Introduction

During refugee emergencies and crises, foreign states often implement measures to either provide aid and services to displaced people in host countries, or allow for refugee resettlement to a third country. On the one hand, models of assistance, care and recovery proposed by the Northern-led aid industry have been hypervisible on the international stage, embodying the mainstream (some would say hegemonic) official discourse on humanitarian operations mainly in the ‘global South’. On the other hand, however, diverse Southern countries have long provided alternative – and yet, until recently, relatively under-researched – modes of responding to displacement. These include ‘regionally based’ responses – such as the Arab League’s humanitarian support for refugees from Syria since 2011 – but also diverse forms of transregional responses. For instance, the Malaysian Government has provided support to Palestinians in Lebanon and Gaza for over three decades, having established the Beit Atfal Assumoud Community Centre in Baddawi camp (North Lebanon) in 1990 to provide support to camp residents which, since 2011, have included refugees from Syria, including Syrians, Palestinians and Kurds alike (Pacitto and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2013; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto, 2015; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2020a; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Carpi, in this issue). In turn, since the 1950s, the Cuban state has supported refugees in their regions of origin by sending medical internationalist brigades to conflict areas and refugee camps, but also through facilitating the transregional movement of refugees: in the case of Cuba, providing full scholarships for refugees and citizens alike from around the world to complete their secondary and tertiary level studies in the Caribbean island before graduates return to their camps and cities of origin to work (primarily) as medical practitioners (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2010, 2015). Another country is Brazil, whose role in responding to support people displaced from Syria is the focus of this article, which contributes to emerging scholarly and political debates regarding the nature and implications of so-called Southern-led responses to displacement.

In the Middle East context, which is facing overlapping human-made conflicts, states like Brazil have mostly engaged with aid provision in indirect ways, financing pre-existing programmes or entities which have already been operating on the ground. States like Brazil, which tend to remain in the background of the predominant humanitarian scene due to their less visible engagement in ‘emergency and crisis’ areas, have often opted to provide resettlement opportunities in their own territory. Resettlement, as one of the three durable solutions officially available for refugees, is the least commonly available solution, with, on average, fewer than 1 per cent of all refugees registered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) worldwide resettled each year. Although the number of people in need of resettlement has continued to increase year on year, only twenty-four countries accepted resettlement submissions from UNHCR in 2022¹ – the majority being countries of the so-called global North – and there has been a concerted effort to diversify potential resettlement countries as a result.² Brazil is one such country which has prioritised the development of a transregional resettlement programme, building upon its involvement in the regionally focused ‘Solidarity Resettlement Programme’ for Latin American refugees, a programme whose contours were delineated in the 2004 Mexico Declaration and Plan of Action celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees. While much research has been conducted with refugees after resettlement to countries of the global North – noting that refugee resettlement has historically been discussed in terms of refugees’ economic and cultural adaptation in the host society (Lanphier, 1983), and successful resettlement has primarily been assessed in terms of support services, employment and social networks (Curry et al., 2018) – and of course with those who remain in first countries of asylum and who have not (yet) been offered resettlement at all, it is notable that there is a relative dearth of research into refugees’ own experiences, and conceptualisations, of resettlement to countries of the so-called global South. We seek to contribute to redressing this gap through an analysis of the case of Brazil’s resettlement programme for refugees from Syria, and viewed from the perspective of both Syrian refugees and representatives of the Brazilian state.

