XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Whiteness and International Academic Mobility: A Study of White Brazilian Students in “Ciências sem Fronteiras”

• In Event: Brazilian Studies of Whiteness – Part 2: Whiteness and Mobilities

Abstract

This paper is part of a new research project that examines the intersections between race, mobility, and international education. More specifically, the project analyzes whiteness in the context of “Science without Borders” (SwB), a program of the Brazilian federal government that funded the international academic mobility of over 93,000 college students between 2012 and 2016. The central hypothesis is that whiteness both impacted and was impacted by the SwB program, which favored (even if inadvertently) the admission of white students, whose white identity was, in turn, enhanced by their participation in the program. Thus, racial inequality not only structured the unequal access to the program; it was further reproduced as a result. The project builds on Brazilian Whiteness Studies and the New Mobilities Paradigm to investigate how studying abroad strengthened the racial identity of white Brazilians, who had the opportunity to not only deepen scientific knowledge and attain fluency in another language but, above all, to increase their “network capital,” or the capacity to establish social relations with specific people and to visit specific places in ways that generates financial and practical benefits. In the context of international education, network capital can be cultivated through establishing academic and professional connections with renowned scientists abroad, and the prestige that derives from studying in distinguished foreign universities that are viewed as the global centers of scientific production.

Author

• Patricia Pinho, University of California, Santa Cruz