“I am a strange body in the group”: narratives of a black migrant student in a Brazilian university

Abstract

Modern western thinking is a system of visible and invisible distinctions of social, cultural, and epistemic separation. These are abyssal lines (SANTOS, 2007) that determine hegemonic categorizations of subject, race, language, and knowledge, which position, on the upper side of the line, an ideal of modern man and, on the lower side, subordinate, and silent ways of being in the world. To problematize how the black migrant student suffers from the effects of the abyssal divisions in the university and produces a response to these categorizations established in the context, I bring narratives of a Haitian graduation student from a Brazilian public university. Jean, who was approved to study in the Geography Bachelor course through a special selection process for refugee students in higher education, narrated some experiences lived during his first semester in graduation. Based on his narratives, I resort to a Critical Applied Linguistics perspective (MOITA LOPES; FABRÍCIO, 2019; PENNYCOOK, 2001; 2006) to discuss reflections on language, raciality and decoloniality, based on Almeida (2019), Anya (2017), Carneiro (2005), Gomes (2005), Fanon (2008), Nascimento (2019) and Santos (2007). I also discuss how the concept of race, socially, historically, culturally and discursively constructed (GOMES, 2005) and the racialization of identities (ANYA, 2017) reproduce abysmal lines in different segments of the student's life in the university, and define colonial divisions of speech and silence, legitimacy and exclusion.