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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to indicate how place making and belonging are still largely governed by race in Brazil and South Africa. As such, it engages with debates about the postracial informed by the study of two urban settings that are discernible by their relationship with race issues: Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and Johannesburg’s townships. Design/methodology/approach The study provides a brief account of post-racial discourses in each country: Brazilian racial democracy and South Africa’s self-imagination as rainbow nation. Subsequently, these two major national self-understandings are probed using data gathered in the fieldwork (participant observation and in-depth interviews) carried out in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and Johannesburg’s townships between 2013 and 2015. Findings The main accomplishment of the study is to approach debates about senses of place, understood here as place making and belonging, from the everyday experiences of favela and township inhabitants. The study suggests discrepancies between the racialized senses of place in Brazilian and South African urban milieus and any sort of post-racial rhetoric. Despite the existence of norms and institutions promoting equal rights of citizenship in Brazil and South Africa, place making is still largely encumbered by the legacy of racial domination in both countries. Originality/value By adding new evidence to the research on everyday racism, the study explores the mutual influences between senses of place and the persistent patterns of racial segregation in two urban contexts of the global South. Beyond this, it offers a comparative approach that connects micro-level social dynamics and macro-level discourses.

"El Dossier “Afrodescendientes de América Latina. Racismo y desigualdad estructural desde una perspectiva postcolonial” es un digno y modesto homenaje al legado dejado por la Conferencia Mundial contra el Racismo, la Discriminación Racial, la Xenofobia y las Formas Conexas de Intolerancia, celebrada en Durban, Sudáfrica, hace ya más de veinte años. Fue aquella conferencia la que emancipó los estudios sobre el racismo de los yugos de la persecución, el no-reconocimiento, la invisibilidad y el silencio del problema en nuestra región. Agradecemos mucho a la revista RELASP por el espacio que nos ha dado..."

The expansion of sugarcane monoculture for the production of agrofuels since the early 2000s has caused territorial reconfigurations in the Brazilian countryside. This territorial reordering represents both a lucrative way of employing idle capital and the geographical expansion of capital domains. In the process, new markets are created and leveraged by discourses of environmental conservation while air, soil, and water are depredated and indigenous people, peasants, and quilombolas are dispossessed and dragged into new circuits of accumulation. Linked to the continuous search for new fronts of accumulation and the increasing commodification of nature, Brazilian agrofuel production may be understood as an expression of the logic of coloniality. A expansão da monocultura açucareira com vistas a produção de agro combustíveis tem causado reconfigurações territoriais na área rural brasileira. Implementada desde o princípio dos anos 2000, essa reordenação territorial apresenta ao mesmo tempo o emprego lucrativo do capital ocioso e a expansão geográfica do domínio do capital. Nesse processo, novos mercados são criados e alavancados por discursos ambientalistas, enquanto ar, solo e água são devastados. Demais, a população indígena, os campesinos e os quilombolas sofrem destituição e são forçados a integrar novos circuitos de acumulação. Relacionados à busca de novas frentes de acumulação e à comercialização da natureza, a produção brasileira de agro combustível pode ser compreendida como expressão da lógica da colonialidade.

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