Biography
Professor of Sociology at the University of São Paulo
Brazil’s Racial Inequalities and Regional Variations: Recent Changes and Age-old Challenges
Afro-Latin American Research Institute Fellow
Fall 2016
Márcia Lima is Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of São Paulo, and focuses on racial inequality in her scholarship. She is also a senior researcher at CEBRAP [Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning] and at CEM [Center for Metropolitan Studies], with projects linked to CEPID-FAPESP [Center for Research, Innovation, and Dissemination at the São Paulo Research Foundation]. She is the editor of the Brazilian Journal of Bibliographic Information on Social Sciences. She has published and supervised students in the following areas: employment market, occupational trajectories, race and gender inequalities, and affirmative action policies in Brazil.
Project Description
Brazil’s Racial Inequalities and Regional Variations: Recent Changes and Age-Old Challenges
This research proposal builds on a broader project dedicated to understanding the trajectory of Brazilian social inequality over the past fifty years through the use of census data from 1980 until 2010. This project intends to analyze racial inequalities through the inclusion of a significant dimension, which has been under-analyzed in recent studies: regional differences. Racial inequalities should be interpreted in light of historically constructed regional differences, which currently act as a discrimination mechanism. The proportion of black and brown people within the country’s different regions is not a mere demographic variable, but also an important factor for understanding the racial dynamics within these spaces, their social and economic indicators, as well as their public investment strategies.
The present research will conduct a comparative analysis between the country’s regions and their major metropolises to investigate how a region defines or redefines racial inequalities. The key questions in this project are: in which regions do we find a greater reduction of racial inequalities? In which regions do we find a persistence of inequalities? To what extent does living in a particular region of the country increase or decrease the odds of the black population’s socioeconomic attainment?