(Re)Setting Networks: race, migration and trade in the Syria-Lebanese community in the Americas

Abstract

This proposal aims to present a comprehensive plan to be developed as a research through FAPESP´s BEPE (Research Internship Abroad) for our Doctoral Degree under development at Campinas State University, entitled: "Patricians Connected: The influence of the Syrian-Lebanese immigrants in the urbanization of São Paulo (1887-1928)". This investigation intends to understand the expansion of the urbanized area of São Paulo as a product of the private initiative in conjunction of the regulation of the State. The research intends, by privileging the microhistory in dialogue with the macroscopic and territorial process, to study the biography of some important immigrants in the community of the Syrian-Lebanese between the years of 1887 and 1928, as the Jafet family and Rizkallah Jorge. To do so, it is necessary to investigate archives and libraries in the United States of America to obtain specialized data and bibliography about the agency of these social actors in the U.S, and their commercial relations with Brazil, and the state of the art about the Arab immigrants in the American Continent. In this BEPE, we expected, therefore, to understand better the relations between U.S and Brazil, focusing in three lines of investigations: i) the exchanges in the sociological field regarding the idea of race and the "place" dedicated to the Syrians and Lebaneses; ii) the different policies created in these two countries involving the immigration theme, and iii) and the historiographic theme of transnationalism. (AU)