other countries. While these observations are warranted and supported by national, supranational and interregional data, this particular narrative focuses mostly on establishing a deficit. The founders had more to say about what ‘African states, societies, and economies are not’ (Mbembe 2001: 9), while showing little interest in what they actually are, centring Brazil as a progressive nation, that intervenes in (and thus relies) on the nonprogressiveness of the partnering countries and their student populations. While acknowledging the developmental needs of Brazilian regions such as the Northeast, the ultimate lack of development is viewed as persisting elsewhere, in Africa. Co-constituting Northeast Brazil and Africa as rural and underdeveloped allows the central Brazilian government to step up as the provider of development, ready and able to help remove these regions (in the broadest sense) from their backward past into a (developed) future. This resembles what Elizabeth Povinelli (2011) describes as the practice of ‘othering through time’. She explains that multiculturalism and the recognition of cultural differences by governments often fail to improve the lives and opportunities of subaltern groups and people who inhabit alternative social worlds because neoliberal discourses have captured culture and transformed it into a technique of governing difference in ways that preserve rather than alter pre-existing, inequitable forms of social organization and distribution of goods. This occurs by assigning not merely different times, but ‘different tenses’ to the ‘actions of different cultures’ (Povinelli 2011: 758), which creates a temporal division between dominant cultures and others. Povinelli argues that the durative present (being) belongs to the dominant culture – in this case, Brazil (or rather, a Brazil that ‘thinks itself as white’ (Gusmão 2011: 192) and developed). Actions within the dominant socio-cultural and politico-legal frame, as well as past

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wrongs, are interpreted through the potentialities of future outcomes for the dominant culture. This grants the dominant culture sovereign rights to define the present and to anticipate the future expressed as the future anterior (will be). Other social worlds are defined in the past perfect (were), which means their present actions are interpreted through a historical lens. This temporal division confines them to the past and leaves unrecognized their existence and their needs in the present. It makes their future development conceivable only through the future anterior (will be), already anticipated by the dominant culture. In the case of UNILAB, the developmental curriculum predetermines international students’ future as development workers, who will return to their home countries carrying the expert knowledge imparted to them by Brazilian interventions. Relating Povinelli’s argument to Edward Said’s (1978) seminal critique of empire building as constant perpetuation of the Orient as the other reveals how Northeast Brazil and Africa emerge as objects of intervention. The gesture of othering through time is further accentuated in that the UNILAB-asdevelopment-project gets legitimized through a history constructed as shared, which is not actually shared. Constituting Africa as the place from which slaves originated (and from which they were extracted by colonial force) and Brazil as the recipient and eventual abolisher of slavery afforded the founders the possibility to imagine the transatlantic slave trade as a supposedly shared history, a gesture that renders Africa in the past tense (Povinelli 2011). The founding narrative positions Brazil as a postcolonial nation-state that successfully fought against the cruelty of slavery (not usually narrated in relation to Brazilian struggles for independence) and now celebrates its Africanness and the mixedness of its cultures from a post-slavery stance. Africa cannot join in this celebration since it cannot abolish its role as the source of slaves. The founding mythology makes Africa’s varied nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial experiences invisible. The experiences and relations of African states and people in the present are subsumed into an imagined relationship of Africans out of Africa in the past, and not as the current flow of people into Brazil for new experiences and opportunities. In effect, the focus on the history of slavery erased the part of history that is actually more shared between countries – the history of Portuguese colonialism. This erasure also expunged the basis for any sustained engagement with East Timor – the country that sent the largest number of students at the time of the research – whose history was dominated by Portuguese colonialism rather than slavery. Indeed, the absence of a role for East Timor in the narrative of shared basis for integration and cooperation indicates how much this particular

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narrative of past, present and future (with slavery as its starting point of a linear trajectory) dominates Brazil’s discourses of South–South cooperation. In this particular construction of history, Brazil sets itself apart in time and consequently reworks and reemploys the idea of the other as other in time. Africa and subsequently students from African countries are made into historicized icons (icons of Brazil’s slave-owning past) and ‘subjects of recognition . . . called to present difference in a form that feels like difference but does not permit any real difference to confront a normative world’ (Povinelli 2011: 31). Students from African countries are called upon to signal difference in the celebration of Brazil’s ethno-racial diversity. From a Brazilian perspective, this produces a vision of internal development and increasing equity within the state, which is well aligned with then-president Lula’s general efforts to overcome racialized inequalities. It also expresses the desire for development as an attempt to overcome the wrongs of the past, which further reconstructs Africa as a place that is always already in the past and that has to be lifted out of this history through cooperation with the always already present Brazil, and into an equally shared future. In the attempt to fabricate a founding narrative for the university – that is, to rediscover the history of slavery and postulate it as the new foundation of Brazil as a nation – the Brazilian government collapsed complex histories into a simplified and historicized image of Africa. This repeats the century-old colonial gesture of othering Africa and Africans in new yet all too familiar ways in the name of development (Kothari 2006; Wilson 2012), this time in the name of Brazilian progress.

Unsettling UNILAB’s Middle Passage narrative UNILAB’s founding mythology falls within a Middle Passage epistemology that narrates development as post-slavery progress. But what are other possible readings of the scenario, readings that are more akin to Wright’s notion of multilinear and multidimensional interpellations of blackness? What other questions can be asked? What other narratives emerge if one refuses to accept a singular (linear only) reading? In this section, I suggest additional interpretations, to tease other emancipation/progress/development narratives that articulate themselves through notions of race and blackness. The Brazilian government and UNILAB founders mobilized the transatlantic slave trade to legitimize contemporary South–South cooperation with Portuguese-language countries, especially in Africa, though the project also depends on bilateral relations with East Timor. The narrow focus on transatlantic

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slavery precludes any sustained engagement with East Timorese perspectives on South–South cooperation because the history that can be conceptualized as shared is Portuguese colonialism rather than slavery. Perhaps, more than anything, having East Timorese students in the classrooms forced professors to pause and rethink their approaches to the teaching of history since their presence and perceptions did not smoothly align with UNILAB’s post-slavery imaginary. This becomes apparent in the words of Professora Rocha, a Brazilian professor in the humanities: Regarding the work of UNILAB, integration, the countries have in common the language and the weight of colonization. The dean said that we should think about changing the name of UNILAB because it does not include the East Timorese students. . . . The original proposal is contrary to colonization. We cannot be the new colonizers. The students receive our culture and language, but we need to be careful of Lusophony. Sometimes this is not discussed. Interview, 4 March 2013

Older generations who went to school in East Timor under Indonesian rule, including a small number of UNILAB students, perceived Portuguese as the language of resistance rather than oppression (Taylor-Leech 2008; Macpherson 2011). Either way, for faculty, the presence of East Timorese students destabilized the possibility of the Middle Passage epistemology and of Lusophony as shared Portuguese language to function as binding elements across partnering countries and their student populations. The emphasis on the Middle Passage epistemology overpowers another facet of Lusophone historical relations. Earlier I put forward a ‘Brazil that thinks itself as white’ on par with Povinelli’s notion of a dominant culture as the culture that has the sovereign right over defining the present. UNILAB-as-South-Southproject has been imagined from this position as racial redress, compelling at least partial admission of guilt. A ‘Brazil that thinks itself as black’ – Afro-Brazilian activism – however, is not conclusively locatable in the moment of abolition. First of all, abolition did not mark the end of non-white Brazilians’ suffering. It merely shifted relations of expropriation to exploitation. The racial democracy myth obfuscated the fact that racial distinction provided the classificatory assemblage to justify enormous socio-economic inequalities (hyper-inequality), which disproportionately affect black Brazilians. Furthermore, Afro-Brazilian militants rarely take abolition alone as the constitutive moment of the Contemporary Black Movement (Movimento Negro Contemporânea). They name other sources of inspiration as well, including the US civil rights movement, the literary movement

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of Negritude, and, from the 1970s onwards, anti-colonial resistances in Angola, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique (Pereira and Alberti 2007). African independence movements, serving as a ‘projection screen’ (Waldow 2010) for a collective identity, inspired previously fragmented Brazilian resistance groups against white superiority to form a more unified black movement. Selfidentified black militants witnessed (in solidarity) the anti-colonial struggles and celebrated independences as a victory. More importantly, Africa provided a venue for talking about blackness. Through the incorporation and celebration of black (US) music and (African) cultural traditions from what is now Rwanda and Burundi, for example during the 1975 carnival in Bahia, Afro-Brazilian activists began to charter a broader discourse on blackness in the Brazilian context. ‘[T]he discovery of Africa had an important function in the process of the instrumentalization of militants because it amplified a conscience of its proper origin and opened possibilities for action’ (Pereira and Alberti 2007: 2). The notion of Africa as the origin, the ‘quintessential homeland of the diaspora to Europe and the Americas . . . forever . . . a place of origin and purity’ (Vizcaya 2012: 919) is frequently mobilized by black collectives to interpolate a shared identity. The idea of origin is itself problematic since it frequently serves as a technology of distinction and subsequent mechanism of exclusion from within collectives that position themselves as white, for example in Europe (El-Tayeb 2011) or black, for example in the US (Wright 2015). However, in the ideological atmosphere of racial democracy, officially and in the public imaginary, nonwhite Brazilians were denied the possibility of even relying on blackness as a form of collective identity. Afro-Brazilian activists have been drawing on the image of Africa’s fight for freedom to counteract the silence imposed on them by the racial democracy myth (Agier 1995; Alberto 2005). The now of UNILAB – imagined by its founders as spurring development through the integration of countries and people bound by a single history – is in fact an amalgamation of histories that, if viewed through multilinearity, reveals many possible meanings of the university project. I am offering here a rather schematic reading for analytical purposes (historians might disapprove) before turning to how professors, students and administrators mobilized the various meanings and made sense of them in the chapters to come. To the extent that UNILAB had to be imagined first, as utopia sketched on paper, it has been gathered from the emancipatory potentialities of abolition, emblematized by the image of the mulata as the racial-democratic representation of Brazilian modernization and displayed right in front of the university’s main entrance. It has then been invested with a development logic – rational and technical,

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undisturbed by its racializing beginnings, which, unlike the abolition narrative, denies race its relevance. This rhetorical move also makes the socio-political impacts of 1950s and 1960s anti-colonial movements, the Africa–Brazil connection that might be even more meaningful, invisible. In Brazil, Portuguese colonialism and slavery coincided. Brazil gained independence in 1822 and abolished slavery in 1888. Hence, abolition can be claimed as a national achievement. In African countries, bureaucratic and settler colonialism gained pace around the time that slavery was abolished (1884–5 onwards). Angola, Mozambique and others won independence in the mid-1970s together with East Timor; only the latter was immediately recolonized by Indonesia. Why is it then that the founders imagined abolition – reified through the choice of location and campus names and symbolically on its website – as the constituting moment of UNILAB although colonialism so obviously seems to be the history that is actually shared? Why not stage UNILAB against (in opposition to) Portuguese colonialism more directly? Why is colonialism afforded the possibility of staying in the shadows? While there are many potential reasons (including current geopolitical interests), from the vantage point of crafting a founding mythology, anti-colonialism does not lend itself unambiguously to a narrative that portrays Brazil as the leader of the Lusophone world. And why? First of all, it would neither allow the Brazilian government to inject an alleged post-slavery emancipation agenda (and subsequently conceive of Brazil as a post-racial/post-anti-blackness society), nor withstand closer scrutiny of the solidarity terminology. Even though Afro-Brazilian militants celebrated African nations’ independence as a victory, the Brazilian government did not extend the same support. Apart from the mobilization of Lusotropicalism to infamously defend Portuguese colonialism during the 1960s, Brazil consistently sided with Portugal on colonial issues in the international arena, which earned the government palpable distrust on the part of African countries (Taela 2017). *** Development efforts are often framed in technical terms but projects ultimately survive and thrive because they serve political purposes (Ferguson 1994; Li 2007).3 UNILAB is no different. The Brazilian government promoted the university as a project of joint development, but in the end, it serves broader geopolitical purposes. In framing the university through the history of slavery, the government takes first steps to recognize Afro-descendant rights domestically. The astonishing absence of thinking with race from the development-oriented

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curriculum is all the more surprising despite the founding narrative’s ostensibly obvious association with abolition. By making UNILAB an international development project in collaboration with African countries, pre-emptively placing it under the aegis of abolition, I argue that the founders paid lip service to, yet circumvented intentionally or unintentionally, the controversies regarding affirmative action policies in Brazilian higher education, at least initially. They bypassed the more complicated questions of redress and redistribution, which an open discussion of racial justice would require. Development (as a technical operation) rather than race (as sedimented relations of power, globally) seemed to be at the centre of the university’s utopia. In Chapter 4, I illustrate the tremendous efforts of Afro-Brazilian activists to turn this developmental imaginary into an anti-racism agenda, one that acknowledges blackness beyond the mere celebration of miscegenation in the context of UNILAB’s institutional consolidation.

Notes 1 While Ceará was never a major slave-holding enclave freed people have long been playing an important role in the state’s economy and society. Furthermore, to a large extent, freed people and slaves themselves drove these anti-slavery efforts (Miles 2002; classroom observations, 18 February 2015). It is not without irony that Cearense dignitaries take pride in the state’s role as it represents another form of appropriating black people’s history. 2 Fieldnotes, 9 October 2012 and 11 July 2015 3 The post-structural and postcolonial literature exposes the power of development as a discursive regime located in Western-centric notions of reason, progress and modernization. Development discourses dissect and reconstitute local realties, rendering them technical, amenable to expert solutions from the Global North (Li 2007). Meanwhile, it obfuscates colonial and neocolonial relations of expropriation, exploitation and dispossession that are the root of impoverishment as they continue to transfer human and natural resources from the periphery (at a global scale as well as within countries) to the centre thereby enriching the latter. Development as a discursive regime thus depoliticizes a set of relations, which are in fact deeply political.

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4

Solidarity and Blackness in the Institutional Unfolding of UNILAB

As has been noted in the introduction, long-standing patterns of inequalities based on racialized class distinctions have led to the systematic exclusion of non-white students from Brazilian higher education. At the beginning of the 2000s, responding to sustained activism and in collaboration with social movements (Martins, Medeiros and Nascimento 2004; Paschel 2016), the government launched a number of reforms to combat these inequalities. It aimed to democratize access by expanding private and public higher education (i.e., PROUNI, REUNI). To further ensure greater access for non-white students, the Supreme Court declared race-targeted quotas legal in 2012 and the government made them mandatory for federal universities in 2013 (Schwartzman and Paiva 2014). To target popular attitudes, Lula da Silva, as one of the first acts of his presidency, sanctioned Law no. 10.639 in 2003. The law mandates the teaching of the history and culture of Africa and the Afro-Brazilian diaspora at all levels of education to enhance Brazilians’ historical knowledge and to reduce prejudice against people of colour (Felipe and Teruya 2012). Taken together, these policies represent a revolutionary shift in state discourses from racial democracy to affirmative action (Htun 2004). Brazil’s historical debt to Africa as the official justification for South–South cooperation and the government’s endorsement of affirmative action policies provided the discursive grounds for UNILAB to emerge as an Afro-Brazilian university (Gomes and Vieira 2013). This, however, was not as straightforward as it might seem since actors – the main focus here is on professors – imagined the university’s purpose from different socio-historically positioned perspectives. In this chapter, I describe the perspectives and explain how professors mobilized their perspectives to influence the directions of the institution. I further show how the arguments relied on notions of blackness in contradictory ways.

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Everyday politicking During fieldwork in 2012 and 2013, I sometimes wondered why UNILAB seemingly prematurely admitted international students, before the infrastructure was ready for the rapid increase in enrolment (e.g., dormitories, laboratories, classroom), but I was assured repeatedly that UNILAB had to become an empirical reality before the end of Lula da Silva’s second term (2010), otherwise, one could not be sure whether the idea would survive a change in the country’s political leadership. Consider the following scene: On 1 March 2013, Lula da Silva visited UNILAB. In the evening of his visit, a group of professors and administrators went to a nearby open-air bar to celebrate the day. A band played live music. The singer proposed a toast. The audience, composed of locals and university personnel, applauded enthusiastically. Dean Speller shared an anecdote: ‘I called Lula’s office to invite him for awarding an honorary doctorate (Doutor Honoris Causa). They said that fifteen other universities wanted to award Lula the same title.’ The dean paused to give his next words the deserved weight: ‘Tell him that UNILAB is calling and he will come.’ Fieldnotes, 1 March 2013

In democracies around the world, political parties determine the directions of countries by appointing party officials to ministries, resorts and all the way down to the secretaries. Changes in political leadership often lead to the replacement of these party officials. In Brazil, due to strongly opposing ideological views about how to best govern Brazil and a notorious scarcity of resources, each change in leadership could easily jeopardize any project conceived of by the previous leadership. Since UNILAB was born out of Lula da Silva’s foreign policy to match his domestic agenda, any president or party with a different outlook could have prevented the creation of the university. Indeed, Dilma Rousseff, who took office in 2011, reduced spending on South–South cooperation (Marcondes and Mawdsley 2017). Lula da Silva and the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) were central to UNILAB’s emergence (interview, 16 February 2013). The Lula administration together with Fernando Haddad, Minister of Education (2005–12) handpicked Paulo Speller. He is a member of the Workers’ Party and one of Brazil’s development volunteers (cooperantes). Cooperantes went into exile in Mozambique and Angola after 1975 to flee from the military dictatorship (1964–85). They worked alongside Russian and Cuban volunteers to transform the former colonies into independent

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nation-states (Azevedo 2011, 2012). Speller worked in the Angolan and Mozambican education sector at that time (interview, 28 February 2013). In the context of UNILAB, Speller took part in the Implementation Committee since 2008 and was appointed as first temporary dean (Reitor Pro Tempore) from 2011 to 2013.1 According to Dean Speller, self-governance structures were left flexible, initially, with the intention to solidify them from within once the university had constituted itself.2 For example, he was appointed pro tempore with the expectation that professors, students and administrators would eventually elect a dean from within their ranks. The university statute (Estatuto) represents another example. Institutional conversations concerning the statute began in 2010 and continued until 2013, when the document was finally approved on 22 March by the temporary university council (Conselho Superior Pro Tempore) but only under the condition that it would be later reviewed and revised if necessary (document, no. 40). Mr Speller interpreted this flexibility as the condition for democratic engagement, providing professors and students with the opportunity to participate in the institutionalization of the university. Electing a dean and approving the statute are only two examples. Other activities included writing course curricula, planning and building infrastructure, administering student financial assistance and research funds, forming an ethics committee, and determining institutional and departmental routines. The list seems endless, and professors participated in all of these activities whilst teaching, conducting research, publishing and devising community outreach activities. Many professors aspired to occupy administrative posts (cargos) including positions as vice deans, department chairs, programme managers and committee members. The professors valued these posts because they associated them with better salaries and career opportunities. By holding such posts, professors negotiated and decided many aspects of institutional policies, structures and daily routines. Moreover, professors held personal convictions, situated imaginings, for themselves and for the university. These convictions were informed (but not causally determined) by professors’ positions in the Brazilian society and globally; that is, they reflected intersecting aspects of professors’ personal, professional, political, economic and cultural positionalities as well as their regional and national sense of belonging. These positionalities also enhanced or limited the professors’ capacity to influence the institutional politics. Professors with relevant connections to the university leadership had greater access, which, however, could change over time and shift depending on who was in power. Therefore, in order to pursue their

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interests, professors had to forge alliances with like-minded colleagues, or, they persuaded colleagues to organize into politically viable groups by convincing them of their aspirations. Much of this forging and organizing occurred in informal settings (e.g., hallways), or in the words of Professor Silva: ‘Here, the politics are not in the official discourses or meetings. It is the interpersonal relations between people that move things’ (interview, 9 July 2015). Then again, these alliances did not form at random. Rather, they reflected the racializing assemblages – force fields of political decision-making – that configure the context of Brazil. It is precisely the hierarchization through mobile structures of domination (race, gender etc.) that culminated in distinctive political perspectives, which manifested themselves in the everyday politicking that had UNILAB’s institutional consolidation as its object. At the same time, professors actively drew on these perspectives to mobilize support for their respective agendas.

Affirmative action After opening its doors in 2011, the university had to quickly expand its faculty to accommodate a fast-growing student population. Between 2011 and 2015, the number of professors grew from eighteen to 173, the majority of whom were junior academics. Some were at the start of their academic careers and others had transferred from private universities. They were looking for jobs in the federal university system, which they hoped would offer relatively stable employment and potential transfers to more desirable public universities. Many professors focused their teaching mainly on professional skills and knowledge relevant for employment. The South–South mandate tended to disappear from their accounts, apart from a vague notion that underdevelopment is a common condition of the Northeast and partnering countries, and which delivered international students to their classrooms. Some of the professors stood out from this seemingly disinterested majority by strongly supporting the idea of local development. Many of them were born in Ceará. Just like Lula da Silva and other politicians cited in university documentations, they considered the creation of UNILAB a source of pride and means of emancipation. They were mostly concerned with the technical (e.g., food production) and social (e.g., public health) development of the region (interviews, 5, 8, 15 and 21 February 2013). In the daily negotiations over the institutional consolidation, however, they tended to side with the majority opinion or to forge singular alliances that benefited them as individual researchers.

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When it came to institutional direction, the majority of professors mobilized a pragmatic perspective to advance their claims. For instance, in July 2015, a relatively small group of professors, who were engaged in union work, called for a faculty strike against Dilma Roussef ’s budget cuts. A large group of professors strongly opposed the strike in the name of the ‘foreign students’, who had supposedly nothing else to do in Redenção and who would miss classes and learning opportunities (participatory observations, 30 June 2015). The group that supported the strike discounted the reference to teaching, accusing their opponents of trying to depoliticize negotiations over institutional directions. Professor Pereira remarked that the strike-opposing group was using a ‘business as usual’ approach as an excuse to avoid public debates over racialized inequalities and to continue steering decisions through informal channels (e.g., personal networks) instead of democratic means such as public assemblies and voting (interview, 3 July 2015). The criticisms concerning the lack of open engagement continued on various occasions. Some professors complained that the majority of their colleagues prioritized their academic careers over UNILAB’s political purposes. Professor Santos said: ‘many just come here to stabilize their academic career and then leave’ (interview, 15 February 2013). Other professors offered similar comments: ‘[They] only want to occupy cargo’ (fieldnotes, 13 July 2015) and ‘Some are here only for [their] career. Not all talk about Africa and Brazil’ (interview, 16 February 2013). The criticisms frequently referenced racialized inequalities. For instance, Professora Simone said: ‘they don’t even teach about Afro-Brazilian health in nursing’. She continued: ‘we are the naughty ones (somos os chatos)’ for continuously bringing up these questions (fieldnotes, 13 July 2015). The criticisms should not be misread in a way that implies that professors, who uttered them, were less concerned about their academic careers, far from it. Yet, it points to a political perspective that is explicitly concerned with the remediation of racism. This assertion of Afro-descendant concerns is a novelty given Brazil’s ideological legacy of racial democracy and the only recent turn to affirmative action policies. It requires the sort of political activism that is apparent in the words of Professora Lourdes, a self-identified Afro-Brazilian activist: I understand the construction of my career as a collective trajectory. I have to give back. That I am here is not an individual but a collective accomplishment. I have to give back to the community. I have to accept this responsibility. I cannot only say, look, I am here. When I heard about UNILAB in 2009, I already knew I wanted to be here. I am coming out of the Black Movement. . . . For me

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Internationalization of Higher Education for Development UNILAB is a political and pedagogic project, not a project of constructing a new university. Interview, 11 February 2013

The act of self-identification represents a political act because Brazilian society is characterized by a colour-continuum and absence of clearly defined racial groups. Loveman (1999) pointedly explains the conundrum: ‘Blacks’ are deprived not just of explicit causes against which ‘they’ might mobilize, but of policies that would constitute ‘black’ as a meaningful category, and from there possibly a meaningful group, in the first place. The challenge confronting Afro-Brazilian activists (self-named) is not simply mobilization of a given constituency the boundaries of which are known and unproblematically recognized by all concerned: it is to create a constituency by actively drawing ‘racial’ boundaries. 915, emphasis original

In 2012 and 2013, this sort of Afro-Brazilian activism surfaced primarily in the realm of teaching. For professors who supported the political cause, the mere teaching of professional skills was not enough. They regarded students, Brazilians and non-Brazilians alike, as historical subjects who needed to learn about the discrimination of Afro-Brazilians, the systematic suppression of African heritage in Brazilian cultures, and active resistances against such oppression. To briefly state two examples: in class, Professor Rafael, a Brazilian professor in the humanities, screened the movie Quilombo (Diegues 1984) about a seventeenthcentury settlement of escaped slaves and discussed the syncretism of religious practices present in Brazil (classroom observations, 23 January 2013). Professora Lourdes taught about slave revolts in Ceará (classroom observations, 18 February 2015). By 2015, the group of politically active professors had grown into a publicly outspoken alliance, which sought to steer institutional directions. This change resulted in part from the rapid expansion of the student body and the subsequent hiring of additional faculty, including professors to teach mandatory courses on history, societies and cultures of Lusophone space. In addition to the disciplines in applied sciences (discussed in Chapter 2), the university offered a required general curriculum during the first and second trimester (discussed in detail in Chapter 5). In the beginning, professors, who taught these courses and whose disciplinary backgrounds were in anthropology, history, sociology and literature did not have a departmental home within the development-oriented curriculum. The university soon realized that in order to hire qualified faculty members and

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to keep them they needed to create respective departments. At first, in the opinion of Professor Martins, the administration was reluctant since the professors’ request fell outside of the university’s immediate developmental purpose (interview, 4 February 2013). In September 2012 (earlier than originally planned), however, the administration established new disciplines in social sciences and humanities (Bacharelado em Humanidades, BHU) as well as languages and literatures (Letras) in the evening. These disciplines were mainly designed to attract working adults of the local population and to serve as the departmental homes for professors of anthropology, history, sociology and literature, meanwhile international students also enrolled in these disciplines (cf., classroom observations, 16 and 25 January 2013). Because the new departments made additional use of the limited infrastructure and recruited a new group of students, they quickly expanded. By March 2013, the evening classes constituted the largest section on campus in terms of the number of students and professors. This expansion also attracted a growing number of professors sympathetic to Afro-Brazilian activism. Afro-Brazilian activism gained additional momentum when the government appointed Nilma Gomes as dean in the second half of 2013. A proponent of the black movement and self-identified Afro-Brazilian activist, Gomes opposed racialized inequalities in Brazilian education throughout her academic career, focusing on the decolonization of knowledge and on teacher education to transform society (cf. Gomes 2012). Through her initiatives, UNILAB implemented institutional changes that put non-white professors into offices and championed Afro-Brazilian interests overall. For example, in 2015 UNILAB opened its third campus over 1,000 km away from Redenção in São Francisco de Condo in Bahia. Bahia is often referred to as the most Afro-Brazilian of all Brazilian states (de Santana Pinho 2010). Furthermore, the Institute of Humanities and Letters (Instituto de Humanidades e Letras, IHL) was founded to host BHU and Letters. In March 2015, pedagogy (Pedagogia) was added to IHL. The official goal of the teaching was to overcome Eurocentric ways of knowing the world and to preserve historically under-appreciated knowledges and cultural practices derived from Brazil’s African cultural heritage. At the end of 2014, Gomes left UNILAB because she was promoted into Dilma Roussef ’s government as head of the Office of Promoting Racial Equality (Secretaria de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial, SEPIR). In their efforts to shape institutional directions according to Afro-Brazilian objectives and in the interest of racial parity, professors solicited the support from their non-Brazilian colleagues and international students. For example, in

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July 2015 professors, students and administrators were called to democratically elect the chair of the IHL department. The professor activists put forward a nonBrazilian non-white professor in the hope this would encourage non-Brazilian colleagues (and students) to vote in their favour (interview with non-Brazilian candidate, 3 July 2015). The group further promoted the worldview of Ubuntu, which means: ‘oneness of humanity, a collectivity, community and set of cultural practices and spiritual values that seek respect and dignity for all humanity’ (Goduka 2000, cited in Assié-Lumumba 2017: 2) as their motto to invite professors and students to join their camp. This form of presenting the group to the UNILAB public advances a notion of blackness that has as its tenet shared experiences of discrimination, thus transcending national boundaries in the name of black solidarity. Afro-Brazilian activists did not intend to exclude nonblack professors and students from these struggles. On the contrary, the nonBrazilian candidate proudly said of a Brazilian non-black professor, ‘Now she is one of us. She supports our cause’ (fieldnotes, 14 July 2015). Yet, they clearly campaigned for affirmative action policies that go beyond recognition and an apolitical notion of development, building toward a transformative anti-racist and decolonial agenda that directly challenges the effects of anti-black racism in the Brazilian society (da Costa 2016).

