When I moved here 11 years ago, I arrived so traumatized that I was only able to see the good things in the city. But the more my wounds healed (and that is what I came here for, in the first place), the more I could notice the bad things, the everyday racisms, the inequality, the unemployment, the lack of housing. And most of all I came to understand just how Berlin and Berliners of all nationalities are suffering with the commodification of the city. Fighting for the right to the city and for housing rights made me connect and even love the city again.

2011

Alice

2011

(...) thinking back to the year that I left Brazil and all this time that has passed until now has been more than 10 years, already 15 years. I think that when I left Brazil I began to learn to live on my own. I left when I was 18 and before that life was just school and "oba oba", school and parties. And I think that my leaving Brazil marked the beginning of an independent life, a life with responsibilities, and it was a difficult beginning, but I think it was exactly what I needed to be able to live independently quickly. I think in Brazil that is very difficult...

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2011

2021

The awareness that this is definitely not the last station and that it is actually also a decision that I do not make myself, but that is predetermined from the outside. So it's not that I'm in an apartment where I say, if I want I can stay here forever, but I will definitely have to look for something else. And it was the same with the two apartments before, because we were expats and I knew that it would be over at some point.

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2011

2021

Although I've been in Berlin for 5 years now and therefore in my fatherland/motherland (laughs), the topic of migration is a big and very present one, because since we've been here my husband Vicente has gone through and is going through a very similar process as I did before in Rio. I think that by living in each other's countries, the experience is maybe a bit stronger, because the relationship is absolutely changing. The balance of the relationship is changing. In Rio, he was clearly the stronger pole, and now I would say that I am the stronger pole, because I am at home, in quotation marks. So, I see what challenges he has to face here almost every day. Although he generally feels well, as I did in Rio, but nevertheless he is very often the foreigner, the foreigner which I was in Rio, even though I was there for a long time, have a family there, speak Portuguese well and had a good job and he is also very well embedded here (...) and nevertheless there are many subtle aspects which he has to suffer from because they are great challenges. So that I basically often feel more comfortable than he does and that also brings conflicts into the relationship and yes, the topic of emigration is very present.

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2011

Well, my husband is Cuban and he moved to Finland two and a half years ago. So now I have looked at emigration from like outside, I have been observing someone else going through this process and yeah, I guess I think that I know how my husband fells at some situations, but on the other hand I guess now that myself I'm in my home country. I cannot completely like put myself into his position.

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2011

2021

I've been living in the same city for 15 years now, so this is the place I’ve lived the longest for in my entire life. Even though I have moved at least three times in this city, it's familiar to me and I have very good friends here. And yet, I still often miss something. Even if it's not necessarily nameable. Often, I think it's the feeling of being in a Spanish-speaking country and the security that comes with expressing myself in my native language, but I realized a few years ago that I'm also missing words in Spanish. And my experience has also shown that no matter where I am, I always feel somehow foreign and I think this feeling is just part of me, as part of my identity.

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2011

2021

I travelled the world to find my place here. Living abroad helped me situate myself in the world. Today there is no place I want to live in, no country that I want to build, other than Brazil.

2011

I think that immigration is about discovery, it's about exploring, it's about (...) I have a lot of this in me, of being in a place for a while, but knowing that maybe the time I spend there has a beginning, a middle and an end, that I don't know when that will end - if it will last for months or if it will last for years - and that at some point I will close a cycle in that place, that I will explore a new place.

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2011

2021

(...) I still have this...this restlessness inside, that maybe I could go somewhere else sometime and I think, maybe I could do it again, but I don't do it, I don't know why. (...) But, it plays a role, but rather a subordinate role at the moment. Because (...) it cost me a lot of energy and strength to somehow form some kind of bond here in Germany and I wouldn't just throw that away, because also have this community and security issue somehow.

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2011

2021

Although there is such a social sensitivity spreading, in a positive sense actually against all kinds of discrimination, I still don't have the feeling that anything has improved or improved for emigrants, on the contrary. I get more and more the feeling that I don't belong at all, that I don't belong to this society, and yes, my thoughts of emigrating are actually getting bigger and bigger, paradoxically.

