Brazil

This Migration Profile of Brazil belongs to the series of the first four South American profiles produced by IOM´s Research Unit, in coordination with IOM offices in the region. The preparation of the Profile was possible thanks to the close collaboration with Brazilian government agencies involved with migration management.

The Migration Profile of Brazil shows that the country has historically been recognized as a destination country for immigrants. At the end of the 1930s, around 4.4 million immigrants lived in Brazil, most of them comers from Portugal, Italy, Japan and Germany. Nevertheless, the Profile underlines that this flow was reversed in the last years. Since the 1980s, a new phenomenon could be detected in the dynamics of this society: the emigration of Brazilian citizens abroad. It has been estimated that a number ranging from 2,5 to 4 millions of Brazilian nationals live outside their country of origin, mainly in the United States, Paraguay, Japan, the United Kingdom and Portugal.

Given this new migration scenario, the need to re-think the institutional framework of Brazil in connection with the matter has arisen, on the basis of the rights guaranteed by the Brazilian Constitution. In recent years, state agencies and civil society organizations have sprung out and been strengthened, generating actions such as the drafting of a new Migration Law, the development of the new migration policy, and the implementation of counter-trafficking policies, among others.