Performing portugueseness in Germany

Abstract

This paper explores representations of “Portugueseness” in the diasporic community of Hamburg, Germany, and unpacks the politics around a major festival featuring Portuguese folk culture held annually in the city’s Ethnographic Museum. A central question is how arguments about this form of national self-representation have, over the past four decades, played out within the migrant community, the wider field of German society, and the still wider transnational nexus of Portugal and the Portuguese diaspora. While these folkloric representations of Portuguese culture have heightened the visibility and pride of the Portuguese migrant community, they have also, simultaneously, helped to conceal conflict, contemporary agency, and persistent forms of inequality. Highly visible folkloric performances in a prestigious German space were not, in this case, accompanied by increased access to political power.