Introduction

According to a Portuguese Immigration and Borders Service report for 2022, Brazilians “remain the main foreign resident community, accounting for 30.7% of the total.” (SEF 2022) This very significant percentage has been rising since the 1990s, with several waves of Brazilians migrating to Portugal between then and today. It is a diversified immigration, sometimes more focused on workers with low levels of education and qualifications, sometimes combining this profile with that of students, specialized workers with higher incomes, and even retirees with stable resources (Fernandes, Peixoto & Oltramari 2021). This immigration of middle- and upper-class people is reflected in the mainly positive representations of Brazilian immigration by the Portuguese (França & Padilla 2018), although cases of xenophobia are constantly in the news and are denounced in social networks. In relation to Brazilian women in particular, stigmas and prejudices remain “the result of mechanisms of sexualization, coloniality and racialization that constructed Brazilian women as exotic and sexually available bodies” (França & Padilla 2018, 3; França & Padilha 2025).

I begin with these considerations because it is important to be aware that while today Brazilians make up the largest group of foreigners migrating to Portugal, it was once the Portuguese who represented the majority of foreigners migrating to Brazil. Likewise, just as the profile of today’s immigrants has various social markers—including social class, which is reflected in the different levels of professional training, schooling, income, and social insertion—this heterogeneity also existed in the profile of the Portuguese immigrants who previously arrived in Brazil, with multiple experiences and affiliations. In the Amazon of the 1800s, Portuguese merchants, owners of rubber-trading¹ or export firms, bank directors, trade association members, and members of literary and philanthropic institutions might have been more visible in the Brazilian and Portuguese newspapers, but it was the thousands of men and women who worked in rubber extraction, at the ovens in the bakeries, at the counters in the dry and wet stores, in the sale of water and milk, and in the domestic services of washing, cooking, and breastfeeding, who made up the vast majority of the immigrant population from the second half of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Despite the specificities, contexts, consequences, and prejudices of class, race, and gender relating to the migratory experiences of the present and the past, it is important to explore this avenue and combine more elements to think sociologically about immigration, remembering its different spaces and temporalities and going back over practices, difficulties, and forms of support to better understand the processes of displacement and their challenges.

In this article, I analyze Portuguese immigration to the Brazilian Amazon—in particular, the state of Pará—in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. I combine a quantitative approach to the migratory flow, migratory profile, and marriages, with a micro-social approach to living and working practices, social support networks, and representations of age and marriage. The discussion is presented from the perspective of the social markers of difference (class, gender, and generation) of the immigrants because, despite their shared nationality, they were not a homogeneous population, and neither are they a homogenous group today; they occupy different social positions and experience more-or-less asymmetrical relations of power according to those social markers.

To carry out the analysis, I worked with passport records for the period 1850–1930 from the district of Porto, the main place of origin of those who migrated to Pará or other parts of Brazil.² I also used the immigrant registration books kept by the Portuguese Consulate in Pará from 1834 to 1930.³ In addition, I consulted official letters, newspapers published in Pará, and criminal proceedings. These documents allowed me to cross-reference the quantitative and serial analysis with the individual stories of people in various social positions, in a game of scales that is typical of micro-history and its possibilities for dialog between the broader socio-economic structures and people’s individual experiences and capillary networks of social interaction.

Immigration, colonization, and flow

Modern international migration was driven by the industrialization of Europe, the globalization of the market, and the massive flows of capital, raw materials, and goods. The movement of people in this period had a marked influence on the demographic profile of European countries, since displacements were recurrent not only in industrialized countries (such as England, where the percentage of outflows peaked at above 41% in relation to its total population) but also in countries with a pre-capitalist economy (such as Portugal, where the percentage of displacements reached 30%) (Massey 2003, 2). A large part of this population went to the Americas, in particular the United States, Argentina, and Brazil. Several Brazilian states received an inflow of people, especially Rio de Janeiro, the country’s capital at the time. However, along the migratory routes were other states, including those in the north of the country, in the area of the Brazilian Amazon where Pará is located.

It is always important to point out that the state of Pará, since the colonial period, was part of the Portuguese colonization process; it was a target of the metropolis’s migratory colonization policies, which were responsible for the arrival of individuals and families from the mainland and the Azores Islands (Vieira Júnior 2017). Whether under the tutelage of institutional policies, through initiatives of private agents or business owners, or even through individuals and families, population movements were constant in the state, stimulated by the inclusion of Pará on the global trade route as a result of the export of spices and cocoa. Many of these immigrants settled in the state and were fundamental in setting up social support networks for future immigrants—especially those who came to work in the services and commerce sectors, even after Brazil gained independence in 1822.

