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Festival de trabalho e ideias (Brazil - October 12th 2019)
These events took place in Cuiaba, Mato Grosso and Maringa, Parana in Brazil and were delivered in Portuguese. A full report of the event is given below.
The connections between knowledge and action are key points for a transformative research agenda. In October, approximately 230 migrant workers in Brazil participated in a set of two workshops “Trabalho Migrante” in Cuiabá, in the Brazilian Amazonian region, and in Maringá, southern Brazil, as part of the ESRC global challenges project “So who is building sustainable development? Transforming exploitative labour along southern migration corridors”. The Festival of work and ideas Trabalho Migrante aimed to discuss the acute exploitation of migrant workers in Brazil and to examine the potential of creative, interactive and participatory research to create critical knowledge, and begin to transform, the realities of these migrants. The workshops followed up on research which has been carried out in four states of the Brazilian Amazonian region and in northern Paraná - region that has been a place of destination for thousands of international workers who were previously living the Amazonian region. The event counted with the participation of migrants – women, men and children – originally from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, Nigeria, Colombia, Senegal, Benin and Syria.
Trabalho migrante aimed to put migrants at the centre of this research activity, acknowledging their experiences and knowledge as well as their transformative role in this process. Through different group discussions and creative methods, the research team – which consisted of scholars and immigrants - asked workers to point out their main challenges in Brazil and to propose possible solutions to address these issues. Migrant workers and their collective associations were engaged in all stages and activities of the workshops: starting from the organisation of the event to a whole range of other activities such as the elaboration of groups’ dynamics, discussion questions, facilitation, cultural activities and the presentation of results. At the end of the day, the research team committed themselves to present these results – alongside the representatives of these communities - to project partners and public representatives through a set of public engagement activities which will take place in 2020 on local, national and international level.