THE ETHNIC WEB Socio-Spatial Characteristics of South Florida’s Brazilian Community

This thesis examines South Florida’s Brazilian community’ spatial organization in the region and its socio-cultural features in order to understand the nature of this immigrant community and the characteristics of its spatial structure. To do so, this study uses qualitative interviews with members of Brazilian community with the purpose of understanding how they make decisions of where to live, how they are connected to the broader community, how the community affects their individual experiences of living in the region and plan for the future. In addition, using secondary literature, it will compare the transformation of Brazilians ethnic community with that of the Cuban, Haitian and Russian communities located in South Florida. Situating this case within ongoing theoretical debates about immigrant incorporation in US cities, I will make the case that classical ethnic enclave or the spatial assimilation concept does not fit the spatial and social structure of Brazilian community.
The conclusion of this paper is that the US new immigrant ethnic groups may transform their shapes into a new multicultural ethnic web, as a result of the actual economic and social phenomena. The new ethnic web does not discard the disappearance of classical ethnic enclave, or the spatial assimilation processes, but given the actual international and local socio-economic processes, the three types of processes could overlap or be complementary.