This study analyzes the presence of foreigner students in the city of Redenção, state of Ceará, Brazil. The objective of this study is to understand the resignifications that Guineans produce of the urban space. This study aims to dialogue with researches made about the ongoing African diaspora in Brazil. In these studies, the emphasis in national identities recreated by dislocated individuals is highlighted. However, it is observed an under valorization of the spatial conditions when interpreting the location of these individuals in the “land of the other”. We argue that the foreign uses occur at a moment when Redenção experiments the growth of an imaginary of a city of liberty because it was the first urban nucleus to free slaves at the end of the nineteenth century. After the installation of the University for International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony in 2010, the new spatial milestone of this topography of liberty, the city began to appropriate symbols that compound a mosaic of contrasting historical temporalities.
Foreigners; Urban language; Social Imaginary; Contemporary diasporas; Urban space