It must also be mentioned that, in addition to the immigration of free or semi-free workers, the state of Pará witnessed the forced migration of enslaved Africans from two areas: Bantu Africa, with enslaved people coming from the ports of Benguela, Luanda, Loango, and Angola; and the Senegambia area, through the ports of Cacheu and Bissau. These port names, as Diego Pereira Santos points out, “often ended up being given to the slaves, [and] correspond to the ports of embarkation/procedure, and are therefore, meta-ethnic, not translating into self-identification in Africa”.⁴ These people migrated by force, having been traded by companies and private individuals, from the eighteenth century until 1888, when legal slavery was abolished in Brazil. The end of slavery resulted in an increased search for a free labor force, preferably made up of white and European populations who fit the characteristics of the ideology of “whitening”—which was based on the country’s ideal of modernity and civilization, associated with the whitening of its population and was propagated by the intellectual and economic elite (Schwarcz 1993).

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the state of Pará experienced intense economic growth linked to the exploitation of rubber, a substance that had more market value thanks to new vulcanization technology making it useful in the manufacture of strategic products, including tires. The demand in the international market, the growth of rubber exports, and the higher liquidity of the state of Pará were important factors in the increased flow of migrants that took place in the state and throughout the Brazilian Amazon as a whole.

To attract European immigrants, who were migrating in droves to America and Brazil in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Brazilian states, including Pará, began to create public policies to form colonization centers and to offer land and work through advertisements that were circulated outside the country. In parallel with these state policies, travel agencies and private agents facilitated and controlled the obtaining of passports that made immigration possible and placed the workers in private estates, colonial centers, and, in the case of Pará, in rubber extraction areas, all of which were located in the interior of the state. The precarious infrastructure in these areas made it difficult to access the means of production, sanitation facilities, and healthcare. Faced with these adverse conditions, many immigrants preferred to remain in the capital, Belém, where they worked mainly in the tertiary services sector (as discussed later).

Although the Portuguese made up the largest share of the free immigrants who settled in the state capital, other nationalities were also present, especially Spaniards and, to a lesser extent, Italians, English, French, Turkish-Arabs and Turkish-Asians (as the Syrians and Lebanese were referred to in the official statistics), Americans, Germans, and Japanese. To provide some idea of the difference between the Portuguese presence and that of the other nationalities mentioned above, the statistics in the demographic population censuses of 1872 and 1920 on the presence of foreigners in the state of Pará show that there were 4,463 Portuguese in 1872, which had risen to 14,211 by 1920. This is followed by the presence of Spaniards, with 158 people in 1872 and 3,355 by 1920. Italians were the third-largest group to arrive in the state, with 37 people in the 1872 census and 3,355 in the 1920 census (Emmi 2009, 265).⁵

The intense Portuguese immigration to Brazil and to the state of Pará in the second half of the nineteenth century is directly related to the fact that Portugal was a dependent country in an unequal position in the expansion of European capitalism. Portugal lived with the “failure of the respective national markets to absorb the enormous mass of peasants that the breakdown of the Old Regime and the development of capitalist relations in the countryside had freed” (Pereira 2002, 18). In turn, in the destination countries there was a need for hired labor to replace slave labor, in addition to an expansion of markets and services—similar to the situation in Pará with the development of the rubber economy.

As mentioned previously, most of the Portuguese immigration was to Rio de Janeiro (the capital of Brazil at the time) and, at the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, to São Paulo, a state whose coffee-oriented economy led to intense economic liquidity. Nevertheless, at the end of the nineteenth century, the state of Pará was in second place as a destination for Portuguese men and women.

To analyze the flow of Portuguese men and women arriving in the state of Pará, several researchers from the Population, Family and Migration in the Amazon Research Group (RUMA) based at the Federal University, Pará State (UFPA) surveyed the passport records of Portuguese districts known in historiography for their significant outflow of migrants to Brazil and arrived at the following figures: for the district of Porto, 18,308 passport records were collected for Pará between 1834 and 1930 (Cancela, 2019); for the district of Aveiro, 13,680 passport records were collected for Pará between 1882 and 1918 (Tavares, 2021); for the district of Braga, a total of 3,841 passports to Pará were recorded between 1868 and 1912;⁶ and for the district of Lisbon, 1,121 passport files were recorded between 1886 and 1900 (Cosme, 2015). Therefore, even though the years surveyed in the different districts mentioned above do not coincide, the researchers identified a total of 36,950 Portuguese immigrants to Pará at the turn of the twentieth century.