As we argue in this article, while proposed as an important protection pathway for refugees, and as a means for states to provide support for refugees, the lack of clear policies and concrete support mechanisms weakens Brazil’s resettlement system, giving rise to a large number of criticisms. Based on interviews conducted in February and May in Beirut with ten Syrian nationals who intended to resettle in Brazil, and with two representatives of the Brazilian consulate-general in Beirut, and informed by our individual and joint explorations of Southern-led responses to displacement (e.g. Carpi, 2023; Carpi and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2020a, 2020b; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2010, 2016a, 2016b, 2018, 2019, 2020b, 2022; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley, 2018; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto, 2015, 2019; Pacitto and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2013), in this article we explore the potential and paradoxes of Brazil’s humanitarian schemes. In particular, we delineate how Brazil, in different historical stages, has promoted an open borders politics by proposing an expanded eligibility scheme (Programa de Eligibilidade) for its broader solidarity resettlement programme (Programa de Reassentamento Solidário) to Brazil, started in 1999, as a nobler alternative to providing direct or indirect forms of aid provision in crisis-affected areas. By explaining the Brazilian politics of reception and how Brazilian consular representatives in Beirut related to it, we endeavour to understand Syrian applicants’ own conceptualisations of resettlement, and their imaginaries of Brazil and its position in their futures, before concluding that the state’s prioritisation of offering resettlement to Brazil should not be an viewed as an alternative to the provision of aid, not least because different forms of aid remain key to people’s survival after relocation. Starting from the acknowledgement that political geography plays a significant role in producing people’s imaginations of life in Brazil, we trace how Brazil’s eligibility measures for resettlement are understood, contested and/or welcomed by Brazil’s diplomatic representation in Lebanon and by Syrians who are hoping to be resettled from Lebanon.

‘Do People Want to Be the Leader of the South, or the Tail of the North?’

Before turning to examine Brazil’s role as a provider of refugee resettlement, an important starting point in the context of this Special Issue is to consider the extent to which the notions of ‘South’ and of ‘Southern-led’ alternatives to ‘Northern-led’ responses to displacement are meaningful in relation to the topic under consideration. Immigration and migration to and from countries like Brazil – typically classified as a country of the global South, characterised by deep class divides and the economic marginalisation of some social groups, but with a relatively good level of overall economic development and public infrastructure – have mostly been studied in the framework of South–South migration, which has gained considerable attention over the last decade.³ This increasing focus on South–South migration accompanies a growing interest in ‘South-South Cooperation’ and Triangular Cooperation, institutionalised in the form of the UN Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) since 1978. South-South Cooperation marks the ‘emergence, rise or (re)discovery of Southern states as key development actors’, able to propose either alternative forms of development, or even alternatives to development (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2018: 240). Brazil has often been identified as a quintessential leader in relation to South-South Cooperation and a promoter of the ‘horizontality narrative’ (Milhorance and Soule-Kohndou, 2017: 466). According to the latter, while traditional development assistance adopts vertical practices of donorship, South-South Cooperation asserts isonomy between agents and adopts horizontal practices of partnership (Esteves and Assunção, 2014), including through its positioning as a pivotal member of the Brazil–Russia–India–China–South Africa (BRICS) club. According to Briceño-Ruiz (2017: 175), BRICS’s ideology has been associated with an increase in the bargaining power of Southern countries, the reform of global institutions, the democratisation of international relations, and the challenge of Northern hegemony. In 2003, South Africa, Brazil and India originally formed a trilateral coalition, named India–Brazil–South Africa (IBSA), which is still viewed as the ‘practical expression of South-South cooperation’ (Naidu, 2017: 148). As has been noticed, ‘BRICS’s Globalism’ derives from ‘IBSA’s Trilateralism’ (Kornegay, 2015). This involved a predominantly ‘South-South trade geography’ (Hamid, 2012: 106), which reached its apogee during President Lula’s mandate (2003–10) and his visits to the Arab world: a politics which generated the exclusion and resentment of Arab-led financial, commercial and industrial businesses established in Brazil.

As we have discussed elsewhere (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, and Pacitto, 2015; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016a, 2020b), on the one hand, the concept of ‘mutual South-South understanding’ has been employed by the Brazilian government with reference to its actions in disaster-struck Haiti and elsewhere (Brancoli and Thomaz, 2012). In 2011, for instance, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil stated: ‘We are ready to cooperate with our brother and sister countries in the developing world’ (Statement at the 66th UN General Assembly, New York, 21 September, cited in Brancoli and Thomaz, 2012). Brazil’s ‘discourses of solidarity’ (Brancoli and Thomaz, 2012), reinforced through the use of the label ‘Southern’ as a specific identity marker, have often allowed states such as Brazil to identify with a shared ‘Southern’ community based on certain perceived shared attributes. In this context, the invocation of the label ‘Southern’ by the Brazilian government has also demonstrated the extent to which the label itself can hold political capital and can be used as an indicator of solidarity between postcolonial states (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Pacitto, 2015). On the other hand, Brazil’s contemporary position with reference to the typology of ‘the South’ and ‘the North’ is complex, including due to the strengthening of Brazil’s economy and its shifting positions and roles on diverse international stages. Indeed, the relationship between Brazil and ‘the South’ and ‘South-South Cooperation’ has not always been smooth or straightforward.

