Transnational Archipelago: Perspectives on Cape Verdean Migration and Diaspora

299 Pages·2008·5.61 MB·English

by  Luis Batalha

Luís Batalha is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the Edited by
Technical University of Lisbon and author of The Cape Verdean luís batalha and jørgen carling
Diaspora in Portugal: Colonial Subjects in a Postcolonial World (2004).
Jørgen Carling is Senior Researcher at the International Peace
Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), where he does research on migration
and transnationalism.
T
Migration has been essential to Cape Verde since the birth of the na- r
a
tion, and connections to faraway places continue to dominate daily life
n
on the islands. This book makes a signifi cant contribution to the study s
n
of international migration and transnationalism by exploring the Cape
a
Verdean diaspora through its geographical diversity and with a range
t
of thematic perspectives. The fi rst part of the book is a journey to eight i
o
Cape Verdean emigrant communities, from Argentina in the South to
n
Sweden in the North. These chapters testify to the strikingly diverse a
outcomes of migration from a single, small country. The second part l

A
of the book explores selected themes in Cape Verdean migration and
r
transnationalism, including music, language, the Internet and gender
c
relations. h
i
p
This comprehensive account of Cape Verdean migration traces intriguing routes of travel,
e
explores little known destinations in four different continents and uncovers a variety of
l
expressions of belonging and longing. By looking beyond the main migratory routes to major a
destinations, investigated in most migration research, it opens up for important new horizons g
of research and insight.
o
Karen Fog Olwig, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
A unique strength of this book is to show how the same group becomes part of a new country
and stays connected to its homeland in different contexts. Few books offer such a valuable b
comparative perspective. a
t
Peggy Levitt, Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Wellesley College a Transnational Archipelago
l
h
This book brings together a new generation of scholars of Cape Verdean migration from a
around the world and from various disciplines. Batalha a
n
and Carling have given us an indispensable new resource
d
for anyone interested in Cape Verde and for students of c Perspectives on Cape Verdean
migration in general. a
r
Deirdre Meintel, Director, Groupe de recherche Diversité l
urbaine (GRDU) , University of Montreal in Migration and Diaspora
g
www.aup.nl
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aup_transnational_def.indd 1 03-06-2008 09:41:26
Transnational Archipelago
Perspectives on Cape Verdean
Migration and Diaspora
Edited by Lu´ıs Batalha and Jørgen Carling
Cover design:Neon, design and communications,SabineMannel
Layout: The DocWorkers, Almere
ISBN 978 90 5356 994 8
NUR 741 /763
© Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2008
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright re-
served above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or in-
troduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the
authorof the book.
Contents
Foreword 5
Notes on contributors 7
1. Cape Verdean Migration and Diaspora 13
Jørgen Carlingand Lu´ısBatalha
SECTION I– DIASPORA COMMUNITY PORTRAITS 33
2. Cape Verdeans inthe U.S. 35
Marilyn Halter
3. Cape Verdeans inArgentina 47
Marta Maffia
4. Cape Verdeans inSa˜o Tome´ and Pr´ıncipe 55
Augusto Nascimento
5. Cape Verdeans inPortugal 61
Lu´ısBatalha
6. Cape Verdeans inSpain 73
Roc´ıo MoldesFarelo andLuzia OcaGonza´lez
7. Cape Verdeans inItaly 81
JacquelineAndall
8. Cape Verdeans inthe Netherlands 91
Jørgen Carling
9. Cape Verdeans inSweden 101
Lisa A˚kesson
SECTION II– MIGRATION AND TRANSNATIONALISM 111
10. Making Waves: Cape Verdeans,Whalingand theUsesof
Photography 113
MemoryHolloway
11. And When theWomen Leave? Female Emigration from
Boa Vista 131
Andre´a de Souza Lobo
12. Cape Verdean Tongues: Speakingof‘Nation’ at Home and
Abroad 145
Ma´rcia Rego
13. Cape Verdean Transnationalism on the Internet 161
So´nia Melo
4 TRANSNATIONALARCHIPELAGO
14. Imagesof Emigration inCape Verdean Music 173
Juliana BrazDias
15. Cape Verdean Migration, Music Recordings and Performance 189
Rui Cidra
16. DiasporicNetworks,Political Change, and the Growth of
Cabo-Zouk Music 205
JoAnneHoffman
17. Managing Work and Care for Young Children
in Cape Verdean Families inPortugal 221
Karin Wall
18. Cape Verdeans’ Pathways to Health:Local Problems,
Transnational Solutions 237
Huub Beijers andCla´udia de Freitas
19. Cape Verdean DiasporicIdentity Formation 255
GinaSa´nchez Gibau
20. The Resilience ofthe Cape Verdean MigrationTradition 269
Lisa A˚kesson
SubjectIndex 285
Foreword
This is the first book to present a comprehensive exploration of Cape
Verdean migration and transnationalism. It is also one of very few an-
thologies that presents a range of geographical and thematic perspec-
tives on any single diaspora. The book emerged out of a conference or-
ganised at the Centro de Estudos de Antropologia Social (CEAS), at the
Instituto Superior de Cieˆncias do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE), in
Lisbon, April 2005. The conference comprised forty presentations by
researchers from a dozen different countries. The chapters in this book
include substantially revised versions of selected conference papers,
chapters that merged individual conference papers, as well as newly
written chapters. The conference itself was trilingual (Portuguese,
Spanish and English) and several chapters have been translated into
English.WhilethereisagrowingliteratureonCapeVerdeanmigration
in Portuguese, our ambition with this book was to make high-quality
researchonCapeVerdeanmigration accessibletoaninternationalEng-
lish-speaking audience.
