Brazil is increasingly emerging as a key destination for the world’s asylum seekers. Between 2015 and 2024, the country received over 454,000 asylum applications from people representing 175 different nationalities. Among these, more than 82% originated from Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian, and Angolan nationals, reflecting the country’s regional and linguistic connections as well as ongoing crises in Latin America, the Caribbean, and parts of Africa. In 2024 alone, Brazil recorded more than 68,000 new asylum applications, marking a 16.3% increase compared to the previous year. These numbers highlight both Brazil’s growing significance as a destination for displaced populations and the urgency of addressing the systemic challenges refugees face once they arrive.

While legal recognition and protection frameworks in Brazil have evolved, the lived reality for refugees remains precarious. Many encounter informal work, low wages, bureaucratic obstacles, and racialized exclusion, reflecting a profound disconnect between legal rights on paper and the material conditions on the ground. Examining this disconnect requires understanding Brazil’s historical refugee policies, labor market structures, and broader patterns of racial and social inequality.

Brazil’s refugee policy is deeply intertwined with its broader racialized political and economic projects. For much of the 20th century, Brazil adopted a highly selective approach to forced migration, privileging white European refugees while actively discouraging Black African and Asian migrants. This approach was neither neutral nor humanitarian; rather, it reflected a strategic effort to “whiten” the Brazilian population and advance a vision of modernization rooted in racial hierarchies.

In the aftermath of World War II, Brazil welcomed European refugees deemed culturally assimilable and economically beneficial. Many of these refugees were integrated into rural colonization projects or absorbed into low-skilled urban sectors, receiving little state support beyond their initial placement. By the early 1950s, Brazil had accepted approximately 40,000 European refugees. This Eurocentric policy intensified during the Cold War, as Brazil welcomed refugees fleeing communist regimes in Eastern Europe. These migrants contributed to the urban and industrial economy, yet their integration was shaped more by economic expediency than by concern for human rights.

The military dictatorship period (1964–1985) further complicated Brazil’s approach to forced migration. While some European and Latin American refugees were admitted, political dissidents and refugees from neighboring countries such as Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay were often viewed with suspicion. The state’s treatment of forced migrants was marked by repression and exclusion, and there was no structured public policy for refugee integration or labor market access. Those who did find work often did so informally, and their skills and professional backgrounds were largely ignored by the state.

The transition to democracy in the mid-1980s marked a turning point for Brazil’s refugee policy. The 1988 Federal Constitution enshrined human rights principles and affirmed Brazil’s commitment to providing asylum. In 1989, the country lifted its previous geographic restrictions under the 1951 Refugee Convention, enabling the recognition of refugees from any part of the world. Law 9.474, enacted in 1997, established the first national framework for refugee protection, creating the National Committee for Refugees (CONARE) to oversee asylum procedures and ensure compliance with international obligations.

Brazil’s post-1997 refugee policies signaled a commitment to humanitarian action, particularly within Latin America. CONARE gradually became more systematic in its operations, and Brazil began receiving refugees from a broader array of countries. The enactment of the Migration Law (Law No. 13.445/2017) further strengthened legal protections. This law recognizes migration as a human right and guarantees that immigrants enjoy the same inviolable rights as Brazilian nationals, including access to life, liberty, security, and property. It also introduced temporary humanitarian visas for stateless individuals or nationals from countries facing severe human rights violations.

Despite these legal frameworks, Brazil’s promises of inclusion have not translated into meaningful economic opportunities for most refugees. The legal right to work, access public services, and obtain legal status exists on paper but is undermined by a lack of coordinated state support for labor market integration. Civil society organizations often fill the gap left by the state, offering language training, vocational guidance, and employment assistance, yet these initiatives are limited in scope and reach.

As a result, many refugees are forced into informal, low-paying, and precarious jobs. They often work in sectors such as street vending, domestic service, construction, agriculture, and the textile industry-areas marked by high instability, low wages, and exploitative conditions. In 2023, authorities removed over 2,000 workers from degrading conditions in wineries in Bento Gonçalves, Rio Grande do Sul, including 83 Venezuelan migrants subjected to long hours, poor living conditions, and physical punishment. In São Paulo, the textile sector thrives on informal migrant labor, with workshops often operating underground and outside regulatory oversight.

Credential recognition poses another barrier. Many refugees arrive in Brazil with university degrees and professional experience, yet bureaucratic obstacles prevent them from validating qualifications. This results in downward occupational mobility and economic marginalization. Black migrants, particularly from Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo, face compounded discrimination that reflects Brazil’s long-standing racial hierarchies, deepening their exclusion from formal employment and reinforcing patterns of systemic inequality.

