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African Diaspora in Ceará: Integration experiences of African immigrant

students in university

Ercílio Langa 1

UFC, Brazil

Abstract: In this paper I will discuss the integration experiences of African immigrant students in public and

private Brazilian universities. By analyzing those individuals’ situation in university life experienced in Fortaleza,

Ceará, I will examine their daily lives, their encounter with alterity, prejudice and racial discrimination, the

difficulties in integration into colleges, as well as their social dramas at the end of their studies, related to the

possibility of returning to their home country or staying in Brazil. It is true that Brazilian universities are many

times unaware of those students’ and their countries’ reality, as they are simply regarded as knowledge

consumers, whose experiences are underused or wasted. That student migration has been making student groups,

movements and associations gather African students according to national distinction, making them quite sterile

with no negotiation skills with Brazilian higher education institutions. As foreigners and as dark-skinned people,

African students often experience a state of social anomie, where they have to “fend for themselves”, finally

adopting a capitalist identity based on consumption.

Keywords: African students; Brazil; universities; experiences; integration.

Translation: Soraia Redondo. 1 PhD student in Sociology and Master by the Federal University of Ceará (UFC, Brazil). Have Bachelors Degree in Social Sciences and in Sociology from the University Eduardo Mondlane (UEM, Mozambique). Email: ercilio.langa @ gmail.com

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Introduction: presenting the African diaspora in Ceará

To briefly summarize, the metropolitan citizen would accept

the immigrant if he were invisible and silent, but once a

certain demographic density has been reached, the ghost

assumes a terrifying consistency. To make matters worse,

reassured by his growing numbers, he dares, on the

contrary, to talk out loud in his native tongue and

sometimes appears in his native dress. Albert Memmi.

The presence of African students in the state of Ceará, as immigrants, began in the second

half of the 1990s, with the very first group coming from Angola. Over that period, only

students from Portuguese-speaking African countries came to be part of the Federal

University of Ceará (UFC, Portuguese: Universidade Federal do Ceará), through the

Undergraduate Student Partnership Program (PEC-G, Portuguese: Programa de Estudantes

Convênio - de Graduação).2 The immigration of Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean students

started in 1998 and, two years later, Santomean, Angolan and Mozambican students follow.

By the early 2000s there is a significant increase in the number of African students living in

Ceará, most of whom come to study at private colleges, with contracts signed in their

countries of origin, through ads and admission exams done in Guinea-Bissau. The increase in

immigration of African students to Brazil, at the start of the 21st century, was also fuelled by

president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s political stance and his policy of cooperation and

tightening of bonds with Africa3.

That ongoing policy of cooperation is particularly directed at higher education, by creating

different mechanisms, such as trainee programs, scholarships and agreements, in order to

facilitate the possibility of Africans studying in Brazil. Within the context of different

mobilizing strategies, students leave their respective countries with academic expectations

regarding Brazil, due to the country's greater level of economic, technological and academic

output development, bolstering their hopes of easy integration because of a common

language and culture – the Portuguese language, the cuisine, the religion and the African

culture brought by slaves permeating Brazilian life.

2 Undergraduate Student Partnership Program (PEC-G, Portuguese: Programa de Estudantes Convênio - de Graduação), the result of cooperation in the area of education and higher education between Brazil and developing countries, collectively administered by the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations and the Ministry of Education, and comprising 45 countries, with 32 active countries which send students from Africa, Latin America and East Timor. The African continent has the biggest student contingent, with 20 countries which send students every year. In 2010, there were 383 African students, most of whom Bissau-Guineans, Cape Verdeans and Angolans, enrolled at Brazilian federal and state universities. In the same year, under that program (and other similar ones), there were about 18.917 students from Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PALOP) in Brazil. 3 Over the eight years of Lula’s government, spanning from 2003 to 2010, the student exchange between Brazil and African countries intensified. During his two terms, President Lula visited 27 African countries, while his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, only visited three.