South–South solidarity A small group of Brazilian and non-Brazilian professors worried that UNILAB would succumb to the domestic debates over affirmative action policies in Brazilian higher education at the expense of South–South cooperation. They were concerned that South–South efforts (e.g., inter-institutional relations) would remain rather thin, existing only on paper in the form of signed agreements without sustentative activities. Professor Santos mobilized history by giving it his own situated twist, remarking to that effect: ‘Brazil was never a socialist country. Countries with socialist traditions know what solidarity cooperation is. Brazil was a land of slaves. How can you do solidarity cooperation if you don’t have a history of what solidarity is?’ (interview, 22 February 2013). Non-Brazilian professors feared that internationalization would not go beyond the admission of international students, and even that might fade, as changes in admission policies suggested. Initially, UNILAB had planned to admit 50 per cent Brazilian and 50 per cent international students as stated in the founding document: ‘In order to

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achieve its proposal, half of the students will be selected from young people living in Brazil; the other half will be selected from the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries, especially Africa’ (UNILAB 2010: 10). Table 4.1 shows the number of students by country accumulated over time. The numbers include only students enrolled in on-campus, undergraduate courses. The university had planned to offer 180 slots to each group, a total of 360 students, during the first two rounds of admission in 2011 (MEC 2011). Between May 2011 and December 2012, the total number of enrolled students expanded from 179 to 964, which represents an increase of 229 per cent. Although expansion slowed down afterwards, it remained high: 40 per cent in 2013 (1,352 in total) and 52 per cent in 2014 (2,056 total). In line with the objective to expand higher education mostly into the interior of the country, UNILAB gave preference to Brazilian students from Redenção and surrounding municipalities (Acarape, Aracoiaba, Aratuba, Barreira, Baturité, Capistrano, Guaramiranga, Itapiúna, Mulungu, Ocara, Pacoti and Palmácia). It administered a bonus system that added points to applicants’ secondary school grades if they came from the region and had attended public secondary schools. By 2013, Brazilian students were mostly local students with the exception of a very small group of students from neighbouring states, for example from Paraíba and Fortaleza. Although the proclaimed goal of parity in enrolment – 50 per cent Brazilian and 50 per cent non-Brazilian students – has never been reached, international enrolment has

Table 4.1 Student enrolment by country, over time Brazil InterAngola Cape Guinea Mozam- São East Total national Verde Bissau bique Tomé e Timor Principe 05/2011 09/2011 09/2012 12/2012 01/2013 06/2013 01/2014 08/2014 04/2018

141 38 293 38* 515 112 805 159 815 195 1,053 299 1,171 376 1,446 610 2,942 1,034

12 12 n/a** n/a 19 26 32 46 n/a

3 3 n/a n/a 22 39 50 73 n/a

* No incoming international students. ** For cells designated n/a no data could be obtained.

18 18 n/a n/a 58 135 181 360 n/a

1 1 n/a n/a 3 5 12 17 n/a

1 1 n/a n/a 21 23 29 44 n/a

3 3 n/a n/a 72 71 72 70 n/a

179 331 627 964 1,010 1,352 1,547 2,056 3,976

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been growing proportionally faster than the enrolment of Brazilian students, in fact 1.5 times faster compared to national enrolment. While non-Brazilian students constituted only 22 per cent (thirty-eight students) of the first cohort, by August 2014 the international students share was at 29 per cent (610 of 2,056 students), of whom the majority (540 students, 86 per cent) came from African countries and 70 students (11 per cent) came from East Timor. The rapid growth in enrolment attests to UNILAB’s general commitment to the expansion of higher education, but over the years it increasingly catered to domestic development demands. In August 2014, anticipating a general slowdown in enrolment justified through the lack of UNILAB infrastructure (e.g., classrooms, dormitories) and national budget cuts, the administration initiated a policy that capped international student enrolment at 20 per cent rather than the original 50 per cent. At the time the policy took effect, international students and faculty expected the actual international enrolment to turn out even lower due to a build-in redistribution mechanism. The policy stipulated that the 20 per cent of slots reserved for international students should be distributed evenly across countries; that is, each country (excluding Brazil and East Timor)3 was allotted the same number of slots for autumn 2014 (thirtythree students per African country, a total of 165). Slots that could not be allocated either due to ‘a lack of qualified candidates or withdrawal’ (document, no. 35: 2) should be reassigned to Brazilian students. This mechanism did not take application dynamics into account. It did not weigh the allocation of slots against the number of applications by country, which by 2014 had proven to be rather uneven. By and large, the demand on the part of students from Guinea Bissau was the largest. The demand on the part of students from other African countries was not only lower, it also consistently fell under the thirty-three slots allotted by the policy.4 While the international students’ and the faculty’s suspicion that international enrolment would fall even below 20 per cent did not actually materialize (26 per cent in 2018), the policy ended previous dynamics according to which international enrolment grew faster than national enrolment. Understandably, this policy generated protests among South–South cooperation-oriented professors and international students. Professor Silva suspected that international student numbers were reduced to create quotas for non-white Brazilian students (interview, 9 July 2015). Perhaps this was only an individual suspicion – and yet during an interview, a Brazilian non-black administrator, while suggestively waving his hand across the room (I assume he was referring to the international students) remarked that racial quotas were of little use for the selection of students since UNILAB ‘already admits so many

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blacks’ (fieldnotes, 9 February 2013). The two comments, albeit stated independently, read together highlight that the competing perspectives circulating among professors (and administrators) mirrored the domestic debates about whether affirmative action policies can actually serve to reverse racialized educational inequalities. More generally, Brazilian academics, who argue against quotas, refute that socio-economic inequality and race are related issues. Instead, they uphold the idea of racial democracy because they believe that affirmative action policies reinforce racialized inequalities by reproducing an allegedly inexistent racialism. In contrast, academics who advocate for quotas view Brazil as a nation of racial groups in conflict (Bailey and Peria 2010). Much like UNILAB’s Afro-Brazilian activist professors, these academics advocate for the right to be different and the explicit redress of racialized disadvantages. The non-black administrator did not exactly argue against quotas, but he mobilized the presence of the international students as an excuse to disregard AfroBrazilian concerns in the name of transnational blackness in a way that obscured the racialized class structures of Brazilian society. This gesture not only generalizes across non-white people, it also pitches a depoliticized perspective against Afro-Brazilian political activism. Some professors and international students (though certainly not all) refuted both notions of blackness, homogenizing as they were across a multitude of non-white collectives. Professor Martins said in this regard: ‘I don’t have a cargo because I am black. They [referring to Afro-Brazilian activist professors] think I don’t know that, but being black isn’t all that matters’ (interview, 7 July 2015). Non-Brazilian professors wanted to be recognized first and foremost as professors at a Brazilian federal university, not as foreign/Africans to legitimize Brazilian South–South cooperation or as black to support Afro-Brazilian activism. Instead many of them (though certainly not all), supported by very few Brazilian professors, petitioned for South–South policies such as hiring international faculty, taking non-Brazilian professors’ expertise into account in institutional planning and promoting a transatlantic research agenda (interviews, 26 January, 4, 22 and 25 February 2013). Professors made sense of UNILAB’s purpose from different perspectives to mobilize the support they needed to further their professional and institutional agendas. A majority considered neither South–South cooperation nor AfroBrazilian emancipation a priority. Many of them were of privileged socioeconomic backgrounds and would be considered white in the Brazilian contexts. In contrast, activist professors leveraged the ‘symbolic value’ of UNILAB (Silvério 2017) to lobby for Afro-Brazilian rights – for the recognition of

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racialized inequalities and for the promotion of non-white professors to administrative posts (cargos) as a form of racial redress. The majority of Brazilian professors met this sort of activism with hesitation, if not outright resistance. For instance, during a general faculty assembly in the context of the strike described above, a Brazilian non-white professor took to the stage to advocate for solidarity between groups in Brazilian higher education (including Indigenous, public school and students of colour). In a matter of minutes, three-quarters of the professors stood up and left the auditorium pouring into the hallway where they engaged in quite agitated conversations (fieldnotes, 13 July 2015). The professors’ divergent perspectives and the tensions between them were symptomatic of ongoing domestic debates over access to (state) power. By advocating for affirmative action policies in higher education and beyond, AfroBrazilian activists struggle to establish ‘blackness [as] a legitimate political category’ (Paschel 2016: 13) to influence national policies towards improving the circumstances of Afro-descendants in Brazil. Race thus surfaced as a political issue in two ways: on the one hand, whether to cast the socio-economic inequalities prevalent in Brazilian society in terms of racialized inequalities (as opposed to class, for instance, intersectionality notwithstanding) constitutes a much-debated issue in Brazilian higher education (Schwartzman and Paiva 2014). On the other hand, by 2015 (four years into the project), race had become a main theme around which negotiations over UNILAB’s institutional directions evolved. The idea of race had become a talking point, a governing technology so to speak, that shaped UNILAB as policy in practice. This analysis is not to omit that race as a ‘set of socio-political processes of differentiation and hierarchization’ (Weheliye 2014: 5) is always already there. Yet, issues of racism and racialization had become spoken about more candidly (clearly an accomplishment of the Afro-Brazilian activist professors’ doings), unlike in 2012 when they were still addressed secretly. In 2012, some professors had decided, for instance, not to propose a project designed to openly discuss the racial tensions embedded in the UNILAB project. Instead, they preferred to pull me into private conversations when they wanted to point out the racializing effects (and students’ experiences with racism) of UNILAB’s construction of South–South solidarity.5 The founders envisioned abolition as the common past from which to build a cultural and scientific bridge that would provide a shared pathway into the future. As we saw, notions of history and perceptions of relevance are fragmented at best, if not contradictory. The making of UNILAB can thus be understood as an attempt to meld fragments into a project that would withstand the winds of change in national leadership. With the general education curriculum, the

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founders set aside space in which they imagined professors and students would perform the necessary work to produce the coveted integration via historical conscience and sociability, both of which carry racializing notions of the other. University classrooms, like primary and secondary school classrooms, are complex socio-political and socio-cultural spaces in which students receive messages about the kind of knowledge that is valued and about themselves, for instance whether they are considered knowers of their lives or mere recipients of dominant cultural norms (Popkewitz 1998; Apple 1995; Ladson-Billing 1994). These messages are not merely discursive practices but constitute the principles of realities. In Chapters 5 and 6, I pay attention to these aspects of university life, to continue examining notions of blackness as they percolate through ideas of solidarity and integration.

Notes 1 His successors, Nilma Gomes (2013–14), Tomas Aroldo da Mota (2015–16) and Anastácio de Queiroz Sousa (since 2017) were also appointed. 2 Interview, 28 February 2013 and fieldnotes, 28 January 2013. 3 The calculation did not include East Timor for two possible reasons: first, admission procedures differed from those of the African countries as students received government stipends and were admitted as cohort (rather than through individual student applications), which was most likely considered as significant resources for the students and, indirectly, the university. Second, because students were admitted as cohort, the number of applications (and subsequent enrolment) did not grow as consistently as the number of applications from other countries. This, however, does not explain why the policy did not cap Brazilian enrolment. 4 People (including international students and faculty, and also my colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) offered a variety of explanations for the disparities including the following, listed in no particular order: a) the general lack of higher education and overall political and economic instability in Guinea Bissau, b) the relative geographical proximity to Brazil, which requires fewer resources for travel, c) the already existing population of students from Guinea Bissau in Fortaleza, d) political animosities on the part of other countries concerning Brazil’s leadership aspirations (e.g., Mozambique, Angola), e) more attractive alternatives (e.g., South Africa in the case of Mozambican students), and f) lack of resources on the part of students needed to obtain necessary documents (e.g., passports). A Mozambican student, who lamented the severe poverty among many of his friends, mentioned the latter point. 5 Fieldnotes, 25 September 2012.

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Historical Consciousness

The formation of a national citizenry based on the political and moral principles of a society is one of the main purposes of modern schooling. Ideal citizens deploy reason and knowledge to pursue a balance between individual freedom and the common good. The teaching of history is necessary to produce a governable subject or ‘responsible citizen’ whose identity as well as present and future actions are based on a shared historical narrative. Knowing history, that is, developing a historical consciousness, is seen as a pedagogical technology that links citizens’ thoughts and actions to a singular collective narrative that encompasses past, present and future. The notion of a historical consciousness emerged in the 1970s in the wake of the Holocaust against Jewish people under the Nazi regime. Its historical urgency is best articulated by George Santayana’s famous dictum: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’ (cited in Friedrich 2010: 655). Scholars and educators often take for granted that historical consciousness must be fostered in students in order to mould them into ideal citizens. Meanwhile, an individual deemed to possess an ‘adequate’ historical consciousness is perceived as someone invested with the attributes of an educated person. The philosophical implications of historical consciousness – as a means of questioning subjectivity – can become clipped by its pedagogical application, which can impose a progressive view of history that discourages dissensus in favour of consensus, or what is defined as the norm with regard to reasonable thought and action. What constitutes a historical consciousness depends on the discursive specificities of each particular site (Friedrich 2010). An analysis of how historical consciousness is translated into different fields should pay close attention to how it negotiates diverse values and rationalities. Is such diversity accepted as historically and geographically produced or is it subsumed within a universalistic position that discourages difference in the name of uniformity and progress? Table 5.1 shows the courses included in UNILAB’s general curriculum, which was designed to foster students’ intercultural capacities and historical knowledge. 75

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Table 5.1 General education courses Course name (in English)

Course name (in Portuguese)

1st 2nd Trimester Trimester

Reading and Producing Texts I Reading and Producing Texts II Society, History and Culture in Lusophone Spaces (SHC) Intercultural Topics in Lusophone Spaces (TI) Initiation into Scientific Thinking Insertion into University Life (VU)

Leitura e produção de texto I

X

Leitura e produção de texto II

X

Sociedade, história e cultura X nos espaços lusófonos Tópicos de interculturalidades nos espaços lusófonos Iniciação científico X

X

Inserção à vida universitária

X

I observed general curriculum classrooms because I assumed that most of the work to build solidarity and integration would be performed in these classroom spaces. Indeed, in the founding document these three courses were originally discussed as the courses in which students would receive fundamental information about the ‘history, culture and socio-cultural identity of partner countries’ to ‘stimulate them to share their own socio-cultural universe and to get to know [each other] better’ and ultimately to ‘sensualize [the students] and [let them] understand different realities and ways of living’ (UNILAB 2010: 34– 5). In this chapter I review the courses that were designed to teach about history, society, and culture (SHC and TI). I examine professors’ pedagogical approaches to the subject of history. The focus on the general curriculum provides an interesting counterpart to the applied science of the disciplinary curriculum described in Chapter 2. Whereas the disciplinary courses concentrated on technical training, the general courses emphasize the humanistic aspects of the undergraduate education (interviews, 15 February and 5 March 2013). The courses’ official curriculum (UNILAB 2010: 10) highlights the parallels in history and culture (e.g., language) as the conditions for the possibility of South–South cooperation and integration. Courses should examine the historical, cultural, geographical, climate, religious and linguistic diversity of the various countries. They should discuss concepts such as Lusotropicalism, Lusophony, interculturality and integration. Indeed, many professors tackled these issues on a country-by-country basis and cast

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international diversities in celebratory terms. The idea of these courses represented a radical break from previous ways of teaching the history of Africa– Brazil relations and its repercussions in Brazilian schools. Throughout the chapter I illustrate professors’ approaches in pedagogy and content as they provide spaces (or not) for students to insert themselves into the imagined decolonizing development project that is UNILAB.

Teaching history According to the official outline (ementa),1 the course on society, history and culture (SHC), taught during the first trimester, focuses on: ‘the world the Europeans found: The organization of African and American societies before the 21st century. The economic and cultural exchange in the colonial context – the traffic of slaves, Indigenous people and negros in the construction of a Brazilian nation, Pan-Africanism as struggle for liberation: the literature of resistance and affirmation of negro identity. Postindependence: social conflicts, and politicocultural reordering.’ The course on intercultural topics (TI), taught during the second trimester, explores: ‘the different temporalities of the colonial process, the cultural practices, exchanges, and conflicts that occurred during contact, with emphasis on the analysis of concrete manifestations that arose from the process of occupation, from struggles of resistance until independence. It employs historical–cultural texts that consider changes, continuities, and intermittencies of beliefs and values within diverse societies’. The course outline includes a list of readings (Appendix II includes the full list) that provides an indication of the epistemological inclinations of the scholars who crafted the course descriptions. The choice of texts exemplified UNILAB’s attempt to displace Europe as the sole source of Brazilian modernity. As such, these courses aim to tackle what Madureira calls the ‘main goal’ of postcolonial theory, which he described as the reconsideration of the ‘history of slavery, racism and colonization from the standpoint of those who endured its effects’ and to revise history from a position of and ‘oriented toward the South’ (2008: 141). SHC and TI imagined the teaching of history as a profound contestation of the underlying notion of the inferiority of Africans and Afro-descendants and to replace it with the norm that Africans and Afro-descendants in the (Brazilian) African diaspora are agents of their own lives and histories. Wordings such as ‘indigenous’ [sic] and ‘Pan-Africanism as struggle for liberation’ and references to the Movimento Negro indicate that the authors of the outline viewed formerly colonized societies as spaces where everyday lives

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and cultures are substantially shaped by struggles against dominance. By putting wordings such as ‘different temporalities’ and ‘consider changes, continuities, and intermittencies of beliefs and values within diverse societies’ on paper, they displayed an understanding of culture as something fluid, ever produced and reproduced in interactions between the oppressor and the oppressed (Young 2003). The authors (or rather, visionaries) emphasized the multitude of cultural manifestations that resulted from colonial occupations and resistance(s) against it. The wording such as ‘Brazilian nation’ and ‘Pan-Africanism’, as well as the choice of scholars to read, which include North and South American as well as African writers (e.g. from Cabral to Bernd to Anderson), further suggests that the courses were meant to address these issues in reference to both sides of the Black Atlantic. The Brazilian Northeast and Africa have long been entangled in the materialities and representations of centre–peripheral differences. The Brazilian government, Brazilian society and the world at large traditionally perceived them as economically, socially and culturally underdeveloped, in short backward (Weinstein 2015; Mbembe 2001). In the light of this context, the SHC and TI descriptions represent an important and radical break with common understandings of the students’ lives and cultures found elsewhere. It also represents a radically different approach to understanding their lives as historically linked across the Atlantic as a space of connections and routes so vividly described by Paul Gilroy (1993), which by no means constituted mainstream discourse in the Brazilian context. The suggested contents of SHC and TI comply with the Brazilian Law 10.639 that was passed in January 2003. The law mandates the teaching of the history and culture of Africa and African descendants at all levels of education (da Costa 2014; Felipe and Teruya 2012). The course descriptions go further in that they encourage the acknowledgement of students’ agency over shaping their lives and experiences and the use of ideas that elevate them to agents over their own histories. It seems that the descriptions were written in the hope that students would gain an understanding of the emergence of social relations (including race relations) in Brazil and elsewhere from a postcolonial perspective (especially from the perspective of Brazilians of African descent as the use of the term negro suggests) and be able to compare and contrast these perspectives to the more common historical narratives of European intellectual, material and overall imperial expansions. The hope was that students would appreciate the mixedness of Brazilian culture from the vantage point of African ancestry and acknowledge previous moments of transnational diasporic integration. The SHC and TI course descriptions laid the ground for professors to develop full syllabi. The outlines were meant to create a shared reading list and approach

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to conceptualizing the courses. However, professors at different times exclaimed that the descriptions were too broad and not specific enough. Professora Simona, a Brazilian professor, responded amused when asked about her experiences with the outline. She said: ‘The ementa is an elephant. I don’t know how to apply it with the students’ (interview, 21 February 2013). Many professors struggled with transforming the general outlines into syllabi. Some thought the readings were too difficult for the students and others were uncertain about students’ prior knowledge. The teaching of the emancipatory narrative proposed in the course outlines often relied on simplified understandings of Black Atlantic relations. Although, overall, the teaching covered a great variety of topics including African philosophies, the triangular trade regime, or ethical issues of interculturality and communitarian solidarity, individual professors frequently cut one or more dimensions out of the picture to transport particular emancipatory perspectives from which to inspire resistances against various notions of dominance. The predicament was that the celebration of either national or racial cultural diversities as the means to portray integration and solidarity to legitimize the UNILAB project and Africa–Brazil relations more broadly masked the power imbalances that de facto existed on campus and which did not fall neatly along the one-dimensional national or racial identities that professors envisioned as the base for social change. Professors often imagined fault lines of integration, which thus needed to be overcome through the teaching of historical consciousness, in ways that made sense from their own perspectives. They were frequently able to relate only to fractions of students in their classrooms, which was often a problem since UNILAB classrooms were highly diverse. Aspects of Brazilian race relations were highly controversial. Moreover, they were often discussed in ways that portrayed Africa as the source of slaves ultimately bracketing the contemporary political, social, cultural and economic realities actually experienced by international students in their home countries. Tensions thus arose left and right causing students to disengage, if they had a chance at all to participate in classroom discussions. The talking time was often controlled and dominated by professors themselves leaving little room for debate.

Emancipation through culture Many professors emphasized the interconnectedness of Lusophone countries and people from a cultural perspective. They emphasized religion, identity and language. Many of them focused on particular aspects, which often reflected

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their own experiences. Take, for example, Professor Rafael, a Brazilian professor of history. His focus was on religion. One day he showed students the movie Quilombo, a celebration of Brazil’s most important maroon community and the first ‘free republic of the Americas’, directed by Carlos Diegues (1984); briefly summarized: The movie depicts a group of slaves who revolted in 1650 and escaped to the mountains to join the community of the Quilombos dos Palmares and their leader, Ganga Zumba. Ganga Zumba and his people had been living in Palmares for many years. Eventually the Portuguese persuaded them to leave. Ganga Zumba wanted to capitulate but many people in Palmares disagreed. The warrior Zumbi emerged from the disagreement. He demanded freedom and independence and refused to compromise with the Portuguese. In 1864 Palmares came under attack again and was ultimately defeated. Many people, including Zumbi, died. Classroom observations, 22 January 2013

During the discussion afterwards, Professor Rafael repeatedly linked the movie to the syncretism of Brazilian religious practices tracing the heritage of African belief systems. He often proclaimed that: ‘We are all mixed. Religions are mixed’ (classroom observations, 23 January 2013). Professor Rafael encouraged students to explore and value their (‘our’) African ancestry by discussion of, for example, orixás (goddesses). Rather than portraying it as the religion of the colonial other (African or Afro-Brazilian alike), as has historically been done, he highlighted it as a shared heritage. Even though this approach to history and culture represented an important discursive shift, international students often enough found the assumed sharedness paradoxical. From their perspective, it seemed puzzling since Professor Rafael’s approach was evidently Brazil-centred. It reflected neither the diversity of religious practices in African countries in the past nor of students’ spiritual belongings in the present. Another example of the ambiguities that arose was a cultural approach to history designed to inspire unity across postcolonial spaces. Professora Telma, a Brazilian professor of sociology, taught about the history of colonialism as the source of individual and collective identity formation. She was the only professor, of those whom I observed, who addressed history from the perspective of (de-)colonization rather than slavery. In one of the classes she discussed a text called Atmospheric Violence and Subjective Violences by the Mozambican author José Cabaço (2011), briefly summarized here: Cabaço renarrates how his perceptions about the social order of the Mozambican society – his social identity – changed while he grew up. When he was a child he

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lived with his parents in the interior of Mozambique. They were of Portuguese descent. For example, while branco [white] travellers frequently visited his parents’ house, indígenas [indigenous, locals, black] and assimilados [assimilated, mixed] persons were never invited, nor did they solicit accommodation. The author admits in the text that he did not question this racialized order (‘o meu mundo’ [my world], p. 215) at that time. As he grew older he started to understand that this separation contradicted the Catholic values of conviviality and harmony under which he was brought up. He started to revolt by reading and learning about ‘o mundo-Outro’ [the world-Other] (p.  217) – the social, political and economic realities of the local population in Mozambique. He realized that he had to break with ‘his world’ and ultimately joined the war for Independence during the 1970s. Classroom observations, 28 January 2013

In her explanations, Professora Telma emphasized the cultural domination and marginalization of the colonized by the colonizers. In other classes, Professora Telma spoke about the formation of Brazilian identity underscoring hierarchization and discrimination born out of the discursive and physical violence of the Portuguese colonialism-slavery-war assemblage (classroom observations, 21 January 2013). Foregrounding the formation of socio-cultural identities through struggles for freedom and against oppression without victimizing the formerly colonized, she emphasized students’ agency in forging their own histories and futures. In her mind, colonization was still ongoing as the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized have become ambiguously intertwined over time. As she saw it, the only way to escape subjugation was through knowing the history of cultural colonization. She placed the responsibility to know this history firmly with her students. Like Professor Rafael, Professora Telma’s explanations transported a particular, and purportedly united, understanding of a ‘we’. It constituted the condition of being postcolonial in the sense that southern countries and people have, over time, formed hybrid identities due to oppressive histories such as transatlantic slavery and colonization. Seen from this perspective, professors and students at UNILAB are equals in the endeavour of asserting their emancipation by valuing their social identities and southern epistemologies. Her approach is not as Brazilcentred, since it takes as its starting point an imagined experience of shared belonging to the formerly colonized. Professora Telma’s approach privileged culture as a site of struggle without confronting other sustained structures of difference and dominance. This resembled what Maher and Tetreault (1993) described regarding the discussions of gender inequality in US collegeclassrooms. They found that the positionalities of the professors influenced the

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kinds of conversations in which teachers and students engaged. White-American professors ‘privileged gender as the main category of analysis’ (123). The conversations often did not confront racism and white privilege, whereas African-American teachers discussed gender and race as inextricably linked. Moreover, Professora Telma projected her own socio-historically positioned understanding of culture sometimes (though not always) dismissing students’ perspectives for which the following conversation provides a particularly striking example (classroom observations, 21 January 2013): Professora [Sighs.] One has to have hope. Student Hope stays with God. Professora No, God doesn’t do it. We do. Student The current generation is worse than other generations before. Professora Many leave Guinea Bissau to study. I hope they return. One has to hope that soon it will be better. Student One has to go to church. Professora No, not church. One has to do something. In this instance, Professora Telma cut short what could have been an interesting conversation. She did not, however, take the time to acknowledge the student’s way of seeing the world. She negated the student’s suggestion of how to foment change. She was not the only one who rejected the idea of God. Other Brazilian professors had a beef with God, and the Catholic Church in particular (classroom observations, 21 and 29 January 2013), so it seemed, perhaps because the latter – here I only speculate – was central to maintaining anti-black discourses in Brazilian history. What was a situatedly informed opinion on the part of Professora Telma, in the context of UNILAB the negation of the student’s reference system was more than just an unfortunate teaching style lapse. It denied the possibility of a diversity of epistemologies in her classroom. Since she worked under the auspices of UNILAB’s original proposal, which included also the idea of mutual respect, she could have used the student’s culture (i.e., religious