As the Brazilian Consulate-General representative in Beirut highlighted in our interview in February 2019, ‘During the military government [1964–85], Brazil had a very difficult relationship with multilateralism. When democratisation started [in 1985] we wanted to get rid of a Brazil where human rights are not respected, and where torture and abuse can still happen’.⁴ More recently, however, President Dilma Rousseff’s refusal to reintegrate Brazil into a North Atlantic centred post-World War II world order (Amar, 2014a: 33) has been emblematic of the ways that political relationships are changing once again due to the country’s ideological turn toward the far right, with Jair Bolsonaro withdrawing from the Global Compact for Refugees in 2016, and seeking proximity to the United States’ right-wing culture promoted during the mandate of President Donald Trump (2017–21).

Reflecting the changeable and changing position of the BRICS countries within the global political arena, Brazil has alternatively positioned itself as closer either to the global North or to the global South. As the Consulate-General representative emphasised during our interview, Brazil’s continuous process of relocating in different political geographies depends more on ideological stances than particular historical periods. For instance, the Brazilian military, while characterised by far-right conservatism, proved to be politically pragmatic when it decided to advocate for the independence of Angola and Mozambique to create new spaces for foreign investment, and when it emerged as the new leader of the South, whose technologies and cultural empathy have been appreciated in countries across Africa. Nonetheless, such forms of Brazilian intervention in Africa have also been acknowledged, and even denounced, as a sort of ‘South-South imperialism’, ⁵ which does not manage to propose a valuable alternative to the programmes and policies implemented by the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

It is against this backdrop that we now turn to Brazil’s position on refugee resettlement and its eligibility schemes.

No Clear Policies for Refugee Resettlement

In the Latin American context, there is a long tradition of asylum and refugee protection provision. Brazil, like Chile, is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol. Following the ratification of the Convention, Brazil also created the National Committee for Refugees (Comitê Nacional Para Refugiados, CONARE), ‘an executive inter-ministerial committee which provides the legal and bureaucratic support that refugees need when they arrive’ (Silva-Menezes and Costa, 2017: n.p.). The Committee was acclaimed as one of the most effective ways of dealing with forced migration (Barreto, 2010). Brazil’s humanitarian role in Latin America expanded further following the 1997 Refugee Act (Rodrigues et al., 2017), when Brazil proposed a regional resettlement programme which marked the twentieth anniversary of the 1984 Cartagena Declaration and encouraged the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean to engage in assistance and protection for refugees. Law 9474/97 later involved an extension of the definition of ‘refugee’, which merges the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention, the 1967 Protocol and the Organization of American States’ 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees: both documented and undocumented people could apply for asylum once they arrived in Brazil (Hamid, 2012: 101). Overall, Brazil is said to have resettled more refugees than any country in the region and, unlike similar initiatives in Argentina, Chile and Paraguay, its resettlement programme has neither been suspended nor delayed (Silva Menezes and Kostas, 2017).

Brazil is also a member of the broader regional framework for refugee protection, including the 2004 Mexico Declaration and Plan of Action (MPA) that established the abovementioned solidarity resettlement programme (Programa de Reassentamento Solidário) and the 2014 Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action (BPA) (Espinoza, 2018b: 85). As noted above, resettlement is one of the three durable solutions that the UNHCR is mandated to seek for refugees (the other two being integration in the first country of asylum and voluntary repatriation to the country of origin), and yet it provides no easy access to rights and protection. Nonetheless, in the Latin American region, resettlement has been promoted as a key value within the context of regional solidarity (Espinoza, 2018b: 86, 90) and as a form of respect for cultural difference (Hamid, 2012: 313).

