The Struggle for Lisbon’s Brazilian Carnival and Against Structural Xenophobia

Abstract

Since the mid-2010s, Brazilian immigrants have celebrated carnival festivities in the streets of Brazil’s ex-metropole, Lisbon, Portugal. As the events of the blocos (carnival ensembles) began relatively small, they initially paraded using the legal status of “demonstrations” with minimal fees. By 2020, when their events had grown to attracting crowds in the thousands, the police began to categorize them instead as “commercial events.” This new status required the blocos to pay exorbitant fees despite their celebrations in public space having no profit motive, which created many obstacles for the realization of the events. Brazilian immigrants have often interpreted the differential treatment of the carnival as a manifestation of the prejudicial xenophobia they often experience in Portugal. However, the City of Lisbon was careful not to stigmatize Brazilian cultural practices, claiming that Brazilians were treated no differently from others. I argue that Brazilian immigrants in Portugal have confronted structural xenophobia, a systemic form of immigrant exclusion manifested through bureaucratic obstacles that may or may not accompany prejudicial xenophobia. When event management systems do not structurally adapt towards the goals of equity and inclusion, they can exclude the festivities of these communities, which cannot take advantage of these systems as easily as actors of the host society. In 2023, the blocos launched a campaign to make the carnival viable through protests against and negotiations with the City. This article examines how the carnival community transformed into a social movement against structural xenophobia. In a promising development, Lisbon signed an agreement in 2025 officializing the carnival and providing a firmer footing for the festivity, which represented a victory following years of campaigning and negotiation. The article takes stock of the strategies the blocos deployed to ultimately achieve this status after years of combatting the structural xenophobia that had perennially left them in a precarious position.