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2011

2021

I remember at age 28 I had moved houses 32 times and so I really, I thought to myself whatever comes, it's something I have done before, so it can't be that hard (...). I think it's not something I wish for my family, for my own child. So I'm very much looking at, ok where is a place where I can see myself for the next 10 years and how can I start to live with this idea of no change, you know, because I think sometimes if you are growing up that way, you think that the change is exciting and it's in your bones and if you don't change then life gets boring and you need variety, but I think it's, I'm continuously reprogram myself to think, ok you know what, I am not going to find everything in one place (...)

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2011

2021

We had been living here for a month and a half and the pandemic started. (...) I invented a ritual, which was that every Friday we had a birthday party. Fake, because there was no one's birthday. But it was like this: we would buy a really nice cake, like the kind they sell in the market with lots of frosting, light a candle and we would sing happy birthday... And I usually said it was for my daughter, just because (...) We would get all dressed up, put on our going out clothes, sing Happy Birthday and then we would dance to the music of the Trem da Alegria, music from the 80's and we weren't — it may sound crazy, but I think this brought that feeling of familiarity.

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2011

2021

To emigrate is my ongoing dream (laughs). I keep on wanting to go here and there and experience daily life and work routine and the quotidian of different places and unfortunately because of the pandemic some plans have been kept on hold, ok I'm doing other things but I'm rather having a difficult time being held off here in Strasbourg...

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2011

2021

(...) simply because of the question: Where do you come from, what you have already experienced, you are always reminded that you come from many different places, but it is more a quiet role, so it is not active in my life (...) so I grew up bilingual, Spanish and German but with my children I speak only German actually. (...) Unfortunately it's not strong enough that I feel safe, so it's not my mother tongue anymore, German is my mother tongue and that's why it somehow didn't feel, didn't feel authentic to speak Spanish with the kids (...) insofar this part has actually disappeared more and more, so I always notice, sometimes still, that people look at me and still with such a questioning look: Well, where does she actually come from and so on, and that of course always pushes you then, reminds you that you might somehow look in a little bit different and that there is still more in you. But it is no longer active (...)

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2011

2021

Ten years ago, I had been here for about five years, I guess. And relatively fresh, coming from Brazil and now ten years later, I think I got more used to it. I considered myself in Brazil a little outsider, a little different from the people there and communicative, but in a different way. And here I have found myself more. In a city that has people from all over the world, that has more foreigners than Switzerland. What changed most: I think that I am even more rooted here than I was ten years ago and more used to it and, you could say, feeling more at home.

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2011

2021

I would say that my first immigration was when I was four to five years old. And today I can say that it was a real milestone in my life, which left many marks. Because it was not something that I chose, that my parents chose. (...) but my home country had been Germany until then, so it was a very strange feeling as a child to see myself in a culture that was extremely opposite to what I had experienced in my early years. An extremely opposite climate and as much as I liked Brazil, but I felt a little bit alien here. (...) And I feel that every place that I - that life ended up leading me to live in, those choices came for me. So, the big change in these immigrations, was because I chose them.

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2011

2021

It's very hard to be a foreigner, you know. As much as I don't feel 100% from here because I spent in total four years in Germany, I felt much less from Germany, obviously. But as much as I'm not 100% from here, it's very hard to be a foreigner, it was very hard to be a foreigner. That actually I think had an impact on my relationship with other foreigners coming here, you know. I am very careful with people from abroad.(...) I think that because I have been through so many subtle and sensitive things. (...) I think that I gave up the difficulty of being a foreigner coming back here. I faced and face other difficulties, many giant difficulties. The sensation of body, for me, was fundamental for me to decide to come back and no longer be a foreigner.

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2011

2021

When I went, I thought "Oh, how great!" - that feeling of discovery. When you come back home, a feeling of mission accomplished. Look how crazy that is! And it's good, because you realize how much life fits when you live abroad (...). it's like a spiral - you come back to the same place, which is Rio, very familiar to me, but as you are another person, you don't perceive the place as the same no matter how identical it is. You position yourself differently. You situate yourself differently, you speak differently. So, Rio for me also became a laboratory of experiments. Only in a familiar house, which is really my Heimat. And Berlin will always accompany me. I think it will be a floating Heimat, that will always fit inside me, in a very special place.

