Fabio Santos - Bridging Fluid Borders

Interweaving rich ethnographic descriptions with an innovative theoretical approach, this book explores and unsettles conventional maps and understandings of Europe and the Americas. Through an examination of the recently inaugurated cross-border bridge between Frances overseas department of French Guiana and Brazils northern state of Amap, which effectively acts as a one-way street and serves to perpetuate inequalities in a historically deeply entangled region, it foregrounds the ways in which borderland inhabitants such as indigenous women, illegalised migrants, and local politicians deal with these inequalities and the increasingly closed Amazonian border in everyday life. A study that challenges the coloniality of memory, this volume shows how the borderland along and across the Oyapock River, far from being the hinterland of France and Brazil, in fact illuminates entangled histories and their concomitant inequalities on a large scale. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and border studies with interests in postcolonialism, memory, and inequality.

Fabio Santos is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Latin American Studies, Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany.

Series Editor:

Srgio Costa, Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany

Departing from classical approaches to the study of social inequalities between individuals and social classes within particular national settings, this series emphasises the production and reproduction of inequalities across borders, as well as the multiplicity of categorieswhether race, sex or nationality amongst othersaccording to which contemporary inequalities are shaped.

Entangled Inequalities constitutes a forum and a catalyst for discussing recent advancements in inequality research from a transnational, global and intersectional perspective, highlighting the fact that social inequalities are always the product of both global interpenetrations and of complex intersections between different social categorisations. The series therefore welcomes monographs and edited volumes across the social sciences that deal with inequalities from an entangled perspectivewith an intersectional or a transnational focus, or both.

Global Entangled Inequalities
Conceptual Debates and Evidence from Latin America
Edited by Elizabeth Jelin, Renata C. Motta and Srgio Costa

A Port in Global Capitalism
Unveiling Entangled Accumulation in Rio de Janeiro
Srgio Costa and Guilherme Leite Gonalves

Convivial Constellations in Latin America
From Colonial to Contemporary Times
Edited by Luciane Scarato, Fernando Baldraia and Maya Manzi

Bridging Fluid Borders
Entanglements in the French-Brazilian Borderland
Fabio Santos

For a full list of titles, please visit: www.routledge.com/Entangled-Inequalities-Exploring-Global-Asymmetries/book-series/ASHSER1413

Entanglements in the French-Brazilian Borderland

First published 2022
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2022 Fabio Santos

The right of Fabio Santos to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-1-032-04511-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-04512-2 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-19355-5 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003193555

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The seeds of this book were planted while I studied sociology at Freie Universitt Berlin: in fact, it began as a term paper I wrote as a masters student in 2015. I am thus deeply indebted to Manuela Boatc who taught that course and sparked my interest in rethinking Europe against the backdrop of colonial history and its ongoing legacies. At the same time, back in 2015, I worked as a research assistant of Srgio Costa whose incessant support made me consider pursuing a doctoral degreesomething I had not seriously aspired to prior to meeting him. His long-standing empathic and generous mentoring is not the only reason why I owe him a great debt of thanks: becoming my PhD supervisor upon completion of my masters degree, he pushed my knowledge of social theory and the intricate inequalities haunting Brazil to an extent that greatly enriched my work. Manuela Boatc, meanwhile leaving Berlin to lead the Global Studies Program in Freiburg, later rejoined the project as my second supervisor, for which I will be forever grateful: her enthusiastic motivation boosts, coupled with an intellectual fierceness on global inequalities, postcolonial and decolonial approaches, and many more fields than I can mention here, left important marks on my work. This book, a revised version of my doctoral thesis, would not have been possible without the guidance received by this academic dream team.

I have been fortunate enough to become a member of the German-Mexican Graduate School Between Spaces: Movements, Actors, and Representations of Globalisation. Besides generously funding my project through a scholarship provided by the German Research Foundation, the graduate school offered an inter-disciplinary and international academic home where I could discuss my work and that of others on different occasions in Berlin and Mexico City. Special thanks go to Stefan Rinke, Marianne Braig, Susanne Klengel, Marisa Belausteguigoitia Rius, Ricardo Prez Montfort, and Claudio Lomnitz for providing insightful comments at different stages of my work.