A Didactic Experiment with Cinema - Portuguese Emigration and Sense of Belonging

Abstract

Since the first decades of the twentieth century, Portugal has affirmed itself as an emigration country. This social, political, economic and demographic phenomenon has consequences, which have always been approached in a general way, neglecting the personal side and identity aspects that the displacement causes at an individual and family level. In long duration emigration, there is usually a paradoxical feeling of non-belonging/belonging to two spaces. On the one hand, already integrated into the new reality, the individual feels that to a certain extent they belong to the new space. However, in their identity memory, the culture and way of life of their nationality, region or place still exist. This dilemma of belonging is relatively abstract to convey to students when we work the demographic phenomenon. The Portuguese filmography has a recent film - The Golden Cage, released by the son of Portuguese emigrants, in France - where this feeling of belonging is represented, under ‘the cover' of a comedy. We showed the film to a group of Demography and Sociology students and had them explore this phenomenon. The results were extremely positive.