Perpetual motion: Displacement of travestis from an ethnographic perspective

Abstract

Abstract Intense mobility is a characteristic observed in the context of travestis who work in sex markets. Studies on the subject usually emphasize that this mobility is related to a project of refinement, social ascension, and greater social, symbolic, and economic well-being, besides serving as a project of transformation and beautification of the bodies. Based on ethnographic work, I argue that, in order to understand the various orders of displacements of travestis, it is necessary to understand such movements as a perpetual motion machine, and not as being determined by imperatives that would necessarily lead to displacements from one place to another in search of something - much less something exceptional. In the observed context, displacements are a way of being in the world. Events occur during the displacements, not because of them.