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beliefs) as a vehicle for learning (Ladson-Billing 1995). For example, she could have used this situation for an open debate about the role of values and beliefs for the formation of identity on both sides of the Atlantic, and to ask for students’ personal experiences as postcolonial subjects. She could have reshaped the conversation to talk about the role of religion in colonial and postcolonial identity formation processes, the topic of her classrooms. Instead, she stated her own view, negated the student’s different sense-making apparatus, and returned to the conversation of the text that she had selected. Although this is not only a matter of pedagogy but also a philosophical one (as I will discuss in a moment), the pedagogies that I observed in general education courses often seemed less transformative than the decolonial perspective of the course outlines suggested. Many professors used professor-centred approaches when teaching these matters. They often lectured and explained things in ways that highlighted their expertise but left little room for open-ended questioning and critical engagement on the part of the students. While, theoretically, professors valued students’ contributions and frequently solicited them by calling on students, they actually gave students very little space, or else, very controlled space to share their opinions. When asked to explain their teaching practices, professors justified them as acts of resistance that alternatingly wanted to ensure equal participation and to defuse tensions that might arise from the topics at hand. Professors often mobilized notions of colonial difference – Africaness or identity – to produce the students as agents of a liberated future. Such a move reinstated the students as unreasonable beings that must be controlled and manicured rather than the postcolonial agents envisioned by the course outline. Professors conflate critical/interpretive discourses with strategic ones as they wished to position themselves as authoritative voices for change (Popkewitz 1998). For instance, Professora Telma’s rather authoritative views on what constituted an appropriate interpretation, found expression also in her style of conducting the classroom as the following observation illustrates: It is 8:00am, Wednesday morning. Students are slowly trickling in. Some are busy getting their stuff out or looking for one of the very few outlets to make sure their laptop batteries last through class. Brazilian students occupy most of the front rows and East Timorese students are sitting in the back with students from African countries spreading mostly in the middle. Professora Telma arrives at 8:05. She starts teaching immediately. First, she introduces todays’ text. Next, she orders students to read the text out loud. She calls on the students chair-by-chair, row-byrow asking each student to read a section of the text. After each section, she asks the respective student to explain the writing. She barely waits for an answer before

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Internationalization of Higher Education for Development explaining the section herself. Students seem to pay attention. They take notes and underline passages in the text. I cannot help but wonder if they do so because they know that sooner or later, Professora Telma will turn to them, in which case they needed to know where to continue. Some students seem tired though, and some others are distracted. After roughly thirty minutes students begin to get up sporadically, leaving the room, and returning shortly thereafter; upon return, performing all kinds of non-verbal communications across the room; some being noisier than others. One can hear East Timorese students whisper to each other, on which Professora Telma comments with a ‘psssst’. She does not, however, react to the commotion caused by students leaving the room. After one hour of reading in this fashion, the text is finished and she releases the students for a break but not without saying: ‘Now we have heard about culture, resistance and persistence. Everybody can reflect for him- or herself.’ After a twenty-minute break, the scenario repeats itself in almost the same fashion. As students return, Professora Telma starts immediately, demanding them to reflect on the text in writing. Some students write while others talk quietly with their peers. After fifteen minutes of mostly individual work, Professora Telma pulls out the class list to register students’ attendance. She calls each student by name in alphabetical order. The person she calls must read their notes out loud, which some students do. Others just talk about what they think. Again, Professora Telma comments on the contributions one-by-one, elaborating their thoughts and connecting them back to the text. Except for some scattered student questions the class passes without any openended conversation between students and the professor. Classroom observations, 21 January 2013

Professora Telma fully controlled who talked, when and for how long. She did not leave it up to the students to decide whether they wanted to speak. Instead she called on them in ways that made their participation inevitable, but also entirely structured by her. She relied on the technologies provided by the classroom (chairs and rows, class list) to call on students, which allowed students to predict their turn but also made it completely unavoidable. Professora Telma occupied most of the talking-time space in class by providing extensive elaborations on the text and students’ writing. Very rarely did she praise students for their comments or prompt others to elaborate further. Despite the potentially empowering content of her teaching, she pursued a rather professor-centred approach, which cut the students short and limited their ability to engage with the matters and each other. Professora Telma justified her style of teaching by saying that one had to read scholarly texts line by line and explain it in the way she did so students would be able to understand them. She insisted that students simply could not process these types of text alone (interview, 29 January 2013).

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After one of her classes, I asked some students what they thought they had learned. José, a Mozambican student, responded: ‘This class is boring, just reading and interpreting texts’ (classroom observations, 28 January 2013). Although it was probably naïve on my part to assume that students would walk away from one lesson filled with excitement about the emancipatory potential of a text written in an abstract form, it nevertheless struck me how disconnected they seemed to the issues discussed. Moreover, Professora Telma frequently reprimanded the East Timorese students whispering ‘pssst’, whereas she did not acknowledge the commotion caused by the students’ constant coming and going. Again, this perception owes much to my own culturally situated assumptions about what constitutes the correct proceedings of a classroom. However, what I observed was that in many classrooms, East Timorese students often relied on each other for translations. The situation also shows that UNILAB professors, more generally, had their own views (or, ‘own rebellions’, an expression that Sandra, a student from Cape Verde, used), and as long as students followed their emancipation narratives, they would acknowledge students’ contributions. Frequently professors portrayed themselves as experts. Professors marked out the epistemological territories, which they considered to be the correct path to a better future. ‘That is, much of modern life is ordered through expert systems of knowledge that discipline how people participate and act’ (Popkewitz 1998: 5). Such an understanding of the role of history in the present is strongly related to enlightenment teleologies of progress composed of a singular collective narrative, which regards the learning of history – the development of a historical consciousness – as the prime responsibility of an individual citizen. The idea that history must be taught – a pedagogical gesture – rather than experienced or lived not only disregards students’ prior knowledge, it also establishes a fault line between those who know and those who do not know, which seemed to stand diametrically opposed to the postcolonial aspiration of the general curriculum idea. Moreover, foregrounding the postcolonial condition as a cultural construct, as in the case of Porfessora Telma, fails to account for other forms of hierarchization such as gender, class, nation and race or intersections of these.

Emancipation through race and blackness Other professors developed courses that were clearly designed to celebrate the Africanness of Brazilian culture and history. They regarded transatlantic slavery as

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the source of persisting domination over non-white Brazilians and non-white subjects in other parts of the world. From their perspective, the celebration of cultural diversity as international diversity was insufficient as uneven race relations in Brazilian society and a skewed perception of Africa also needed to be addressed. For example, Professora Lourdes, professor of anthropology, was more responsive to the uneven social positionings of economically and politically marginalized individuals and groups. She took skin colour as an important starting point: It depends on the way of thinking, but it is strongly linked to the question of physical appearance because racism passes through my phenotype. Racism depends on what one looks like. It doesn’t matter whether I have an Italian grandmother, whether I am half European. For example, I hear a lot of congratulation for being the first black Brazilian woman at UNILAB, but for me that has another side. Why is it so amazing for me to be at UNILAB, if 50 per cent of the Brazil’s population is black? Interview, 11 February 2013

But she did not end there. In talking about these issues, Professora Lourdes deliberately played with the two forms of the verb ‘to be’ in the Portuguese language (ser and estar). Ser refers to an unconditioned state of being (e.g. Sou mulher, I am a woman) whereas estar represents a temporary condition (e.g. Estou trabalhando como professora, I am working as a professor). She questioned: ‘We are (somos) all equal, but are (estamos) we all equal?’ She shared some personal experiences to underscore her commentaries. When she was still a student, a branco student who was also a mother remarked that it was easier for Professora Lourdes to study because she had no children. But Professora Lourdes was poor, therefore she explained that their experiences could not be compared; one would have to account for the intersectionality of being (estar) poor and being (ser) black as well. Like the African-American professors in the study by Maher and Tetreault (1993), Professora Lourdes combined socio-economic inequality and racism in her approaches to teaching the history of slavery. She maintained that a sole focus on socio-economic inequality (i.e., class) erases race from history and disavows the question of stereotyping and prejudice against non-white people. As a consequence, experiences that were fundamentally different could unjustifiably be charted as the same – for example, the question whether socio-economic inequalities or cultural domination are experienced similarly, regardless of a person’s race. Professor Rafael, Professora Telma and Professora Lourdes were interested in the interpellation of collective identities. It is worth paying attention

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to the nuances though. Professor Rafael emphasized the mixedness of the Brazilian culture. He focused on the coalescing of cultural influences, whereas Professora Lourdes, in her lessons (classroom observations, 19 February 2013) and in conversations, emphasized the multidimensionality of race as it intersects with gender, class and other aspects of a person’s life. Still, her approach can be placed on a par with the one-sided emancipation narratives, because she imparts blackness in meaning from a Brazil-centred perspective, which might celebrate too easily the transnational reach as it does not acknowledge the political, classed and gendered fragmentation and uneven social positionings across and within student groups, aspects that I discuss in detail in Chapter 7. Professor Franco, a professor of sociology, focused on teaching about African history and the history of transatlantic slavery, which he linked to the construction of Africa and Africans as inferior in Brazil and around the world. For example, he screened the movie Brazil: An Inconvenient History (Grabsky 2001). This BBC documentary recounts the history of the transatlantic slave trade and the role of slaves in building the Brazilian economy. It focuses on the atrocities committed against slaves and the hardship of slave work on plantations and in mines (classroom observations, 29 January 2013). Professor Franco included a variety of perspectives in his teaching, actively trying to establish a connection between African history, European constructions of the presumed inferiority of people of colour, and stereotyping in Brazil, as the following scene exemplifies: ‘How does the child learn about the image of Africa?’ Professor Franco changes his voice and bends down pretending to be a child. ‘She will not ask his mother to tell him about the image of Africa. The child learns it from the three images: Tarzan, Tambor, Tanga. As Hegel said, Africa has no history. It is still in the stage of infancy. This is a Eurocentric image of Africa.’ He continued in a way that animated the students. He linked his explanations to what could potentially be personal experiences of students. He did so rather sarcastically. ‘Do you know the Tambor?’ Students start drumming on their tables. ‘The subject of Africa cannot talk, can only drum. All Africans live in the forest. Even Brazilians (negro and branco) understand when the Brazilian leaves Brazil and goes to another country, the white Brazilian understands because he is not treated white.’ Classroom observations, 22 January 2013

Professor Franco reversed other professors’ approaches that were characterized by a Brazil-centred perspective in that he focused the content on Africa. He intended to complexify students’ historical knowledge in general, ultimately hoping that he would counter the stereotyped image of the continent. His teaching was often very enthusiastic and he made a great effort to address all

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students in his classroom. The following vignette is from a classroom composed of roughly one-third each of students from Brazil, East Timor and African countries: Monday afternoon, in Redenção: students wander in and out of the classroom greeting each other and interacting loosely while waiting for the professor. A group of Brazilian female students watches a romantic movie on a laptop placed on the professor’s desk (near an outlet). Another group of female students, two from African countries and one from Brazil, sit by the window talking. Professor Franco arrives at 2:15pm. He scolds the students that they should be reading the text. He starts class by asking students to recall what they had learned about the history of Africa. He first calls on a female student from East Timor, who does not respond. He says: ‘Is there someone to help her? Does anyone want to help her? Nobody wants to talk?’ Two male students, one from Brazil and one from Guinea Bissau offer an answer. Professor Franco then lectures about Africa’s precolonial history, frequently tying it in with discussions about racial prejudice and stereotyping Africa. He supports his lecture with images (e.g. maps, cultural artefacts, photographs). He often acts out his explanations in a comedian-kind of way that makes the students laugh, for example by pretending to be an old man who needs a cane to walk. Throughout the class, he asks open-ended questions addressing no one specifically by saying, for example: ‘Who has never spoken in my class? Who can help?’ He waits for only two to five seconds after his questions before he draws on students’ answers to continue his explanations. Most of the answers come from students from African countries. Once in a while, Professor Franco calls on East Timorese students asking questions about their country and its history (e.g. decolonization), which the students (mostly male) respond to promptly. Brazilian students – almost all of them sit in the back of the room like they almost always do in his class – rarely speak compared to the international students. During class, students from East Timor and Brazil frequently leave the room and return shortly thereafter. At some point a female Brazilian student leaves, she says because she is not feeling well. Another Brazilian student follows her. Professor Franco promptly calls on her to stop her. But when she points out that she has to get her classmate to the nurse, he says: ‘okay, okay’, and lets her go. Over and over, Professor Franco reminds the students to pay attention. When they talk amongst themselves, he calls for them to focus on him, for example saying: ‘alô’ [hello] before continuing his explanations. Thirty minutes before the end of class, he shows a documentary. Many of the students seem tired. The movie gets stuck after about fifteen minutes. Students gather their belongings and start leaving, but Professor Franco is able to put it back on and students sit down again. As Professor Franco walks out of the room, student conversations arise. Three students from different countries leave, but as Professor Franco returns,

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handing out copies of the text to read for next week, they come back again. When the movie is finished, a male student from Angola applauds. Classroom observations, 29 January 2013

Professor Franco was an enthusiastic professor with a talent for acting, who based his teaching mostly on lectures accompanied by comprehensive outlines that he wrote on the board and erased while moving along. He was also a demanding professor (much like Professora Telma), who expected the students to pay attention and to provide answers to the questions he frequently asked. Given Professor Franco’s enthusiastic style of teaching and constant attempt to actively address prejudice and stereotyping, I was surprised at how calm, even detached, students seemed. I had expected that his style and the materials that he presented would generate much more debate, outrage, protest, critique or sadness, but students were mostly quiet. Few of them took notes. Sometimes they whispered with their neighbours or exchanged needed things such as markers, erasers, copy money, texts, and so forth. Some frequently pulled out their cell-phones, guarding them with their arms, typing away. Again, these expectations probably have a lot to do with my own situatedly imagined ideas about what constituted normal classroom proceedings. In his explanations, Professor Franco assigned himself an important role in the fermentation of social change. He described the classroom as a ‘zone of conflict’ (see also interview with Professora Lourdes, 12 February 2013), which draws out parallels to the ‘cultural wars’ described by Stanley Bailey and Michelle Peria (2010), according to which two opposing views with regard to racialized relations clash in the Brazilian academy. One side supports the view that quotas will re-entrench racialized inequalities by reproducing an allegedly inexistent racialism. In contrast, academics who advocate for quotas view Brazil as a nation of racial groups in conflict. Professor Franco explains why this is (emphases are mine to highlight his attempt to negotiate different outlooks on history): What the professor does in class depends on his knowledge. My formation and my experiences are from Africa. I try to find African literature. The other example is slavery. What story will I tell – a production of knowledge from an African perspective; not only from a European perspective? When it comes to talking about responsibility, there is a revisionist perspective. They will say that we, Africans, are responsible for the slave trade. We sold each other out. There is a lot of exaggeration. When Africa started to decolonize, we gave all the guilt to Europe. But there is a middle way for decolonization and slavery. There was a small African elite. But the African people were colonized and enslaved. The elite was the mediator. So what history will I tell? Students will be shocked that there

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Internationalization of Higher Education for Development were African empires. I think in whatever course [referring to all disciplines taught at UNILAB, including the applied sciences], we should bring an ethical position. I didn’t come here to seed hate. This isn’t what I do. Being ethical is my position. For example, if I teach black students, when they learn about the cruelty of African enslavement, they revolt. They revolt against white students. Professors, who think that being in a classroom is easy don’t know anything. The classroom is a place of conflict and negotiation, conflicts over our representations, conflicts over our bodies. We are different. We have to negotiate these things here. Interview, 16 February 2013

In his response, Professor Franco highlighted the difficulties in teaching history. He acknowledged the tensions that could potentially arise from his efforts, and he has most likely experienced such tensions throughout his career. Therefore, according to his explanation, his authoritarian style of teaching – a mixture of animation, theatrical performance and high demand – is his response to the potential tensions that he is concerned this subject matter would set off. To underscore his point, he gave examples from his experiences throughout his career as a professor. He shared how he felt that a student deliberately lied to avoid conflict. According to Professor Franco, the student pretended to like candomblé, but he did not actually like it. Other students, said Professor Franco, tried deliberately to cause conflict. He gave an example of a Brazilian student who said that Africans liked Brazil because everyone is a slave. Although these are second-hand accounts which have probably passed through the whorls of Professor Franco’s active and activist mind many times, they do serve to make his teaching style plausible. Professor Franco is rigid in his teaching approach and the intervals he assigns to student-talk as he feels he has to keep resentment at bay and a check on hurtful speech.2 Professor Franco perceived educational spaces as ‘zones of conflict’. He felt that he needed to control his classrooms to contain conflict and prevent students from verbally abusing and emotionally harming each other. Well aware that classroom conversations about racialized inequality are not simple matters to discuss, Professor Franco carefully avoided essentializing race and polarization among students. He tried to be attentive to the multitude of experiences and positionalities present in every classroom. For example, he created a ficha de identidate (identity sheet), which included the name, age and nationality of each student in every course he taught. He explained that this tool was a way of getting to know those in his classes, and for students to get to know each other. In some important ways, Professor Franco and Professora Telma’s approach, who also strictly controlled student-talk, were very similar. Both centred historical knowledge in order for students to develop an

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historical consciousness. But the approaches were also different in a very important way. Professora Telma centred herself as the expert-knower, whereas Professor Franco centred himself as the expert-doubter, who was experienced in navigating classroom tensions. His goal was to establish trust among students and in their relationship to him, for them to feel comfortable (enough) to publicly express their opinions. Controlling student-talk is a way in which teachers try to avoid topics that are either not intended by the curriculum or could potentially cause conflict (Kendall 2012). It could be argued that despite the prevailing professor-centred and at times one-sided approaches to teaching, students would learn all of the aspects over time. However, students were sorted into classes and thus usually benefited only from one or maybe two of these perspectives at the time of the research. Professors had brought with them their individual sedimented – sometimes overly romantic, sometimes overly humdrum-pessimistic – perceptions of either Africa or Brazil. Again, given the objective of this book, it is important to note that various perceptions commingled across all sorts of fault lines of difference. And yes, professors’ perceptions usually made sense when read within their lived experiences. For example, it made sense for a professor to emphasize and share his/her experiences of solidarity relations during anti-colonial resistance movements when s/he was exiled in Mozambique during Brazil’s military dictatorship. It made sense for a professor to share his own excitement about the mixedness of African and Brazilian cultures, if it was perhaps reminiscent of a time filled with emancipatory aspirations. And some had lived in many different parts of the world, thus were perhaps more comfortable with interculturality in general. Most professors, however, were new to the idea of integration à la UNILAB and had as much to learn as their students. Professor Antonio, a Brazilian professor, pointed out the lack of faculty training in this regard: We have difficulties that come from two fundamental aspects: first, the innovation of UNILAB. There is no experience with this. We have not accumulated knowledge how to create the dialogue about internationalization and integration. Second, most of our professors are junior faculty. Many of them have very little experience in teaching. In about four years this will be better. There is a fragility of something new, a new idea, which is the idea of a university of international integration. We professors have difficulties to construct a practice of classroom that works the dialogue, to discuss the relation. Interview, 15 February 2013

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None of the professors whose classrooms I have described above were junior faculty. All of them possessed extensive experience teaching at university level. Therefore, Professor Antonio’s contention that teaching practices would simply improve over time can be questioned. His remarks, however, clearly point to the need for supporting and potentially training professors in developing pedagogical approaches that are more in line with the university’s goals and the ementas’ promulgated ideals. The inability to successfully teach diverse classrooms (e.g. regarding ethno-racial diversity) may not result from a lack of faculty intention, or an inadequate ideology in support of diversity. Rather, it may have been caused by the lack of training in critical pedagogy informed by culturally relevant pedagogy (Sheets 2010) and the lack of opportunity to talk with other instructors or develop a community of practice to support such pedagogical approaches (Wenger 2000). Although individual professors’ perspectives could (and most likely did) become more integrated over time, at the time of the research, professors’ one-sided and authoritative approaches left students puzzled, as the following excerpt from an interview with Rachel (Brazil) and Sandra (Cape Verde), the more outspoken of the two (and one who would pass as mixed; more on this in Chapter 7) shows (interview, 23 January 2013): Sandra Some professors push a lot the history of Africa. They forget Brazilian culture and history. This is not good because it might lead to afastar (pushing away) of Brazilian students. The professors keep explaining that they are also black. They refer to cultural elements, for example Samba, which has African roots. Professors also talk a lot about religion as well, for example Orixa. What is that? I have not seen it in Cape Verde. That is Brazilian religion, Brazilian culture.3 Professors want to show us that we have things in common, that we all suffer discrimination, but they don’t transfer it in a good way (não transmitem numa maneira certa). They teach about suffering. Now students and people in the community feel sorry for us (tem muita pena de nos). In class, professors always ask: ‘Did you understand? Did you understand? Did you not understand?’ The African professors got here already with their own revolta (rebellion). They suffered a lot of discrimination in Brazil, but they have to clarify this. They have to be careful not to push away the Brazilian or Afro-Brazilian students. There are discussions about who suffered more, or who suffered less. Brazil has its history of discrimination. They brought white people here to mix with the blacks to eliminate (eliminar) the blacks, can you imagine!

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Rachel [Nods mostly and listens to her friend.] Sandra At enrolment, I had to fill out my race, if I was white, or pardo, or black. Rachel That makes no sense, how would you know whether you are pardo, or black [making a gesture with her right hand/finger across her lower left arm]. But maybe it is because of the quotas. Taina, a student from Angola, shared that together with her friends, they were shocked when they learned about Lusotropicalism, and how it was used to justify whitening policies. She said they had many heated debates (fieldnotes, 10 March 2013). These examples highlight that prejudice and misconceptions abounded, including local Brazilians’ perception of international students as the subjects of slavery. They also show that the students were confronted with many contradictory messages, which they had to figure out themselves given that they often had little space during classes to discuss these issues. I offer some explanations on the why in Chapter 7, but the chance that these discussions would happen across different nationalities outside of the classroom was also rather slim because many students spend most of their time outside the classroom (on- and off-campus) in groups of friends and peers from their own countries, rather than in the mixed groups UNILAB founders had imagined. There are many aspects of Africa–Brazil relations that professors did not address. They often theorized and structured their syllabi around South–South relations from the perspective of cultural practices, as opposed to global sociopolito-historio-economic assemblages (including inter-racial tensions), within which students had to organize their lives, and which shaped their everyday experiences in- and outside of the classroom; that is, the daily routines and realities of struggling for acceptance and sustained interactions with their peers as opposed to officially staged encounters or the idealized relations of the envisioned utopia. Yet, integration-work is hard work and professors’ efforts should be acknowledged, even if they did not always accomplish what they set out to do.

Dialogue across differences Very few professors integrated their lessons across issues of race, culture, socioeconomic inequality and students’ global aspirations (a point to which I will

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return in Chapter 7). In the spirit of Gloria Ladson-Billing’s seminal book The Dreamkeepers (1994) in which she studied successful teachers of AfricanAmerican students, I questioned UNILAB students about their favourite professors. In response, students usually pointed out professors who they thought ‘explained things well’ (interviews, 30 January and 1 February 2013). I heard and saw other things in these professors’ classes, which resembled the four characteristics of culturally relevant pedagogy developed by Ladson-Billing: 1) teachers had a positive self-image and strongly identified with their profession, 2) they respected the students as competent learners and made their experiences relevant for classroom learning, 3) they created a community of learners without privileging particular groups of students, and 4) they underscored that knowledge was flexible and could be challenged (1994: x–xi). Professors who students described as successful encouraged open dialogue between professors and students, and among students, built more explicitly on students’ prior knowledge and, most importantly, allowed the complex social relations (including tensions) that students experienced outside of the classroom to inform the conversations as an important step toward addressing diversity in the classroom (Ngo 2010). Maria, a student from Cape Verde, named Professora Simona, a Brazilian professor of anthropology. She described her teaching style in the following way: After reading a text at home, Professora Simona asked us in class what we understood. Everyone spoke about what they understood. She collected vocabulary. The words, she put them on the board and explained them. For example, the definition of culture, students had to write about culture. Then students had to read it out loud. Students gave their ideas and Professora Simona collected them on the board. At the end she synthesized the ideas. She gave her interpretation. She jointed it with her knowledge. Ela não descartava a nossa opinião (she did not disregard our opinion). We can construct our knowledge, for example if she had given us a definition, we would not have had time to think about it. She constructed an understanding, atravez do que ela pensava e que nos tambem pensavamos, construimos um conhencimento (based on what she thought and also what we thought, we constructed knowledge). Interview, 1 February 2013

Taina valued the opportunity to contribute from her own understanding to the creation of knowledge. She thought this kind of knowledge production was more conducive to fostering integration, especially compared to more professorcentred approaches from other classrooms. Professora Simona explained her approach. According to her, many professors worry about teaching the students

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about content, whereas she preferred to focus on the method of reading and studying, which she found more important, otherwise ‘the university would pass over the students rather than they pass through it’. Her objective was to encourage students, to critically reflect on what they learned, about Lusophony, which also manifested in the content of her teaching. Professora Simona focused on the diversity and complexity of language. She engaged her students in critical reflections on the meaning of Lusophony as the concept of shared language resulting from Portuguese colonialism and slavery. She provided the students with various texts about the diversity of Portuguese spoken throughout CPLP countries. Professora Simona explained: I would like my students to take a long critical reflection of Lusophone spaces. We are trying to homogenize what is not homogenous. They are distinct societies, with distinct histories and cultures. They have some things in common: colonialism, not to negate. Cape Verde was a laboratory of slavery. People from São Tomé e Principe, and Angola, all of them passed through Cape Verde to be trained as slave-masters and slaves. I want students to think about the relations that exist between them, between São Tomé e Principe, and Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, etc. Timor is new to me. I read a little bit to understand the students’ background. Lusophony as an idea of integration seems forced. What is interesting is that Timor used Portuguese as the language of resistance. One student speaks Portuguese as a form of resistance against Indonesian rule. Other students don’t embrace this. They are from another generation. Interview, 21 February 2013

Her explanation highlighted the complexities of cross-Atlantic cultural relations. She linked colonialism to slavery and described African countries, and most importantly the connections between students as contemporary people rather than icons from the past or underdevelopment. She acknowledged that Brazil benefited from slavery and that African cultures came into contact in new ways through slavery on the way to Brazil. She criticized the idea of Lusophony because she thought that it brushed over the cultural and linguistic diversities of the students. She celebrates these differences as a shared point of integration. Alda from Guinea Bissau referred to Professor Martins, a professor of anthropology. His approach differed in that he strongly encouraged inter-student dialogue and allowed students’ experiences to inform the conversations, especially with regard to prejudice and stereotyping, but without alienating Brazilian students. Consider the following classroom situation:

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Internationalization of Higher Education for Development Professor Martins starts off the class by asking students to rearrange the chairs into a circle so that they face each other before he screens Chimamanda Adichie’s The Danger of a Single Story, her legendary TED talk on stereotyping. Professor Martins follows up by asking students what they had understood or learned from the speaker. Initially the room is quiet. Students do not talk, but Professor Martins waits for what felt like two minutes, until someone finds the thoughts, words and courage to respond. He lets the students talk until they are finished, acknowledges what they say and when appropriate, links it back to the talk. Afterwards, Professor Martins waits to see if someone else wants to add something. In the moments that silence continues beyond the point of comfort he says: ‘Does anyone want to say something?’ He looks around and waits. He does not point out individual students (or groups of students) but provides time to think. Almost a little bit like magic, students begin to talk and one-by-one, they add their thoughts. Classroom observations, 25 September 2012

What struck me most during this class was how students came to talk about stereotypes and prejudice differently than in most of the other classes I observed, exactly because of how Professor Martins did not overpower the conversation. Because he provided a space deliberately designed to feel safe, these topics developed from the discussion. Like Professor Franco, Professor Martins knew about the potential of conflict between students. He accepted the responsibility to address and transform it into a constructive conversation among students. Still, he did not elevate himself into the position of authority by controlling most of the talking-time space. Rather, he decentred himself, perhaps because he conceptualized conflict not as a clash of forces but as the fight for harmony as his following statement shows: Harmony is a state of appearance, an invented peace. Harmony is a gift. Equilibrium is just a moment. It is the present. One doesn’t repeat it. We fight for equilibrium every moment. Equilibrium is an attitude. It is unstable. We invent it every time again. Conflict isn’t always violent. Interview, 25 February 2013

Virtually all professors considered teaching the history of Africa and African descendants as crucial for the students’ ability to integrate across Lusophone countries and cultures. Many professors highlighted the role of Africans (as former slaves) in building the Brazilian economy and their struggles for freedom. They celebrated the cultural characteristics and linguistic capital that slavery built for Brazilians. Very few professors, however, incorporated teaching about decolonization and the socio-cultural capital it had built for Africans, thus

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breaking out of describing Africa’s history only in abstract and simplistic terms. If they did, they were as likely to emphasize a one-sided narrative as their colleagues. In Chapter 6, I continue examining the idea of integration in the general education curriculum.