The Brazilian scheme for refugee reception is perhaps better captured by the definition of ‘eligibility’ (eligibilidade), as Syrian nationals do not reach Brazil as refugees: instead, they are able to travel to Brazil as humanitarian visa holders who can then secure a legal status in situ. Being holders of humanitarian visas upon arrival is the only factor that today marks out Syrian nationals arriving in Brazil – especially in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro – as ‘refugees’: able to request asylum upon their arrival, they can, in addition, look for other legal ways to remain in the country (Espinoza, 2018b: 90).

With ‘refugees’ arriving in Brazil as ‘migrants’, rather than ‘as’ refugees per se, and being able to settle through alternative statuses (of which asylum is only one), local researchers have in turn increasingly advocated for an actual ‘visibilisation’ of the refugee and asylum-seeking question in Brazil, towards which local universities are presently working (Jubilut, 2020). In this framework, humanitarian aid has been shaping ‘national identity in spaces where political hegemony is at stake’ (Hamid, 2012: 311),⁶ while promoting Brazil as a welcoming, peaceful and tolerant country, open to foreigners regardless of their religious beliefs or ethnic origin (Hamid, 2012: 83). This is irrespective of the reality that, although such representations and actions have often been justified through discourses of solidarity, refugees in Brazil have nonetheless faced discrimination, including religiously and racially motivated violence (Teixeira and Sandy, 2018; Tsavkko Garcia, 2017). Moreover, rejections are quite frequent in the Brazil Refugee Resettlement Programme – especially for Venezuelan applicants. Under former President Bolsonaro – who led the country while our research was underway, only losing in the October 2022 national election to Lula – it was widely feared that Brazil’s recent ideological alignment with other global conservative leaders, as mentioned, might lead to considerable changes in the treatment of refugees.

In spite of these challenges, between 2007 and 2017, 2,771 Syrian nationals arrived in Brazil, gradually coming to represent the largest percentage of refugees in the country.⁷ Indeed, over the last decade, Brazil’s introduction of humanitarian visas has represented an alternative politics of care to the provision of aid to refugees in the war-affected region of the Middle East. This aid, from 2012 onwards, mostly consisted in the provision of food items through the UN, financial support through the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and medications through the World Health Organization (WHO), which have been called kits calamidade (emergency kits) (Abdenur and Sochaczewski, 2016: 88). Unlike Palestinians’ exclusion from many resettlement schemes worldwide, the humanitarian visa for individuals affected by the Syrian conflict has also extended to Palestinians from Syria.

Despite acknowledging these elements of success, however, our interlocutors from the Brazilian consulate in Beirut acknowledged that in order to contribute more effectively to the international protection of refugees, the Brazilian government should take a leading role in its national resettlement programme. While it currently relies primarily on funding provided by the UN and the international community, the consular representative in Beirut maintained that Brazil itself should provide the primary funding for the programme. More specifically, they argued that the tripartite structure of the Brazilian Resettlement Programme⁸ should not limit its financing to the UNHCR if better outreach standards are to be achieved.

According to the Consulate-General representative in Beirut, the unclear system at present means that the programme is ultimately ineffective in protecting refugees’ rights and meeting their needs, contradicting Brazil’s long-standing history as a migrant receiving country. To point out the relatively recent character of prolonged labour migration towards Brazil, he mentioned that the last ship from Japan to Brazil – the largest Asian community in Latin America – departed in 1977, when the domestic demand of skilled and non-Black workforce from outside was high.⁹ In this regard, he mentioned how the nature of migration has changed in Brazil, shifting from labour migration to the reception of people from Bolivia, Haiti and Venezuela. Although not all of the latter have fled conflict or natural disaster – which are normally classified as ‘crises’ – the present profile of new migrants can be better associated with different forms of forced migration, especially caused by economic hardships.

