24 ACUMEN • SPRING 2023 Strangers in Their Own Land CHRIS QUIRK Terry-Ann Jones examines the experiences of seasonal, migrant sugarcane workers in Brazil, providing insights in the country’s deep-seated inequalities Jones is a professor of political science and Africana studies and deputy provost of undergraduate education. She has focused much of her research efforts over the last 15 years on understanding the complex social and economic situation that the sugarcane harvesters face and has detailed these findings in her most recent book, Sugarcane Labor Migration in Brazil. Brazil is the fifth-largest country by area in the world, larger than the 48 contiguous U.S. states. It has more than 213 million inhabitants and had the 12th-largest Gross Domestic Product last year, but Brazil is rife with economic inequality. Despite its aggregate economic heft, Brazil’s GDP per capita is around one-tenth of that of the United States, ranking just behind Mauritius, according to the International Monetary Fund. Oxfam International, while noting some recent progress, has called the economic inequality in Brazil extreme and rates it as one of the most unequal nations in the world. Jones first traveled to Brazil as a faculty member developing a student exchange program. She recalls waiting at John F. Kennedy International Airport to board her plane that day at the same time France was eliminating Brazil in the quarter-final of the 2006 World Cup. “That was a pretty sad flight,” she recalls. While in Brazil, Jones had a conversation with a sugarcane harvester that sparked her interest in the plight of these workers, and she was determined to learn more. “On that first visit, I discovered that these workers have long, long days in the Thousands of workers from northeast Brazil make the journey to plantations in the more affluent southern part of the country each year to manually harvest the sugarcane that fuels Brazil’s lucrative ethanol industry. The trek is long, and the work is arduous and dangerous. Among the worst of the adversity these workers face, though, is the sense of degradation they feel at the hands of their own nation and, at times, by their fellow citizens. They are, for all intents and purposes, says Terry-Ann Jones, aliens in their own country.
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