Study analyzes the influence of foreigners on the construction of São Paulo

Research project contributes to understanding of the relationship between foreigners and the transformations that have occurred in São Paulo city since the 19th century.

By Fábio de Castro

Agência FAPESP – Over a four-year period, an interdisciplinary group of researchers from the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) performed a study with the objective of understanding the physical, demographic, economic, social and cultural transformation processes that São Paulo has undergone since the 19th century due to the presence of foreign nationals in the city.

The Thematic Project “São Paulo: Foreigners and the Building of Cities,” coordinated by professor Ana Lucia Duarte Lanna of the USP School of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU), included contributions from researchers from the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism, (IAU), the College of Philosophy, Letters and Humanities (FFLCH) and the Museu Paulista, all part of USP.

According to Lanna, the studies sought to address the presence of foreigners in the São Paulo capital in their diverse forms—including immigrants, travelers, visitors, residents and natives or “eternal foreigners”—by describing and symbolizing their heterogeneous ways of living.

“The project was careful to avoid establishing the foreigner as a sociocultural category of the classic immigrant figure normally associated with explaining the modernization of large American cities,” Lanna told Agência FAPESP.

“We looked at the figure of the foreigner in a broader sense, with more heterogeneous contexts and experiences, to try and understand how the city transforms itself through this multiplicity of possible encounters,” she said.

The project also considered foreigners in terms of the work environment. The themes of the study were articulated along two lines of research: “The transformation of downtown, the construction of territories, networks and identities” and “The transformation of professional fields: practices, networks, players and the circulation of knowledge.”

“The studies included works ranging from the Italian, Jewish and Japanese working classes to the arrival of intellectuals, artists, architects and urban planners. This broad gamut of professions and nationalities, with greatly varying contexts and periods of permanence, allowed us to look more closely at this relationship, which is very important to the city of São Paulo,” said Lanna.

The perspectives presented on the various groups of foreigners and aspects of the studies were associated with other cross-sections, including categories such as boroughs, territories and sociability.

The project was careful to safeguard part of the collections that the researchers used, which were maintained by FAU and the Museu Paulista. One of the project’s main goals was to create a database as a platform for use in future studies adopting any approach. The database was created from experiences with cataloguing and keyword search systems developed at the Museu Paulista and was coordinated by MP Professor Solange Lima.

“A large part of the material—including architectural and decorative projects, blueprints, photographs and over 1,000 São Paulo city maps from the collections of foreign architects and photographers—was processed and selected. A great deal of it was digitalized,” said Lanna.

The database’s content was adapted and made available at http://estrangeiros.fau.usp.br to facilitate searches. “The database will continue to be fed with new information or studies that emerge as the Thematic Project unfolds," she said.

The database also provides references to articles published in the magazines Revista de Cultura Anhembi, Revista do Arquivo Municipal and Revista Sociologia that have been written by foreigners or that discuss the presence of foreigners in the country. In addition to other kinds of documentation, many studies conducted within the Thematic Project used interviews.

The web site also includes a section focusing on heavily studied boroughs of the city, especially Bom Retiro and Bexiga, where many foreigners have congregated.

In addition to the database and web site, another product of the Thematic Project is a book titled São Paulo, os Estrangeiros e a Construção da(s) Cidade(s) [São Paulo, Foreigners and the Construction of the City/Cities], published by Alameda with FAPESP funding under its Research Support-Publishing program.

In addition to Lanna, the other project organizers were Fernanda Arêas Peixoto, Anthropology professor at FFLCH-USP, and José Tavares Correia de Lira and Maria Ruth Amaral de Sampaio, both FAU-USP professors.

The book was the result of an international seminar held as part of the project. All researchers involved in the seminar contributed, in addition to several guest authors.

“The book presents a discussion of the city of São Paulo but is not restricted to it. Some of the guest authors spoke to the relationship between foreigners and cities in other contexts,” Lanna commented.

A second book, expected to be released soon, will address the relationship between foreigners and the city with a focus on the issue of displacement. The book is being edited by Sarah Feldman, Paulo Gracez, Cristina Leme and Fernanda Torres.