Within the context of the global South, most countries have advanced particular requirements to accept refugees for resettlement (Joles, 2018), thus reasserting the normative definition of refugees. Instead, Brazil has approached refugees like migrants, as also happened with the country’s reception of Palestinian refugees throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Notably, Brazil expected these refugee communities to ‘integrate just as previous Arab migrants had in the early twentieth century’ (Schiocchet, 2019: n.p.) and, eventually, to obtain Brazilian citizenship as something they should ‘“deserve” in the eyes of the Brazilian government’ (Schiocchet, 2019: n.p.). From this perspective, despite its lack of juridical instruments for refugee reception and inclusion (Abdenur and Sochaczewski, 2016: 93), Brazil is believed to allow for a ‘prejudice-free melting-pot’ (Schiocchet, 2019: n.p.), in which, following a structuralist approach, the lack of refugee’s integration is attributed to (or blamed on) the refugee’s culture rather than viewed in relation to any failures of the receiving state; this common narrative ends up silencing the local lack of legal clarity.

On the one hand, the suggestion that refugees are not different to migrants can be praised for breaking the humanitarian ‘biopolitics of containment’ (Duffield, 2008), which seeks to provide aid to refugees as much as possible to offer them incentives to remain in the crisis-affected areas. Indeed, the containment of migrants and refugees in areas of origin has long been a primary objective for governments that aim to achieve both national and ‘global’ security. On the other hand, the challenges of Brazil’s policy of addressing refugees in the same way as migrants, in addition to the apparent ‘flexibility’ of the resettlement eligibility process, were highlighted by a number of our interlocutors in Beirut. During our interview with the Brazilian Consulate-General representative, the refugee-like-a-migrant approach of Brazil’s foreign policy became evident: as long as they manage, from a distance, to establish a support network within Brazil, Syrian refugees are likely to gain approval for resettlement. As the representative mentioned, at the time of Dilma Rousseff’s mandate, there was a popular joke: ‘If Japanese Brazilians watched the news on the Syrian war and became distressed as a result, they could have applied for asylum in Brazil. Anyone could do it: there was no rigorous selection criteria, no legislation in place, no provision of anything. How do you make sure that these people will not end up in the street and become beggars?’.¹⁰ Likewise, a Brazilian citizen we met in the Brazilian Consulate-General in May 2019 affirmed: ‘This is like saying “Come in, pay for your flight, have a drink, do whatever you want … but don’t bother”. It doesn’t sound like addressing a crisis.’¹¹ Indeed, typically, no financial support, no housing services, and no other material assistance have been awaiting refugees once they have landed on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. In light of the absence of state-led support for new arrivals, refugees from Syria have thus depended significantly on existing networks and contacts, as we discuss following a brief contextualisation of Brazil’s approach to war in Syria and, in turn, the historic connections between Brazil and people from Syria and Lebanon.

The BRICS Approach to the War in Syria and Brazil’s Policies on Syrian Displacement

Brazil’s policies on Syrian displacement are correlated with the BRICS countries’ legal and political framework, and with the long-standing relationship between the Middle East and Brazil through the South America-Arab States Bloc (ASPA) seeking to consolidate ‘the commercial, diplomatic, and cultural exchange, coordination, and solidarity between two emergent world regions’ (Amar, 2014b: 5). Brazil started reaching out to the Middle East in the framework of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s revival of the Non-Aligned Movement (at its zenith in the 1950s and 1960s), when Brazil witnessed mass mobilisations against the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Indeed, in an effort to oppose US mainstream politics, Brazil sympathised with the anti-colonial revolutions in the Middle East (Amar, 2014a: 19) and supported the recognition of Palestine as a member state in the UN General Assembly (Amar, 2014a: 33) during the Presidency of Dilma Rousseff (2011–16).

In turn, BRICS started directly addressing the Syrian conflict with the 2012 New Delhi Declaration, promoting a ‘mild approach’ (Abdenur, 2016b) to the condemnation of Bashar al-Asad’s repression of the popular uprising which erupted in March 2011. While Russia has been leading the BRICS discourse on Syria – finding its main form of intra-BRICS support in China and militarily intervening inside Syria–BRICS as a collective unit has rather kept a low profile. In the specific case of Brazil, ex-President Rousseff in 2012 remained silent on Russia’s intervention in Syria while warning against the risk of turning Syria into a new Iraq (Baeza and Pinto, 2016: 347). As a result, the Syrian government has increasingly looked at BRICS as a legitimate peacebuilding, development and post-conflict reconstruction actor (Abdenur, 2016a).

