beyondbrics

Today beyondbrics begins a short series on EM diasporas, seen through their community media. We’ll look at Filipinos in Hong Kong, Vietnamese in the Czech Republic, Indians in New York and more. We begin with Leros, the monthly magazine for Brazilians in London.

The cover story in issue 240 of Leros says it all: Como fazer render as escassas libras… (“How to stretch those scarce pounds a bit further”).

For citizens of booming Brazil living in downturn London, this is the question of the moment. Should they really be busting a gut as nannies, painters, labourers or waiters to send money home, or is it time to make the journey back themselves? And what about the thousands who have made long-term investments in businesses in the UK?

Vicente Lou, editor and owner of Leros since he set it up 20 years ago, says London’s Brazilian community has always been dynamic but is especially so now.

“The real is strong and the pound is weak, so it’s a lot easier for Brazilians to come here on holiday or to study,” he says. “But there are also a lot of Brazilians going home.”

These days Brazilians seem to be everywhere in London. You can hardly walk down the street or get on a bus or tube without hearing Brazilian Portuguese. It’s the same getting into a department store lift or sitting down in a bar or restaurant – where if the people at the next table aren’t Brazilian, the manager probably is. (Recent personal experience: the Bibendum Oyster Bar in South Kensington has a Brazilian manager; so does the Anglesea Arms near Ravenscourt Park.)

The figure you often hear for the number living in London is 200,000. Lou says this is pure guesswork, partly because the Brazilian consulate only recently started counting the number of Brazilian arrivals, and partly because many of them arrive on Portuguese, Italian or (like him) Spanish passports (all you need is a distant European relative and a lot of Brazilians have those) so they wouldn’t be counted anyway.

“Everybody exaggerates, especially if they have a business plan,” Lou says. And a lot of Brazilians do. Take a flick through Leros’s pages and what strikes you most – apart from the cheerfully predictable Brazilian editorial mix of music, football and Gisele Bündchen’s new line in underwear – is the huge volume of advertising that reflects the energy of London’s Brazilians, both as consumers and as entrepreneurs.

And it’s not all cargo transport, accommodation, money changers and cheap telecoms – the usual expatriate fare. Leros’s advertising pages have those in abundance but they are also packed with businesses offering services Brazilians do especially well: dentistry (Brazil’s dentists are among the best in the world), physiotherapy, psychotherapy, legal services, and less serious stuff like beauty treatments (the famous Brazilian waxing), restaurants, party caterers, hair dressers – page after page of them before you even get to the classifieds.

It’s thanks to these advertisers that Leros has grown from the eight pages of its first issue to 116 pages in issue 240, printed in full colour throughout on high quality glossy paper.

“We are in a privileged position,” Lou says. “Things [for Brazilian entrepreneurs] are bad, but they would be worse without Leros.

“Brazilians have a different attitude to advertising,” he explains. “They see it more as an investment than an expense. So they don’t cancel their ads like the British do. When you don’t have any money [coming in], you need your ads even more.”

Nevertheless, many are feeling the pain of Britain’s sluggish economy. “Most Brazilian businesses think of attracting Brazilian customers. That’s a problem for restaurants, for example, which really feel it when people move back. If you’re here for the short term you want to experiment. It’s only after you’ve lived here a couple of years that you want to eat Brazilian food.”

With the World Cup coming up in Brazil in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016, many Brazilians are thinking hard about heading back – or have already gone.

So what does the future hold for Leros? “Our income has fallen a bit, but so have our costs,” says Lou. “We’re working more for the same income. But we’re managing to keep on the same level. And we always pay our people on time. Nobody works here for free.”

Related reading:
The Diaspora Digest, beyondbrics