Most of the research presented in this book would not have been
possible without the contributions of Cape Verdean informants in-
volved in the diaspora and on the islands. We are all grateful for the
willingness of so many Cape Verdeans to generously share their experi-
ences for the benefit of our research. There are, unfortunately, no aca-
demics from Cape Verde among the contributors to this volume. How-
ever, it is promising to see that higher education and research is devel-
oping rapidly in Cape Verde, and that increasing numbers of Cape
Verdeanstudents overseasare doing graduateresearchlinkedto migra-
tion.
The conference in Lisbon was supported by the Fundac¸a˜o para a
Cieˆncia e a Tecnologia (FCT), and the Fundac¸˜ao Luso-Americana
(FLAD). We are also grateful to Anto´nia Lima, who while acting as
Chair of the CEAS, promptly agreed to discusswith the board the orga-
nisation of the conference as part of its annual programme, and for
Isabel Cardana’s contribution to the organisation of the conference.
The chapters in the book have been peer reviewed and commented
upon by several anonymous referees, whose efforts we greatly appreci-
ate. We would also like to thank our editor at the University of Amster-
6 TRANSNATIONALARCHIPELAGO
dam Press, Erik van Aert for his encouraging support, and Achim Le-
wandowski for permission to use the cover photograph of children
playingin front of the old secondary school in Sa˜o Vicente.
Lisbonand Oslo, December 2007
Lu´ıs Batalha and Jørgen Carling
Notes on contributors
LISAA˚KESSON is Director of Studies in Social Anthropology at the School
of Global Studies, Go¨teborg University. Her PhD in Social Anthropol-
ogy addressedthe meaningsof migration in Cape Verdeand was based
on extensive fieldwork in Sa˜o Vicente during the period 1996–2003.
She iscurrently doing researchonremittancestoCape Verdewithafo-
cus on rural Santo Anta˜o. She has also done fieldwork among Cape
Verdeans in Sweden. Her research, teaching and supervision also cov-
ers family and kinship, ethnic and cultural diversity, and human traf-
ficking.
JACQUELINE ANDALL is Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at the Depart-
ment of European Studies, University of Bath. Her research interests
are on labour migration, female migration, second generations and Ita-
lian colonialism/postcolonialism. She is author of Gender, Migration
and Domestic Service (Ashgate, 2000), editor of Gender and Ethnicity in
Contemporary Europe (Berg 2003) and co-editor (with Derek Duncan) of
Italian Colonialism: Legacy and Memory (Peter Lang, 2005). Her current
researchis onGhanaian migration toItaly’s industrial districts.
LUI´SBATALHA is a social anthropologist and Associate Professor at theIn-
stituto Superior de Cieˆncias Sociais e Pol´ıticas, Universidade Te´cnica
de Lisboa. He has done ethnographic work among Cape Verdeans in
Portugal, the U.S. and Cape Verde exploring issues relating to ethni-
city, race and identity construction. He has published a book about the
presence of Cape Verdeans in Portugal, The Cape Verdean Diaspora in
Portugal: Colonial Subjects in a Postcolonial World (Lexington Books,
2004) as well as several articles and book chapters on related issues.
He is currently working on the presence of the Cape Verdeans in Mo-
zambique’s late colonial period asmiddle-mencivil servants.
HUUB BEIJERS is manager of transcultural psychiatry for Symfora group
Mental Health Care in the Netherlands. He has a background in medi-
cal anthropology and social psychology. He was responsible for the de-
velopment of the Apoio project, a community mental health care initia-
tive for Cape Verdeans in Rotterdam. His researchin the Cape Verdean
community in Rotterdam focused on experiences of psychosocial dis-
8 TRANSNATIONALARCHIPELAGO
tress, explanations of distress, pathways to health, and experiences of
exclusion and discrimination in mental health care. He is currently de-
veloping research on experiences of Cape Verdean girls sexually abused
by relatives.