More specifically, Brazil’s commitment to receiving Syrian refugees is partially motivated by its historical and cultural links with Syria and Lebanon – Bilad ash-Sham, which used to form the Greater Syria before the 1920 French mandate. In the late 1930s, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party was already present in Brazil as a consequence of its founder, Antoun Sa’adeh, having lived there years before (Baeza and Pinto, 2016: 343–4). Muslim Sunni and Shiite charitable societies have been burgeoning in Brazil since the early 1930s (Baeza and Pinto, 2016: 341–2), as evidence of the strong links between Lebanon, Syria and the diaspora in Brazil in the field of welfare. The arrival of a sizeable number of Arabic-speaking migrants dates back to the nineteenth century, especially between 1884 and 1939 (Pinto, 2018: 61). From the politico-economic perspective, it is meaningful that, first, during the 2000s, bilateral trade relations between Brazil and Syria increased, expanding Brazilian exports to coffee, meat, steel and iron, while imports from Syria went beyond petrol, gradually including fruits and spices (Abdenur and Sochaczewski, 2016: 81). Around the current conflict in Syria, Brazil has also been witnessing a strong pro-Asad regime political mobilisation of the Syrian-Lebanese communities, who have enacted strategies to silence local dissent in order to produce an overall image of a pro-regime consensus (Baeza and Pinto, 2016: 336–8). This was often the result of a decontextualised process of Latin American appropriation of anti-imperialist struggles worldwide, with most Latin American countries having suffered from American imperialist policies.

In turn, the ties between Brazil and Lebanon are similarly strong. There are nearly six million Lebanese nationals and descendants in Brazil (outnumbering the Lebanese population within Lebanon), who are also well represented among local middle and upper classes, belonging to professional, business and political groups (Abdenur, 2016a: 405). Their wealth, however, is partially the result of both local and scholarly stigmatisation of ‘integrated’ Arab communities in Brazil (Pinto, 2016: 54). Likewise, within Lebanon, there is a large Brazilian community (approximately 10,000 people) living predominantly in the Beqaa Valley and Beirut (Abdenur, 2016a: 406). During wartime, Brazil’s Lebanese communities and other civil society local groups have been mobilising to raise funding for the displaced of the July 2006 war and for the reconstruction of the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, destroyed during clashes between the Lebanese Army and the al-Qaeda offshoot Fath al-Islam in 2007. During the July 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon, the Brazilian media largely covered the conflict, which was discussed in both Lebanese Brazilian and Jewish Brazilian communities (Pait, 2008). In this framework, in 2010, Brazil also accepted to lead the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Maritime Task Force, with the purpose of expanding its role in international security and enhancing naval force in UN peacekeeping, due to its growing maritime interests in the South Atlantic (Abdenur, 2016a: 411).

Welfare also powerfully connects Brazil to Lebanon through transnational spaces of aid and mutual support, especially during war. For instance, during fieldwork in Bourj Hammoud (Beirut’s Armenian neighbourhood) in February 2019, Carpi observed that Brazilian flags are not merely exhibited in the public space (e.g. on residential buildings or on private balconies) to support Brazil in the world leagues, but also as an intentional ‘monument of memory’ (Bevan, 2007); since 2015, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh has observed a similar process and motivation for exhibiting Brazilian flags in public spaces across Baddawi refugee camp in North Lebanon. In the context of Bourj Hammoud, a Lebanese Armenian family affirmed that by exhibiting the flag they seek to cherish the generosity of their relatives who resettled in Brazil in the 1970s and supported them during the Lebanese civil war (1975–90). Showing the Brazilian flag outside their balcony became a way to show their gratefulness over time. This episode reminded Carpi of a Lebanese family who exhibited a Brazilian flag outside their balcony in Sidon, in 2005, not only to show their support for the soccer team, but also their emotional ties with their relatives who had resettled in Brazil to start a better life.

Why Resettle in Brazil?

