Lusophony is one of the cornerstones of Portuguese foreign policy. A cultural heritage discourse based on the linguistic legacy of colonialism - the common use of Portuguese - underpins this orientation. In the context of the globalisation of higher education, Portugal relies on the common use of Portuguese in former colonial territories to attract international students and thus improve its status in the knowledge market. Nevertheless, the colonial differentiation of immigrants from former colonies continues in everyday practice in Portugal. In contemporary Portuguese society, language is used as a tool in these processes of subject formation, which also take place within the space of higher education, as Brazilian linguistic diversity is constantly marked and discriminated against. The territorial border as a mechanism of exclusion of immigrants is often the focus of critical migration studies. In this proposed research, we focus on border practices that are enacted within the territory through processes of raciolinguistic differentiation. These practices reveal the exercise of everyday violence legitimised and normalised by the coloniality of power, knowledge and language. Thus, we discuss how borders are erased in the high politics of lusophone space, while they are normally enacted in the lived experiences of Brazilian students in Portugal. The present study aims to explore how official Portuguese discourse relies on a lusotropical notion of lusophony, through which borders are erased or at least blurred in order to attract international students from former colonies.The study also suggests that processes of othering in contemporary Portuguese society represent resistance to the prevailing lusotropical discourse in everyday politics, namely when the Portuguese identify the other as Brazilian on the basis of their (hegemonic) interpretation of linguistic performances, thereby positioning the other as inferior. The present study aims to contribute to the theoretical and conceptual conversation about what can be learned by treating language practices as a case of de/re-bordering processes. This requires a nominal approach to casing that sheds light on the practice of framing phenomena and is informed by interpretive perspectives.In this sense, the fieldwork for this proposed research is already an ongoing process, as the author is a full member of the group whose narratives and experiences will be analysed. “Theory is a scaffolding that keeps the researcher steady, guides the dialogue with participants, and provides the means for thematizing the researcher’s participation. Fieldwork constitutes in this context a sequence of experiments that continue until one's theory is in sync with the world one studies’

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