Abstract
AbstractIn the USA, Portuguese-Americans are proud of being immigrants, seeing themselves as a part of the endless process of building the country. On the contrary, “emigrant” status does not fit well with their own perceptions of identity. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in Cambridge, Massachusetts, my aim is to discuss the ambivalent and tense relationship between being simultaneously a Portuguese immigrant in the USA and an American emigrant in one’s homeland. This discussion will contribute to studying the social construction of the “emigrant” category among the “Portuguese diaspora”. By treating Portuguese-American perceptions of the “emigrant” category as a reliable source, a paradoxical contrast between the use of an “immigrant” status as a choice versus an “emigrant” status as an imposition emerges. “Emigrant” is in fact a hetero-classification imposed by others, while “immigrant” comes across as a self-classification. While “being Portuguese” in the US seems to have an inclusive effect in the host society – helping to build a sense of belonging to what is experienced as “home” in a transnational context – “being an emigrant” in Portugal appears to exclude them in their homeland, retaining the strength of a historical prejudice associated with a stigmatised category.
Highlights
My approach began in the place where this movement had emerged, and aimed to understand views of Portuguese-speaking immigrants and their descendants about this appeal, which was led by the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers (MAPS), a social-service non-profit organization (NPO) based in Cambridge
A substantial part of my fieldwork was dedicated to understanding what it meant for my interlocutors to be American, to become a US citizen, and how “being Portuguese” or “of Portuguese origin” was part of “successful integration” into American society
Despite my fieldwork leading me to interact with different speakers of Portuguese as variously an official, native or heritage language, a closer relationship with the Portuguese-American community was inevitable. This led me to discover dimensions I had not even thought of addressing, such as the question raised by João Feitor
Summary
An Immigrant in America Yes, But Not an Emigrant in My Own Country! The Unbearable Weight of a Persistent Label. The reflection that follows explores the relationship between these two statuses – which, while ambivalent, have moved in opposite directions: that of the emigrant, with prevailing negative connotations constructed over many years, perhaps even centuries, in a country characterised by a long history and experience of emigration; and that of the immigrant, which has much more positive connotations and is prominent in certain regions and cities of a “nation of immigrants” (Kennedy 1963) Because they are relational concepts that can only be properly grasped from a certain point of view, this reflection takes the standpoint of the city of Cambridge, MA, where the most important Portuguese community in Greater Boston has been building its life and its history for more than a century
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