As emerged from the research conducted at the Brazilian consulate in Beirut, according to the consular representative, the key factors that enable Syrian refugees to resettle from Lebanon and Syria to Brazil are, mainly, a strong network of people who will be able to support the refugee once in Brazil, and Syrians’ willingness to take up different job opportunities upon arrival. However, as noted above, resettlement does not involve the provision of any sort of material support within Brazil, but rather the provision of access to Brazil on the basis of complying with selected eligibility criteria. These conditions, which Syrian nationals need to comply with before lodging their humanitarian visa application, have given rise to important debates on effective humanitarian exit strategies: in particular, aid withdrawal as an effective way of avoiding mere palliatives to conflict-induced displacement (Belloni, 2005).

Against this backdrop, as we have observed since 2019, among Syrian nationals, resettlement in Brazil has become a increasingly popular alternative to aid provision in loco for those who belong to religious minority groups in Syria (e.g. Christians and Muslim Alawites, who make up a large segment of Syrian diaspora groups in Brazil), and for Syrian middle and upper classes – unlike most of the Syrian refugees who nowadays reside in different Lebanese areas. Indeed, most of our Syrian interlocutors in the consulate affirmed they used to undertake specialised jobs in the technical, economic or cultural sector before the war. They often specified that they had disposed of sufficient economic resources throughout the conflict, and therefore tended to consider themselves relatively self-sufficient and not in need of any form of material aid. As further evidence of their socio-economic status, research in Brazil has found that the majority of adult Syrian refugees who recently reached Brazil have a tertiary-level education, and work as entrepreneurs in small businesses (Rodrigues et al., 2017).

Moreover, as emphasised by the consular representative, most people from Syria seeking resettlement to Brazil already have family, friends or acquaintances who have established a good economic condition or are studying at low cost in Brazil. Amongst our Syrian interlocutors, the presence of a pre-existing network of support and the possibility to secure livelihoods on arrival were indeed presented as the primary reason for seeking to be resettled in Brazil. However, most of the Syrian applicants we interviewed specified that they also had supportive networks in other geographic regions and that Brazil simply represented the most viable destination. Meaningfully, a Syrian woman still residing in Homs affirmed: ‘I am not choosing Brazil because I have some relatives there. I am ready to set up a new life along with my children with no network ready to support me. I also have relatives in Sweden, Canada and Australia, but going to these countries has become way more complicated’. In such cases, the applicants could prove their personal networks in Brazil, but those did not emerge as the key motivating factor for seeking resettlement there.

Brazil, in general, was the first choice of resettlement for most of our interlocutors. In fact, only a small minority of the interviewees declared that they were interested in Brazil because they had been rejected by other embassies or they had failed in their family reunification attempts (e.g. Malaysia, Australia and Canada). In these cases, they mentioned Brazil as their second choice because their salaries would have been more generous in countries like Australia and Canada.

The vast majority of the interviewees who approached the Brazilian consulate in Beirut in order to apply for resettlement were still living inside Syria at the time, ranging from those who faced multiple internal displacements that cyclically jeopardised their livelihoods and housing conditions within Syria, to those who had never became displaced and whose belongings had neither been destroyed nor confiscated. Three out of ten interviewees were living in Lebanon: none of them were registered with UNHCR and they did not report any personal experience of having received emergency relief provision. To cope with everyday hardships, they said they instead relied on the help of neighbours or the assistance offered by churches, mosques, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), or other local providers. Importantly, the majority of them were reluctant to define themselves as ‘refugees’, associating a low economic status with displacement. Those who were from a religious ‘minority’ background pointed out that, unlike them, Sunni Syrians are usually worse-off and therefore tend to rely on the provision of international aid on a regular basis. In addition, they highlighted that they would officially have registered as refugees only if the UN had been likely to resettle them outside of the region, but not for aid purposes. Further, one interlocutor affirmed he did not register with UNHCR as he feared their name being included in official registers and sought to avoid facing political risks. Similarly, their main reasons for seeking a humanitarian visa to Brazil instead of remaining in either Syria or Lebanon were concerns for their personal and family safety, the desire to work in their own field of expertise, or to secure legal and financial sustainability, which they identified as being unachievable in the region and further endangering their dignified social status.