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According to Mourão (2009), in the 2000s, the African students who were part of the

international agreements with Brazilian public universities called themselves the “African

community in Fortaleza,” including, particularly, young students of Cape Verdean and

Bissau-Guinean nationality, united and dealing with common issues at the time, such as

adjusting and solving everyday problems. The author argues that, even so, that union at the

diaspora did not dispel the historical differences of class, income, status and level of

education between citizens from both countries. Over the years, the number of African

students at Ceará has grown, establishing a contingent of immigrants becoming complex in

its diversity. In contrast, Baessa (2005) states that, given the increasing number of Guinean

and Cape Verdean students in the city, these individuals begin to establish greater

distinctions among themselves, highlighting their specific nationalities, contradicting the

previous designation of “African community.” Nowadays, there is a growing segment of

students from different countries, social classes and religious beliefs, not only from

Portuguese-speaking countries but also from English-speaking and French-speaking

countries, such as Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In 2011, the Federal Police of Ceará registered a 1260 African students in the state, of

whom 1000 attended several private colleges, a 130 attended the Federal University of Ceará

and 20 attended Universidade Estadual do Ceará (UECE), the majority being from African

Portuguese-speaking countries (PALOP) (BRÁS, 2011). In fact, the number of students seems

to be greater than what the Federal Police had previously registered, because many students

are in an irregular situation. A significant portion of students, the majority, studying at

private colleges, live in precarious conditions along with prejudice and racial discrimination.

I call the increasing presence of students – from Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau,

Mozambique, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal –

in the State of Ceará, African diaspora4. Those individuals, who belong to several

ethnolinguistic groups, feature multicultural identities and several kinds of differences that

mark their lives in this state. This diaspora is comprised of both male and female students, of

whom the majority is young men between 18 and 35 years old, dark-skinned, of several

ethnicities, belonging to the big Bantu ethnolinguistic family. The African diaspora has

created groups and movements, gathering African students in a mobilization and

4 The notion of diaspora, which drives this research, is inspired in Hall’s ideas (2011) about the identities of immigrants from the Caribbean region and Great Britain, their origin myths, the needs and dangers they face under globalization.

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organization process in several student associations, the most important being: the

Associação de Estudantes Africanos no Estado do Ceará (AEAC), the Associação de

Estudantes da Guiné-Bissau no Estado do Ceará (AEGBECE), the Fundação de Estudantes

Cabo-verdianos nas Faculdades do Nordeste (FEAF), the Centro de Estudantes Estrangeiros

da UFC (CEEUFC) and the Movimento Pastoral de Estudantes Africanos (MPEA). Usually,

such African student associations are based on national distinctions, making them quite

sterile with no negotiation skills with Brazilian higher education institutions, these students

attend.

In light of this student migration situation, marked by the massive arrival and presence of

African students from several countries in Brazilian public and private higher education

institutions, and by the emerging of African student associations in those institutions, I feel

compelled to understand this phenomenon, discussing these students’ presence and

integration in Brazilian universities. My analysis is limited to the expectations of African

students in UFC, the largest public higher education institution of the State of Ceará, in

northeast Brazil. Therefore, I analyze the experiences of African students at the Fortaleza

campuses, where I have lived for about three years, being myself a student of UFC. For

questioning the problems of such phenomenon, here are some questions that guide this

paper: Who are these students? How do they life? How are they received by universities?

How is their integration carried out in Brazilian academic life?

The daily lives of African students in Fortaleza and their encounter with alterity

Once in Brazil, African students face daily challenges, especially financial difficulties, given

the high cost of living in this metropolis in comparison to what they can afford. A significant

portion of the contingent of students claims feeling discriminated against every day, due to

the color of their skin and their own African descent, in different degrees and forms of the

discriminations found in their home countries. Gusmão (2005) opens up ways for reflection,

by circumscribing Brazil’s own position, in receiving the African diaspora:

A multiracial country which is part of the so-called “developing countries,” but that differs from the European countries, until very recently privileged in the search for qualification of personnel by Palop. In question, the position of a relatively peripheral country in the international division of labor, with a Portuguese colonization past as well, and which, though structurally mestizo and black, thinks of itself as white and European. In discussion, the existence of internal processes of discrimination and racism in Brazilian reality and the perception and experiences of the black and African individual in this context. (GUSMÃO, 2006:16).

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In Fortaleza’s daily routine, racial prejudice and discrimination toward African students

occur in several ways, often subtle ones, which range from looks of suspicion and discomfort

in waiting lines and rooms, when accessing services such as hospitals, banks, lottery retailers

and busses. Just like changing from one sidewalk or one street to another, people change

their wallet, purses and cellphones from one side or pocket to another as soon as an

individual of African descent approaches. These situations represent types of what Bourdieu

(2007) defines as symbolic violence.

Such violence involves gestures, signals, symbols and cultural practices shared by society,

often carried out subtly and inconspicuously by those who act, as a form of oppression, if not

constant repetition. The African students part of the federal and state universities, who are,

in fact, the minority, survive on the PEC-G scholarships and on other signed agreements

between Brazil and their home countries. As for the students studying at private colleges,

they receive money from their families to pay for tuition and to stay in college, adding to their

income from some undeclared work – at stores and markets, beauty salons, auto repair

garages, factories and construction, restaurants or parking lots of big shopping malls and

supermarkets, or even at people’s homes as babysitters – to thus ensure their survival and

their own means of transportation in the city.

