Migration research in Brazil in times of Covid-19

Abstract

We conducted these interviews with fellow social scientists who do research on mi- gration and asked them about their research experiences in Brazil during the Covid-19 pandemic. They are from Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Mozambique, and Senegal and are currently based (at least partially) at different academic institutions in Brazil. The interviews took place between April and June 2021. During this period, Brazil had more than 500,000 registered Covid-19 deaths, one of the highest rates in the world. Since 2019, the government of President Jair Bolsonaro has gone from openly targeting teaching and research in sociology to deliberately denying scientific evidence of the effects of the pandemic in Brazilian society. In terms of academic cooperation, our conversations with these researchers can be seen as a positive outcome of the con- straints imposed by the pandemic. Although the restrictions to our fieldwork were challenging, we were aware that it was a huge privilege to be able to keep working in Germany with our well-funded academic contracts – yet another example of the deepening of global inequalities in the production of knowledge in “Covid-19 times”. We see these interviews as a way of broadening the scope of empirical research on migration during an especially challenging period for scholars working in and on Brazil. It was an opportunity to have an exchange with these colleagues and to learn more about their research.