O tênue equilíbrio no movimento: A vicinalidade na migração transnacional

Abstract

This article discusses the implications of transnational mobility to ways of inhabiting the world. From the analysis of the experience of migrants from Goiás to Portugal, we explore how relationships of vicinality and cohabitation are constructed according to their temporal and spatial dimensions. The vicinality, understood as self-help groups involving different social relations and forms of solidarity and conflict, promotes a reworking of the mutuality of relations of migrants in circulation. Through vicinality the success or failure of the migration is ensured: from the arrival and adaptation in the new place to the maintenance of ties left back home. The connections of vicinality are subject to uncertainties, emotional turmoil, practical flaws, negotiations, and they reconfigure family and friendship interactions, as well as the very notion of cohabitation. Exploring the concept of vicinality seems to be a very productive point of view to reflect on this migratory mobility.