Resignifying Migration and Minorities' Cultural Contact in Brazil

This volume provides in-depth discussions on the challenges of intercultural encounters in Brazil. It analyzes existing policies related to migration and minorities and proposes innovative approaches to policy-making. It also highlights policies that have had a real social impact. The volume consolidates theoretical contributions from authors of different but convergent fields to indicate the role of culture and cultural processes in a wide range of phenomena such as psychosocial intervention with immigrants, emigrants, returnees and refugees, homelessness, mental health and interculturality, mobility in urban settings, monolingualism and monocultural curriculum at Brazilian schools and universities, besides narratives of new and older immigrants. Displacement is one of the 21st century's greatest challenges, and this volume provides interdisciplinary perspectives on mobility and people in cultural contact in Brazil, the largest country in South America and the fifth most populous in the world. Although seen from a Brazilian scenario, issues discussed here permeate all other countries that are diverse and receive immigrants, and shed light on the complex socio-cultural world in which we live.

Sylvia Duarte Dantas has a PhD in social psychology from Boston University and a Prodoc CAPES (postdoc) from the Institute of Psychology at São Paulo University, through which she has idealized and coordinated an intercultural counseling service. She is a Professor at the Department of Preventive Medicine, Social and Human Science area in the Federal University of São Paulo UNIFESP. She coordinates the research group 'Contact Between Cultures, Immigration, Mental Health and Interculturality' under the directory of the national research groups, CNPq. She is an associate researcher at the Promigras research group, CNPq. She is the vice-coordinator of the research group 'Intercultural Dialogues' at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of São Paulo which she founded and coordinated from 2009 to 2019. Dantas was a consultant to the United Nations Development Program during 2006 and 2007 and a consultant for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in 2021. She conceived and coordinates the Mental Health, Immigration and Intercultural Specialization course and the Intercultural Psychosocial Care Project at UNIFESP. Her research interests are: mental health and migration, intercultural care, brief intercultural counseling and psychotherapy, psychosocial intervention, gender, ethnic/cultural identity, prejudice, cultural insertion processes, psychoanalysis and public health. She has been a guest lecturer in different states in Brazil, in Japan, Paraguay, Canada and Chile. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the journals Community Psychology in Global Perspective (Salento University Publishing) and Interdisciplinary Journal on Human Mobility REMHU (Brasília). Among her recent publications are: Intercultural Dialogues: Interdisciplinary Reflections and Psychosocial Interventions (Diálogos Interculturais> Reflexões interdisciplinares e Intervenção Psicossocial, editor), IEA-USP, 2012; Revista USP Interculturalities Dôssie (Dossiê Interculturalidades, editor), 2017; Handbook on Mental Health and Psychosocial Care of Migrants and Refugees (Guia de Saúde Mental e Atenção Psicossocial para Migrantes e Refugiados, editor). IOM.

Paulo Daniel Farah has a PhD in literary theory and another doctoral degree in social history. He is Professor at the Faculty of Languages, Literature, Philosophy and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP), Director of the Research Group 'Brazil – Africa' (USP), coordinator of the Intercultural Dialogue Research Group at the Institute of Advanced Studies at USP, and supervisor and coordinator of the Graduate Program on Humanities, Rights and Other Legitimacies. Farah is the author or editor of more than 30 titles on the Middle East, Africa and South America, including Languages of Survival: Migrations, Interlanguages, Narratives and Representations (editor); Dialogues and Resistances: Africa in Brazil and Brazil in Africa; Alterscience: Critical Propositions and Creative Processes for Knowledge (editor); Dialogue South-America/Arab Countries; ABC of the Arab World; among other books written in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Arabic, and English. His research interest includes literature, history, linguistics, paleography and culture, focusing on Arab, African and South American studies, travel narratives, migration and refuge, interculturality, representation, Orientalism, decoloniality, transdisciplinary studies, Islam and Arabic manuscripts. Farah is responsible for the projects (in partnership with the United Nations) 'Production, Dissemination and Repercussion of Scientific Knowledge: University, Society and Vulnerable Groups' and 'University in Transformation: Challenges and Potentialities - Education, Research and Human Rights in the 21st Century in an Interdisciplinary Perspective', and also for the 'Program for Refugees', which give classes, develops initiatives with, for and by refugees and immigrants, besides providing food, transportation and general support. Farah is the director of Bibli-ASPA, a leading research, education and culture center on Africa, Arab countries and South America, and the editor of the journal Fikr, Review of Arab, African and South American Studies.