Much of this survey focused on the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, when there was an increase in immigration to Brazil in general and to the state of Pará in particular. By reducing the scale and working with one of the main districts of immigrant origin—Porto—we can get an exact idea of this increase.

As shown by my analysis in a previous article (Cancela, 2019), the line representing the five-year moving average in Figure 1 highlights that immigration intensified in the mid-1850s,⁷ maintained an upward trend throughout the decades of the rubber economy’s expansion (1850–1911), before decreasing significantly in the years of the rubber trade crisis (from 1911), when exports of rubber were in decline.

The same happened in the district of Aveiro, as analyzed by Tavares (2021). According to the author, in 1882, 105 people from Aveiro moved to the state of Pará. This number jumped to 888 in 1900 and stayed high (with annual entries of over 500 people) until 1913, the year before the First World War, when immigration numbers dropped to fewer than 150 people a year (Tavares 2021, 121–2).

When we expand the sample to include the various Portuguese districts as a whole, using the records of the Portuguese Consulate in Pará we can see that the data follows the same upward trend shown for the districts of Porto and Aveiro. The numbers rose from the 1850s, reaching a total of 6,661 entries in forty-nine years (1850 to 1899). Between 1900 and 1918, a period of eighteen years, there were 2,746 entries, a significant increase that corresponds to 41% of the total recorded in the second half of the nineteenth century.

These figures show the importance of the rubber economy in attracting immigrants, with the international situation and mass migrations from Europe to the Americas also contributing. However, in addition to these macroeconomic issues, we must consider the importance of social networks in the migratory processes. These networks made travel to and settling in a destination possible and minimized uncertainty, thus building bridges that helped immigrants to find housing and work, as discussed later.

Social markers of gender, age, and marital status

Most of the immigrants who moved to the state of Pará were men (Cancela 2019; Fontes 2016). However, the small number of female immigrants in the first half of the nineteenth century increased considerably in the early decades of the twentieth century, in a process of feminization of immigration that occurred not only among Portuguese women but in a broader process of mass international immigration from Europe to America, with more and more women participating in intercontinental and transoceanic immigration (Lutz, 2010).

The numbers help us understand this process of feminization of immigration. In Pará, for every ninety-nine men who migrated from the district of Porto in the first half of the nineteenth century there was one woman. This flow changed dramatically in the 1920s and 1930s, when the ratio fell to two men for every one woman arriving in the state. The same trend was observed for the Aveiro district, where we found that 160 men for every one woman migrated in the years 1882 and 1883. This ratio fell to twenty-six men for every one woman in the early twentieth century (1904–1908) (Tavares 2020, 135). These figures reflect the increase and prominence of women in international mass migration (Cancela & Tavares 2023).

In terms of age, most of the men and women from Porto who arrived in the state of Pará were between twenty and thirty-four years old (43%). Children between the ages of zero and fourteen were also present, accounting for around 12% of immigration. Those aged between fifteen and nineteen (8.2%) and between thirty-five and thirty-nine (10.3%) were also significant, although at a lower percentage. Above this age group, the numbers fell substantially for both sexes and did not exceed 7%. The data indicate that a large section of immigration was made up of young people of working age, which has been corroborated in other studies that have discussed Portuguese immigration—whether to the state of Pará (Tavares 2021; Cancela 2019; Cosme 2015; Emmi 2009; Fontes 2016; Carvalho 2011) or to other Brazilian states (Menezes & Matos 2017).

The age profile of the immigrants is reflected in their marital status upon arrival in the state, given that the percentage of single people and married people were fairly similar. It should be noted that migration subsidized by public or private authorities was not significant in the state of Pará, unlike in places where the coffee economy was taking hold and governments and landowners were encouraging families to come to the plantations. In Pará, although there was an immigration policy and official and private subsidies were available to promote agricultural nuclei, immigration was organized by the individuals themselves and sometimes by their networks of kinship, friendship, and fellow citizens, who pooled resources and made housing and work possible (Cancela 2023). According to this model, men and women often migrated alone; once they had settled down they could call on their spouses, children, relatives, or acquaintances to settle in the state.