JØRGENCARLINGis Senior Researcher at the International Peace Research
Institute, Oslo (PRIO) in Norway. He holds a PhD in human geogra-
phy based on a case study of Dutch-Cape Verdean transnationalism.
He has done research on several aspects of migration and transnation-
alism, including human smuggling, migration control, transnational
families and remittances. He has extensive fieldwork experience from
Cape Verde, and among Cape Verdeans in the Netherlands and Italy.
He has published in most of the leading journals in migration studies,
including the International Migration Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies,
Global Networksand Journal ofEthnicand Migration Studies.
RUICIDRA isaresearcher anddoctoralcandidateat the Institutode Etno-
musicologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. He has carried
out fieldwork on the islands of Santiago and Sa˜o Vicente, and in the
Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, on Cape Verdean Music and on Hip-hop.
He is preparing a PhD dissertation on the creative processes of Santia-
go’s young musicians. He is co-editor of Enciclope´dia da Mu´sica em Por-
tugal no Se´culo XX, where he has written forty entries on musical gen-
res, processes and musicians from Portugal, Cape Verde and other Lu-
sophone African countries.
JULIANA BRAZ DIAS is Professor of Anthropology at Universidade Federal
de Mato Grosso, in Brazil. She holds a doctoral degree in Social
Anthropology from Universidade de Bras´ılia. Her research has focused
on popular culture and social identity in Cape Verde. She has extensive
fieldwork experience, studying several aspects of Cape Verdean society,
since 1998. Her teaching and research activities also cover kinship, mi-
gration, colonialism and museums.
ROCIOMOLDESFARELO is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Universi-
dad Europea de Madrid. She holds a PhD in political science and so-
ciology from theUniversidad Complutense de Madrid. Herdissertation
is an ethnographic study of Cape Verdean communities in Spain,
based on extensive fieldwork in the years 1995–1998. Her current re-
search is concentrated on the sociology of labour and migration and on
human resource management. She is the author of Prevenir el racismo
en el trabajo en Espan˜a (IMSERSO, Diciembre 2000) and the co-author
of Paro, Exclusio´n y Pol´ıticas de Empleo. Aspectos sociolo´gicos (Tirant Lo
Blanch, Octubre,2004).
NOTESONCONTRIBUTORS 9
CLA´UDIADEFREITAS is a PhD candidate in Social Sciences at the Utrecht
University,TheNetherlands. She has abackground in ClinicalPsychol-
ogy and holds a MA in Migration and Ethnic Studies from the Univer-
sity of Amsterdam, based on a study of Cape Verdeans’ perceptions of
care providers, access to health care and transnational health care seek-
ing. She is currently writing her dissertation on Cape Verdeans’ partici-
pation in mental health care and recovery. She is the author of Em Bus-
ca de Um Bom Me´dico – Quando a Sau´de Na˜o Tem Fronteiras: Percep¸co˜es
dos Caboverdianos Sobre Profissionais de Sau´de na Holanda (Lisbon:
ACIME, 2006).
GINASA´NCHEZGIBAU is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthro-
pology at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. She
earned a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin,
specializing in the African diaspora. She conducted fieldwork on iden-
tity formation among Cape Verdeans in Boston, Massachusetts, and in
the islands. Her current research focuses on the construction of Cape
Verdean diasporic identity in cyberspace. She has published articles in
Transforming Anthropology, Identities, and The Western Journal of Black
Studies.
LUZIAOCAGONZA´LEZ is Lecturer of Applied Anthropology at the Universi-
dade de Tra´s-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal. She holds a Master’s
Degree in applied anthropology from the Universidad de Santiago de
Compostela. Her research and fieldwork is linked with social interven-
tion, primarily with the Cape Verdean community in Galiza (Galicia),
on which she has published various articles in Portugal and Spain. She
hasalsodonefieldworkontheislandofSantiago,fromwherethecom-
munity originates. She has created the anthropological exhibition Ba-
dias:cabo-verdianasnaGaliza.Shecurrentlymanagesaparticipatoryre-
search with women in Santiago’s fishing communities.
MARILYNHALTER is Professor of History and Research Associate at the In-
stitute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University.
Her books include Between Race and Ethnicity: Cape Verdean American
Immigrants, 1860-1965 (University of Illinois Press, 1993) and with Ri-
chard Lobban, The Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cape Verde
(Scarecrow Press, 1988 edition) as well as Shopping for Identity: The
Marketing of Ethnicity (Schocken Books, 2000) and New Migrants in the
Marketplace: Boston’s Ethnic Entrepreneurs (University of Massachusetts
Press, 1995). Her current research project, ‘The Newest African Ameri-
cans’, is a study of recent West African immigrants and refugees to the
U.S.