This article is concerned with the study of rural workers in Barras, Piauí, who repeatedly migrate to the states of Pará, Mato Grosso and Goiás and experience forms of slave-like labor. After a long period living away from home, they arrive full of news about hard work and exploitation, low wages, illusions, hardships, and the deceptions practiced by the contractors, which makes them want to return to their own world. After the end of the inter-harvest period, they go again, dressed in their best clothes as a feast day, imbued with the desire to materialize dreams, amazed by a world whose dangers pose challenges to them.
slave labor; migration and return