Academic positions

Since 2020
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Maria Sibylla Merian International Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America, University of Cologne, Germany

2017–2020
Incoming Pegasus² Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, University of Leuven, Belgium

2013–2017
Postdoctoral Researcher and Member of the Steering Committee of the Doctoral Programme ‘Europe in the Globalised World’, University of Konstanz, Germany: Center of Excellence ‘Social Foundations of Cultural Integration’

2009–2013
Doctoral Research Fellowship, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI MMG), Göttingen, Germany

Education

2015-2020
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Museo Nacional, PPGAS, Brazil, Postdoctoral Researcher

2009–2013
University of Oxford, UK, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, DPhil in Social and Cultural Anthropology

2007–2008
University of Oxford, UK, Centre for Migration, Policy and Society, MPhil (Distinction on Thesis) in Migration Studies
 

• Urban Studies
• Migration and Im/Mobility
• Transnationalism and Globalization
• Inequality and Social Stratification
• Conviviality, Cooperation and Conflict
• Race and Ethnicity
• Intersectionality and Queer
• Religion and Ethics

Urban alliances. The politics between old and new residents

Urban alliances asks how newcomers and longstanding residents in Brazilian cities, who face facets of the same post/colonial structures of exclusion, have differential access to privilege and citizenship, how they perceive each other, enter into dialogue, and labour to construct alliances at the fractured locuses they occupy. The project grounds in ethnographic fieldwork in cities like Rio de Janeiro (since 2014) and São Paulo (since 2019). The project conceptualises the politicization of newcomers alongside long-term residents in the 21st century as well as the potential and challenges for solidarity among marginalized populations, be they immigrant, Black, Left and/or Queer. All of them clearly face violent realities of intersectional exclusion grounded in the structures of coloniality of which racism, conservativism, and capitalist exploitation are part. Still, newcomers to Latin American cities defend ethical and political positions that may hold a strong potential for tension and conflict within local contexts of political struggle. Whiteness, negritude, gender/sexuality, and political orientation do not necessarily mean the same to Brazilian residents and African or European newcomers. The project will renew the understanding of global asymmetries and how they configure locally in contemporary Brazil. The refined understanding of local politics and societal resilience will be relevant not only to Latin American cities but also cities in other locations in the Global South and in the Global North.

(1) Valued difference. Recently arrived in Rio de Janeiro (2014-2020)
Valued Difference traces social hierarchies, inequality, and urban change through the hi/stories of arrival of Senegalese (Heil 2020d, 2018) and Spanish (Heil 2020e) in Rio de Janeiro, a metropolitan space that envisioned a bright future before falling back into the current crisis. I enquire into how urban newcomers in Rio de Janeiro experience distinct social mobilities in(to) a locality which is characterized by multiple contradicting and interdependent social hierarchies that are historically shaped by race and class and, in recent years once more, by migration-related diversification. The project contributes to the emergence of a more nuanced, less concerted, and decentralized understanding of cities and social stratification. This conceptualization depends on how urban dwellers interpret, judge, and manage the situations through which they pass in everyday life and which take shape at the intersection of changing global relations and con/diverging social imaginaries (Heil 2020d, 2020e, 2019a, under review a, b). Questions of both situational and institutionalized hierarchisation take centre stage on multiple levels and in various arenas: origin, race, class, sex, gender, education, and legal status. Socio-economic precariousness (Heil 2017) intersects with problem-ridden constellations of black-black distinction (Heil 2020b, 2019c), postcolonial re/deconstructions of power hierarchies (Heil 2020e), and challenges of religious and gendered difference (Heil 2019a). Due to the interferences of unanticipated power configurations, knowledge regimes, public cultures, and sexual epistemologies, urban newcomers live their local incorporation in distinct spaces, shifting encounters, variously configured networks, and their respective temporalities. Different from long-term dwellers, newcomers draw upon conflicting translocal and diachronic reference frames. The project combines participant observation, informal, semi-structured interviews, and transect-walks with online ethnographic approaches to handle its vast geographic and temporal scope. This comparative study results in a ‘thick’, multi-sited, and multi-layered ethnographic account of valued difference, intersecting hierarchies, and trajectories of inequality.

Funding:
Incoming Pegasus² Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant 665501; Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) - Postdoctoral Fellowship, Centre of Excellence, University of Konstanz
Fieldwork:
Rio de Janeiro (2.5 years), Buenos Aires (1 month)
Relevant network: 
- Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
- Núcleo Interdisciplinar sobre Estudos Migratórios, UFRJ
- Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

(2) Stranded on transit in Djibouti. Female Ethiopian migrations (2017-2020)
Stranded in transit comparatively enquires into the migration trajectories and lived experiences of East and West African women who migrate to Europe, the Middle East, or Latin America. Many are stranded in transit and some have returned to their places of origin. Taking different places of origin in Ethiopia and Senegal into account, the project aims to comprehend the lived experiences of, and challenges faced by Ethiopian and Senegalese female migrants. The risks and challenges they face range from sex trafficking and exploitation, over detention and kidnapping for ransom, to social exclusion and accusations. This project, however, goes beyond a normative victimization narrative and pays particular attention to the women’s agency: the creative strategies they employ while negotiating their precarious and vulnerable position. The project studies the different mechanisms female migrants use to overcome challenges they face and their different pathways of incorporation. Furthermore, we enquire into the prospects of mobility and/or settlement of migrants in a transit country and the factors that affect their decisions to further migrate, settle, or return home. Benefiting from long-term contacts in the field sites, the project is based on qualitative ethnographic methods and life-story interviews.Comparing East and West African migration, transit, and return, we highlight the parallels and differences in the conditions and experiences of two very disparate gendered migration dynamics which sharpen the re/conceptualisation of gendered migration.

Funding:
Senior Postdoctoral Fellow, Volkswagen Foundation
Fieldwork:
Senegal (2 months); Brazil (2 month); Ethiopia (1 month)
Relevant network:
- Dr Meron Zeleke Eresso (PI), Rift Valley University, Addis Ababa
- Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa
- Núcleo Interdisciplinar sobre Estudos Migratórios, UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro
- Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Daka