Notes 1 The ementa, which could best be described as a government approved standard outline that presents a general description of the content and a list of readings, provides the basis from which professors developed their courses. Ementas are included in the Projecto Pedagógico do Curso (Pedagogical Course Project, PPC) of each discipline offered at UNILAB, for example in the PPC of Agronomy (document, no. 04). 2 See Cortese (2006), Crenshaw et al. (2018) and Matsuda (2018) 3 Agier (1995) explains that Afro-Brazilian movements have in part tried to formulate rather rigorous positions on cultural practices to mobilize and solidify black Brazilian communities. He wrote: ‘Through these stances, candomblé tries to transform itself into a quasi-church (organised with hardened and classified rituals), capable of competing on an equal footing with the Catholic church, or of responding to aggression (and the competition) of new so-called “Protestant” churches. . . . It is necessary, therefore, to overcome an old political inequality, embodied in the old Christian adage which states that African cults cannot achieve the status of religion, because they are too subjected to the “affairs of man” and, hence, can exist only as magic (see Auge, 1982: 32). In this way political-religious discourses which publicly condemn all forms of “syncretism” of candomblé and Catholicism are developed. In opposition to the continuance of the “ancient accommodation”, established in times of repression and fear, a return should be made to the “African matrix” and the cults should “evolve without losing the essence” ’ (258).

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UNILAB’s tenet is development through integration. To this effect, the founders envisioned the university as a place of cultural and humanistic education based on ‘conviviality’ and ‘socio-cultural learning’ (UNILAB 2010: 10). The vision was that students, who lived and learned together, would overcome their cultural differences and evolve into a harmonious group. This idea entails a distinct vision regarding the significance of everyday interactions, which resembled what Elijah Anderson, in his remarkable ethnography on race relations in public spaces in Philadelphia, called the sociability and civility of the ‘cosmopolitan canopy’ (2011), which he described as follows: In this relatively busy [mall], under a virtual cosmopolitan canopy, people are encouraged to treat others with a certain level of civility or at least simply to behave themselves. Within this canopy are smaller ones or even spontaneous canopies, where instantaneous communities of diverse strangers emerge and materialize. . . . At times, strangers may approach one another to talk, to laugh, to joke, or to share a story here and there. Their trusting attitude can be infectious, even spreading feelings of community across racial and ethnic lines. 15–16

In ways similar to the encounters described by Anderson, the founders assumed that students, through sharing classroom and community spaces, would start sharing cultural and social experiences. Through acts of shared living (convívio), they would get to know each other and become acquaintances, if not friends, in the words of Mr Speller: If you leave your country, you don’t speak the language of the other country, what is the first thing you do? When you meet someone who you identify with. . . Hi, where are you from? Let’s go have a feijoada in my house on Saturday. This is the same with Africans [sic]. It is the same with every nationality. Now, over time integration will take place. What do you begin to see? A student from Guinea Bissau dating a Brazilian woman. You begin to see a Cape Verdean going to a party

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of forró, right? Dancing with a Mozambican, right? They are in the same classroom, in the university restaurant, playing soccer, well, here integration will happen socially, and we promote it with cultural, academic and gastronomic activities. Fieldnotes, 10 February 2013

The founders aspired to create an ambience characterized by mutual recognition, understanding and respect for cultural diversity. In line with the premise that cultural sharing leads to fuller integration the administration invested significant time, space and resources into extra-curricular activities. It thought that any distance that might initially exist between students would be temporary and present only at the beginning of a student’s time at UNILAB. The Office of Student Affairs (Coordenação de Assuntos Estudantis, CAE), initiated, organized and supported numerous sporting events, most notably soccer tournaments, to celebrate various countries’ independences. The administration regarded intramural sport activities and events as an important way to spur integration. It provided sport and leisure time equipment, for example table tennis and table soccer on campus. The university also encouraged cultural performances. The Office for Outreach, Art and Culture (Pró-Reitoria de Extensão, Arte e Cultura, PROEX) frequently organized events. Every Wednesday evening, the university hosted movies, poetry sessions, dance and theatre performances in the auditorium (Quarta Cultural). To give but a few examples: in March 2013, Quarta Cultural featured the Cape Verdean rock band Primitive. In December 2014, it screened O Emigrante (The Immigrant), a movie about two young men from Angola, who visit Europe. In May 2015 it showed Negro lá Negro cá (Black Here Black There), a movie created by a Brazilian student from Fortaleza which critically reflects upon racism in Brazil. Moreover, Quarta Cultural was open to the general public including the local population. Move (Movimenta), which took place for the third time in January–February 2015 as a campus-wide event, provides another example. It offered workshops (e.g., forró (local dance), music, photography, capoeira), round table discussions as well as theatre and music performances by students. These cultural and athletic activities carry an image of sociability, an image of UNILAB as a place where students could familiarize themselves with the habits and customs of students from other countries. Following such familiarization, deeper connections – including dating, regular socializing and interacting in daily life – was expected to occur. This cultural connectivity would support and build on the intellectual connectivity to be achieved in classrooms, resulting in a deeper and more meaningful integration of Lusophone people. However, even as

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sections of the curriculum were tailored towards enhancing intercultural learning, and professors deliberately encouraged cross-cultural interactions (e.g., group work), which produced integration initially, the effects withered over time. In those early days, the fact that integration did not materialize as hoped caused anxiety in faculty and administrators, which set in motion a series of surveillance strategies to supervise the movements of bodies in relation to each other and across time and space. In this chapter, I will illustrate how integration evolved only partially, in part because it ran counter to Brazilian sociability and in part because, in its mandated forms, it did not reflect students’ lives outside the university.

Teaching integration In the previous chapter I described the curriculum that was dedicated to intercultural learning anchored in learning about history. Another course, Insertion into University Life (Inserção à vida universitária, VU), focused more on contemporary issues including internationalization efforts. Originally planned as a welcoming week for newly arrived students, the idea was that they would receive information on Brazilian higher education, the mission and structure of the UNILAB project, and the cultural contexts of the partnering countries. Still in the planning process, the welcoming week was transformed into a regular course taught over forty hours during the first trimester for which students received grades. The idea was also that professors of social science would teach VU, but it soon became the responsibility of each discipline (e.g., teacher education) and got assigned to the teaching load of professors, who would otherwise teach physics, for example. According to the course outline (ementa), VU teaches: ‘university and society; university, interculturality, and life stories; tendencies in higher education: internationalization and multilevel integration (local, regional, national and international); higher education and multidimensional formation: formative principles. Academic guidelines at UNILAB: teaching, research, and outreach. University and the curriculum of the discipline. University and life trajectories’ (document, no. 04). In other words, VU was designed to accomplish two things: first, to establish a link between the university’s mission of solidarity cooperation and students’ educational trajectories and second, to inculcate students with intercultural knowledge to generate mutual respect. Professora Cruz, a Brazilian professor, put it this way: VU should encourage students to ‘think about each

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other (se preocupar com o outro)’ (interview, 28 February 2013). VU lessons addressed an assortment of topics including globalization, internationalization, study abroad opportunities, Brazilian higher education, cultural differences, interculturality, communality and life histories. One professor explained at length the functioning of the library on campus. Classroom activities included lectures (students sometimes referred to them as ‘slide-slide-slide’, which they did not find particularly compelling), reading texts, open-ended discussions, small group projects and student presentations. Regarding the latter, students were almost always asked to present the culture of their country. These were the so-called cultural maps (mapas culturais). Through them students were expected to provide information on ‘1) popular festivals, typical food, dances, music; 2) education, health, literature, handicrafts, languages; 3) economy, livestock (breeding animals), agriculture, industry, local currency; 4) religion, ethnicity, migration, politics’.1 For professors and students alike, VU was a challenging course because it opened up more questions about integration and how it was supposed to be practised – a touchy issue in the context of Brazil’s ambiguous racial relations – than it provided answers. Most often students were perceived as representatives of their countries ultimately chartering a path to international integration. At the same time, VU was supposed to pave the way for a shared understanding of the UNILAB project. Since it was built on the assumption of students as representatives of their countries, imagining UNILAB outside of this limiting frame was complicated, because students’ subjectivities, the fragmentations and complexities of their lives did not neatly fit into these simplified national categories. The following example from a VU classroom clearly shows this dynamic. The classroom conversation centred on students’ first impressions of Redenção and UNILAB. Many Brazilian students had already spoken when Professora Carmen, a Brazilian professor, pointed at a student from Guinea Bissau (classroom observation, 7 February 2013): Professora What was your first impression of Redenção and UNILAB? Samir I was excited but the housing situation is difficult. Professora [breathes in abruptly and her words tumble] Let’s not talk about housing. We are all in the same boat. Prices are rising. I am lucky because I bought my land two years ago for R$100,000. Now land is expensive. It is R$200,000. But what were your first impressions?

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Professora Carmen worked hard to create a collegial and inclusive atmosphere in her classrooms. In response to her question, the student expressed one of his serious everyday concerns. Professora Carmen failed to acknowledge these concerns by mobilizing her (privileged) financial situation and comparing it to Samir’s. Yet, paying R$100,000 or R$200,000 is not the same as paying R$400 for rent if your monthly stipend is R$380. In addition, Professora Carmen also possessed the sort of financial stability necessary to accumulate even R$100,000, whereas Samir had spent his entire savings to pay for his passage to Brazil. To accumulate the amount necessary for the flight, he had to save up first. During an interview he explained that he did not tell his family or friends about his plans to study abroad until the day he left for Brazil. If others had known that he was saving money for the flight, they would have asked to borrow some of it. His sense of collective responsibility would not have allowed him to deny the requests. This is not to suggest that all international students were poor and all Brazilians were not. On the contrary, many local students came from low-income families whereas many international students came from families that possessed the social and political, if not financial, capital to send the student abroad. Otherwise they would not have been in Redenção because the university (like most of the partnering countries) did not support students’ travel. Yet, the example serves to show the complexity of socio-economic conditions and social relations that surrounded UNILAB and its students. It makes clear that in order to build a truly shared understanding, these complexities needed to be addressed including the intersection of uneven classed, racialized and gendered relations. Alongside the cultural maps, students were also encouraged to reflect on their lives in the form of the so-called life-project (projecto da vida), which should include aspects of their life histories and plans they had for their (professional) futures. Most professors left it to the students to decide whether they wanted to talk, write, paint or otherwise perform on this topic. They were also careful to inform the students that it was their lives and therefore their stories, which they could share in any way they saw fit. Some professors worried that international students’ lives were intimately shaped by poverty, instability, and war – aspects that could not easily be shared in the public space of a classroom. Felicia, a student from Guinea Bissau, agreed with these concerns. When asked what she thought of the life-project exercise, she said: ‘my life before was complicated, it makes you sad’ (fieldnotes, 18 February 2013). Sandra on the other hand, a student from Cape Verde, saw the exercise as a good way for students to get to know each other, if only it wasn’t graded (fieldnotes, 1 February 2013). Professors usually did not express similar concerns regarding Brazilian students’ lives, with

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few exceptions of professors who understood that poverty is filled with personal stories including those of the Brazilian students. SHC and TI focused mostly on the past of Lusophone relations, whereas the future fell into the jurisdiction of VU. In the broader Brazilian context, interiorization and internationalization of higher education were seen as educational policies that would lead to the integration of the rural interior into the (at that time) booming Brazilian economy, and that Brazilian students would benefit from such integration by being exposed to global networks of production and trade, education and cultures. The hope that students would grasp this logic was a major objective of VU. The life-project located this vision of the future within students’ lives. João, a Brazilian student from a neighbouring state, explained: ‘In VU the student will get to know himself better. It helps to identify myself, what I want to do in life. It helps the student to identify the project of the professional life. . . . VU initiates introspection about professional life’ (interview, 2 February 2013). Whenever we spoke about UNILAB, it seemed that João was wrestling with the idea of how to overcome poverty in his own life and in general through the betterment of the self. His understanding resonates with what Professora Mendes said when she clarified the life-project exercise to her students: ‘Life is a construction, a construction of ourselves. When we get to the end of your studies [at UNILAB] . . . you will write a different life history. Why, because of the experiences of these five years. You will be more mature’ (classroom observation, 27 February 2013). On other occasions, Professora Mendes stressed repeatedly that it was a person’s action of relating and helping (e.g., sharing fruit from the countryside, collecting clothes for deserving families) that would ultimately lead to a better life for everyone. To motivate students to work towards a better future, she would, for example, remind them that: ‘suffering comes and goes, difficulties come and go, when you enter the university, many of your difficulties have already passed’ (classroom observation, 14 February 2013). The idea that improvement dwells within the subject is contingent on the notion of a reasonable person, who makes choices that benefit her. She is also a moral person because she weighs her decisions against the needs of others. Locating development (economic, cultural and otherwise) in the life of the individual (e.g., life-project) represents a mode through which to control the uncertainty and unpredictability of the future. This mode depends on the possibility that life can be indeed observed and rationally explained. Furthermore, asking students to scrutinize their ideas of the future through introspection and in public constitutes an act of surveillance that would eventually expose unduly misconceptions of, for example, diversity and conviviality. As Popkewitz (2008) argues:

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[B]iography in social time enables calculations and administration of reason and the ‘reasonable person.’ Reason is both an object of public scrutiny and a private inner mode of conduct to order everyday life. . . . The uncertainty of the external world is given stability through the common rules and standards of reason, which enables the individual to act with foresight and to plan change. 28

The possibility of locating certainty within the individual as the locus of identity and therefore projectable future rests on the Enlightenment invention of the self as a certain kind of norm – reason, calculability, objectivity and rationality. This norm, however, is only one side of a binary. The other side is the unreasonable person through which the reasonable person is conceived. The condition of the possibility of the reasonable self is the unreasonable self (Popkewitz 1998). Everyone else, including the colonized, the underdeveloped, the women, the poor, the insane, the black folks, is constructed as deviant from this norm. Hence, the idea that an otherwise uncertain, unstable future can be pinned down (stabilized) within a projectable life-story simultaneously resurrects the notion of a subject incapable of planning. To secure the future of development through integration, the technology of the life-project becomes a mechanism through which to observe and order time. Professors often envisioned the future for students from different countries differently. For Brazilian students, professors emphasized that the university would open many opportunities, including the chance to study abroad. Brazilian students were invited to apply for Science without Borders (Ciências sem Fronteiras) or exchange programmes with Portuguese universities. These students were seen as individuals, who would forge their personal futures. International students, on the other hand, were viewed as representatives of their countries. Their individual lives mattered in so far as the symbolic value of their presence could be exploited for the benefit of the Brazilian economy and geopolitical interests turning them into carriers of knowledge deemed relevant to perform development work. The assumption that international students would return to their countries after attending UNILAB was widespread. For example, Brazilian professors would use it as an entry point for conversation with international students. It also caused resentment among some professors who understood that not all students wished to return – another aspect that could not be easily shared in the classroom. Many of the international students perceived their coming to Brazil as a ‘door to the world’, a sentiment that they found frequently disappointed by the Brazil-centred approach to development.

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Performing integration in classrooms On the campuses in Redenção and Acarape, classrooms range in size between 430ft2 (40m2) and 645ft2 (60m2). All the rooms have air-conditioning, a teacher’s desk, whiteboards, a projector, and blinds at the windows. The floors and the lower half of the walls are covered with glazed tiles. Fluorescent lamps provide lighting from the ceiling which are in frequent use because the rooms either have no outside windows or the blinds are shut to keep out the sun. Together with the tiles, the rooms have a new but somewhat sterile feeling. All rooms are equipped with individual student chairs each with a little desk and a rack for bags underneath. As shown in Figure  6.1, they are organized in straight rows until the arrival of the students, who frequently rearrange the chairs, pushing them closer together or further apart, mostly the former, to be able to chat with their friends during lessons. Most of the rooms are big enough to accommodate twenty-five to thirty students. Larger rooms are big enough for the students to spread out and to increase or reduce the space between them. Some of the rooms, however, are small and can feel cramped once everyone is in their seats. Students are organized into classes by cohort and by discipline (e.g., agronomy September 2012). According to Brazilian professors this reflects an arrangement that is common in federal universities. There are roughly between twenty-five and thirty students in a class, though demographics vary widely. Very few of the classes that I

Figure 6.1 Student chairs organized in rows.

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observed had students from all nationalities. In most classes, Brazilian students represented the majority, whereas international student numbers could range between five per cent and two-thirds in individual classes. In fall 2012 and spring 2013, I accompanied one agronomy class for extended periods of time. In 2012, shortly after they had begun their studies, I spent a full week with them, accompanying them to all their classes, on trips to the farm and to the laboratories in Fortaleza, and to lunch. In 2013, I observed a full TI trimester. Out of thirty students, approximately one-third came from East Timor, one-third from Brazil and one-third from African countries including Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and São Tomé e Principe. Fall 2012 was the only time, that I know off, when UNILAB received a large cohort of East Timorese students. In both trimesters, the class had been assigned one of the large classrooms. In 2013, I also accompanied an engineering class with similar demographics to compare what I saw. In the autumn of 2012, students’ interactions seemed fluid, propounding few national boundaries (boundaries between men and women, however, existed in almost all classrooms I observed). There were significant verbal, gestural and material exchanges. For instance, students greeted each other, sometimes even from across the room if one was late, to the dismay of the professors. If students needed to take copies of an assigned reading, someone (one female Brazilian student in particular) would collect money from everyone and run to the copy shop on campus. Another Brazilian student, Tamara, brought vegetables from her garden and shared them with her East Timorese colleagues, whom she also invited to meet her family. A group of East Timorese students went to Tamara’s house where they stayed overnight in a tent, a courtesy she would also later extend to me. On the morning of the day that I accompanied the class to the universityowned farm, we gathered in the university courtyard waiting for the bus to arrive. Students spread around a number of tables, separated by gender but mixed by nationality, for instance a group of two Brazilian students and one student each from Cape Verde, Angola and East Timor, almost all of them women, shared one table. A group of male students included one student each from Guinea Bissau and Brazil and four from East Timor. Once at the farm, the students walked around in similar constellations looking at a lake and the beautiful tropical flora. They stayed together during lunch and retreated tiredly into their seats on the bus at the end of the day (fieldnotes, 2 October 2010). The visit to the laboratories at the Federal University of Ceará (Universidade Federal de Ceará, UFC) unfolded in much the same way, this time looking at equipment for botanical experiments (fieldnotes, 9 October 2012). Some of these fluid

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interactions and exchanges turned into stable relationships, for example between Robinho from Guinea Bissau and Valentim from East Timor, who were still friends when I returned in 2015. Some students flirted across nationalities, which sometimes turned into long-term relationships that were still ongoing in 2013. Overall, it seemed that the students were enjoying each other’s company or at least not thinking negatively about it. Students carried on their social intermingling in the classroom. Figure  6.2 shows one of the seating charts, which I recorded similarly in almost every classroom I observed. The scribbled horizontal line at the top represents the whiteboard. Crosses represent women and carets represent men. East Timorese students are depicted with two dots and students from African countries with one dot. Brazilian students are depicted without dots. This diagram shows students sitting close together in the middle of the room (remember, they are in a large classroom with plenty of room to spread). Except for the slight concentration of women to the left, no particular grouping of any nationality can be discerned (classroom observations, 1 October 2012).

Figure 6.2 Seating chart agronomy (classroom observations, 1 October 2012).

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When I recorded the chart, I did not know that the students had been paired to help each other, especially with language issues, otherwise I might have been less surprised about the changes I found in 2013. Figure 6.3 shows a chart that reveals a different pattern. In 2013, the students were no longer concentrated in the middle of the room, nor did they mix across nationalities. Instead they spread out, making full use of the space (again, a large room). At the front of the room (left side) sat a group of female and male students from East Timor. On the other side of the room (front, right side) sat two female students from different African countries. At the back of the room (right side) sat a group of Brazilian students of both sexes. International mingling was going on only in two cases: at the front (middle) and the back (left side) of the room two groups composed of male students from African countries and East Timor sat together. Between January and March 2013, I recorded the students’ seating arrangements many times, and I kept seeing similar things. Students sat together by nationality and gender in ways that resulted in distinct and rather homogenous groups. When I showed one of the diagrams to an agronomy student, he could

Figure 6.3 Seating chart agronomy (classroom observations, 19 February 2013).

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tell me exactly which cross or caret represented which student in his class. I take this as an indication that these seating arrangements changed little between courses. Over time, students organized themselves into largely nationality-based groups. Their likelihood to segregate by gender decreased slightly (especially if trumped by nationality) whereas the significance of country-specific separation increased noticeably. In the words of Sandra, a student from Cape Verde, six months after the initially assigned integration: ‘nobody goes around anymore with their partners’ (interview, 23 January 2013), and Rachel, a Brazilian student added: ‘but we still help them with their language’ (ibid.). This particular agronomy class was not the only one in which students organized into national groups. I found similar patterns of students’ seating arrangements in other classrooms (across disciplines and with different demographics). Take, for example, the engineering class that entered UNILAB in January 2013 (Figure 6.4). Of the thirty students, about 50 per cent came from Brazil and 50 per cent came from Cape Verde, Angola and Guinea Bissau. Students from African countries sat to the left. Brazilian students sat to the right near and around the aisle (scribbled vertical line). Sitting there had its advantages,

Figure 6.4 Seating chart engineering (classroom observations, 5 March 2013).

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since it provided students with easy access to the door at the end of the aisle (located at the bottom of the vertical scribbled line). This way they could easily leave the room without having to push aside or climb over chairs in this otherwise crowded room. The seating arrangements of students in a teacher education class show that the formation of groups by nationality did not merely run between Brazilian and international students, but between students from different African countries as well (Figure 6.5). The class was composed almost entirely of students from East Timor except for five students, three of them from São Tome e Principe, one from Angola and one from Guinea Bissau. The circles in the diagram highlight that the five African students sat separately, sorted by nationality, with plenty of space between them so that they could not (and did not) interact during class. I also rarely saw them interact during break. Instead, Joanna for example would hang out with her friend and roommate Felicia, also from Guinea Bissau, who studied nursing in the room next door. This is not to suggest that students from different African countries should somehow naturally become friends – imagining their social relations in this manner would render them other within

Figure 6.5 Seating chart teacher education (classroom observations, 18 January 2013).

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the ethno-racial order of things – still, it serves to highlight the nationalized and gendered fault lines of integration in classrooms. Professors frequently tried to counter-steer these tendencies, for example by insisting that students worked in groups which included someone from each nationality present in the class (e.g., student projects, fieldnotes, 16 January 2013). When left to their own decision-making, however, students returned to their preferred group settings. The group constellations changed very little over time. The reasons for this persistence can be found mostly outside the university where students, particularly international students, had to rely on ‘networks of survival and wellbeing’ to navigate the socio-economic (resources) and educational (workload) circumstance of life in Redenção. The groups were not fully segregated. Students could and frequently did cross national boundaries. Acts of sociability, verbal and non-verbal (e.g., greetings, nodding, slight raising of the hand, or tapping of the shoulder), even material exchanges (e.g., treats, pens, sharing screens and access to laptops) were the order of the day. Still, students within groups interacted more frequently with each other and these interactions lasted longer than their interactions with students from other groups. Because these groups remained relatively stable over time, they noticeably shaped classroom interactions (i.e., instructions, group work, and breaks). Like the everyday politicking described in Chapter 4, in classrooms too, information was often transmitted and conditions were negotiated through informal channels of communication. For instance, professors repeated their explanations or described scholarship opportunities and application processes in greater detail to groups composed primarily of Brazilian students that gathered around their desk at the beginning or end of class. In one instance that I observed, a Brazilian professor explained homework. A Brazilian student stood up in the middle of the explanation walking towards the professor’s desk asking for additional clarification. The professor did not hesitate to offer individualized advice (classroom observation, 26 February 2013). Everyone else remained seated. Often there was informal chatting, which professors would sometimes join. Brazilian students used these moments to solicit off-task information, for example about how the university operates and its opportunities, which would have been relevant information for everyone in the class. For instance, the class was tasked with reading a text out loud. Luis (a Brazilian student) engaged Professora Mendes (a Brazilian professor) in a quick conversation on research assistantships (bolsa), in which he gained clarification while Gustavo, a student from Guinea Bissau, was reading:

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Professora Mendes Don’t just enter bolsa for the money. You will have to work a lot. Luis Can I have auxilio [stipend] and bolsa, or only one? Professora Mendes You can have both. Luis When I got here I asked about auxilio tranasporte, but I haven’t received anything. Do you know anything about it? Professora Mendes No, I don’t. Luis Can I have more than one bolsa? Professora Mendes No, you can have only one bolsa. Even professors cannot have more than one bolsa. If you do this and it comes out, you will have to return the money. Afterwards, Professora Mendes returned her attention to the class. Not that the professors would not have shared the same information with everyone, but international students found themselves in an unfamiliar setting. They were less inclined to approach professors in such an informal manner, as they were less used to treading the boundaries between playing and teaching in this unfamiliar environment. They did not always feel confident about whether they knew the rules of Brazilian sociability. Sometimes they even felt as though professors slighted them. For example, the classroom situation above continued by moving into the discussion of the text. Professora Mendes solicited students’ opinions. Two students from Guinea Bissau shared their thoughts with little reaction from the professor. It seemed as though she had difficulty in understanding what the students were saying since she had yet to become familiar with the nuances in pronunciation and dialects. This was further complicated by the constant buzzing of the air conditioning as well as the Brazilian students’ chatter. For the rest of the lesson she did not return to them, instead she focused on the Brazilian students. International students could also not be completely sure whether their actions would be treated with the same level of acceptance as those of their Brazilian peers. I witnessed more than once that Brazilian professors were more at ease when debating with Brazilian students (even calling them to order) than they seemed to be in interactions with international students.

