The Brazilian foreign policy related to emigrants and their descendants

Abstract

Brazil, in most of its history, had been a country of immigration. However, in 1980, because of the great amount of Brazilians who moved to other countries, Brazil became a country of emigration. Accompanying this tendency,the Brazilian government has been changing its posture towards emigrants, transforming the administrative structure and developing various public policies which together can be considered as a foreign policy. In the face of these important changes, this research proposes to map, since 1990, such policies - whether implemented, in experimentation or in the form of proposition -, which are developed mainly by the Foreign Relations Ministry and by the National Congress. For this, we will analyze the formulation and implementation of these policies, verifying their impacts and limits, the actors envolved and their interests, as well as the motivations and demands in play. Our presupposition is that the mentioned governamental changes are determined by qualitative and quantitative changes in the migratory flux.