Categories as learning practice: navigating contested belonging along transatlantic mobile trajectories

Abstract

Although mobility-related categorization processes are central to migration studies, the ways that mobile populations understand, adapt, or contest them remain understudied. To trace such interpretations across both space and time, this paper explores a migrant trajectory that first crossed national borders within Africa before continuing to Brazil and later proceeding to Canada. The research combines ethnographic insights with the autobiographic reflections of one protagonist, whose perspectives and experiences move between different places, countries, institutions, people, and critical events. Following that individual’s learning processes, this article traces which categories were meaningful in the context of origin, how these changed in the interaction with different authorities, how transformative events played into valorizations, and which signs of categorical dissolution were recognizable during these trajectories. A biographical learning perspective sees not only the aspirations and the ideals but also the pragmatism and skepticism around the impact of mobility-related categories change along such journeys.

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