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To attribute these interactions to racism or xenophobia (as ingrained in practice) would be premature. They are rather expressions of Brazilian sociability. However, sociability in the Brazilian contexts functions as an ordering principle, which holds racial distinctions (economically, politically, culturally and before the law) in place. Sociable acts are expressions of fraternization, which serve to maintain distinctive groups in the social fabric of Brazil. In the words of Michel Agier (1995: 251): [S]ocial customs and ways of self-presenting and relating to others. These customs and ways are expressed outwardly with embraces, hands on other’s shoulders, the attribution of loving nicknames, the use of diminutives, congratulations, flattery, and other forms of enchanting interpersonal relations. These manners attempt to, and usually succeed in, eliminating the effects (tensions and conflicts) of social differences and domination in public domain.

The self-selection of students into distinct groups, based for example on ethnoracial identifications, is common in educational settings characterized by diversity (Ngo 2010). In VU, diversity has been conceptualized foremost as existing between national cultures (Afro-Brazilian activist interventions notwithstanding). This particular notion of diversity captures the classificatory assemblages that govern students’ lives only partially. It leaves aside aspects of their positionality (i.e., racial distinctions) that were perhaps even more salient in their experiences of social relations on campus, in Redenção, and Brazilian society at large. Although the teaching of history and cultural diversity was at the core of the general curriculum, in practice the courses often fell short of providing the space that was needed for critical reflections to build deeper connections among students. Such gaps between ideals and actual classroom practices are common experiences of diverse classrooms and have been found for gender (Zittleman and Sadker 2010) and multicultural diversity (Ngo 2010) elsewhere. Nonetheless, given UNILAB’s premise of joint development through solidarity and integration, professors registered its absence with consternation.2 Their worries motivated them to monitor the movements of students in relation to each other intensely.

Evading integration Students’ self-selection into homogenous groups was not limited to the classrooms. It continued in other campus spaces such as the university restaurant

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(restaurante universitário, RU). The RU is a separate building nestled at the middle level of a three-tiered terrace structure of buildings, between the administrative and the teaching blocks on the Redenção campus. It is a large open hall with a ticket counter at the entrance and a food counter at the rear end of the hall. The walls are perforated allowing for free flow of fresh air, which along with two gigantic ceiling fans makes the hall a sociable and bracing space where students can meet away from the blistering midday heat. The restaurant was open for lunch from 11.30 am to 1.30 pm and for dinner from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm on weekdays. On Saturdays it was open for lunch but closed for dinner, and on Sundays it was closed. Students had to pay for their meals but prices were affordable. Students considered them less pricy than the food sold at numerous carts across town. For students, each meal would cost R$1.10 (about U$0.30), R$1.60 for administrators and R$2.20 for professors. At every meal, students could choose between rice, beans, pasta, vegetables, salad, fruit and juice. The meat varied between beef and chicken. Students and professors sometimes complained about the quality of the latter. In general, the food was plentiful. It was certainly one of the ways that the university supported the students financially. Many of them ate regularly at the RU. At the time of the research in 2013, the university had only one such restaurant on the campus in Redenção. The process of opening another RU on the campus in Acarape had been repeatedly delayed and only completed with a final push just in time before the visit of Lula da Silva in February 2013. Since the number of newly admitted students grew constantly at fast pace, it soon outgrew the size of the RU. The restaurant was often overcrowded and students had to negotiate their way through the throng at every meal. By 2013 and still continuing in 2015, it was common for the queue of students to extend far outside. Sometimes students had to wait thirty or forty minutes to get their food. The RU is an important social space. Even as the RU provides an environment where students can meet outside the externally-determined demographic structures of their classrooms, it is still an on-campus space (in contrast to students’ apartments). It thus falls under the jurisdiction of the university where students’ social relations are subject to surveillance of the space (much less though in 2015). Professors, administrators and researchers frequently judged students’ behaviour based on their conception of what constitutes successful integration; that is, the spatial mixing of bodies equipped with divergent characteristics. They screened the room to discern whether integration was indeed occurring or not. Since UNILAB was still small (roughly 3,000 students at the time of research), professors knew many of the students individually.

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But beyond that they relied on their senses to register instantly the progression of integration. Because of who was perceived as belonging to either group of students by virtue of a gaze situated in the Brazilian (Cearensean) sociocultural imaginary, degrees of perceived Africanness often formed the basis of this judgement. It almost goes without saying that the purported ability to judge based on sensual information was an illusion which often failed the observer as it got frequently ruptured when a person’s features seemed to adhere to the principles of one group while in fact the person belonged to another. International students, on the other hand, behaved in the RU in ways that enabled them to create safe spaces where they could escape, temporarily and however imperfectly, the disciplining function of the gaze. Sometimes students would sit together with their classmates, but usually they shared their meals with friends and peers from their respective countries. The separation between men and women was less pronounced. Even if classmates stood together in the queue, one could see them break up and join their country groups almost always after fetching their trays of food. This was almost always the case when students did not come directly from class. For example, Patricia (Brazilian) and Sandra (Cape Verdean) belonged to the same agronomy class. During our interview they claimed to be friends. During lunch, however, I often saw Patricia sitting together with Brazilian students from other classes, whereas Sandra joined students from Cape Verde. Likewise, students from East Timor and Guinea Bissau shared respective tables. Acts of sociability, similar to those in classrooms, like joking, playing tricks, shaking hands, nodding, eye contact, and stopping and approaching someone for a brief chat were always going on, across all nationalities. The socializing was particularly pronounced on Saturdays, when the RU was less crowded and students had more time. However, these acts were mostly limited to the waiting in the queue, whereas when the time came to choose a table, even students, who were conversing before, retreated to one of their country’s tables. Figure  6.6 shows a model of the RU. It depicts the ticket and food counter, the tables and chairs, and the queue line. It also indicates some tables that were informally designated for students from certain countries. East Timorese students usually occupied the tables in the far-right corner from the ticket counter, whereas students from Guinea Bissau sat to the left of the food counter. Cape Verdean students seemed to favour (and had established for themselves over time) the corner right next to the ticket counter. In any of these cases, picking these tables offered a number of advantages, as these areas were located in the

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Figure 6.6 Model of the university restaurant.

periphery of the RU. From there, students could overlook the hall. They also avoided the crowded middle section where tables and chairs were placed so close to each other that they left little room for manoeuvring trays, bodies and backpacks. After some time of frequenting the same tables repeatedly, students would know where to find their friends and peers. I also felt that I should not sit at a designated table if I had no business with the respective students. Also the other way around, when my computer cable broke midway through fieldwork (a precious item since it could not be replaced without going to Fortaleza, which amounted to a full day of absence from the field), I knew where to look for an East Timorese student, who had been pointed out to me by Tiago, a student from Guinea Bissau, for using the same type of computer. This shows that these groups, by virtue of forming networks with other groups, granted access to resources. Meeting in the same place around the same time every day during the busy routines of the day afforded the international students a sense of comfort in an environment that constantly called on them to represent the vision of the university (and its failings). Country-specific groups provided a source of familiarity in what was otherwise an unfamiliar environment for many of the

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international students. Students did not have to request membership to sit with their peers because they belonged. They also did not have to explain themselves, their doings and motivations, or their accents. To put it differently, they could engage with others by drawing on a familiar set of norms and beliefs, just like back home. This is not to imply that these groups were perfectly harmonious, to the contrary. Personal quarrels and fault lines of difference (e.g., gender, ethnicity, religion or language) caused tensions within a group as much as they did across them. It meant, however, that students populated a space in which they could use their languages (e.g., Cape Verdean creole) without having to feel that they were violating the tenets of integration in the terms of sociability. They could sit and eat as they liked, not like in their apartments, of course, as the RU was still a public space, but in ways that felt familiar. International students who often felt marginalized by their Brazilian peers described their tables as zones of comfort, a small oasis in which they could somewhat let down their guard. By joining these tables, students created spaces for themselves, where they could hide from the rhetoric of integration, which marked them as racialized other, for as long as it took to eat lunch or dinner. Ninho, a student from São Tomé e Principe, concurred with this view saying: I don’t get the fuss about [integration]. All students have one thing in common. They want to be comfortable. They want to be with someone who is equal, who is like them. They look for conversations where they don’t have to worry about language, whether they speak too fast or whether they know the right words. They want camaraderie. Fieldnotes, 19 March 2013

Every day of the week, international students shared their meals in the RU, sat near each other in classrooms, sought out each other’s companionship in hallways, walked together in groups in the streets of Redenção, and spent weekends in each other’s homes, whenever possible, to create zones of comfort. Their tables, chairs and houses resembled the spaces that Rebekah Nathan (2005: 63) described for minority students in a large US university: [M]inority ethnic clubs, dorms and student unions have a clear meaning. Ethnicbased groups are often clouded by perceptions that they . . . remove their members from the mainstream and surround them with people of the same background. [Instead] people of color are already heavily involved in interethnic and interracial relationships on campus. In fact, most of their . . . personal

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networks included people, who were ethnically different from them. Under these circumstances, an ethnic-based club . . . is better understood as a needed respite from difference, a chance to rest comfortably with others who share similar experiences in the world.

The groups that students had in mind when speaking of comfort and camaraderie were not forcefully mixed. Instead, they emerged from a sense of familiarity, which students often found within groups of their countries. These groups were also social networks within which students exchanged resources and lent each other support navigating the exigencies of living and studying in Redenção. As such these groups functioned in parallel to Brazilian networks, which Brazilian students accessed by virtue of Brazilian forms of sociability. Interactions and exchanges between international and Brazilian group settings, on the other hand, were less frequent than between the various international groups. Brazilian students were more in control of UNILAB spaces, which afforded them greater capacity to control the course of action. As a more general characteristic of Brazilian society, people maintain distinctive groups through sociability (as networks of interaction and verbal/non-verbal communication), which also leads to social and ethno-racial segregation due to divergences in the availability of resources and connections (Agier 1995; Bichir and Marques 2012). Students’ social interrelations outside the university unfolded in much the same way with analogous effects, as I will discuss in Chapter 7. Something else was going on as well. The tables (like other social space shared by the groups) became places where students would talk about many things, including their misgivings. Sometimes they would complain about what they perceived as rudeness on the part of Brazilians. Tiago once said: ‘In Guinea Bissau, we don’t kiss in public.’ Ramon, for example, explained: ‘In Guinea Bissau one has to respect older people even if they are not part of your family. I have to listen to elders and respond. I have to speak slowly. I have to ask for forgiveness if I did something wrong. We go visit them. We greet them in the streets. Here they don’t greet you. One has to get used to it’ (fieldnotes, 7 February 2013). On another occasion, Joanna insisted: ‘In Guinea Bissau we take you in. We show you around and tell you what we expect. We teach our children how to behave. Here they don’t do that. Here they don’t explain the rules’ (fieldnotes, 3 March 2013). At the same time, whenever a conversation turned to how Brazilians were different, students were quick to assure that they respected those differences. Ramon for example added: ‘I respect everyone, not only older people.’ Students’ complaints can be read in multiple ways. They are expressions of international

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students’ uncertainties with Brazilian sociability. They functioned to set the respective groups apart from the rest to create a shared sense of belonging while highlighting students’ intercultural awareness. They also displayed the students as morally upright people, which, perhaps, students felt inclined to do to counteract disparaging rhetorics circulating at the university. For instance, a Brazilian professor once tried to convince me that all students from Guinea Bissau were drug traffickers (interview, 10 July 2015), a gesture of difference despite frequent claims to sameness between non-white subjects. The sense that students needed to escape became clear when I saw Tomas to pierce or ‘jump the line (furar a fila)’ (fieldnotes, 30 January 2013). Jumping the queue was the common but contested practice in the RU of giving money to a friend, who would then buy the food ticket and wait in line until it reached the food counter, at which moment the student, who had originated the jumping, joined the friend. On that day, I said to Tomas in a jest: ‘This is not integration.’ He got upset and answered: ‘I just come here to eat. We are all human. We all have to eat.’ In his response, he simultaneously subverted the act of surveillance and asserted his rightful belonging in the space. International students’ behaviour in the RU disrupted official assumptions about how they should be acting. It ruptured the very notion of integration. While official rhetoric assigned the presence of international students an iconic meaning, the lived realities of UNILAB-in-practice were informed much more by negotiations over these meanings. As student numbers kept growing and as students got to know each other better, the effects of self-selection withered. By 2015, social relations in public spaces like the RU had become much less tense. Students who had been at UNILAB since 2012, national denominations notwithstanding, shared meals with students from across countries more frequently, particularly in contrast to newly arriving cohorts. I can only assume that these changes occurred because of the efforts people made during everyday conviviality in this relatively small university and town such as the actions of Professor Bob: In lunch line, I watched Professor Bob as he was talking with three Brazilian students (male, engineering) sitting at a table where he passed by. He did the same with international students (male, Guinea Bissau) at another table. He greeted Fabio, a student from East Timor, in much the same way. He spoke with them all. He asked them about their days and made jokes. They were laughing together. When we sat down to eat, a female Brazilian student stopped by the

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table, exchanging a few words with Professor Bob. Meanwhile, he waved at another table filled with three agronomy students. They waved back. Fieldnotes, 21 February 2013

The crowdedness of the RU was a time and place where people would engage with each other more easily. Even if students preferred to sit with friends and peers from their respective countries, they still had to navigate the hall on a daily basis. The space between tables and chairs was limited. The students carried trays packed full of food, silverware, a cup, and sometimes an orange in severe danger of rolling off the tray. They also carried backpacks, not to mention personal accessories such as handbags, cell phones or motorcycle helmets. Just like in classrooms, students navigated the crowdedness with a civility that matches Anderson’s description of interactions under the cosmopolitan canopies of the mall in Philadelphia. Sometimes students talked to each other, sometimes they mocked each other, and sometimes they ignored each other. However, over time, a certain familiarity arose, and interactions seemed to be more at ease. This attests to the fact that the original idea of integration through conviviality took hold indeed, clearly an accomplishment of the students’ and professors’ doings. Perhaps, the students had got to know each other well, beyond the parameters of artificially fabricated integration. By 2015, Pedro (Brazil) and Duarte (Guinea Bissau) confirmed that the coexistence (conviver) had improved measurably since 2013. They also agreed that the ability to integrate across nationalities and the willingness to sustain these interactions beyond brief encounters were dependent almost entirely on individuals. Yet, it was uncertain whether this willingness could be accounted for by choice alone, as degrees of blackness in combination with socio-economic factors shaped how students could move about spaces, and to what extent their movements were observed and policed by others. This caused international students to continue seeking out spaces of comfort and respite from the racializing gaze of the many observing eyes on campus, and which ultimately entrenched self-selection in students’ communal relations to which I will turn next.

Notes 1 Classroom observation, 26 February 2013. 2 Interviews, 8, 11, 16, 19, 21 and 25 February 2013.

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We just finished eating. The smell of cooking is still in the air. Music plays. Cars drive by. We are in Joanna and Felicia’s bedroom. The door is shut. We are hiding from the outside world. At first, I wasn’t sure whether I should sit down on the bed, but Felicia sensed my hesitation and assured me that it was okay. She even suggested lying down. As I come to rest on the bed, I start to relax. Joanna dances with the music. Felicia sits next to me. She brushes my blonde hair with long strokes while looking me in the eyes. The kindness of her caring and the intimacy of the bedroom seduce me into letting go of the ethnographer’s gaze. For now, there is only music. Felicia speaks into this moment of ease. ‘Esta cor não presta.’ [This colour is useless.] She moves her fingers up and down her forearm. ‘Coisas pretas são coisas que jogamos fora.’ [Black things are things we throw out.] I can feel the tears rising in my eyes. ‘Why?’ ‘Deus é branco.’ [God is white.] Fieldnotes, 2 February 2013 Felicia and Joanna, both from Guinea Bissau, shared a one-bedroom apartment. According to Vigh (2006) the interpretative conflation of blackness with instability, conflict and decline (or, according to Felicia, waste) was common among youth in Bissau City, where Felicia was from. Nevertheless, when she spoke these words in the privacy of her bedroom, it startled me. Two years into her studies at UNILAB that was how she felt about the colour of her skin. Her words were filled with resignation, if not despair. By then, I wondered, should these feelings not have been reshaped, if not vanished, had UNILAB actualized its potentialities of solidarity cooperation? Something was happening, or better put, something was not happening that could have disrupted Felicia’s diminishing sense of self. In many African countries, whether Portuguese-speaking or not, young people like Felicia (late teens to late twenties) came of age at times when national elites, multilateral organizations and First and Second World donor countries 123

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promised progress and development for everyone. In reality, young people often witnessed and survived political instability, proxy hot wars, internal armed conflicts, and economic decline (Ferguson 2006). Many of them are aware of the contradictory conditions of their lives. They realize their marginality and limited ability to participate in global modernity (Bordonaro 2007; Dureau 2013). Still, they dream about better lives and actively engage in forging them (Vigh 2006). Like many young people around the world, young Africans turn to education for future opportunities. Education has become ‘a way of doing or perceiving life, a way of being in the world and coming to know it’ (Stambach and Hall 2016: 23). It provides a cultural repertoire that affords young people symbols, perceptions, and attitudes to make sense of the world and their lives within.1 International student mobility entails, in many ways, the culmination of these promises. International mobility can offer students access to university education or a better quality thereof (King and Raghuram 2013). They can acquire what are perceived to be valuable credentials (Beck 2008) and provide financial support to their families from afar (de Haas 2010).2 Apart from these material opportunities, the physical act of moving between places also has a symbolic meaning (Cresswell 2006). Like participating in schooling in general, international migration for educational purposes (and otherwise) allows youth from African countries to imagine their escape from marginality. International students at UNILAB imagined their stories of coming to Brazil as stories of global belonging, cosmopolitan mobility and participation in modernity. However, their lives in Redenção bore little resemblance to their expectations – this sense of disillusionment is common in accounts of international students’ experiences elsewhere (including students from African countries in other Brazilian universities, Gusmão 2011). International students reported difficulties in adapting to Brazilian society. Their lives displayed a high level of segregation from the lives of Brazilian students. Furthermore, segregation was not merely determined by student nationality. It also ran along racial and economic lines. Among the students with whom I worked, segregation boundaries were strongest for international students with darker skin and limited funds. These segregation patterns reflected the intersecting, intermeshing and interlinking grid of social divisions in which social markers, such as race, class and gender characterize the powerfully racialized class hierarchy prevalent in Brazilian society (Bailey, Loveman and Muniz 2013). This was surprising, given UNILAB’s emphasis on solidarity cooperation. As I have described throughout, founders had distinct visions regarding the university’s purpose. They believed that students, over time, would develop a dialogical relationship through living and studying together. In this chapter I

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share international students’ aspirations. I describe their daily lives and how they relied mostly on students from their home country to meet the demands of survival and ensure their own wellbeing. Following the nomenclature suggested by Hendrickson, Rosen and Aune (2011), I refer to these relationships as conational networks compared to multi-national networks. International students’ experiences starkly contrasted with the university’s mandate of cultural integration and solidarity, and cut against the aspirations students had imagined for themselves before their arrival at UNILAB. During fieldwork I interacted with over 100 students. In terms of students from African countries, many of them came from Guinea Bissau, which was by and large the country that ‘sent’3 the most students (60 per cent, n=386, of the 650 foreign students by April 2015). As I have already explained in Chapter 4, the number of students who came from the various countries varied significantly. At the beginning of 2013, the largest group of international students came from East Timor, followed by the group of students from Guinea Bissau, which by August 2013 surpassed the group of East Timorese students in numbers. Other countries like Angola and Mozambique ‘sent’ significantly fewer students. The interactions with students resulted in countless conversations, including seventeen formal interviews and many hours of participatory observation in and outside of classroom, on and off campus. My analysis draws from all of these interactions, but it is narrated primarily through the experiences of thirteen students. Let me briefly introduce these students in no particular order. Felicia is a nursing student in her mid-twenties from Bissau City, Guinea Bissau. She is the mother of a three-year-old daughter, whom she left with her mother in Guinea Bissau. She receives a housing stipend as well as some additional support from her family. She says that her personal story is too sad to share. Also from Bissau City, Guinea Bissau is Joanna, a student in her late twenties who began her studies in teacher education but later switched to social sciences. She receives a housing stipend and recently also acquired a small study-work allowance. About her personal life before coming to Brazil, she only shared that she had been enrolled in typing and accounting classes in Bissau City. In 2015, she gave birth to a son. Alda is another student from Guinea Bissau. In 2012 she shared an apartment with Felicia and Joanna. She is in her early twenties. She later moved in with her boyfriend in Redenção. José is an engineering student from Maputo, Mozambique who says he is nineteen years old but seems older considering the experiences he shared about his life. He receives a housing stipend along with a monthly allowance of R$100

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from his mother who works for UNICEF; recently he started working as a research assistant. Of Mozambican-Portuguese decent, he comes from a middleclass family and attended private school. Before coming to Brazil, he was enrolled in computer classes in Maputo. Sandro is a humanities student in his mid-twenties from Mozambique. He receives a housing stipend as well as support from his family, although he says they are poor. Robinho is a twenty-year-old agronomy student from Guinea Bissau. He receives a housing stipend as well as sporadic familial support. He comes from what in the Euro-American context would be considered a patchwork family and has nine siblings. Back in Guinea Bissau, he lived mostly with his father, a shoemaker and tailor, and was able to attend a private school that employed his father to make uniforms. Robinho stressed repeatedly, like many of the international students, how he felt responsible for his family. His father had prepared him to go abroad in the future. Robinho was hoping to be able to support his siblings’ education by paying their school fees. Valentim is a student from East Timor. He is in his mid-twenties and studies agronomy. He receives a 50 per cent UNILAB stipend along with a US$500 stipend from the East Timor government. Like most students from his country, he was recruited into UNILAB via the National University of East Timor in Díli. Robinho and Valentim said they were friends. Duarte is a 28-year-old student from Bissau City, Guinea Bissau, who originally studied nursing but switched to public administration. He receives a housing stipend. Back home he ran his deceased father’s driving service in order to support his family and was unable to attend university. He has a four-year-old son, who lives with his mother in Guinea Bissau. Tiago is a public administration student from Bissau City, Guinea Bissau in his late twenties. He receives a UNILAB stipend and a research assistantship, and has also taught English and worked at a local pizzeria. Orphaned at a young age, he was raised by extended family and has a cousin living in Europe. He said he would like the mother of his young daughter to join him in Brazil to study, and he later managed to move her to the country. Tiago and Duarte were both students of the first cohort, UNILAB pioneers so to speak. Tamara is a 22-year-old agronomy student from Fortaleza, Brazil. She receives a social stipend and worked as a research assistant. She lives with her mother and her younger sister in Guaramrange (approximately an hour’s journey each way by bus), where they moved a year ago to have access to better schools. Her stepfather passed away about a year ago.

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Sandra is a twenty-year-old agronomy student from Cape Verde, who receives a housing stipend as well as familial support. Her parents are farmers but also work for the city; her mother lived in Italy before marrying Sandra’s father. Before coming to Brazil, Sandra worked as a teacher and as a domestic employee. A 22-year-old from Fortaleza, Brazil, Patricia began her studies in agronomy but later switched to engineering. She receives a transportation and food stipend. Her parents were originally from rural Ceará; her mother was a homemaker while her father owned a company that made spectacle lenses. Sandra and Patricia said they were friends. Levin is a Brazilian engineering student in his mid-twenties from Redenção. He receives a social stipend as well as reliable support from his family. His father is a police officer and his mother owns a school-transport company. João is a 24-year-old public administration student from the Brazilian state of Paraíba. He receives a social stipend. His father works as a custodian/domestic worker while his mother stopped working thirty years ago due to a back injury. João began working at the age of twelve in construction, small commerce and teaching, and was able to pay for his own education ever since.

Networks of everyday survival and wellbeing International students’ experiences were strongly shaped by their social positioning in Brazilian society and globally. Their socio-economic situation, their nationality and their bodily characteristics influenced their social interactions. In turn, they drew on their positionalities to make sense of the university. International students relied mostly on co-national networks to access and share the resources necessary to meet the demands of daily survival, wellbeing and studying in Redenção. In these networks, they connected and reconnected (if they knew each other from before) with colleagues from their home countries. They created mutually beneficial, at times gendered, relations to exchange goods (e.g., internet access), money (e.g., copy or lunch money) and services (e.g., cooking, running errands), and to lend each other material (e.g., housing) and emotional (e.g., friendship) support. These networks played a key role in students’ initial introduction to UNILAB, and continued to play a key role in most students’ lives throughout their time at the university. As such, they both contributed to the segregation patterns described in the previous chapter and to the students’ successful navigation and completing of their studies.

