Recently, Chile has become a complex context to study international immigration in intersectional terms. Firstly, the immigration to Chile has grown quickly at the last 10 years, doing large flows of immigrants an unexpected phenomenon (Doña-Reveco, 2018). Secondly, the qualitative characteristics of these recent migrants – mainly coming from South America and Caribbean, mostly female, non-white and composed by low-skilled workers – has done the new international migration an unwanted problem to many Chileans (Stefoni & Stang, 2017). These elements make the current immigration in Chile a problem of gender, race and class intersectionally, and produce an intricate framework to the Migration Studies.
Into the field of Migration Studies in Chile, several authors have focused their research on understand unconnectedly problems related to gender and race inequalities among Latin American immigrants. On the one hand, the gender studies have addressed their interest in comprehending the immigrant women, mainly from Bolivia and Peru, in vulnerability situation inside of traditional female work market (ex.: housework services and healthcare) (Stefoni, 2012; Stefoni & Stang, 2017). On the other hand, the race studies in migration have emphasized the African Americans and Indigenous immigrants’ experience of discrimination and racism in Chile, and how Chilean native people have rejected these outsiders because they threaten the Chilean national identity based on the ideal of whiteness (Tijoux, 2012; 2016). In general, the migration studies in Chile have researched gender or race separately, and have chosen to highlight the migrants’ socioeconomic susceptibility in the experience of moving abroad.
The type of research approach that has been given to the study of migrations in Chile has some limitations. While many studies have focused on the women experience of migration, very few researchers have dedicated themselves to understand the subjective experience of migrant men. The gender studies have been limited by targeting women without discuss gender how a set of power relations where women and men are imbricated. Moreover, these researches tend to be constituted from the critique to identities of gender or race in a segmented way, making necessary studies that promote an intersectional perspective of the migratory process in the country (Stefoni & Stang, 2017).
Furthermore, in terms of intercultural meet and production of identities between countries, the researches have highlighted only the intercultural relations among nations that share physical and geographic bounders with Chile (such as Argentina, Peru and Bolivia), leaving aside other types of boundaries in the study of migrant identities (Guizardi, López, Nazal & Valdebenito, 2017).
In the attempt to contribute to reduce these gaps, this research aims to analyze, from an intersectional perspective, how women and men immigrants produce and negotiate identities into interstitial spaces between two cultural frames (Brazilian and Chilean). In addition, it tries to realize how this process changes according to the social position of the subject, in terms of gender, race and class, simultaneously. Each foreigner must negotiate, on the one hand, with the origin culture and needs to maintain loyalty to the homeland. On the other hand, the migrant must acculturate to the host culture. At the same time, the intersection among migrant’s skin color/ethne, gender and class positions the subject into these identity negotiations. Therefore, this research focuses on the subjective experience of international migration, using the cases of Brazilians immigrants in Chile to analyze the dynamics of production of intercultural identities.
Two qualitative methods have been adopted in this study, both relevant to scan the production of identities into the migrant experience from an intersectional perspective. The first method, named Life Story Method, is a narrative form to access subjective stories from the participants which they are invited to tell freely about their migration experience. The second method, the Participative Photography, is a visual way to connect with non-discursive information about the participant. Therefore, about 20 participants, in diversity of race, gender and class, have been invited to tell their migration stories and take pictures of their daily life for one week. These two ways to produce data are complementary in the construction of a deep understanding about identity processes and their differences according to the position of each subject.
In general, the research will adopt a Biographical Analytical Perspective, a type of analysis that focuses on the knots of articulation between aspects of subjective life and social structures (Bertaux, 1999). This means that the analytical approach will highlight subjective and symbolic elements in dialogue and negotiation with global sociocultural dynamics that structure social life (such as the problems of an era of globalizing crisis, networks of gender, race and class relationships, disputes between dominant identity frameworks, etc.). In the specific case of Brazilian immigrants in Chile, it will be analyzed how each migrant´s story is connected to socioeconomic context in Latin America, the problem of racism and discrimination, the migration flows based on gender, the new nationalisms in the context of a globalization crisis, and so on.
It is important to note that this research is based on the assumption that the process of negotiating identities between cultures is differently experienced depending on the migrant’s social position. The social position is the place that each person occupies into the social relations hierarchy, composed by the intersection of various categories that the subject fits in. The more the subject belongs to several socially undervalued categories, the more he can exempt situations of precariousness and vulnerability. In the case of Brazilian migrants in Chile, it research expect to find that it is not the same be a rich and white man immigrant than be a black woman from middle class. Because of this, the experience of negotiating and producing identities between cultures into migration process will vary according to the position that the subject is into the networks of social relations, based on the intersection of gender, class and race.
Finally, this research seeks to offer knowledge about the dynamics of identity production into the migration process to disciplines linked with Human Mobility and Migration Studies in Latin American context. In the specific case of international migration studies in Chile, this research displays an understanding on the subjective experience of migration, part of the immigration issue that has been less studied. Moreover, it tries to show other ways of understanding the production of identities, seen here as a dynamic and fluid process, ever negotiated with the context. In conclusion, this research expects to provide to Social and Human Sciences a deeper understanding about identity processes into the migration experience.

Bertaux, D. (1999). El enfoque biográfico: Su validez metodológica, sus potencialidades. Proposiciones, 1-23. Obtenido de http://www.sitiosur.cl/r.php?id=436
Doña-Reveco, C. (2018). Amid Record Numbers of Arrivals, Chile Turns Rightward on Immigration. Migration Information Source, 1-9. Obtenido de https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/amid-record-numbers-arrivals-chile-turns-rightward-immigration
Guizardi, M., López, E., Nazal, E., & Valdebenito, F. (2017). Fronteras, Género y Patriarcado: Discusiones teóricas para replantear el transnacionalismo migrante. Límite. Revista Interdisciplinaria de Filosofía y Psicología, 12(38), 22-38. Obtenido de http://limite.uta.cl/index.php/limite/article/view/218
Stefoni, C. (2012). Mujeres inmigrantes en Chile: ¿Mano de obra o trabajadoras con derechos? Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado.
Stefoni, C., & Stang, F. (2017). La construcción del campo de estudio de las migraciones en Chile: notas de un ejercicio reflexivo y autocrítico. Íconos. Revista de Ciencias Sociales., 5(58), 109-129. doi:https://doi.org/10.17141/iconos.58.2017.2477
Tijoux, M. E. (2012). Negando al ‘otro’: el constante sufrimiento de los inmigrantes peruanos en Chile. En C. Stefoni, Mujeres inmigrantes en Chile: ¿mano de obra o trabajadoras con derechos? (págs. 15-42). Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado.
Tijoux, M. E. (2016). Racismo en Chile: La piel como marca de la inmigración. Santiago de Chile: Universitaria.