Duplos Funerais: quando a morte encontra o morto em contextos transnacionais

Abstract

In the anthropological literature there are few cases of an ethno-graphic analysis of the phenomenon of death in transnational contexts, notwithstanding the fact that anthropology has been one the social sciences that dedicated the most attention to death. Here we seek to addressthis gap by presenting a comparative analysis of three different situations of deaths that occurred in transnational contexts. The first case concerns Bengal immigrantsin England, described by the British anthropologist Kathy Gardner; the second occurred in Surinam, described by the Dutch anthropologist Ivon van der Pijl; the third case comes from the Nether-lands, amongst Brazilian migrants, and concerns our own research. In this way we seek to identify differences and approximations between the three cases, concluding that, in certain transnational contexts, the occurrence of the death of a migrant induces the familiesand/or communities to actions which we categorize and problematize as a ‘double funeral’ ritual.