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Although the administration advertised UNILAB through a variety of channels, it ultimately relied primarily on word-of-mouth for student recruitment. An administrator of the Communication Office (Assessoria de Comunicação) explained that the university used radio announcements, flyers and posters for recruitment. In some cases, they contacted secondary schools and other educational institutions with which they had been able to establish connections. He also said that they encouraged international students to make UNILAB known to their friends. UNILAB provided flyers to students – in colour as well as in black-and-white (documents, no. 10, no. 11) in case they ‘didn’t have colour printers’, he commented – to distribute among their informal networks (fieldnotes, 5 March 2013). As intended, international students reported they had seen the advertisements and learned about UNILAB through social connections. José explained: ‘I want more students from Mozambique to come. I called my mom, who promised to contact somebody at a radio station’ (interview, 22 February 2013). Robinho remembered that he heard about the university from his dad, who knew about it from somebody who worked for the Brazilian embassy (fieldnotes, 27 January 2013). Duarte recalled that he found out about the university almost by accident. He had planned to apply for a tourist visa, when a friend at the Brazilian embassy told him about a new university that would provide scholarships for international students. Other students conveyed similar stories. Some said they heard about it from friends and family members in Fortaleza. According to Duarte, there were about 1,000 students from Guinea Bissau in Fortaleza, who were studying there mostly at private universities (fieldnotes, 21 September 2012). As such, the recruiting of students from abroad followed network patterns commonly found in migrant communities for whom interpersonal bonds between migrants, former migrants and non-migrants back home facilitated international mobility and helped newcomers to integrate into the host society (de Haas 2010; Massey, Arango, Hugo, Kouaouci, Pellegrino and Taylor 1993; Toma and Vause 2014). Similar patterns have been described for international student communities in other parts of the world (Collins 2008; Hendrickson, Rosen and Aune 2011). The recruiting of international students through co-national networks would play a role in what would later manifest itself as segregated housing and sharing of resources once students arrived in Redenção. Housing represented the area where international students relied most heavily on co-national networks. Because Redenção is a rather small town, it was not prepared to absorb the growing influx of students and professors. The growing demand, however, motivated quite a number of private individuals to

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make housing available to students. Some simply rented apartments and houses they owned without much improvement of the infrastructure. Others renovated their apartments and then rented them. One person in particular undertook large-scale construction projects that resulted in completely new apartment buildings. Still, rents were rising and placed significant constraints on students’ financial resources. Therefore, where students rented and with whom they shared apartments often depended on their financial situation. Students with limited funds tried to avoid the new buildings because owners rented the apartments at high prices to maximize their profits. But students with limited financial means also preferred to live with people they knew would support them if they faced extreme financial difficulties (e.g., their roommates would lend them money while they waited for their stipend cheque). In its original proposal (UNILAB 2010), the university promised to provide housing to international students. A large poster hanging above the reception desk at the entrance of the Redenção campus as well as in planning documents (document, no. 12) provided by the Dean of Planning Office (Pró-Reitoria de Planjemanto, PP) widely announced the provision of student dormitories. The construction of these dormitories started immediately after the opening of the university. Arranging building materials, equipment, workers and construction experts, however, proved challenging in the rural interior of Ceará, as a representative of PP explained (interview, 5 March 2013). On top of that, such large-scale construction projects take time.4 Brazilian South–South cooperation projects often had to set priorities in order to deal with these constraints. In the case of UNILAB, the dormitories had not been completed by August 2015. Meanwhile teaching began and international students started to arrive. To remedy the lack of dormitories, the administration placed the first cohort of foreign students in a number of apartments. All of them were located in the same building west of the Praça (the central square of town). As a result, all thirty-eight incoming African students lived in the same building. The administration also provided furniture (e.g., chairs, beds and tables) and appliances (e.g., stoves and fridges). The apartments consisted of a gated patio in the front, a living room, two bedrooms separated by a bathroom, and a kitchen that opened onto a patio at the back. A long narrow hallway connected the rooms to the patios. This layout is typical for apartments and houses in Ceará. It allows air to flow from the front to the back, an important feature in a region with a year-round high temperature of 80°F (27°C). The apartments were in good condition, which was by no means the case with all the apartments available in and around Redenção. The apartments had white-tiled floors and walls, so that

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they could be easily maintained. The electricity allowed for the reliable operation of a stove, a fridge, a TV and the occasional laptop. Altogether, the apartments were functional but small for up to for six people to share. In response to the crowded conditions of university-organized housing, the first cohort of students soon started to rent houses and apartments on their own. They did so in groups of people from the same country. In September 2012, I visited one of these first apartments. At the time, three men from Guinea Bissau lived there. Three of the original six students had moved to an apartment on the east side of town. Likewise, a group of eight male and female students from Angola, who also belonged to the first cohort, had moved to the east side. They shared a house split into two apartments; the men lived upstairs and the women downstairs. Finding housing was the first and main obstacle for newly arriving students. To resolve the problem of coming to a new town with limited, and often very expensive, housing options, they relied on co-national networks, like international students elsewhere (Hendrickson, Rosen and Aune 2011; Subuhana 2007). Tiago, who lived in the east side apartment, regularly hosted calouros (freshmen) when they arrived. José and Sandro shared an apartment. East Timorese students shared housing as well. They often rented a house together as a large group. For example, a group of thirteen students shared a house with three bedrooms, one bathroom, a small kitchen and two living rooms. In this house, women and men lived in gender-designated bedrooms (fieldnotes, 2 February 2013). One evening I met Esperança, whose brother studied in Fortaleza. She explained that she was looking for a new apartment because she needed space for herself and her younger cousin, who would soon arrive (fieldnotes, 7 October 2012). When I met Esperança for the first time, she shared an apartment with Joanna, Felicia and Alda, all four from Guinea Bissau. They sublet the apartment from a first-cohort student, also from Guinea Bissau, who had moved to a bigger house. The women had arrived in Redenção in summer 2012, as part of the second cohort. At first they lived in a building outside of town, which they described as having been in very bad condition. Rain would enter through the roof so they had to move (fieldnotes, 3 February 2013). The apartment they sublet, however, had no appliances or furniture (unlike the first-cohort apartments). Therefore, in 2012 they relied heavily on a group of first-cohort male students from Guinea Bissau (e.g., Duarte). Later, UNILAB provided allowances for appliances, but as was often the case the payment was delayed. In spring 2013, when I met them again, the women’s housing situation was about to change again. Esperança had moved out into one of the new apartment buildings in November 2012, which I assume was made possible by the funds she

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received ‘vez em quando’ (from time to time) from her family in addition to the housing stipend (fieldnotes, 7 October 2012). Alda moved in with her boyfriend, just a few days before the student from whom Joanna had sublet their apartment reclaimed it. Without any prior notice, he asked them to leave. At this time, the women did not have funds available beyond to their stipends. Given the lack of affordable apartments in Redenção, Joanna and Felicia passed a very stressful two weeks, on top of their studying responsibilities (too often, professors forget that they meet students only in their classrooms missing the complexities of everyday life outside) before they were able to rent a one-bedroom apartment with an open kitchen living space and small bathroom, roughly 300ft2 (30m2) for R$400 (U$115), raised later to R$500 (U$144). By 2015, the two women had moved again, this time out of Redenção to the neighbouring town of Acarape. There they rented separate apartments at half the cost of what they had paid in Redenção. Felicia’s apartment was of similar size and with similar amenities to the one she’d left. It costs R$250 (U$72). Joanna’s was slightly larger. She sublet the living room to another student. International students constantly worried about housing for themselves, their peers and family from their country. They moved often because they were either moved out of their apartments or because other options were more affordable. Financial resources were a constant concern, on the one hand because of limited resources but also to spend as little as possible on housing in order to afford other necessities (e.g., computers for studying) or to support their families back home. Whenever possible, students worked (as research assistants, waiters, English teachers) to supplement their stipend. I am unsure to what extent the search for housing was influenced by the Brazilian population’s prejudices against international students. From what I have heard, I assume that most of the attitudes students encountered were determined by the tight housing market and negotiations over money, rather than racialized or xenophobic discrimination. Whatever the motives, they resulted in sometimes rather paradoxical engagements between international students and the local population. These encounters also revealed the tensions inherent in UNILAB as a domestic and international development project. Students often considered who was in need, or more in need, than others. José explained: Brazilians think we take their opportunities. Many here need money. The money isn’t enough to maintain themselves. They say the money we receive should be invested in Brazilian students. If we have sufficient education, if we are middleclass . . . here in town, they think that Africans have much money because they are here. For example, I wanted to look at an apartment. I was on the phone with

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the owner. He said the apartment was R$200. We agreed that I would look at it. When I got there, he asked me whether I was Brazilian or African, because I speak Portuguese well. I said I was African. Then he said the price would be different. Instead of R$200, I would have to pay R$400. Interview, 22 February 2013

Finding housing and other socio-economic challenges are common experiences of international students (Hendrickson, Rosen and Aune 2011; Pedro 2000; Robertson, Line, Jones and Thomas 2010; Smith and Khawaja 2011). Perhaps the students perceived it as particularly daunting in Redenção because UNILAB was such a new university and both the university and Redenção received a large number of international students in a rather short period of time, while lacking the capacity to absorb this growth. During my first visit in September 2012, a large number of foreign students (about 120) had just arrived on campus. The country, the town, the housing, the university, their colleagues, everything was new and very few structures or systems were in place to support them. There seemed to be a lot of tension and anxiety in the air. Besides housing, students needed resources to meet the daily demands of living and studying in the new environment of Redenção. Many international students relied on housing and other stipends as their main source of funding. The stipend, however, was tight and often insufficient to cover all the expenses of the students, let alone breathing space for other activities (e.g., trips to Fortaleza). To bridge the gap between the stipend and actual costs, students with little or no outside sources of funding again found themselves largely drawing on conational networks to meet these demands. Rarely, it seemed, did they share resources across multi-national networks. As José’s comment above suggests, the lack of engagement could perhaps be explained by the fact that the local Brazilian population also had only limited resources. International students often interpreted it as discrimination and lack of integration to air their grievances and frustrations with their precarious situations. Life in Redenção was not cheap. Common costs faced by students included housing, water and energy, food, clothing and study materials, including photocopying fees. Apart from the stipend for which they could apply, students had to have proof of financial support from their families, other benefactors or the government as part of their visa requirements. Initially, UNILAB was founded on the assumption that, because the university was supposed to be built in partnership with other countries, these governments would largely provide support for their students. In reality, however, only the first cohort of Angolan students and the large (and by 2015 still only) cohort of students from East

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Timor received monthly support from their governments. Very few of the other students could count on regular payments other than the stipends, because, as is common among families with migratory aspirations around the world, their proof of support was often a reflection of the short-term pooling of extended family resources in a bank account, not a long-term source of funding for their daily needs (Mazzucato 2009). Some students received irregular payments from a benefactor or family members or knew people whom they could contact if needed. A significant number of students, however, had no outside source of support at all. Even those who economized could run short of money at the end of the month. This meant that international students commonly depended on university-based, co-national networks to eat and cover other essential expenses for at least a few days each month, just like Brazilian students would rely on their families for support. To make financial matters worse, it was often hard to predict when exactly the Brazilian government scholarship would be deposited in students’ bank accounts. During the last days of each month and into the first days of the next, students talked more about money and their lack of it than at any other time. Most were down to their very last few cents and people would spend time checking their accounts, constantly talking to friends about whether the stipends had arrived or not. This took up students’ time. It also wore on them psychologically. On one such morning, I met Tiago on campus. He said he wanted to go to the bank during the lunch break. I met him again in the afternoon. He reported that the money had not been deposited in his account, so he would continue checking. The moment the money arrived one could feel the wave of relief that washed over the campus. Sometimes I speculated whether their concerns regarding the arrival of money, which they generally withdrew from their accounts all at once, were related to the fact that they would have to wait in the queue that formed in front of the one bank in town – an image associated with poverty in the region as locals benefiting from social welfare contributions (e.g., bolsa familia) formed exactly such a queue. International students complained about the unpredictability of the scholarship. Some of them thought that the administration held the money back on purpose. They criticized the administration for ‘lack of integration’. Since it took me some time to decipher what was actually going on, I found myself mumbling things about the ‘lack of integration’ too. The university had little control over when funds were released. It depended on the Ministry of Education and the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) for its budget. The official regulation was that the government organizations could deposit the funds within ‘cinco dias

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úteis’ (five workdays) of each month. This meant that the exact date when UNILAB received its funds and the transfer of the money into students’ accounts could possibly fluctuate by up to a week each month, which made it unpredictable in the perceptions of the students, who frequently ran out of money before the end of the month. From the perspective of the Ministry and the administration (and some of the Brazilian professors), these were regular federal funding processes. From the perspective of the international students, however, it forced some of them to go days without money. Very poor Brazilian students, for example Tamara, whose stipend was the main source of income for her mother and brother, or João without any support from family, were faced with similar problems. The instability caused by these delays was a greater source of anxiety and bitterness among students and one of the aspects that hindered integration across national student groups. Anxieties caused by depleted resources were serious. Students most often relied on co-national networks to address them, not because these networks had the greatest resources but because other networks did not appear open to them. One evening I had a conversation near the campus copy shop with Duarte. We were talking about his family and life back in Guinea Bissau, when a female student approached him. She said something in Creole. Duarte pulled some coins from his pocket, briefly checked the amount and gave it to her. They exchanged a few more sentences before she left. Duarte explained: ‘She needed money for copying. She will give it back tomorrow. I know her. She is from Guinea Bissau’ (fieldnotes, 8 October 2012). From other conversations I knew that money was an issue for Duarte. He wanted to buy a computer but the scholarship was not enough to save up for it. Like other students, he had spent all of his savings on travelling to Brazil. Still, when the students asked him, he helped out. He did so both because he felt he could trust them to return the money and because he knew that at other times he might have to ask the same of them. Duarte and the two other students who lived in the same apartment, together with Joanna, Felicia, Esperança and Alda, who at least at the beginning relied on them, often split costs for food, particularly at weekends, when the university restaurant was closed. They bought groceries and cooked together (fieldnotes, 7 October 2012). When I visited one of their apartments students also shared their food with me and felt obliged to apologize if they weren’t able to provide any. During these visits I saw how Joanna and Felicia quite frequently called students from Guinea Bissau off the street to come upstairs and offer them food and/or companionship. Some of these students had just arrived and were still waiting for the first payment of their stipends, which had been delayed for

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almost two months due to bureaucratic processes. Robinho acknowledged that money could be short at the end of the month. He said, however, that he was not very concerned because he could rely on a number of sources for support, mostly his dad and co-national friends in Redenção (fieldnotes, 27 January 2013). A key point for readers is that in matters of daily survival, safety and well-being, international students turned almost entirely to networks of students from their own country, which is similar to what Maundeni (2001) reported about a community of international students from African countries in Britain. UNILAB’s structures, including the housing and funding insecurities that students regularly faced, made these networks essential for most students’ survival, and the university did not view such networks as problematic: in fact, creating networks with people from one’s own home country was viewed as the first step of integration, as Mr. Speller repeatedly argued. The founders, in particular, assumed that over time these co-national interactions would become more open. What they may not have fully understood was that these networks were not a step towards later networks; in most cases, they defined the intimate spaces and people with whom students interacted throughout their time at UNILAB. For many international students, co-national networks were the spaces in which they felt they could ask for, and receive, support for basic necessities. Even when they moved outside of co-national networks for support, they relied mostly on other international students.

Sharing resources in multi-national networks Like international students elsewhere, matters of daily survival and maintaining the home and body (cooking, cleaning, etc.), and being able to borrow small sums for essential activities were generally handled within co-national networks (Hendrickson, Rosen and Aune 2011; Subuhana 2007, 2009). Sometimes the support to meet the demands of daily survival involved other international students. Valentim, the student from East Timor, told me that he had bought lunch tickets for his friends and classmates at various times. In general, however, multi-national interactions were more common in study-related issues. Students attended classes by courses (agronomy, engineering etc.) and cohorts (e.g. first cohort enrolled in May 2011). Therefore, students from one country often belonged to different classes. Since students from each country were fragmented by cohort and by course, cohorts and classes were usually multi-national. The internet was often one of the students’ greatest concerns with regard to studying. They used it for completing writing tasks and research. UNILAB

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provided free Wi-Fi for students on campus. The university also had a computer lab and additional computers in the library. Theoretically, it seemed that students had plenty of time between and after classes to work on the computers and use the internet. Formal instruction, however, was very time-consuming and highly monitored, as professors were required to take attendance. Students spent six to eight hours per day, four to five days a week, in class. In addition, they participated in practical lessons in laboratories, schools, and on the university farm once or twice a week. Table 7.1 shows Joanna’s schedule of the third trimester teacher education course to provide an example of the time demands placed on students by formal instruction. UNILAB students had a heavy schedule.5 In addition, they faced other challenges. They had to go to the Universidade Federal de Ceará (Federal University of Ceará, UFC) in Fortaleza for laboratory lessons because the facilities in Redenção had not been built. The trip took one-and-a-half hours by bus each way. The university farm was located about forty-five minutes away from campus. Even with transportation provided by the administration, on field/laboratory days students spent up to ten hours on the road. As a result, students spent up to forty hours per week inside classrooms or otherwise involved in structured educational activities, where professors diligently registered their attendance. On top of that, they had to master unfamiliarly high reading loads, complete group work, research information, prepare presentations, write essays and study for tests. However, the internet was slow and the computer facilities often overcrowded because all students wanted to Table 7.1 Sample timetable of third trimester teacher education Monday 8am– Physics II 10am

Tuesday

Origin of Life and Evolution 10am– Chemistry I Physics II 12pm

Wednesday Thursday Friday School visits and Student Teacher Training

12pm– Lunch break 2pm 2pm– Mathematics Mathematics School 4pm II II visits and Student 4pm– Astronomy Teacher 6pm Training

Saturday

Origin of Mathematics Chemistry Life and II Lab in Evolution Fortaleza Origin of Life and Evolution

Chemistry Pedagogical Chemistry I Practice Lab in Fortaleza Astronomy

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use them at the same time. International students in particular, relied on the internet for communication with their families and friends all around the world (fieldnotes, 22 February 2013). Given students’ extensive classroom/field schedules, internet hours on campus were actually often not flexible enough to give students enough time to complete their work. Very few students had laptops and even fewer had internet at their apartments. Therefore, during weekends and in the evenings, when the library facilities were closed and for group projects, students would visit each other to work together, to use laptops and the internet. On a Thursday evening I met Joanna on Santa Rita Street. I asked where she was going. Pointing eastward she responded: ‘Vou a casa dos meninos timorenses’ (I am going to the house of the Timor boys). She was referring to the East Timorese students, who were in her teacher education class. She explained that the professor had assigned a group project on which they needed to work together. It required them to research information online, and unlike Joanna, the East Timorese students had laptops and internet connectivity in their home. Though networks for academic support were less nationally focused than housing networks, students still expressed the most comfort when talking about working with students from their home countries. Rarely did international students rely on Brazilian students for these issues and activities, unless professors assigned students to group projects. Otherwise, international students felt there was a social distance between them and their Brazilian colleagues.

The ability to pass (or not) As in other parts of the world, international students at UNILAB reported difficulties in adapting to local cultures. They reported feelings of alienation, which they often interpreted as ‘lack of integration’ and sometimes ‘racism’ to express their frustrations. Like Lee and Rice (2007), I argue, however, that not all of international students’ experiences can be explained (away) as adjustment difficulties. Instead, some of their frustrations and seeming reluctance to integrate (like at the RU) should be understood as a response to their social positionings. It was with regard to studying – home assignments, exam preparation and interactions in classrooms – that international students reported experiences of discrimination the most. They said that Brazilian students seldom offered, actively pursued, or followed through with study-related support, even when they were required to do so by professors. Observing spaces in and outside

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the classrooms, I found Brazilian students to be cheerful and lightly communicative (e.g., they would smile and greet each other) but not engaging at a deeper level with their international colleagues. Scholars have argued that joviality and laughter were subtle but common mechanisms in Brazilian society to mask and deny racist sentiments, practices and structures (Dahia 2008; DaMatta 2001; Martins 2008). Consider Alda’s experiences: The hall between classrooms is noisy. It is filled with students. They play games and talk. Until recently, there were less than 100 night students. Now there are 200. The noise can make you dizzy. It is also comforting. A single person is less noticeable. Alda certainly appreciates it. She stands by the fountain together with friends, her back to the wall. The women talk. Alda enjoys their companionship just a little longer before she has to go to class. It is Alda’s second trimester. She is the only student from an African country in her class. When she came to UNILAB, she was excited to study and to learn about Brazil. She felt shy and stayed quiet at first, but she wanted to know about her classmates. She used to come early and enter class right after dinner. She would sit in her chair in the middle of the room and eagerly await her classmates, hoping to have a few moments to chat before class started. After a few weeks she realized that they wouldn’t talk to her unless she approached them first. They would talk a lot though amongst themselves. They could be quite chatty. They filled the room with jokes and laughter, but they didn’t involve her in the conversations unless the professor told them to do so. Alda felt invisible in her chair in the middle of the room, surrounded by people who would greet her but not talk to her. Today is Wednesday, Alda’s favourite day because of Professor Martins. Her eyes travel across the hall. As she spots the professor, she briefly smiles at her friends and follows him to class. At the door she pauses just enough to take a deep breath and look around. Her classmates are their chatty selves, squeezed behind a few laptops. Music plays. It stops as soon as the professor enters. Somebody greets Alda. Alda nods back. She moves towards the chair by the wall under the window. She no longer sits in the middle. At the beginning she wanted to be noticed, but now she hopes nobody talks to her. It makes her feel exposed. She just wants to listen to Professor Martins before she can return to her friends in the hall. Fieldnotes, 19 January 2013; interview, 30 January 30, 2013

This scene is representative of numerous stories I heard from international students, who often reported that they did not feel welcomed by Brazilian students within their classrooms. Duarte said that he did not like doing presentations. A tall man, in moments of confidence he stood upright and had a strong presence. It was hard to see why he might have issues with presentations, as he seemed well spoken when talking with his friends. On campus, however, he

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often wore his hat pulled low over his eyes to protect them from the sun and perhaps the sight of others. He kept his shoulders low and bent his back as though to appear smaller. When I asked why he did not like presentations he said: ‘My colleagues don’t understand what I say,’ referring to his accent, which was unfamiliar to many Brazilian students (fieldnotes, 1 October 2012). There seemed to be an unspoken demand in these settings for Brazilian Portuguese. As in other Brazilian universities, professors at UNILAB based students’ academic performance on their mastery of (Brazilian/academic) Portuguese (Castanheira, Street and Carvalho 2015). The request of Brazilian Portuguese seemed an odd demand, given that UNILAB was supposed to be a space of integration and partnership among Lusophone countries, all of which have distinct forms of the Portuguese language (Ribeiro 2011). However, judgement of language use and abilities represents a practice of discrimination that can reflect underlying racist sentiments not only in Brazil but also in the US (Lewis 2003). International students further reported that Brazilian students seemed to lack interest in assisting them with academic matters such as tutoring and exam preparation. One day, Tiago and I had lunch. He pointed to a Brazilian student in line saying: ‘This guy, he is very good at maths. He is willing to help. He explains things to us. Others don’t like to help.’ Without specifying, who ‘us’ was, Tiago continued that he would meet with this student in the afternoon to go over maths problems (fieldnotes, 9 February 2013). This incident stood out for Tiago because it seemed to be the exception rather than the rule. Felicia, who often worried about her academic performance, described a more common scenario. We were sitting on the balcony of her apartment together with Joanna. Felicia had an exam coming up for which she wanted to study with two of her Brazilian classmates. She had planned to go over to their houses. Felicia seemed anxious. When I pointed it out, she explained herself: Felicia We had already set a date to study last week, but they didn’t come. Joanna They don’t want to study with us. They are racist. Susanne Why? What if they don’t want to study because they are not sure if they can explain things? [Silence.] Felicia Like Professor Martins says, we have to go into ourselves. We have to listen inside to find an answer. (Fieldnotes, 3 March 2013)

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Felicia left the apartment soon after the conversation. Not twenty minutes later she returned. Neither of the women was home. I believe that neither Joanna nor I were entirely wrong in explaining the situation. My comment was motivated by Tiago’s hint at how the student who was willing to help was also good in maths. Many of the Brazilian students were first generation college students (UNILAB 2013). Many of them came from public schools, which perhaps had not prepared them sufficiently for university learning (Schwartzman 2009). It seemed plausible to assume that some Brazilian students did not study with their international peers because they did not feel prepared enough to do so. Joanna’s comment, on the other hand, was motivated by her experiences inside classes and what she knew from Felicia about her efforts to work with these particular classmates. Both repeatedly described their difficulties of finding Brazilian students to work with them unless the professor assigned students to groups. Even this did not always work. Students would find strategies to avoid close cooperation (e.g., do group work on their own). Scholars have identified similar patterns of aversion regarding study-related issues in the US between mainstream and racially minoritized students (Abad-Merino, Newheiser, Dovidio, Tabernero and Gonzáles 2013). Similar patterns of international students in the US have also been reported (Brown and Jones 2013; Leong and Ward 2000), which supports UNILAB students’ argument that racial differences play a role in their narrowed opportunities to partner with Brazilian students on study issues – the one area in which international students expressed repeated interest in wanting to integrate. Brazilian scholars who have conducted research on students from African countries at other universities have found similar racializing trends in the relationships between students (de Gusmão 2011; Malomalo, Fonseca and Badi 2015; Subuhana 2009). The discussion of school-related relationships between Brazilian and international students provides an entry into how the co-national networks and multi-national interactions among students reflected both UNILAB realities to support students’ integration and the racializing fabric of social relations in the context of Brazil. Like social relations in general and elsewhere in the world, these network boundaries were rather fluid constellations, but not for all students equally (Twine 1997; Telles 2004). Subtle mechanisms, such as laughter (Dahia 2008; DaMatta 2001; Martins 2008), perceptions about language (Castanheira, Street and Carvalho 2015; Lewis 2003), silence (Sheriff 2000) or ‘not helping out’ (AbadMerino et  al. 2013), and not least the uneven distribution of resources allowed some of the students to cross social boundaries with more ease than others. Ultimately, international students with limited financial resources seemed to be the least likely to cross social boundaries as examples in this chapter have shown.

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José and Sandro’s experiences, however, provide a glimpse into dynamics of another kind. The student cohort from Mozambique was much smaller compared to other groups. Therefore, students could rely less on co-national networks for support and depended more than other students on multi-national networks to meet daily demands. José and Sandro shared an apartment. Both had at least some financial support and thus did not depend entirely on the housing stipend. They got along well according to José. The difference between them though was that José was of mixed Mozambican-Portuguese descent, whereas Sandro’s parents were from Mozambique and he was black. In my participatory observations on and off campus, I rarely saw them together. At the beginning of my fieldwork in the autumn of 2012, after both of them had just arrived, I met Sandro wandering about town. He told me that he enjoyed conversing with the women at the market because it allowed him to practise the local accent, which he wished to adopt. He was proud to report that he already could ‘roll the r’ like they did, which was understandable given the emphasis often placed on language. As fieldwork went on, my encounters with him grew fewer and further apart. In contrast, I frequently met José, especially at weekends. He would sit with students from Cape Verde and São Tome e Principe by one of the kiosks on the Praça or go to parties.6 José said that he often played cards or soccer with his friends from these countries. He also dated a student from Cape Verde, and he frequently interacted with Brazilian students, especially his classmates, in and outside of class. José explained once that he thought that Brazilians did not necessarily identify him as African because of his appearance and because of his rather Portuguese accent (interview, 22 February 2013). A comment by Sandra further illustrates the dynamic. She reflected on what had happened to an international peer (but not herself): Susanne Have you experienced racism? Sandra I have not experienced racism except for one incident on the bus. A woman entered. The seat beside Camilla was empty. So the woman sat there. When another seat became empty, she switched places. I don’t know what the woman was thinking, whether it was racist or not. People here don’t perceive me as African. As long as I don’t talk they think I am Brazilian. (Interview, 1 February 2013) During this conversation, Sandra implied that she had doubts about whether the woman’s action was motivated by racism. It was remarkable, though, that Sandra

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did not recount something about herself when asked about racism. Instead she described a scene that she had witnessed with her peers, whose skin was of a darker colour. Like José, Sandra believed that Brazilians did not readily identify her as African. She felt that they would let her pass, or that she would be able to pass as Brazilian. For Sandro and Camilla this option was not as readily available. The social relations that I have been describing provide a rather clear indication that financial resources played a significant role in students’ ability to move across social boundaries. Many thought that East Timorese students were not very integrated. On the campus in Acarape, from which students had to take the bus to return to Redenção for lunch, a group of male students from East Timor frequently gathered apart from other students for reasons that could not be easily discerned (fieldnotes, 18 February 2013). Perhaps they gathered as a group of friends with whom they felt comfortable (like the constellations I have described regarding the RU). In addition, they generally needed to rely much less on networking activities as they had more resources than any other group of students. They received a stipend of R$1,000 (US$500) in addition to the (reduced, 50 per cent) stipend for housing. In the context of rural Ceará and the contexts where most international students came from, this government stipend was exceptionally high. I am not trying to suggest that East Timorese students should be resented for their financial stability, only that the funds they had available ‘torpedoed’ them outside any frame of reference in comparison to the general student population.7 At the same time, East Timorese students were called out the most when it came to describing any perceived lack of integration (in addition to the constantly recurring discriminatory gesture of referring to seemingly all international students as ‘the Africans’, only to then quickly add and ‘East Timor, of course’). When East Timorese students were called upon, it almost always happened in ways that referenced them as a group, and almost always in referring to them as a country rather than individual students. In the Brazilian context, people’s ability to move freely across social boundaries is often associated with the funds that people have available, a racializing assemblage in Weheliye’s words (2014), which functions socially in ways that are sometimes referred to as a ‘whitening’ capacity of resources (Schwartzman 2007). Resources (i.e., social, cultural, political and economic capital (Bartlett 2007)) and the perceived and/or assumed appearance of affluence all played a role in shaping (but never fully determining) students’ ability to pass as mixed, hence Brazilian or not. It facilitates social mobility and more fluid social relationships. For instance, Levin was convinced that Brazilians were ‘more integrated’ with East Timorese students than international students (interview, 7 February 2013).

