Overview

Published in 2008 and winner of the 2011 Thomas E. Skidmore Prize, Paulo Fontes's Migration and the Making of Industrial Sao Paulo is a detailed social history of Sao Paulo's extraordinary urban and industrial expansion. Fontes focuses on those migrants who settled in the suburb of Sao Miguel Paulista, which grew from 7,000 residents in the 1940s to over 140,000 two decades later. Reconstructing these migrants' everyday lives within a broad social context, Fontes examines the economic conditions that prompted their migration, their creation of an integrated identity and community, and their efforts to gain worker rights. Fontes challenges the stereotypes of Northeasterners as culturally backward, uneducated, violent, and unreliable, instead seeing them as a resourceful population with considerable social and political resolve. Fontes's investigations into Northeastern life in Sao Miguel Paulista yield a fresh understanding of Sao Paulo's incredible and difficult growth while outlining how a marginalized population exercised its political agency.

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9780822361152

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Reviews

Paulo Fontes's excellent scholarship and strong narrative sense makes Migration and the Making of Industrial Sao Paulo a book that should be widely read. -- Jeffrey Lesser, author of Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present Paulo Fontes's work stands out as the best book in the current surge in research about the Brazilian working class. Fontes challenges the received wisdom of previous generations of scholars and presents an integrated study of the complex interactions of race, gender, social origins, and political processes among those who migrated to Sao Paulo. Migration and the Making of Industrial Sao Paulo makes for an enjoyable and accessible read for students and scholars of Brazilian history, modern Latin America, and labor history alike. -- James N. Green, author of We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States

Paulo Fontes's work stands out as the best book in the current surge in research about the Brazilian working class. Fontes challenges the received wisdom of previous generations of scholars and presents an integrated study of the complex interactions of race, gender, social origins, and political processes among those who migrated to Sao Paulo. Migration and the Making of Industrial Sao Paulo makes for an enjoyable and accessible read for students and scholars of Brazilian history, modern Latin America, and labor history alike. --James N. Green, author of We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States

Paulo Fontes's excellent scholarship and strong narrative sense make Migration and the Making of Industrial Sao Paulo a book that should be widely read. -- Jeffrey Lesser, author of Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present Paulo Fontes's work stands out as the best book in the current surge in research about the Brazilian working class. Fontes challenges the received wisdom of previous generations of scholars and presents an integrated study of the complex interactions of race, gender, social origins, and political processes among those who migrated to Sao Paulo. Migration and the Making of Industrial Sao Paulo makes for an enjoyable and accessible read for students and scholars of Brazilian history, modern Latin America, and labor history alike. -- James N. Green, author of We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States Fontes offers an unprecedented closeup account of Brazil's most crucial yet understudied mass movements of people: the migration of thousands of impoverished rural northeasterners to the country's burgeoning industrial centers in the mid-20th century... By centering the complexity of this important working population, Fontes contributes a fresh perspective on the vital processes of urbanization and labor activism that defined and continues to shape this crucial South American powerhouse. Highly recommended. -- B. A. Lucero Choice

Author Information

Paulo Fontes is Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences (CPDOC) Fundação Getulio Vargas – Rio de Janeiro; a researcher at the Brazilian Council of Research and Development (CNPq); and the coeditor of The Country of Football: Politics, Popular Culture, and the Beautiful Game in Brazil. Barbara Weinstein is Silver Professor of History at New York University and the author of The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil, also published by Duke University Press.

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