Within this group of students studying at private colleges, there are a number of them who,

in their free time, trade clothes and footwear between Brazil and their home countries.

Finally, a select group of private college students, mainly Cape Verdeans, survives and studies

in a relaxed manner, thanks to the money sent by family members living in Africa and by

immigrant relatives in European and North American countries.

Private colleges – as a mechanism of attraction - claim to guarantee paid internships to

students once they finish their Management, Accounting, Marketing, Communication,

Science and Information Management degrees. In reality, African students are offered “paid

internships” that are forms of precarious work such as being pamphleteers, security guards at

shopping malls and parking lots or electronic surveillance operators, in a ploy used to bypass

the norm which forbids them from working.

In everyday life, African students realize how hard it is for Brazilians to call them by their

given names, replacing these by the Brazilian native category “negão” (lit. “big black”) and

easily forgetting their nationalities and the names of their home countries, blurring

everything into the African generic category. Mendes (2010:27) highlights that “[...] African

students are not fully aware of the social limits traditionally built by whites to segregate the

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blacks. They are not informed of those environments of exclusion, they go through the

delineated borders and walk in whites’ environments.” African students, in everyday

Fortaleza, notice the social distance of Brazilian blacks who, many times, believe that

Africans are playboys, rich individuals from African political elites, or that they are

individuals who come to Brazil to take up the seats which, by right, would be theirs.

There is also, among the Brazilians blacks, the idea that Africans are “cotistas” (lit, “quota

holders”), in other words, students beneficiary of racial quotas in higher education in Brazil.

To be exact, forms of African student integration with Ceará’s population, on a daily basis,

tend to express discrimination mechanisms, making them outsiders (BECKER, 2008);

(ELIAS & SCOTSON, 2000). One can notice, among the people of Ceará, the existence of

multiple ideas about the African presence, particularly, stigmatizing points of view of racial

prejudice because of being black. In a report, Guinean students, as an organizational strategy

within the scope of the Movimento Pastoral do Estudante Africano (lit. “pastoral movement

of the African student”) reported expressions of racism:

We have faced racial discrimination in the city and on campus as well, which

characterizes institutional racism, by college staff, teachers and academic

departments. The academic departments have even implemented rules for

us, such as: Take showers, wear perfume, skin cream, don’t arrive sweaty

[…]. These demands are only made of African students (2012: 7).

In fact, many of those students come to Brazil bearing expectations of easy academic

integration and personal and professional growth, however, they come across Brazilian

society’s social structure, organized in a hierarchical way by race, skin color and social

classes. Being black, African and poor places them in a subservient position, preventing

them from accessing several opportunities.

The difficulties and different forms of discrimination faced by African immigrants, their

racial interpellations and identity resignificance are similar to what Turner (2005) calls

“social dramas,”5 difficulties in recreating social and symbolic universes in the modern

world, where people feel isolated and abandoned faced with the responsibility of giving

meaning to their lives. In that context, several African students struggle to pay tuition and

others are caught working and threatened with deportation. Even so, student migration to

5 According to Turner (2005), social drama appears as a life experience which refers to the notion of danger, allowing individuals to access the social and symbolic universe, contrasting the ordinary to the extraordinary. This notion emerges as a model for reading reality in tribal societies, viewed in four moments: rupture, crisis and crisis intensification, repairing action and outcome. Drama presents itself as an important moment in repairing crisis.

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Brazil is a life experience6, an intensely lived, unique and significant experience which forms

and transforms these student’s lives and paths. The migration experience is almost always

given a positive resignificance, and it is perceived as an education, learning and career

development opportunity. However, it is also perceived as a change in their worldview and

stance, acquired because of the financial difficulties they go through and challenges finding

work and paying their bills.

African students' experiences in Brazilian universities

African students in Brazilian universities seam to live in a state of social anomie (Merton,

1970). Social anomie in African students in Fortaleza manifests itself through disorientation

in their personal and academic lives. It shows in the constant skipping between programs and

colleges, where many can't adapt to the programs their enrolled in, when they would rather

take others befitting their “heart’s desire” of their “calling.” Others still, become aware of

other programs and colleges that offer better segues into the job market and, with time,

“find” their calling in a different profession. These intentions of constantly switching

programs cause problems for the students, as well as for the college’s academic departments

and heads of the students’ programs. They are seen as “a problem,” as “problem” students.