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Tamara, also a Brazilian student, confirmed Levin’s claim saying that she was friends mostly with students from East Timor in her rather diverse agronomy classroom (interview, 25 January 2013). In contrast, I felt that international students generally interacted more and in a more sustained manner with East Timorese students than with Brazilian students. This conclusion owes much to my observations of sustained friendship, for example between Valentim and Robinho, and Joanna’s mostly working but also sociable relationship with her classmates. Relationships like these seemed to give way to other kinds of encounters. One day, for example, a group of male students from East Timor came to campus with their hair braided in cornrows (fieldnotes, 4 March 2013). In general, exchanges of resources of all sorts gave way to other relationships, much like Mr. Speller had envisioned, with one important twist. Rather than assumed cultural parallels or the much-heralded equality between partners, it was the challenges students faced due to financial hardship and a lack of infrastructure in the rural interior of Northeast Brazil that encouraged integration. Opportunities to balance inequalities led in some cases to strong relationships. These were generally clustered networks, however; there were also individuals (students, professors, administrators, people in the community), who made it clear through their actions that they welcomed and provided solidarity opportunities. On the other hand, there were also moments when international students could not hide from the spectre of race. I witnessed one of these moments, when Tiago and I had a drink at one of the kiosks on the Praça in Redenção. When it was time to pay, both of us walked up to the stand, Tiago stood in front of me, a little to the right, as I waited for my turn to pay the kiosk’s owner hissed at Tiago saying: ‘10 dollars’. In an effort of fraternization with me, he turned to me with a proud smile on his face and reached out to take my money. I am still puzzled how Tiago was able to walk away without commenting on the situation. Just like the incident with the girl in the supermarket, which I described in the introduction, where Joanna also did not comment much. This was not the first time that I witnessed such a moment. I had seen similar things happen before in the US and Germany, but it startled me much like Felicia’s comment at the beginning of this chapter. Anderson refers to moments like these as ‘nigger moments’ (2011), the moment in a person of colour’s life when she cannot escape the haunting of history’s shadow. According to Anderson, these moments are always moments of shock, often perceived as deeply humiliating. UNILAB’s international students’ experiences are shared with international students in other parts of the world. These issues represented sources of stress that contributed to feelings of isolation and uncertainty.8 In light of UNILAB’s

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original proposal of solidarity cooperation and integration, international students’ experiences of socio-cultural, if not racialized, exclusion and economic marginalization (due to personal circumstance and UNILAB’s complex funding mechanism), seemed particularly disturbing. Regardless of the educational opportunities UNILAB provided to these students, their daily experiences often cut, for some more and for others less, against their aspirations and the possibilities they had imagined before coming to Brazil. Duarte said that sometimes he was unsure whether coming to UNILAB was the right choice. He said: ‘Maybe life here is not much better than it was in Guinea Bissau’ (fieldnotes, 23 September 2012). He came because he saw Brazil as an opportunity to migrate further north. Like many young people of his generation (Bordonaro 2007; Ferguson 2006), he wanted to leave Africa. He said if one would send twenty Boeings to Guinea Bissau and make a radio announcement that those who wanted to leave could, twenty Boeings would not be enough. Much of his aspirations involved some sort of migration fantasy for himself or about others who had successfully migrated to North America or Europe. Returning to Guinea Bissau was almost not an option, except perhaps to work for an NGO. Besides his disciplinary studies, he wanted to learn to speak English and French because these languages would be most helpful in transnational careers (including working for transnational NGOs in Guinea Bissau). Duarte thought a lot about home, his son and his country. He regretted that the stipend was not sufficient to support his family, but he hoped that in the future he would be able to make a difference through his education. Joanna provided another example. She was a very perceptive woman, who valued her independence. When she came to UNILAB, she left behind a busy life filled with studying, working and socializing. More than once she made it clear that she was not convinced that UNILAB and Redenção represented an improvement over what she had left. One day she was getting ready for church. She stood before her closet and looked at her wardrobe. She pulled out one piece after another and put it back again. She turned to me saying: Back in Guinea Bissau I had things. I had beautiful things, good clothes. I left it all behind because I thought I was coming into the world. Now I am here. I wish I had brought more clothes! Fieldnotes, 7 March 2013

Redenção was a small town with few stores. They offered limited clothing and accessories and given the experience with Tiago I can only speculate that not all store-owners would receive her with hospitality. Redenção was not very

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cosmopolitan, in a sense. An aspiring woman like Joanna, who was used to living in the capital, able to create her own opportunities and seize them, could well be disappointed. In addition, she had to fend off intimate advances from Brazilian men, which were reminiscent of the sexualization of African female slaves during Portuguese colonialism that represented the abusive underbelly of Freyre’s Lusotropicalism. One night when we were cooking we heard a car sound its horn outside the apartment. Joanna waved it aside and did not say much except that the man driving it had been following her around. She and Felicia did not like going to the Praça in the evenings like other students. Hearing the car horn, it dawned on me that they were avoiding insinuating offers. Joanna had a boyfriend in Fortaleza, whom she visited on weekends and holidays. Sometimes he visited her in Redenção. When she started to receive a small study-work allowance from UNILAB, she went to Fortaleza more frequently. Of all things, Joanna said that she had hoped to find love, which showed that her expectations about what could be gained in Brazil and what could not, had markedly shifted compared to her imagined aspirations. Other students seemed less pessimistic, but they too sometimes struggled with making sense of their lives in Redenção. Robinho on various occasions told me how much he cared for his father, who had prepared him for the possibility that one day he could leave Guinea Bissau. Robinho had to prepare his own meals and wash his clothes, usually women’s work, because according to his father he needed to be able to care for himself. He hoped that one day he would be able to provide for his family the way his father was currently providing for him. Robinho regarded studying at UNILAB as an opportunity and a responsibility. He aspired to live up to it, especially to make his father proud. He did not find it easy, but he worked hard to be a good student. Back in Guinea Bissau, he said, he had not cared much about school. He had trained to be a soccer player, maybe in Europe. Now he concentrated on education. By concentrating and doing his best to succeed, he felt that he was fulfilling his obligations to his family, and that in turn he would be able to relieve his father of some family obligations when he graduated. He viewed UNILAB as a possibility through which to fulfil these goals, but he no longer viewed UNILAB as a place in which he would have or make cosmopolitan connections. This speaks both to the kinds of families and communities from which international students came (families who were imagining and preparing their children for lives outside of their home country), and to the pressures and new experiences that most of the students had: the pressures of taking full advantage of the UNILAB opportunity so that they could in turn improve (or at least stabilize)

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their families’ lives, which again was not unique, but rather represented common migration fantasies among African youth (Bordonaro 2006, 2009; Ferguson 2006) and within migrant communities (de Haas 2010; Massey et al. 1993; Toma and Vause 2014). Still, this was not an easy responsibility, and at UNILAB in particular, it brought along the need to deal with disappointed aspirations.

Notes 1 As development schemes have transformed people’s livelihoods and propelled them into global capitalism (Katz 2004), participation in formal schooling exposes them to the discursive regime of modernization and progress (Kendall 2007). Formal schooling thus becomes a métier in which young people learn about their place in the world (Serpell 1993; Varenne and McDermott 1998), through which they can envision change (Bajaj 2010), and imagine themselves as modern (Bordonaro 2007; Stambach 2000). 2 International student mobility also (re)produces social inequalities. I do not pursue this aspect since the focus is on the symbolic meaning of student migration. Waters (2012) and Findlay et al. (2012) offer compelling critiques. 3 I put ‘sent’ in quotation marks because the majority of students funded their travel and organized their enrolment with UNILAB individually. Except for students from East Timor and the first cohort of students from Angola, students generally did not receive financial support from their respective governments. 4 Cesarino (2013) also described that projects in agricultural cooperation often had to operate under infrastructural (e.g., lack thereof) and bureaucratic constraints (e.g., delay of funding). 5 In an American university this kind of schedule would be unheard of. Formal instruction at the undergraduate level does not usually exceed three to four hours a day. More time is dedicated to independent study, research, etc. than to class instruction. 6 Fieldnotes, 2 February 2013. 7 By the time this research ended, there had been no other East Timor cohort funded in similar ways so far (although rumours suggested that there will be a new cohort after the first cohort students receive their degrees, which seems to indicate a sustained interest on the part of the East Timor government and the international community in Brazil–East Timor relationships). 8 Brown and Jones 2013; Gusmão 2011; Fincher and Shaw 2011; Hendrickson, Rosen and Aune 2011; Malomalo, Badi and Fonseca 2015; Sherry, Thomas and Chui 2010; Smith and Khawaja 2011.

8

Conclusion

I began this study with the aim to examine Brazilian South–South cooperation discourses and practices as sites of possibilities where international development relations would lean towards more equitable solutions. I was especially interested in the experiences of international students from African countries and whether they thought that Brazilian claims of solidarity had been realized. UNILAB is unique in that it had been envisioned to spur international as well as domestic development. Even though the combination of these efforts stays true to claims of mutual benefits (in contrast to the often one-sided, benevolent gesture of North–South ‘aid’ relations), the close study of the university revealed the ambivalences embedded in the project. In the early days, Dean Speller expressed on various occasions his general optimism about the university’s progress with regard to solidarity and integration.1 Brazilian-activist professors disagreed. They thought that conversations about cultural diversity and integration happened because they were comfortable. Conversations about inequality and racism, on the other hand, did not happen because they were uncomfortable.2 Non-Brazilian professors from African countries also disagreed. They felt the presence of international students and their own were instrumentalized to legitimize the project. At the same time, their expertise was frequently side-lined in the consolidation of the institution. They also believed that some of the policies did not reflect international students’ realities.3 For instance, the university initially required international students to do an internship in their home countries before they could complete their degree. Many of the international students, however, did not anticipate returning home. Rather, they planned to stay in Brazil or, in some cases, migrate further north.4 Overall, non-Brazilian professors feared that the South–South mandate would crumble under the pressures of domestic debates on affirmative action policies. At first, many international students regarded UNILAB as an opportunity to access higher education. Not all of them remained certain in light of the difficulties they faced in terms of the 147

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anti-black/anti-African sentiments, the lack of resources and future perspectives they encounter in Redenção. In addition, administrators, professors, fellow students and ethnographers frequently called on them to represent the cultural integration fostered presumably by UNILAB. Especially in the beginning (2011–13) their every move was monitored. Yet, in classrooms they had very little space to express their thoughts, especially when their opinions did not comply with professors’ perceptions of development or postcolonial/post-slavery emancipation. The founding narrative’s emphasis on the history of the transatlantic slave trade and Ceará’s ostensibly heroic role in the abolition of slavery sits at the centre of these tensions. To pose as a project of development through integration and based on solidarity, UNILAB founders relied on the distinctive combination of a nation-state-centred understanding of cultural diversity and a Middle Passage interpellation of (Brazilian) racial diversity. Students from different national backgrounds were perceived to be culturally dissimilar. In teaching lessons (i.e., cultural maps) and extra-curricular activities (i.e., independence celebrations) they were asked to share information about their countries and ‘their cultures’. The founders had assumed that by doing so, students would become acquainted with each other’s differences. Brazilian students in particular would grow more tolerant of Brazilian Africanness thus developing a multicultural attitude with regard to the racial diversity in their own country. No matter how international students approached the idea of culture, their thoughts and actions were always already interpreted within a racializing frame of understanding difference. The omnipresent reference to history scaffolded international students’ subjectivities, locking them into the position of ‘former slave’. Whatever their sense of belonging, from the perspective of the founding narrative their experiences could only be made tangible within a Middle Passage logic that privileges transatlantic slavery as the constitutive moment of black collectives in the Americas.5 The founding narrative performed its function to legitimize the university because UNILAB founders imagined international students’ positionalities in ways that represented all of the project’s dimensions. International students embodied the South–South mandate because they came from countries located in the Global South. The founders were able to picture the students in the role of development workers for the kinds of agriculturebased, state-driven development program they had envisioned for Northeast Brazil because they imagined Africa as equally rural. And most profoundly, the presence of international students could symbolize Afro-Brazilian emancipation

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because the founding narrative constructed international students as racially similar. Yet, in the socio-cultural context of Ceará (and Brazil more broadly), where many aspire to a certain kind of mixedness, blackness is connoted negatively. The relative ease with which some of the international students could cross social boundaries if they could pass as mixed – recall José and Sandro’s experiences – shows how engrained distinct ideas of racial identities are in the Brazilian socio-cultural imagination. The parallels between the dynamics observed in international students’ experiences and Weheliye and El-Taybe’s critical analyses of racializing assemblages in the European context are striking. They reveal how foundational the presupposed existence of an ontological (a priori excluded) other is to an exalting logic, which constructs itself as the universal norm capable of imparting moralizing lessons. Caught between the utopian vision of a university of solidarity and integration, Brazilian socio-cultural realties, and their own aspirations, international students had to learn how to navigate social boundaries that are policed in particular ways – forms of sociability, for instance – which rely on the fine-grained sensibilities of the human capacity to judge relational interactions in a nanosecond. For example, it had not been clear to me why international students preferred to gather around one of the two kiosks on the central square in Redenção until I saw the owner’s hostile reaction towards Tiago masked as playfulness and suggestive of fraternization towards me. Similar gestures of discrimination and exclusion happen every day in many different ways (not only in Brazil), with devastating emotional and material effects for those targeted as not belonging. In their everyday efforts to ensure survival, well-being, educational success, and to cope with the psychological harm imposed on them by anti-black/antiAfrican sentiments, students found material and emotional support in networks of students from their home countries. In these networks, they were able to exchange resources and carve out zones of comfort, which provided them with much needed respite from the towering demand for integration. At the same time, the perseverance of co-national groups strongly indicated that powerful racialization forged violently through Portuguese colonialism and transatlantic slavery, is not a thing of the past. Rather the past lingers in the present, as it is re-articulated through images and imaginations that rest on the presumption of racial turned cultural difference. By no means should colonial and slavery pasts be silenced. To the contrary, they should be brought to the fore in their full brutality, noting, however, that the effects cannot be simply undone. In 2018 at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the annual book fair in Germany, Achille Mbembe

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commented on the return of stolen art to the African continent. To assume the possibility of ‘returning’ creates the illusion that Europe could rid itself of the guilt of the past, while leaving persisting misrepresentations of ‘Africa’ unaddressed.

Race, development and Afro-Brazilian emancipation Enlightenment thinkers established the Cartesian ‘Rational Man’ as the universal norm of what it meant to be human. The idea of development rests on this racializing assemblage, which imparts Man with reason by placing all others (the colonized, the colonized subjects, women, the poor, the insane, the child) outside of reason. Only through education (or development) could a temporarily immature and impulsive child (or the colonized, child-like subject bound by tradition and culture) turn into a disciplined, cultivated and modern person capable of contemplating the world as secular, measurable and calculable. Enlightenment thinkers conjured their visions of the world in concert with colonizing endeavours disguised as discoveries in the name of scientific progress. Colonialism, indigenous genocide, and slavery have assembled the terrific technologies of dehumanization and expropriation that pinion difference – the gulf between reason and unreason – to human physiology – the unspecified spatio-temporal elsewhere of the flesh. At the same time eugenic theories of the different races were invented, which subsequently provide the ideological frame to justify even further colonization in the name of the ‘civilizing missions’. The colonizer is perceived to have a mind, and a free will, whereas the colonized are perceived to have a body that can be readily exploited and tortured for the benefit of the master. The idea of national belonging reified through notions of shared origin and racial purity becomes foundational to the emergence of European nation-states. Over time, colonialism and the invention of race retreat into the shadows of history to hide the monstrous nature of the European cultural condition and sustain the myth of European universalism.6 As European colonies in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere become independent nation-states, they must create their own idea of national purity, which they can only assert through the cultural codes of the colonizer (Madureira 2005). However, as in the case of Brazil, the post-colony has been invaded and adulterated by the colonizers. It thus must come to grips with its own racial impurity as it violates the European ideal. Inspired by European thinkers, who had a central part in proposing miscegenation as the Brazilian ideal (de Castro

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Rocha 2000), cultural and political elites devised ways in which to cast racial mixture as cultural purity, one prominent example being Freyre’s Lusotropicalism ([1933] 1986). Since it was hardly possible to rely on the external, non-European other (as was the case for European notions of national identity),7 ‘the native’ and ‘the slave’ were constructed as internal colonial others of the Brazilian nation (Madureira 2005; Cesarino 2017). ‘The white Portuguese and the primitive natives arise together simultaneously divided and united by two powerful instruments of western rationality: the state and racism’ (de Souza Santos 2002: 30). Brazilian elites and intellectuals appropriated the idea of national purity placing mixedness at the center of Brazilian national identity. This nation-state rhetoric deliberately relied on and accepted that black and Indigenous populations would be idealized (and instrumentalized) in cultural terms while being relegated to the margins economically. Just as Europe (especially Germany), entrenched in the Second World Warbased on ideologies of racial purity, loses its legitimacy, postcolonial countries in Latin America (especially Brazil) began to portray themselves in terms of an alternative modernity. They subsequently acquire an allure for Europeans – in the case of Brazil exemplarily described by Stefan Zweig8 – as they celebrate cultural diversity and hybrid forms of identity. The post-colony, one could say, anticipates European multiculturalism. Without overriding old narratives of national belonging, racism against the physiological repertoire becomes racism against the cultural repertoire of the colonial other. The idea of culture is also bestowed on Europe’s internal other racialized through governing technologies such as ableism, sexism, antisemitism, migration linked to integration narratives that the subjects thus addressed in perpetual motion, forever arriving. A Europe that portrays itself as ethnically diverse but racially similar; that is, white. Legacies of colonialism and slavery, which have pinioned notions of unreason to human physiology, retreat into the shadows of history. The Holocaust becomes the (exclusive) apex from which to construct a shared historical consciousness, a new logic by which to imagine the future as the idea of past wrongs that have been overcome. The Brazilian government’s recourse to transatlantic slavery and abolition represents a similar gesture. It projects Brazil into a multicultural future, one that acknowledges racial diversity. Figure 8.1 shows a mural in Redenção. The picture was taken in 2015. The mural displays a very familiar figure in a new garment, adorned with colourful bunting. This mural did not exist when I left Redenção in 2013. When I saw the painting in 2015, I could not help but smile since it so obviously revealed both, the paradox of UNILAB and its decolonizing potential.

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Figure 8.1 Someone makes a second entrance.

Was she the same person as the one on the monument in front of the university? Or maybe this colourful painting represents her multicultural self? What does it mean: local celebration of Africanness, multiculturalness? Some UNILAB professors shared their joy about the movements of African pride that had formed among students since 2013. Some students had joined groups called Crespas e Cacheados (Curly and Curly – in the case of Brazilian students), and Afro UNILAB (in the case of African students). Although the divide between the co-national networks persisted, studying at UNILAB most likely has contributed its share to the students openly presenting their racial identity. Perhaps it provided a somewhat transformative experience after all inspired by the Brazilian idea of South–South solidarity. At least I would like to believe that.

Thinking and writing with race critically Critical feminist scholars have long challenged social theories’ claims of objectivity and universality that authorize what counts as official knowledge (reason) while discrediting minoritized traditions of thought as ethnographic

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instances (culture, unreason). Yet, incorporating critical feminist perspectives into the canon of social sciences tends to lock individuals and collectives into fixed identities based on the homogenizing gesture of presumed belongings to one or multiple oppressed groups. It has been assumed, for example, that only women of colour could truly know the experiences of women of colour. Marcel Stoetzler and Nira Yuval-Davis (2002) marked out imagination as the principle that stands between the experiences of socially positioned individuals and/or collectives and the production of knowledge from these positions to destabilize essentializing perceptions of knowledge production. UNILAB’s references to history to usher in another, multicultural, future performs a homogenizing gesture towards international students as it locks them into Middle Passage interpellations of black subjectivity. To imagine that international students retrace all of their actions, thoughts and feelings to this particular narrative is misleading. Instead, they draw on a rich repertoire of memories and experiences, many of which cannot be fully captured by a singular frame of reference. Combining linear and epiphenomenal understandings of subjectivity are useful here (Wright 2015). Linear notions of space and time reflect the conventional understanding of history as a series of events, advancing through time and space, with a definite starting point somewhere in the past, and from which this series unfolds as a chain of causes and effects, one event being predicted by the one that came before. In contrast, an epiphenomenal understanding does not preclude nonlinear multiplied meanings in a given moment. It allows for certain unpredictability, which retains an element of choice on the part of the subject. All knowledge is socio-historically situated yet co-authored through dialogical relations in the realm of the social that always already occurs in the present moment, in the now where ‘experience, made by the senses and mediated through the faculties of the intellect and the imagination, produces knowledge as well as imaginings, and along with them meanings, values, visions, goals’ (Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis 2002: 326). Imaginings precede knowledge. They are constituted and shaped but not predictably determined by positionality, while being mobile, at times condensing, at times evaporating, depending on the unfolding of the moment. When writing the book began, I initially experienced great anxiety in transforming people and their doings into analytical categories. The responsibility of a representation that neither essentializes nor denies people’s experiences led me to search for a theoretical and ethical lens that would carry me through the process. Various heuristics to conceptualize social relations and race informed my analyses. These heuristics were in constant dialogue, destabilizing

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assumptions that would otherwise go uncontested. Throughout the process I committed myself to the rooting and shifting of positionings within the various ways of imagining UNILAB. In the beginning, when writing seemed nearly impossible, Lynda Barry’s unique technique of writing an image (2008) was particularly helpful to me. Ebony Flowers, one of her students, further developed this approach into a technique of creative writing for scholarly purposes, which she taught as writing sessions in the Image Lab at the University of WisconsinMadison. The two scholar-artist activists showed me how to bring embodied field-memories to life in written form. They also made me aware that writing always entails an element of inventing. As Lila Abu-Lughod said, ‘ethnographic representations are always “partial truths”. What is needed is a recognition that they are also positioned truths’ (1991: 469). ‘What [ethnographers] write are fictions (which does not mean they are fictitious)’ (473). I have witnessed the events that are shared in this book. In this sense they are true. My interpretations, however, have undergone various rounds of re-routing, of re-imagining UNILAB on my part. Two moments should be emphasized. When I first began writing in 2014, I refused to take race in whatever fashion into account. My own situatedly imagined ideal of UNILAB as solidarity had clouded my understanding. It was mainly due to interventions by UNILAB students and professors that I slowly was able to see beyond my own aspirational imagination. Duarte, whom we have met many times, told me in week one of my first round of fieldwork: ‘They are all racist’ (fieldnotes, 19 September 2012). At that time, I was completely perplexed. How could ‘they’, referring to the Brazilian students and professors, be ‘racist’ if they cooperated with African countries and were surrounded by students from these countries? The second moment occurred when I began to write the book after having returned from the US to Germany and spending time with German colleagues discussing parts of my work repeatedly. Because of their own situatedly imagined ideas, they pushed me to refine my conceptualizations of race. Critical black studies provided a sophisticated and rigorous theorization – disruptive of mainstream discourses – of the role that race, racism and racialization play for human relations writ large. I have learned that dialogue, across disciplinary fields and epistemologies, is the most important way to prevent singular interpretation of events, as they are always infinitely more complex than any singular interpretation would capture. All knowledge is socio-historically situated, even big narratives of difference, for instance, and solidarity. Interpretations are matters of where, when, and how they are imagined. They depend on the epiphenomenal wirings of particular moments. Therefore, it is important to

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contextualize research, contextualize subjectivities, triangulate multiple resources, monitor symbolic values and to allow the research to be informed by criteria of ethical value (Few, Stephens and Rouse-Annett 2003). For many of the students whose stories are depicted in this book, life is complicated and filled with sorrows. In April 2014, international students went on strike. Some of them camped out on the campus in Redenção. They protested against another delay of their stipends. Some of them had lost their apartments because they were not able to pay rent on time. A day later we found ourselves joking in the lunch queue how someone should be doing research on jumping the line. Everyone was laughing although students rarely perceived the act of jumping as ‘funny’. Yet the joke brightened our day. I am not sure whether the small delights are enough to counter-balance the bigger issues, probably not. Still, relationships emerged and withered. Students watched out for each other on their way home from parties and in public spaces. The days were filled with studying, eating, dancing, disputing and reconciliation. Sometimes babies were born. Life was going on under the radar of the big narratives of solidarity and integration although students bore the many little and not so little cuts produced by these narratives. To conclude, admittedly, some of this study’s findings are uncomfortable. They make us painfully aware of the limits of blackness and other forms of identification, and, more precisely, the limits of envisioning difference as a form of resistance against the ongoing delegitimization and disenfranchisement of positionalities other than the occidental/white/heterosexual norm. What for some is the emancipatory assertion of an African diasporic identity, amounts for others to the denial of participation in a supposedly joint development endeavour. All the while (state) power remains elsewhere as the right-wing backlash against racial redress in Brazilian politics (and other parts of the world) since the 2016 have been showing. Nonetheless, the findings point to the need for educational scholarship to engage much more deeply in the conceptualization of race as an analytical lens. Such engagement must transcend understandings of race as a colour-line (or even colour continuum), which locks people into singularized identities that are solely defined in opposition to anti-black racism (as is often the case in Anglo-American scholarship), or an unrelenting racelessness/colour blindness, which makes processes of racial thinking and its effects invisible (as is often the case in European scholarship). Ethnographic observations are paramount to disentangling the many situatedly imagined meanings of race and/or as blackness and the functions they perform in the now of the lived moment. Applying a subjectivist lens illuminates

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that the racializing assemblage of Man is alive and well in the realm of educational reasoning (qua development and otherwise), including in modes of educational cooperation initially imagined as a more egalitarian alternative in international development relations. However, to register the emancipatory potentials of these alternatives requires a much deeper engagement with various traditions of thought for one to rectify the misgivings of the other. Such engagement must go beyond paying lip service to the cause, as it often results in writing-off minoritized traditions in a footnote.9 It is insufficient to problematize the Enlightenment foundations of education research and practice by demanding (in an alleged gesture of solidarity) the abandonment of the subject in order to destabilize the idea of reason. Privileging a certain kind of thinking with power as structure of dominance (classed, racialized, gendered, and otherwise), on the other hand, is similarly limiting since it either divests subjects of agency (assuming that everything is determined by structure) or scaffolds agency prematurely as resistance. It potentially relocates the subject into an assemblage that reinstates difference un-problematized. Scholars in education research should not accept the confines set by any single logic to denounce the racial order of things. Instead, scholars should perform a solidary gesture of a different kind: one that acknowledges the vanguard radicalism of black (also critical ethnic, Indigenous, queer, and disability)10 studies that has and continues to profoundly disrupt theory. A multi-dimensional and multi-linear reading of race across (sub-) disciplinary fields should thus be a primary concern in education theory and practice.