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2011

2021

I guess I made life a lot harder than it should have been. On the other hand, much more interesting perhaps and challenging, but the thing about my parents getting older and me being away... for me it comes in the sense of regret, really, that I didn't think much about what I was doing. And the sense of migration changed a lot after having kids. Before my children I didn't have this notion, because I could go back to Brazil at any moment. And now I can't anymore.

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2011

2021

At this point in my life immigration is one thing that I don't want. I think I've had a lot... I've moved a lot from country to country to house to city and for me now stability is something that I really long for, that is very important to me.

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2011

2021

I am just on the move again, I will start a position as a proofreader at the University of Porto in September. And I expect to live there for the next 4 years. So back to Portugal. And then I'll come back to Cologne, or I'll stay in Porto or in Portugal. But if it goes back then in any case first back to Cologne.

Emigration is my life plan, you could say. While some build a house, start a family and stay somewhere, my life model is to migrate. To meander.

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2011

2021

(...) that there are, yes, several reasons for which someone leaves his home and I just think of many people who also have to leave their home because of war or poverty or hunger and probably they would like to stay because they love their home and they are expelled or they have to go and I find that somehow a very terrible thought - especially since I think many places do not make it easy for you to find a home there. And then there are people, like us perhaps, or our friends, who decide of their own free will to go somewhere else, because they are looking for adventure or because they are going there for professional reasons or for other reasons, but somehow voluntarily and perhaps also with a naturally more positive feeling. Somehow that is so difficult to dissolve sometimes, this contrast, as presumably many people, the refugees would say: Why are you leaving your home, everything is safe there, everything is beautiful and you have prosperity and why are you leaving voluntarily? And somehow, I can't answer that question, but I know that I have it inside me and that I have the feeling that... Yeah, I don't know, I think that's just wanderlust. And where that comes from? Maybe you get that in your mother's milk (laughs).

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2011

2021

That has certainly shaped my life, that is, my experience as a child of having moved around so much, living in other places, which on the one hand has meant that I don't necessarily have a home. The feeling of home has multiplied a bit, or softened a bit. It's important to me to feel at home and this process of making myself at home is fun and important to me, but it's not necessarily so location-bound and that's why I'm not the typical traveler, because what I miss about traveling is having enough time to feel at home and that's what I find so exciting about moving somewhere else, that you have the chance to feel at home in this place for a while, by getting to know the life there, getting to know the people there, the language, so I find this challenge great and that's fun for me, it's nothing complicated and nothing scary, but something I often strive for, because maybe it has grown on me in a certain way, because it suits me, but also because I find it a nice challenge. (...) And I think I've also passed that on to my children a little bit, this desire to do so, or this simplicity of adapting somewhere else (...).

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2011

2021

(...) because nowadays what I see is that I don't need to be part of a culture, it is the culture that is part of me. I have my lived or even genetic Brazilian side, as I have my genetic and lived Austrian side, as I also have impressions of some cultures that I lived at that time, in those countries, in those continents where I was. And that is part of me, I don't need to be part of it, of those cultures. When I want to, I can live that part. And when I don't want to, I can also (...) remove myself from that, because I'm not part of that 100% anyway.

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2011

2021

To live in many places, to travel, it's wonderful, because it gives you another perspective, you meet a lot of people, you're exposed to very good ideas, but it has a downside too, that you get very divided. You have no identity, or it's a very complex and multifaceted identity. At least this is my case, as my father is foreign and my mother is Brazilian... I have always lived between the United States and Brazil and I always feel foreign. When I am here, I don't identify 100% with the Americans at all. I am Brazilian. But then, when I arrive in Rio de Janeiro, I am on time for my appointments, I am not so "oba-oba papo furado". I like things to be straight, I don't fit in perfectly with that culture anymore. So, I don't really know where I belong.

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2011

2021

As we get closer to the age at which my oldest child, Anais, starts school, we ask ourselves: where do we want to stay now for longer? (...) And what happens to me when I ask myself this question is: gee, what a lot of work it took to learn the language. And how hard it was to find people who don't mind so much that I don't know how to conjugate verbs and use the right pronouns. What a lot of work it took for you to get into the group of mothers at the day-care center. And to get an apartment. And to belong. And now you have your favorite restaurant and the waiter knows you and greets you. And you have your favorite bread at the bakery, and these things bring a certain comfort that every time I think about moving, I think: what a job it will be to build all this up again. And I don't know if I'm up for it. I don't know if I want to put Anais on this path too.