It is important to note that these labor market challenges are not unique to refugees. Millions of Brazilian workers, particularly those racialized as Black or Brown, also endure precarious, informal employment. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, in the last quarter of 2024, nearly 40 million Brazilians-or 38.6% of the employed population-worked informally, without access to social security, paid leave, or severance benefits. Informality disproportionately affects Black and Brown workers, with rates reaching 41.9% and 43.5% respectively, compared to 32.6% for white workers.

The racialized dimension of economic exclusion is further reflected in unemployment and income disparities. In the same period, the national unemployment rate was 6.2%, but 7.5% for Black people and 7% for Brown people, compared to just 4.9% for white Brazilians. Income inequalities are similarly stark: on average, white workers earned 73% more than Black workers and 67% more than Brown workers. These figures highlight the persistence of racialized labor hierarchies rooted in Brazil’s post-abolition social order.

Economic marginalization is inseparable from racialized violence in Brazil’s urban spaces. State violence, particularly in the form of lethal policing, disproportionately targets Black and Brown Brazilians. According to the Rede de Observatórios da Segurança, over 4,000 people were killed by police in 2023, with nearly 88% of victims identified as Black or Brown. Poor young men from favelas and peripheries are routinely treated as criminal threats, paralleling patterns of economic exclusion with the denial of safety and basic rights.

This intersection of economic and racialized violence extends to migrant and refugee populations. In São Paulo, the 2024 and 2025 killings of Senegalese street vendors Serigne Mourtalla Mbaye and Ngange Mbaye illustrate the dangers faced by informal workers. Both victims were killed during police operations targeting street vendors, highlighting the systemic hostility faced by migrant workers navigating informal labor markets. Operations such as Operação Delegada, which allow off-duty military police to work paid extra hours enforcing urban order, have been widely criticized for intensifying harassment, physical aggression, and seizures of goods from street vendors, particularly those racialised as Black or Brown and migrants.

The challenges faced by refugees in Brazil cannot be divorced from the country’s historical context. After the abolition of slavery in 1888, the Brazilian state launched a project of “whitening,” encouraging European immigration and systematically marginalizing Black Brazilians. European immigrants were settled in economically dominant southern and southeastern regions, while formerly enslaved people and other marginalized populations were relegated to urban peripheries and precarious labor. Today, migrants and refugees navigate a labor market structured by the same racialized hierarchies, facing barriers to formal employment, social protections, and safety.

This continuity illustrates that the hardships experienced by refugees are not anomalies; rather, they represent an intensification of the structural exclusions historically faced by poor, Black, and indigenous Brazilians. Informality, low wages, credential non-recognition, and exposure to police violence are experienced by both migrants and native-born citizens, revealing a labour market built on systemic exploitation and exclusion.

Despite Brazil’s formal legal frameworks, the gap between law and practice remains wide. A truly rights-based approach to refugee labor market inclusion requires more than legal recognition; it demands proactive state intervention. Coordinated public policies are necessary to provide language instruction, professional credential validation, anti-discrimination protections, and employment pathways that reflect refugees’ actual skills and qualifications. Civil society efforts, while invaluable, cannot substitute for a comprehensive state-led strategy that ensures equitable access to work and protection.

Furthermore, addressing the challenges faced by refugees requires confronting the broader racialized and socio-economic inequalities that shape Brazil’s labor market. The plight of migrants mirrors that of Brazil’s historically marginalized citizens. Any meaningful policy response must integrate these two realities, recognizing that inclusion is inseparable from broader social justice and labor rights reforms.

Brazil’s image as a humanitarian leader and a welcoming destination for refugees masks a more complex reality. While legal frameworks such as Law 9.474/1997 and the Migration Law of 2017 offer formal rights, the lived experiences of refugees reveal economic marginalization, informal employment, and racialized exclusion. The challenges faced by refugees echo the historical exclusions endured by poor, Black, and Brown Brazilians, highlighting the structural inequalities embedded within Brazil’s labor market and urban governance.

For Brazil to genuinely uphold its human rights commitments, legal recognition must be accompanied by material support, coordinated public policies, and anti-discrimination measures. Refugees need more than symbolic inclusion-they require protection, access to work commensurate with their skills, and safety in their communities. Addressing these challenges not only benefits migrants but also strengthens Brazil’s broader social fabric, promoting justice and equality for all residents. Until these structural barriers are confronted, Brazil will remain a country where formal rights exist, but the promise of equitable inclusion remains out of reach.

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Source: Weekly Blitz :: Writings