This first analytical chapter problematises Brazilian migration to London as a process composed of diverse journeys. The journeys presented in this chapter complicate homogenising discourses on migration that construct categories such as ‘the economic migrant’ who flows through social networks from the Global South to the developed North seeking economic gain. The chapter illustrates how historical, institutional, economic, political and social context, alongside subjective, emotional and personal reasons (all shaped by class, gender and racialised identity) intersected in individuals’ decisions to migrate, as well as shaping how their journeys are performed and reformulated. The experience of arrival of Brazilians in the United Kingdom is rooted in the colonial and racial histories of Brazil and its afterlives – which is linked to the European presence in Brazil. This not only affects people’s desires to migrate (to a ‘modern country’), but also differently shapes the ways in which they undertake their journeys. The continuous connection between ‘here’ and ‘there’, past and present, is also evident in the way in which Brazilians are constantly developing and renegotiating their migration process through the markers of class, gender and ‘race’, that differently position them in both Brazil and in London.