Life after Slavery: Migration, Work and Culture in Brazil: 1900–29

This paper examines the processes of reorganization of the lives of the emancipated and their descendants in the decades following the abolition in Brazil, emphasizing the socioeconomic conditions, foreign policies, tensions and conflicts, local and national, that influenced the migration of workers to southeastern urban centers. Cities such as Rio de Janeiro offered attractions like work, and cultural activities, and opportunities to experience religiosity for the Black community, attracting freedmen and their descendants from different parts of Brazil. Although there were a series of measures to discipline and control Afro-Brazilians, they fought hard to rebuild their lives and created communities that blended socio-cultural traditions both from their places of origins and those found in Rio after the abolition.