Brasileiros no Mundo: a global approach to governing populations abroad?

Only in the mid-1990s did Brazil join the world-wide trend of states having diaspora engagement policies, and implemented specific programmes to address the needs and claims of its citizens abroad. In contrast to other Latin American countries, it did so following a low-visibility, technical approach led by consular offices, including very cautious attempts to organize emigrants and regulate their gradual access to migration policy-making. It also tied these outreach efforts to the building up of a global role in international affairs. This article analyses the politics and impact of these processes on foreign policy management, with special emphasis on the implications of these changes in terms of adapting policy instruments to a new notion of citizenship beyond borders and innovative techniques to manage populations abroad. It also investigates these issues in one major destination for Brazilians abroad: London, where Brazilians have lately become the largest Latin American community, but have faced serious obstacles to improving their resources for organization and mobilization. The findings suggest some discrepancies and tensions among officials' views and between policy design and actual results, thus illustrating a gap between foreign policy goals and implementation capacity at both the global and local levels. Thus, regarding the practice of foreign policy-making, the article provides novel information about recent institutional changes in state bureaucracies and the uncertainties and uneven impact of policy implementation. It also casts some doubts on Brazil's overall capacity to carry out a global strategy in this realm.