Abstract

BORGES, Rovênia Amorim. Linguistic (De)Coloniality and Interculturality in the Two Main Routes of Brazilian Student Mobility. Comunicação e Sociedade [online]. 2022, vol.41, pp.189-208.  Epub June 22, 2022. ISSN 1645-2089.  https://doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.41(2022).3718.

Although attending universities in Portugal and the United States is still a privilege for those from Brazilian families with high economic capital, policies to promote internationalization intensified and diversified this student mobility flows in the last decade. Guided by decolonial studies, we present, in this article, an analysis of the intersectionality of race and mastery of the English language of Brazilian students in Portugal, and the United States. The results refer to two empirical investigations carried out between 2013 and 2020 and point out that Black students participating in the same mobility program with scholarships in these two countries showed lower English proficiency than White scholarship holders. On the other hand, students from a White economic elite did not indicate the insufficiency of English as a decision factor for choosing Portugal. In our view, these asymmetries must be perceived and problematized from the perspective of coloniality in English teaching in Brazil, which has limited choices and (re)produced inequalities in the space of international education. However, in pandemic times that hasten the transition to virtual mobility, the greater ethnic-racial diversity and socioeconomic range of student mobility from Brazil to Portuguese universities raise deeper reflections on the intercultural (face-to-face) interactions arising from these displacements. The experiences of studying in Portugal have been marked by some linguistic mismatches, like the imaginaries of a subordinate Brazilian Portuguese and a superior Portuguese from Portugal. The constraints stemming from these intercultural (mis)communications between students from Brazil and Portugal can be explained by the contemporary reverberation of the coloniality of Portuguese language teaching in both countries. We will argue that these current tensions in the academic spaces of Brazil’s former motherland foster what we have called the “decolonial awakening”.

Keywords : mobility; Brazil; Portugal; United States; linguistic coloniality; interculturality.

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in English | Portuguese     · English ( pdf ) | Portuguese ( pdf )