This book sheds new light on the interconnections between identity, gender and geographical displacement. At its centre are Brazilian travesti migrants, assigned as male at birth but later seeking to convey the aesthetic attributes of women by repeatedly performing a minutely-studied type of femininity. Despite the fact that they have been migrating between Brazil and Europe for more than forty years, very little is know about them, especially in the English-speaking world. This work therefore fills a significant lacuna in our understandings of sexualities, bodies and trans issues, whilst rejecting hegemonic terms such as 'transsexual' and 'transgender' in favour of the specificity of the travesti. What it presents is an ethnographical study of their bodily and geographic-spatial migrations, analysing how they become travestis through the gendered modification of their bodies, their involvement in sex work, and the transnational migrations to Europe that many of them make. Examining their lives in both Brazil and Europe, it also analyses how their migrations influence the construction of their subjectivities. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Brazil and Barcelona, this exciting book will appeal to all those interested in gender, sexuality and transgender issues.

This book explores the proliferation and spread of Brazilian-born religious forms and practices throughout the world. The global diffusion of Brazilian religions provides an excellent lens to understand contemporary religious forms. As the book shows, religious movements as diverse as Santo Daime, Candomblé, Capoeira, John of God, and Brazilian style Pentecostalism and Catholicism, have become immensely popular in many places outside Brazil. This global spread is not merely the result of Brazilian migrants taking their religions abroad, it is also due to global media and to spiritual seekers, travelling to and from Brazil. Global Trajectories of Brazilian Religion demonstrates that in a dynamic space of historical and cultural production, Brazil is imagined and re-created as an authentic, spiritual, and sensual place that functions as the center for various global religions. To understand the new cross-fertilizations between religion, life-style, tourism and migration, this book introduces the notion of 'Lusospheres', a term that refers to the historical Portuguese colonial reach, yet signals the contemporary modes of cultural interaction in a different geo-political age.

More than a quarter of a million LGBTQ-identified migrants in the United States lack documentation and constantly risk detention and deportation. LGBTQ migrants around the world endure similarly precarious situations. Eithne Luibhéid's and Karma R. Chávez’s edited collection provides a first-of-its-kind look at LGBTQ migrants and communities. The academics, activists, and artists in the volume center illegalization, detention, and deportation in national and transnational contexts, and examine how migrants and allies negotiate, resist, refuse, and critique these processes. The works contribute to the fields of gender and sexuality studies, critical race and ethnic studies, borders and migration studies, and decolonial studies. Bridging voices and works from inside and outside of the academy, and international in scope, Queer and Trans Migrations illuminates new perspectives in the field of queer and trans migration studies. Contributors: Andrew J. Brown, Julio Capó, Jr., Anna Carastathis, Jack Cáraves, Karma R. Chávez, Ryan Conrad, Elif, Katherine Fobear, Monisha Das Gupta, Jamila Hammami, Edward Ou Jin Lee, Leece Lee-Oliver, Eithne Luibhéid, Hana Masri, Yasmin Nair, Bamby Salcedo, Fadi Saleh, Rafael Ramirez Solórzano, José Guadalupe Herrera Soto, Myrto Tsilimpounidi, Suyapa Portillo Villeda, Sasha Wijeyeratne, Ruben Zecena

This book explores the political-aesthetic practices of transgender women in Lima, Peru, and how they use these to survive and fight for recognition and full citizenship, through drawing on ethnographic research and on decolonial feminist and aesthetic theories. Chapters analyze how the vulnerability and precariousness of trans women coexist with modes of feminist agency, resistance and resilience, as well as with proposals for political action to transform a heteropatriarchal society toward a more diverse and accepting one. Finally, the author draws on the Viennese artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s metaphor of the five skins, whereby the first skin is the epidermis; the second is the clothes; the third is the house; the fourth is identity, which refers to primary socialization spaces such as the neighbourhood; and the fifth is the world environment. The author uses this metaphor to analyze the corporal practices of trans women in a cumulative way, paying special attention to the different stages of their lives, to those skins that embody and accompany them from childhood to adulthood. This book will be of interest to scholars of transgender studies, decolonial feminist studies, and aesthetic, particularly those with a focus on gender and sexuality in Latin America.

In this dramatic and compelling narrative, anthropologist Don Kulick follows the lives of a group of transgendered prostitutes (called travestis in Portuguese) in the Brazilian city Salvador. Travestis are males who, often beginning at ages as young as ten, adopt female names, clothing styles, hairstyles, and linguistic pronouns. More dramatically, they ingest massive doses of female hormones and inject up to twenty liters of industrial silicone into their bodies to create breasts, wide hips, and large thighs and buttocks. Despite such irreversible physiological changes, virtually no travesti identifies herself as a woman. Moreover, travestis regard any male who does so as mentally disturbed. Kulick analyzes the various ways travestis modify their bodies, explores the motivations that lead them to choose this particular gendered identity, and examines the complex relationships that they maintain with one another, their boyfriends, and their families. Kulick also looks at how travestis earn their living through prostitution and discusses the reasons prostitution, for most travestis, is a positive and affirmative experience. Arguing that transgenderism never occurs in a "natural" or arbitrary form, Kulick shows how it is created in specific social contexts and assumes specific social forms. Furthermore, Kulick suggests that travestis—far from deviating from normative gendered expectations—may in fact distill and perfect the messages that give meaning to gender throughout Brazilian society and possibly throughout much of Latin America. Through Kulick's engaging voice and sharp analysis, this elegantly rendered account is not only a landmark study in its discipline but also a fascinating read for anyone interested in sexuality and gender.

Liquid Borders provides a timely and critical analysis of the large-scale migration of people across borders, which has sent shockwaves through the global world order in recent years. In this book, internationally recognized scholars and activists from a variety of fields analyze key issues related to diasporic movements, displacements, exiles, "illegal" migrants, border crossings, deportations, maritime ventures, and the militarization of borders from political, economic, and cultural perspectives. Ambitious in scope, with cases stretching from the Mediterranean to Australia, the US/Mexico border, Venezuela, and deterritorialized sectors in Colombia and Central America, the various contributions are unified around the notion of freedom of movement, and the recognition of the need to think differently about ideas of citizenship and sovereignty around the world. Liquid Borders will be of interest to policy makers, and to researchers across the humanities, sociology, area studies, politics, international relations, geography, and of course migration and border studies.

A mesmerizing ethnography of the largest favela in Rio, where residents articulate their own politics of freedom against the backdrop of multiple forms of oppression. Normative liberalism has promoted the freedom of privileged subjects, those entitled to rights—usually white, adult, heteronormative, and bourgeois—at the expense of marginalized groups, such as Black people, children, LGBTQ people, and slum dwellers. In this visceral ethnography of Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Moisés Lino e Silva explores what happens when liberalism is challenged by people whose lives are impaired by normative understandings of liberty. He calls such marginalized visions of freedom “minoritarian liberalism,” a concept that stands in for overlapping, alternative modes of freedom—be they queer, favela, or peasant. Lino e Silva introduces readers to a broad collective of favela residents, most intimately accompanying Natasha Kellem, a charismatic self-declared travesti (a term used in Latin America to indicate a specific form of female gender construction opposite to the sex assigned at birth). While many of those the author meets consider themselves “queer,” others are treated as “abnormal” simply because they live in favelas. Through these interconnected experiences, Lino e Silva not only pushes at the boundaries of anthropological inquiry, but also offers ethnographic evidence of non-normative routes to freedom for those seeking liberties against the backdrop of capitalist exploitation, transphobia, racism, and other patterns of domination.