Notes 1 2 3 4

Interview, 28 February 2013; fieldnotes, 28 January 2013. Interview, 11 February 2013. Fieldnotes, 28 January 2013. It quickly became clear as well that UNILAB lacked the necessary connections with potential institutions and/or employers that would provide the international students with internship opportunities, thus making the request unattainable for most students. 5 In 2015 there were some indications that this might change over time, at least to some extent, as students formed closer relationships with university staff, professors and their Brazilian peers. In 2018, there are some indications that UNILAB’s international mandate might vanish indeed. Just like the photo of the monument in front of the university, which at first proudly announced the historicized narrative,

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6 7 8

9

10

157

was deleted from the website, detailed reporting of student numbers and national origin under the ‘UNILAB in Numbers’ section on the website has also disappeared. See Fanon (1967); Weheliye (2014); Mbembe (2017). See El-Tayeb (2011); also Edward Said’s vanguard study Orientalism (1978). Zweig found a romantic and pathos filled dream landscape in Brazil. The book A Land of the Future ([1914] 2013) collects his impression of Brazil from 1936 and describes a country in stark contrast to the war filled and fascistic ruled Europe. Zweig paints a now utopian looking picture of a mystical world on the other side of the ocean. For Zweig, Brazil was not constricted by past traditions and had all the potential of the future in its hands. In Habeas Viscus, Weheliye problematizes the dismissal of black feminist scholarship (most notably Sylvia Wynter and Hortense Spillers) performed by Foucauldian notions of ‘biopolitics’ and Agamben’s notion of ‘bare life’, with multiple effects. First, it fails to acknowledge the scholars’ vanguard deconstructions of Man as the norm (that which disciplines humanity into humans, not-quite-humans and non-humans). Second, it places non-white subjects again beyond the grasp of the human by obfuscating how race has been pinioned to human physiology (through violence and surveillance) and thus denying ‘how the politicization of the biological always already represents a racializing assemblage’ (2014: 12). I deliberately exclude postcolonial studies from this list because of a growing suspicion, which I cannot yet name. Postcolonial studies have been the epicentre of intellectual exertions of provincializing Europe in global historiography and science. This book’s critical analysis is in fact deeply indebted to their radical successes, which have only begun to take hold in the field of Comparative and International Education. Yet, it seems to me that postcolonial thought of a certain (elitist) kind has recently been growing into a poster-child mobilized by those who wish to present themselves as tolerant in the face of difference, whereas other non-dominant traditions continue to be relegated to the realm of ethnographic instances.

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Appendix I

Professor

Gender

Course

Time of Hours in Hours in Observ. Fall 2012 Spring 2013

Non-Brazilian Male

GE

Night

Brazilian

Male

GE

Brazilian

Female

GE

3

Hours p. Total Professors

3

6

Night

4

4

Night

4

4

Brazilian

Female

GE

Night

4

4

Brazilian

Male

GE

Night

2

2

Brazilian

Male

GE

Night

2

2

Brazilian

Female

GE

Night

4

4

Brazilian

Male

GE

Night

2

2

Brazilian

Male

GE

Day

2

2

Brazilian

Female

GE

Day

GE

Day

Non-Brazilian Male

2

2

4

18

18

Brazilian

Female

GE

Day

8

8

Brazilian

Female

GE

Day

12

12

Brazilian

Male

GE

Day

6

6

Brazilian

Female

GE

Day

4

4

Brazilian

Female

GE

Day

Brazilian

Female

GE

Day

6

14

20

16

16

Brazilian

Female

GE

Day

4

4

Brazilian

Male

GE

Day

2

2

Non-Brazilian Male

GE

Day

4

4

8

Brazilian

Female

Agronomy

Day

3

3

Brazilian

Male

Agronomy

Day

2

2

Brazilian

Female

Agronomy

Day

2

2

Brazilian

Female

Engineering Day

2

2

Brazilian

Male

Engineering Day

2

2

22

104

11 137

159

160

Appendix II Author

Portuguese Title (as in PPC) English Title

Society, History and Culture of Lusophone Spaces Anderson, Nação e Consciência Imagined communities Benedict Nacional Appiah, Kwame Na Casa de Meu Pai. A África My father’s house. Anthony na filosofia da cultura Africa in the philosophy of culture Bernd, Zilá A Questão da Negritude The Question of Negritude Bhabha, O Local da Cultura The Location of Homi, K. Culture Brunschwig, A Partilha da África Negra The partition of black Henri Africa Cabral, Amílcar A Arma da Teoria. Unidade The weapon of theory. e Luta I Unity and struggle I Carrilho, Maria Sociologia da Negritude Sociology of Negritude Decraene, Pan-Africanismo Pan-Africanism Phillipe Dossiê Brasil/ Os Condenados da Terra The wretched of the Africa earth Feliciano, José Antropologia Econômica dos Economic Thonga do Sul de anthropology of Moçambique. Thonga of southern Mozambique. FRELIMO História de Moçambique History of Mozambique Fry, Peter Moçambique. Ensaios. Mozambique. Trails. Hall, Stuart A Identidade cultural na Questions of cultural pós-modernidade identity

Year 1999 Basic 1997 Basic

1984 Basic 2001 Basic 1971 Basic 1978 Basic 1976 Basic 1962 Supp. 1993 Supp. 1988 Supp.

1971 Supp. 2001 Supp. 2004 Supp. (Continued)

161

162

Author

Appendix II

Portuguese Title (as in PPC) English Title

Topics of Interculturality in Lusophone Spaces Anderson, Nação e Consciência Nacional Imagined communities Benedict Appiah, Kwame Na Casa de Meu Pai. A África My father’s house. Anthony na filosofia da cultura Africa in the philosophy of culture Bhabha, O Local da Cultura The location of culture Homi K. Bosi, Alfredo Dialética da Colonização Dialectics of colonization Cabral, Amílcar A Arma da Teoria. Unidade e The weapon of theory. Luta I Unity and struggle I Craveirinha, Obra Poética Poetry work José Eagleton, Terry A Ideia de Cultura The idea of culture Fanon, Frantz Os Condenados da Terra The wretched of the earth Ferreira, Literaturas Africanas de African literatures in Manuel Expressão Portuguesa Portuguese Hamilton, Literatura Africana. Literatura African literature. Russel Necessária Necessary literature. Santilli, Maria Estórias Africanas: história e African stories: history antologia and anthology Hall, Stuart A Identidade cultural na Questions of cultural pós-modernidade identity Hall, Stuart Da diáspora: Identidades e Cultural identity and mediações culturais diaspora Lopes, Moçambicanismos Mozambicanisms Armando J. Margarido, Estudos sobre Literaturas das Studies of literatures of African nations of Alfredo Nações Africanas de Língua Portuguese language Portuguesa. Construction of Matusse, A. Construção da Imagem de Images of Moçambicanidade em José Craveirinha, Mia Couto e Mozambicanicity in José Craveirinha, Mia Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa Couto and Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa.

Year 1999 Basic 1997 Basic

2001 Basic 1992 Basic 1978 Basic 2002 Basic 2005 Basic n/a Basic 1987 Basic 1984 Basic 1985 Basic 2004 Supp. 2006 Supp. 2002 Supp. 1980 Supp.

1998 Supp.

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Index Page number in bold refer to figures, page numbers in italic refer to tables. abolition, of slavery, 10, 23, 31, 47–59, 72, 148, 151 Abu-Lughod, Lila, 154 Acarape, 50–1, 106 access, 36 higher education, 35–7, 35, 61 reforms, 61 uneven, 35 universities, 30–1 administrative posts, 63 affirmative action policies, 22, 59, 61, 64–8, 68, 71 Africa anti-colonial movements, 2 Brazil’s historical debt to, 61 conception of, 52–5 discovery of, 57 historical entanglements, 2–3 independence movements, 57 modernization, 2 postcolonial education, 26–8 Western-centric portrayals, 2 Africa–Brazil relations, 1, 3, 5, 17 n.5, 79, 93 African cultural heritage, 67, 80 African diasporic identity, 155 African pride movements, 152 Africanness, 54, 83, 116, 148 Afro-Brazilian activism, 65–8, 71–2, 147 diaspora, 3, 61 emancipation, 150–2 movements, 3, 97 n.3 Afro-Brazilian movements, 97 n.3 Afro-descendant rights, 58 Agamben, Giorgio, 7–8 agency, 78, 156 Agier, Michel, 97 n.3, 114 Agostinho Neto University, Angola, 36 agricultural cooperation, 146 n.4 agricultural development, 40

Alberti, V., 57 Alda (Guinea Bissau student), 95–6, 125, 130–1, 134 alienation, 137–46 alliance building, 1 Anderson, Elijah, 99, 121, 143 Angola, 23, 24, 25, 27 Agostinho Neto University, 36 anti-colonial resistances, 57 gross enrolment ratio (GER), 35 independence, 58 student numbers, 125 anti-black identity, 49 anti-colonialism, 57, 58 Antonio, Professor, 91, 92 Associação das Universidades de Língua Portuguesa, 42 Aune, K., 125 Bahia, 67 Baldwin, James Arthur, 14–15 Bandung Conference, 17 n.4, 17 n.5 bare life, 7 Barry, Lynda, 154 belonging, 116, 124 Berlin Wall, fall of, 27 bilateral agreements, 46 biopolitics, 7–8, 9, 157 n.9 Black Panther Party, 20 n.18 black subjectivity, 153 blackness, 5–6, 10–15, 19 n.13, 51, 55, 57, 68, 71–2 and historical consciousness, 85–93 limits of, 155 multidimensional and multilinear, 14, 55 Bob, Professor, 120–1 Brazil African heritage, 3 on colonial issues, 58

177

178 gross enrolment ratio (GER), 35 international development cooperation, 1 national identity, 21, 49, 151 racial relations, 30 role in Portuguese colonialism, 25 solidarity cooperation, 3 Brazil: An Inconvenient History (BBC documentary), 87 Brazil–Africa relations, 46 Brazilian sociability, 113–14 Brazilian students, 69–70, 138–40, 148 bureaucracy, 52 Burundi, 57 Cabaço, José, 80–1 Cabral, Pedro Álvares, 22, 40 camaraderie, 119 campuses, 1, 2, 10, 16 n.1, 50–1, 67 capacity building, 38 Cape Verde, 23, 25 gross enrolment ratio (GER), 35, 36 University of Cape Verde, 36 capitalism, 146 n.1 Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 36 Carmen, Professora, 102–3 Catholic mission schools, 26, 27 Ceará, 10–12, 41, 49, 51, 52, 59 n.1 centre–peripheral differences, 78 Cesarino, L., 38–9, 51, 146 n.4, 151 citizens and citizenship, 75 civilizing missions, 150 class sizes, 106–7 classificatory assemblages, 114 classroom observations, 18 n.11 classroom tensions, 90–1 classrooms, 99 chairs, 106, 106 features, 106 group constellations, 110–12 integration performance, 106–14, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111 seating arrangements, 108–12, 108, 109, 110, 111 size, 106–7 collaboration, 41, 59 collective identity, 86–7 colonial difference, 83 colonial economy, 23–4

Index colonial other, the, 151 colonialism, 95, 150 colonization, 81 colour-continuum, 66 Communication Office, 128 Community of Portuguese-language Countries, 37 community outreach activities, 63 community spaces, 99–101 complaints, student, 119–20 co-national networks, 125, 127–35, 141, 149–50, 152 conflict, 90 conviviality, 99, 104, 121 cordiality, 12 creation, UNILAB of, university of, 33–4, 41, 62–3, 64 critical black studies, 5–6, 10, 154 critical development studies, 5 critical feminist perspectives, 152–3 cultural differences, 5 cultural diversity, 100, 114, 148 cultural domination, 81 cultural performances, 100 cultural sharing, 100 culture, 151 and historical consciousness, 79–85 socio-historical understanding, 82–3 as a vehicle for learning, 82–3 curriculum, 66–7, 72–3, 75–6, 76 da Gama, Vasco, 22 Davidson, Basil, 25 decision-making, 64 decolonization, 24, 96 decolonizing potential, 10, 151–2 dehumanization, 150 demand-driven action, 37–40 departments, 67 development power as a discursive regime, 59 n.3 and race, 150–2 through integration, 57–8, 99–101, 105, 148 development discourses, 16–17 n.2, 59 n.3 development orientation, 44–6, 58–9 development relations, 5

Index development volunteers (cooperantes), 62–3 developmental curriculum, 54, 59 developmental imagination, 53 Diegues, Carlos, 80 difference dialogue across, 93–7 fault lines of, 6, 91, 118 discrimination, 131–2, 149 disillusionment, 124 dispossession, 59 n.3 diversity, 100, 104, 114, 148, 151–2 dominant culture, 54 Duarte (Guinea Bissau student), 121, 126, 128, 134, 138–9, 144 Dutch-Portuguese colonial wars (1602– 63), 22 East Timor, 28–9, 36, 54, 55, 56, 73 n.3 gross enrolment ratio (GER), 35 independence, 58 Indonesian occupation, 30 peacekeeping missions, 38 student integration, 141–3 student numbers, 125 Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique, 36 education, 146 n.1 importance, 124 postcolonial, 26–31 educational exchange, 1 educational system, 30–1 El-Tayeb, Fatima, 8–9, 149 emancipation/progress/development narratives, 55–8, 85 EMBRAPA, 40 enrolments, international students, 68–71, 69 Esperança (Guinea Bissau student), 130–1, 134 ethnographic representations, 154 ethno-racial identifications, 18 n.9, 114 Europe, 151 European universalism, 150 Europeanness, 8–9, 25 exchange programmes, 105 exclusion, 57, 61, 149 exploitation, 59 n.3 expropriation, relations of, 59 n.3

179

Fanon, Franz, 17–18 n.8 farm, university, 107 Federal University of Ceará, 107–8, 133–4, 136 Federal University of Latin American Integration, 38 fees, 37 Felicia (Guinea Bissau student), 103, 123–4, 125, 130–1, 134, 139–40 Flowers, Ebony, 154 foreign policy, 17–18 n.8, 37–40, 62 Fortaleza, 10, 128 Foucault, Michel, 7–8, 9, 20 n.18 founding document, 41, 42, 50, 53, 68–9 founding mythology, 54, 148–9 unsettling, 55–8 Franco, Professor, 87–91, 96 Frankfurter Buchmesse, 149–50 FRELIMO, 27–8 French Colonial Empire, 21 FRETILIN, 29–30 Freyre, Gilberto, 12, 13, 20 n.20, 145, 151 funding, 37, 41 funding insecurities, international students, 132–5 Gandin, Luis Armando, 18 n.10, 39 gender inequality, 81–2 genocide, 7 geographical regions, places, 52 geopolitical identity, 8 Germany, 21, 151, 154–5 Gilroy, Paul, 78 Gomes, Nilma, 51, 67 governance structures, 63 governmentality, 8–9 gross enrolment ratio (GER), 35–6, 35 group constellations, 110–12 Guinea Bissau, 23, 25, 36, 144 anti-colonial resistances, 57 gross enrolment ratio (GER), 35 peacekeeping missions, 38 student demand, 70, 73 n.4 student numbers, 125 Gusmão, Neusa Maria Mendes de, 11, 12 Haddad, Fernando, 62 Hegel, Friedrich, 19 n.14 Hendrickson, B., 125

180

Index

heuristics, 153–4 hierarchization, 85 higher education access, 3, 35–7, 35, 61 demand, 37 expansion, 35–7, 35, 41, 70 and global mobility, 52–3 gross enrolment ratio (GER), 35–6, 35 historical consciousness and blackness, 85–93 and culture, 79–85 definition, 75 developing, 75–96 and differences, 93–7 history teaching, 77–9 and race, 85–93 shared, 151 historical relations, 55–8 history construction of, 53–5 course descriptions, 78–9 cultural approach, 79–85 difficulties in teaching, 90 historical debt, 3, 10, 51, 61 importance, 96 omnipresent reference to, 148 progressive view of, 75 references to, 50 shared, 56, 58 syllabi, 79 teaching of, 77–9, 114 Holanda, Sérgio Buarque de, 12 Holocaust, 75, 151 housing, 128–32 human rights, 38 humanistic education, 99 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 19 n.14 identity, 11, 83 African diasporic, 155 anti-black, 49 Brazilian national, 21, 49, 151 collective, 86–7 negro, 77 socio-cultural, 81 illiteracy rates, 26, 27 Implementation Committee (Comissão de Implantação), 33, 63 impoverishment, 59 n.3

inclusive development, 3–4 independence, 23, 25 independence movements, 57 inequality, 147 gender, 81–2 patterns of, 61 racial, 5, 21–2, 30, 71–2 socio-economic, 71, 86–7 information sharing, 112–13 infrastructure, 70 Insertion into University Life course (VU), 101–5 Institute of Humanities and Letters, 67 institutional consolidation, 64 institutional direction, 65 institutional policies, 63 institutional politics, 63–4 institutional structures, 44–5, 44 integration, 56, 73, 76, 99–121, 147, 148 development through, 57–8, 99–101, 105, 148 educational policies, 104 evading, 114–21, 117 and financial resources, 141–3 lack of, 133–4, 137–46 performance, 106–14, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111 student interactions, 107–8 successful, 115–16 teaching, 101–5 through conviviality, 121 interconnectedness, emphasis on, 79–80 intercultural topics, 77 interculturality, 76 inter-institutional activities, 42–3 inter-institutional relations, 68–73 interiorization, 41, 104 international development cooperation, 1 international mandate, 156–7 n.5 international policy debates, 1 international students, 1 acceptance, 113 aspirations, 144–6 backgrounds, 123–4 co-national networks, 127–35, 141, 149–50 conversation entry points, 105 disillusionment, 124 enrolments, 68–71, 69

Index evading integration, 114–21, 117 feelings of alienation, 137–46 financial resources, 141–3 funding insecurities, 132–5 housing, 128–32 internship, 147, 156 n.4 lives, 123–46 marginality, 124 marginalization, 118 mobility, 124 prejudices against, 131–2 professors’ interactions with, 113–14 recruitment, 128 relationships with Brazilian students, 138–40 resource sharing, 134–5, 135–7 and social boundaries, 149 social positioning, 127 strike, 155 internationalization, 1, 42–3, 104 internet, 135–6, 136–7 interpersonal bonds, 128 interpersonal relations, 64 Joanna (Guinea Bissau student), 11, 125, 130–1, 139–40, 143, 144–5 João (Brazilian student), 104, 123, 127 John VI, King of Portugal, 22–3 joint development, 58 José (Mozambican student), 85, 125–6, 129, 132, 134, 137, 141 Kant, Immanuel, 19 n.14 knowledge decolonization of, 67 exchange, 42 frame of reference, 153 production, 94–5 sharing, 4 Ladson-Billing, Gloria, 93–4 language use, judgement of, 139, 140 laughter, 138, 140 Law no. 10.639, 61 Lee, J., 137 Levin (Brazilian student), 127 liberation, anti-colonial movements, 24–7 life-project exercise, 103–4 literacy programme, Mozambique, 39

181

Lourdes, Professora, 49, 65–6, 86–7, 89 Loveman, M., 19 n.13, 66 Lula da Silva, Luiz, 3, 17–18 n.8, 36, 41, 55, 61, 64 Lusophony, 76 Lusotropicalism, 13, 25, 76, 151 McCowan, T., 18 n.10 Maciço de Baturité, 42 Madureira, L., 77 Maher, F.A., 81–2, 86 marginalization, 118 Maria (Cape Verde student), 94 maroon communities, 50–1, 80 Martins, Professor, 67, 71, 95–6 Martius, Karl Friedrich von, 12 Maundeni, T., 134 Mbembe, Achille, 19 n.14, 149–50 Mendes, Professora, 104, 112–13 methodology, 4–6, 18 n.11, 18–19 n.12, 125 Middle Passage narratives, 13–15, 148, 153 unsettling, 55–8 migrant communities, 128 Ministry of Agrarian Development, 40 Ministry of Education, 133–4 miscegenation, 10, 12–13, 20 n.20, 30, 150–1 mobility, 52–3 international student, 124 modernity, 124 modernization theories, 16–17 n.2 Morais de Sa e Silva, Michelle, 39 Motter, Paulino, 18 n.10, 39 Movimento Negro, 77–8 Mozambique, 23, 24, 25 anti-colonial resistances, 57 anti-colonial war, 27 civil war, 28 Eduardo Mondlane University, 36 gross enrolment ratio (GER), 35 independence, 27, 58 literacy programme, 39 postcolonial education, 26–8 student numbers, 125 mulata, 49, 57 multiculturalness, 152 multilinearity, 57 multi-national interactions, 135–7 multi-national networks, 125

182

Index

Museu de Abolição (Museum of Abolition), 47, 49 mutual recognition, 100 Nascimento, Professora, 44 Nathan, Rebekah, 118–19 national curriculum, 3 national identity, Brazil, 21, 49, 151 national purity, 150–1 Nazi racism, 7 negotiation, negotiating, 4, 44, 63–5, 72, 89, 112, 120, 131 Negritude, 57 negro identity, 77 neocolonial relations, 59 n.3 nigger moments, 143 Ninho (São Tomé e Principe student), 118 Non-Alignment Movement, 3, 17 n.4 North–South relations, 3 objectives of intervention, 52–5 Office for Outreach, Art and Culture, 100 Office of Promoting Racial Equality, 67 Office of Student Affairs, 100 official representations, 50 open engagement, lack of, 65 othering, through time, 53–4 Otherness, 8 Pan-Africanism, 77, 78 Patricia (Brazilian student), 116, 127 peacekeeping missions, 38 pedagogies, 67, 83–5, 87–93, 94–7 Pedro (Brazilan student), 121 Pedro I, King of Portugal, 23 Pereira, A.A., 57 Pereira, Professor, 65 political agendas, 39–40 political parties, 62 politicking, everyday, 64, 112 Popkewitz, T.S., 104–5 Portuguese Colonial Empire, 21 Portuguese colonialism, 21–5, 54, 58, 95, 149 aftermath, 26–31 shared experience, 56 Portuguese language, 19 n.12, 24, 27, 56, 86, 139 Portuguese Overseas Territories, 21

postcolonial studies, 157 n.10 Povinelli, Elizabeth, 53–5 private education, 26 private universities, 36 professors, 16 n.1, 63–4, 64–5, 115–16 Afro-Brazilian activism, 65–8, 71–2, 147 experience, 91–2 financial situation, 103 information sharing, 112–13 interactions with international students, 113–14 lack of training, 91 non-Brazilian, 71, 147 politically active, 67–8 positionalities, 81–2 students on, 94–7 syllabi development, 79 Programme of Restructuring and Expansion of Federal Universities, 41 Programme of University for All, 41 PróReitoria de Relações Institucionais, 42 pseudonyms, 20 n.19 public policies, transfer of, 38 queue jumping, 120 Quilombo (film), 66, 80 race, 19 n.13, 58–9, 72, 150–2 as an analytical lens, 5–6, 6–15 and blackness, 5–6 as blackness, 10–15 critical development studies and, 5–6 heuristics, 153–4 and historical consciousness, 85–93 multidimensionality, 87 South–South cooperation and, 5 writing about, 152–6 race relations, 79 race-targeted quotas, 61 Rachel (Brazilian student), 92–3, 110 racial categories, 30 racial democracy, 10, 12, 21–2, 30, 49, 56, 57, 65–6, 71 racial differentiation, 21 racial disparities, 4–5, 19 n.13 racial diversity, 151–2 racial inequality, 5, 21–2, 30, 65, 71–2

Index racial parity, 67 racial quotas, 70–1 racial redress, 56 racialization, 47–59, 48, 72 interventions, 50–5 racializing assemblages, 6–10, 12, 20 n.17, 149, 150–2, 156 racializing constructions, 15 racializing gaze, 12 racism, 5, 6, 7–8, 11, 72, 86–7, 138–9, 141–2, 147, 151 Rafael, Professor, 66, 80, 86–7 reasonable self, the, 105 Redenção, 10, 47, 48, 49, 50, 106, 110–12, 115, 119, 128–32, 144–5, 149, 151–2, 152 religious practices, 80 RENAMO, 28 resource sharing, 132 respect, 100 REUNI, 41 Rice, C., 137 Rio de Janeiro, 22 Robinho (Guinea Bissau student), 108, 126, 128, 134, 143, 145 Rocha, Professora, 56 role, 15 Rosen, D., 125 Roussef, Dilma, 65, 67 rudeness, 119 Rwanda, 57 Said, Edward, 54 Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira, 24 Salvador de Bahia, 51 Samir (Guinea Bissau student), 102–3 Sandra (Cape Verde student), 85, 92–3, 103–4, 110, 116, 127, 129, 141–2 Sandro (Mozambican student), 126, 141 Santayana, George, 75 Santos, Professor, 65, 68 São Francisco do Conde, 51, 67 São Tomé e Principe, 23, 25 gross enrolment ratio (GER), 35 University Lusiada of São Tome e Principe, 36 schedule, students, 136–7 scholarship opportunities, 112 school enrolments, 26

183

Science without Borders (Ciências sem Fronteiras), 105 segregation patterns, 114–21, 117, 127 self-governance structures, 63 shared understanding, 102, 103 Silva, Professor, 64 Simona, Professora, 79, 94–5 slave trade, 23, 54, 87, 148, 149–50 slavery, 9, 10, 23, 25, 30, 47, 49, 51, 58, 85–6, 95, 145 sociability, 99–101, 118, 119, 120, 149 social boundaries, 149 crossing, 142–3 social intermingling, 107–8 social networks, 119 social positioning, 137–8 social relations, 120–1, 140 social services, healthcare, 45 social space, 114–21, 117 socio-cultural capital, 96 socio-cultural identity, 81 socio-cultural learning, 99 socio-economic challenges, 132 socio-economic inequality, 71, 86–7 solidarity cooperation, 3, 68–73, 124–5, 147 Soudien, Crain, 40 Sousa Santos, B. de, 151 South–South cooperation, 3, 9, 34, 37–40, 76, 147 agricultural cooperation, 40 dangers, 39 implementation, 39–40 justification, 61 legitimization, 55–6 race and, 5 South–South solidarity, 68–73 Speller, Paulo, 41, 63, 99–100, 143, 147 Spiller, Hortense, 7 Spivak, G.C., 9 sporting events, 100 Stambach, A., 124 stipend system, 42–3, 43–4, 43, 132–5, 141–2 Stoetzler, Marcel, 153 strikes 2014, 155 2015, 65, 72 student interactions, 107–8 evading integration, 114–21, 117

184

Index

student numbers, 16 n.1, 125 student presentations, 102–4 student recruitment, 128 students, 1 agency, 78 Brazilian, 69–70, 138–40, 148 conflict, 90 group constellations, 110–12 misgivings, 119–20 mobility, 52–3 motivation, 104 participation, 84 place of origin, 1 positionality, 114 on professors, 94–7 racial quotas, 70–1 schedule, 136–7 stipends, 43–4, 43, 132–5, 141–2 and teaching practices, 92–3 view of development, 52–3 See also international students subjectivity, frame of reference, 153 Supreme Court, 61 Taina (Angolan student), 93, 94–5 Tamara (Brazilian student), 107, 126 teacher education, 67 teaching practices, 83–5, 87–93, 94–7 Telma, Professora, 80–5, 86–7, 89, 91 temporary university council (Conselho Superior Pro Tempore), 63 tensions, 131–2 terminology, ethno-racial categories, 18 n.9 Tetreault, M.K., 81–2, 86 Third Reich, 7, 8 Tiago (Guinea Bissau student), 126, 129, 132–3, 139–40, 143 time, othering through, 53–4

timetables, 136, 136 Tomas (Guinea Bissau student), 51, 120 Torres, Professor, 44 Ubuntu worldview, 68 UN Security Council, 38 underdevelopment, 64 universities, access, 30–1 University Lusiada of São Tome e Principe, São Tome e Principe, 36 University of Amazonian Integration, 38 University of Cape Verde, 36 university restaurant, 114–21, 117 university statute, 63 US civil rights movement, 56 Valentim (East Timor student), 108, 126, 135, 143 Vigh, H., 123 vision, 33–4, 41–2, 57–8, 72–3 website, 50 Weheliye, Alexander, 6–10, 13, 20 n.18, 149, 157 n.9 welcoming week, 101–5 whiteness, 12 whitening, 49, 142–3 Wi-Fi, 136 Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores), 62 Wright, Michelle, 13–15, 55 Wynter, Sylvia, 7 Yuval-Davis, Nira, 153 Zumbi, 50–1 Zweig, Stefan, 151, 157 n.8

185

186