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2011

2021

Freedom cannot be negotiable.

2011

I used to mention it much, much more often by chance when I met someone that I'm not from here, simply because I wanted to say it and now it's no longer so much in focus when I meet new people. Sometimes it takes 6 months until they find out that I'm actually not from here. Yes, maybe that's also a better self-confidence somehow, that I don't always want to express that. That this is my innermost, but not something that other people have to recognize about me. But I am very, very proud of the fact that it is so, that I am not from here and that I have already seen a lot in life.

2011

2021

Emigrating, migrating, immigrating... movements that some people make, others don't, are transformative life experiences, but they are not necessarily more special than others. I think they are just cutouts, spaces in a life. I think it's an experience that for me was significant and I embrace it with all happiness. But I also think that there is a lot of richness in staying and not only in migrating and difficulties in both universes as well. So, I think our life can be rich, whether it's more rooted like some plants or whether it's in a more fluid movement.

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2011

2021

Emigration plays a role in my life in that it means that wherever you are, you always miss someone and miss a place or even more than one place. But it also means that you have a place or several places to which you like to return and where you also like to be. Either you live there or you're visiting there, but, well, you always have more than one place that you miss but also like to come back to. That has changed in that respect, because in the past I felt more of a constant missing, that I felt okay in Germany, so to speak, but actually I always wanted to go back to Portugal, so from the heart.

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2011

2021

So, I guess the longing crossed over and I guess that's how my life is, I always carry the longing for all the places that I've been and people that have passed through my life and I take them with me to a place where I am in the present. And it doesn't necessarily mean that I think I should be somewhere else. It is a longing that I already understand will accompany me forever. And that is what I miss, so what I miss today is what is not here where I am, what is from somewhere else and that was also once part of me.

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2011

2021

Migration, well the other times I had migrated, the place itself was the reason for the change. Because the specific city had an element that called me. First it was New York: the work, the life, the experience as a student and then as a lawyer. Then a job took me to San Francisco and also the idea of living in another metropole with a lot of culture and the summit of many important movements. And now I am in Houston and it was family and the pandemic that brought me here. Without any knowledge of the city, in fact with a negative perception that I didn't like the city. But the reason was simply family and being close to those who helped us the most and loved us the most. And so it was. So the type of migration is very different.

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2011

2021

I was a migrant from the start.

2011

2021

I think that immigration, nowadays, I think less about this term. Because I think that I have a greater connection, maybe, with Brazil nowadays and maybe because the world is more connected, maybe because I have dear friends and people around me that are Brazilians here. And they have this same experience of 'being foreign'. But they are also rooted here in a certain way, (...). And I also think that maybe because nowadays I share my culture more with my partner. Who is a person who speaks Portuguese and knows the Brazilian culture well, even though he is French. So, I think that I feel closer to Brazil today.

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2011

2021

When I first immigrated I loved it! Loved doing something different, being brave, adored the adventure, exploring the new. Now, I do regret it. Of course, I found my partner away from home, married and now we have kids. The cultural differences that never mattered before, challenge us in their upbringing. It makes everything more difficult. Being away from my parents, from family and friends makes me sad... I now feel I don't belong anywhere. And whether I am in Germany or in Portugal, something is always missing, or I realize I missed out on many years that can't be taken back.

Emigration is the reason I feel torn. I hope my children won't feel like that someday. Emigration is the reason why I feel misunderstood and not at home.

2011

Sometimes I wonder if I really experienced emigration. It was so long ago. I catch myself feeling nostalgic of times when I felt safe, free, and the owner of all possibilities.

Now emigration is just a dream of something that might happen again, in a different way. Where would I go — would we go? I wonder how I would feel? I would like to revisit those feelings and give my son and husband the chance to experience them too. Who knows?

2011

Like John Lennon’s lyrics, "imagine there is no countries", I wish people could be free to just go wherever their heart wants them to go. I know that's not possible, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to think of a world that doesn't have countries and borders and people could just be free, to live wherever they want.

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2011

2021