Most Africans are in undergraduate programs in private colleges. Few can manage to break

through into graduate programs.

Education in Brazilian higher learning institutions offers new disfigures and new identity

synthesis through different cultural practices observed in the Brazilian university experience,

however these institutions - students, teaching body and staff - ignore the students reality in

their home countries (FONSECA, 2009). The author also points to conflicts originating in the

sigma of being temporary immigrants and the war refugee stereotype. In reality, these

subjects adaptation is slow. In a colonialist attitude, Brazilian universities and colleges create

gaps where the experience and knowledge African students bring are not applied and are not

considered valid. There's a notion that African students are not producers of knowledge,

merely consumers who come to Brazil only to learn and not bring or produce knowledge. The

universities' hegemonic scientific order isn't concerned by those students' reality, nor that of

6 Turner (2005) literally defines experience as “trying, going on an adventure, taking risks”, where experience and danger have the same origin. Turner differentiates three types of experiences: the daily experience which refers to the simple, passive experience of accepting daily events; the life experience which refers to the unique experience that happens in regards to perception of pain or pleasure, which can be felt more intensively and; learning experiences which differ from external events and internal reactions, such as the beginning of new ways of living, romantic adventures, which can be personal or shared.

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the countries they come from which results in what Sousa Santos (2011) calls a waste of

experience.

[...] the worldview is wider than the western one. The South African, Indian, Mozambican colleagues perceive sociology, society and the world differently from those in the north. So, I thought that, probably, what is most worrying in today’s world is the amount of social experience that is wasted, because it occurs in remote places. The media is adverse to very local experiences, the ones not well known nor legitimized by hegemonic social sciences, and that is why they have stayed invisible, discredited (SOUSA SANTOS, 2011:23-24).

In fact, most African students cannot join extracurricular or research activities in and

outside universities and are underused by the precarious work job market. Usually

experience and knowledge not originating in the West are ignited by the “dominant

paradigm” in scientific work doesn't dialog with other world views (SOUSA SANTOS, 2010).

In this context authors, facts, stories, narratives and experiences from the African and not

western world are ignored and considered nonscientific, local and, in consequence minor.

The migration experience of African students in Brazilian territory influences and changes

their worldview and stance. Many start building a “capitalist identity” (Fonseca, 2009) and

sometimes an “entrepreneurial identity.” These identities are based in the consumption of

goods in a capitalist market, with various products at accessible prices, as has been the case

in Brazil in the last few years. Consumption of clothes, footwear, famous brand cellphones,

as well as trading clothes and footwear between Brazil and their countries of origin - clothes,

tunics, colorful cloth from African countries and Havaianas flip-flops, blouses, bikinis,

footwear, jewelry from Brazil - is predominant in these identities. In this scenario, part of the

students are attracted to remain in Brazil or settle in permanently, by a set of “conveniences”

and a greater “quality of life,” as well as because of the social and certainty returning to their

countries of origin, because of their feelings of lack of place, change of identity references,

social and emotional ties, etc. Gusmão (2008) appropriately describes the position of an

African student in Brazil:

What they learn and what they forget when staying “out of place” for too long is now the challenge for the home countries’ authorities. It is also a challenge for family, relatives and friends, who often sacrificed themselves to support their quest for education, when they finish their degrees and return to their families and home countries. Because of their new ways, how they dress, how they behave, the students no longer fully recognize themselves in their original group, feeling weird at the same time in that world. Those who stayed in that world also feel uncomfortable around those who returned. They see themselves as modern, globalized individuals, who have perspectives and different values which contrast with the more traditional context values and habits. What they understand is that they are no longer from there, but they also know they are not from the land where they seek new paths through education and professional qualification. In these are,

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mostly, foreigners and then “Africans and blacks.” In Africa those who are: Angolan, Mozambican, Cape Verdeans Guinean, Santomean. They are Balanta, Fula, Pepel, Kimbundu, Ovimbundu, Creole, Mestizos and with no reference to ethnic origin, and so on and so forth. (GUSMÃO, 2008:8-9).

A majority of students who remain in Brazilian territory marry Brazilian women or start a

family, but few manage to continue their academic life and take graduate degrees. Others are

observed by the job market in larger metropolis like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. This

scenario, based on the experiences of African students in Brazilian territory, raises several

questions: What historic power relationships have formed between African countries and

Brazil? What educational reality do African countries and Brazil feel, when accepting these

students?

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