This book shows some developments in migratory studies, recently conducted in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil for a postdoctoral project at the University of Campinas, financed by the Sao Paulo Foundation (FAPESP). It rasies some problems of contemporary society which had been repressed and denied in Brazil on the historical- and contemporary acceptance of immigrants in the country.This is how the book tends to de-mystify the myth of receptivity in Brazil.

Migration itself contains the notion of the unknown, and this opens up space for human imagination, for fantasy. This book explores some aspects of how foreigners create an imaginary of Brazilian immigrants and how immigrants themselves reinforce these imaginaries through re-fantasized identities. It will also look at the case of Brazilian self-fantasies in Brazil and their verbalized fantasies of foreigners in Brazil. The book frames the notion of fantasy in the context of the Freudian school and that of Slavoj i ek.

Racism continues to be manifest in various ways in contemporary societies. It is not a distant "bad" memory, something that previous generations practiced and experienced. However, contemporary racism is rather hidden and aversive; thus its nature has changed with time. This book examines the nature of denial and affective logic of contemporary racism. It presents an empirical study conducted in the city of Sao Paulo to point to various discursive forms of denial of racism and a theoretical study through the study and development of the concept of affective logic of racism that Frantz Fanon presents in Black Skin White Masks.

The definition of prejudice provided by Gordon Allport 60 years ago is still used as an authoritative definition of the term prejudice: 'aversive or hostile attitude toward a person who belongs to a group, simply because he belongs to that group, and is therefore presumed to have the objectionable qualities ascribed to that group'. Unfortunately, prejudice is not simply an attitude that remains internal to its owner; it impacts behavior. When negative attitudes on the basis of differences translate into behavior, we have as a result, discrimination and the social inequality it produces. Therefore, efforts to reduce prejudice are well advised to take the social context into consideration when focusing on the individuals' attitudes. This book will help you to understand how anti-Romany prejudices lead to established inequality in Europe. It appears that much progress has been made in the development of strategies for reducing ethnic conflicts worldwide. Two big problems still loom before us however: the problem of involving sufficient numbers of people in these efforts, and the problem of translating changes in individual attitudes to changes in group ethos.

This book is a theoretical exploration of contemporary forms of resistance, which portrays different ways in which people react to oppression and either resist or consent to hegemonic forces. Responses to repressive dominant ideologies were studied in the context of forms of postcolonial oppression.The analysis contains critical explorations of various cultural phenomena as manifestations of resistance, conformity or subordination, and reconstructs different states of resistance.The opening question from which the analysis sets out is whether or not people resist the dominant ideology in oppressive systems. It is argued that there are cases in which people do not resist, but, ironically, internalize their own oppression. The book then goes on to emphasize the richness of human courage and the infinite creativity of oppressed groups by means of a backstage analysis of human resistance.In this way this book represents a psychopolitical portrayal of contemporary forms and practices of resistance by bringing together illustrative materials from European, Bedouin and Latin American cultures, most significantly from Brazil and Venezuela.