Arab immigrants at the south-american border: narratives of labor, religion and imagined futures

Abstract

This article examines the narratives of belonging to the Muslim Arab community among immigrants in the Tri-border region (Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay), emphasizing native categories by which individuals construct a multiplicity of identity discourses. The proposed approach is based on the production of discourses outside of institutional spaces such as community organizations and their spokesperson. Using narrative analysis, life story interviews and reconstruction of the immigrant trajectories as research tools, this work analyzes a set of meanings in order to understand not an identity, in this case Arab or Muslim, but processes of identification produced by immigrants and their descendants located in specific social space of social relations. The work and the search for better life, the religious ascription and the imagined futures of being on the border represent identity arenas that inform shared processes of identification.