Abstract

Based on an ethnographic fieldwork, the text considers the passionate adult settings resulting from the encounter of European tourists and Brazilian women in the seaside neighbourhood of Ponta Negra (Natal-RN, north-eastern Brazil). The analysis focuses on the female expectations, strategies and practices present in these transatlantic relations, assuming the impossibility of establishing a rigid demarcation between money and love, between programas and other forms of intimacy. Most women manage their relationships through a similar set of purposes, although considered and weighted variably. Material interests tend to assume great importance and transversality. However, they are interwoven with many other significant desires and projects in the domains of gender, conjugality, family and migrations. In pursuing these purposes, women demonstrate ingenious micropolitical procedures of intimacy, trying to compensate the adverse social position vis-à-vis the European tourists, structurally privileged by the intersections of nationality, class, “race” and gender.

Keywords:
Tourism; Transatlantic intimacy; Female expectations; Agency; Northeast Brazil