In this sense, in opposition to the minority of Syrian interlocutors mentioned earlier, some Syrian interviewees viewed Brazil as a destination where upholding a relatively high social status is possible, as the local cost of living is generally lower than other countries of the global North. While salaries are generally lower than in the global North, Brazil represented to them an economically affordable country where their decent status would have not been endangered. The following account of a Syrian man who was living in Damascus at the time of our encounter in the embassy summarises well the opinions of this group of interviewees: ‘In the longer term, if I got a good job, in Canada I would be richer. But upon arrival, I would be treated like a poor refugee. In Brazil, I will feel less poor.’ Overall, the majority of the Syrian applicants interviewed in Beirut pointed out that leaving for Brazil as people who were not officially classified as ‘refugees’ made them feel ‘more comfortable’. As shown, such members of the Syrian diaspora in Brazil manage to maintain a decent professional and socio-economic status in the longer run.

Overall, in the resettlement interviews that the Brazilian Consulate-General conducted with Syrians in May 2019 (which Carpi attended with the consent of both the representative and the interviewees), the representative seemed to prioritise the potential support network that future asylum seekers would be able to rely on once they arrived in Brazil, rather than promoting the country as a desirable destination. Providing applicants with informative material about life in Brazil and with the possibility to learn the Portuguese language before resettlement, throughout the interviews, the diplomatic representative of the Consulate-General highlighted the refugee’s individual responsibility and capacity to decide whether relocation to Brazil would be the best option for them.

Against this backdrop, scholars including Marcia Vera Espinoza (2018a: 233) have reported that refugees, such as Palestinians who resettled in Chile and Brazil, believe that the information given by resettlement organisations and institutions is often ‘superficial and misleading, in the attempt to portray the socio-economic situation of the host countries as better than how it actually is, particularly in relation to housing and jobs’. Regarding this, the Consulate-General representative in Beirut referred to a black market of fake invitation letters for Syrian refugees – costing up to 1,000 USD – which make a large number of promises. However, the representative also noted that some of the organisations offering invitation letters, such as the Evangelical Church in Brazil, are resourceful and are generally able to take care of their invitees once they arrive.¹²

Conclusion

In the imaginary of Syrians aspiring to resettle in Brazil, the country emerges as a destination where they would be more likely and more able to uphold a decent social and economic status (as they had held in Syria before war), although their future financial prospects might be less promising than in higher income countries such as Australia and Canada. In essence, Brazil represented to them a destination where they could afford not feeling like ‘poor refugees’ – and, indeed, de facto travelling there as migrants. While leaving Syria and its neighbouring country, Lebanon, is motivated by a general lack of safety, economic unsustainability or lack of legal protection, networks do not seem to be the primary or exclusive factor encouraging them to resettle. Despite the Brazilian consular representative’s wariness, as they insisted on pointing out safety issues and economic difficulties in Brazil, there is a long-standing history of members of the Syrian diaspora succeeding in making a living in the country; and such economic success remained a key factor underpinning Syrian interlocutors’ desire to be resettled there.

In this article, we have also sought to show the complex layers of the refugee eligibility scheme, and the scheme’s limitations in relation to supporting applicants’ ability to secure livelihoods and wellbeing in the absence of clear policies. While the Brazilian government maintains that its eligibility system in third countries is the most effective way out of protracted humanitarianism, with no systematic aid available for refugees from Syria upon arrival in Brazil, it does not emerge as a sustainable scheme with appropriate forms of support in place. Against this backdrop, we conclude that acknowledging the transnational dimension of both refugeehood and of refugee response, not only entails identifying the capacities, resources and aid trajectories that refugees are able to build upon in a broader geographic scenario, including in the context of Brazil’s cultural and economic ties with Syria and Lebanon over history. It also means acknowledging the vulnerabilities that can characterise refugeehood in countries of both asylum and resettlement, and the extent to which campaigns for the provision of more effective support through open border politics can nonetheless overlook and potentially perpetuate precarities linked to the refugee condition, along with its heterogeneities and contradictions, including people’s very reluctance to be formally identified as ‘refugees’.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all interviewees at the Brazilian Consulate in Beirut for their participation in this research. This research has been conducted in the framework of the project Analysing South-South Humanitarian Responses to Displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, led by Professor Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and funded by the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation agreement no. 715582.