Thus, although a significant proportion of the men who arrived in Pará from the district of Porto between 1850 and 1930 were married (42%), the percentage of single men was very similar (40.2%). The same profile was maintained among women, with the percentage of single women (42.5%) being practically the same as that of married women (43%). However, by analyzing the marriage profile of another Portuguese district, Lisbon, between 1886 and 1900, Cosme (2015) observed a wider variation in the marriage profile of immigrants. The percentage of married men was approximately 42%, while the percentage of single men was 55%. Among women, there was also a gap. Married women made up only 19%, in contrast with 67.5% for single women. When I analyzed the records from the Portuguese Consulate in Pará, where we found immigrants from the various Portuguese districts, single men (70%) and single women (72%) outnumbered married men (26%) and married women (13%).⁸

These percentages indicate that immigration to the state of Pará was made up of a large contingent of single people, which could increase, decrease, or remain balanced in relation to that of married people, depending on the district and the number of documents collected. This profile may be related to the fact that we are looking at a migration that is predominantly made up of young people. It may also be related to the absence of an effective and broad public and private policy to attract subsidized family labor to work in the state, which would have increased the number of married immigrants.

To some extent, the fact that many of these immigrants arrived as single women was reflected in their significant presence in the marriage registers that I found in the state, especially in relation to men, who accounted for a total of 17% of the grooms who got married in Belém between 1891 and 1930. In other words, out of every ten marriages that took place in the capital, roughly two involved a Portuguese spouse.

Immigration and marriage

In a previous study, I analyzed civil marriage records with Daniel Barroso. The earliest documents date from 1891, the year in which civil marriage was introduced in Brazil by the newly formed republican state. For the purposes of that work, we looked at records from 1891 to 1920,⁹ since we wanted to go beyond the context of the crisis of the rubber economy that emerged in 1910 and 1911. In our survey, we found that Portuguese men outnumbered Portuguese women (75% men; 25% women) (Cancela & Barroso 2011). With regard to the endogamy of the marriages, the fact that Portuguese men preferentially married women from Pará stands out; only 25.5% of them married a fellow countrywoman and only 18% married a woman with another immigrant background, such as a Spanish woman. The Portuguese women, on the other hand, preferentially married their fellow countrymen (80.5%). “Only 9.5% of them married men from Pará, 5% national migrants and 5% men of other nationalities, especially Spaniards.”¹⁰ This reflects the fact that more men migrated than women did.

However, when I observed the increase in female migration and the feminization of immigration in the twentieth century, as already highlighted here, I wondered whether this process would change the profile of marriages involving Portuguese immigrants. For this reason, I extended the survey to the year 1930, when Getúlio Vargas was sworn in as president of Brazil and drew up a nationalist policy that imposed restrictive measures on immigration within the ideology of valuing the national worker.¹¹

The first thing that stands out in the analysis is that the majority of the Portuguese marriages took place between 1908 and 1917, with an average of sixty-four marriages per year, even during the First World War. The average dropped to forty-two marriages a year between 1918 and 1930, a period marked by both the end of the international conflict and a decline in the flow of immigrants into the state of Pará, as shown in Figure 1. Therefore, the majority of the marriages took place up until 1917, and extending the survey to 1930 did not have much impact on the marriage profiles.

When I analyzed these figures by gender, the marriage trends by period remained the same. The marriages of Portuguese women were more likely to take place in the period before the First World War, with an average of twenty-six marriages between 1908 and 1913. During the war period (1914–1918), this average dropped but was still significant, standing at seventeen marriages a year. After the war, the average number of marriages did not increase again but fell to a low of ten marriages a year between 1919 and 1930. This profile was the same for men. Most of their marriages took place in the run-up to the First World War, with a total of sixty-six marriages between 1908 and 1913. During the years of the international conflict (1914–1918) this number dropped a little but was still significant at fifty-six marriages per year. After the war, the average dropped to thirty-seven marriages a year between 1919 and 1930—the year of the last marriage recorded among Portuguese men.

Similarly, in the sample that was extended up to 1930, there were more Portuguese grooms than brides. Men were involved in 76% of the marriages and women in 24% of them, despite the increase in female immigration and the fact that this migration was mostly of young, single women.

In terms of age at marriage, the differences were more pronounced according to the sex of the spouses (figure 2). The majority of Portuguese women (34%, to be exact) married when they were between sixteen and twenty years old. 29% were in the 21–25 age group when they married, and 18% were between the ages of twenty-six and thirty. Only 11% of the women married between the ages of thirty-one and thirty-five, and 7% after the age of thirty-six. One Portuguese woman had her first wedding at fifty-six years old, which was the limit for our sample.

As for Portuguese men, this profile is reversed. The majority of men married between the ages of twenty-six and thirty (32%); 28% married between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five. Only 2.2% married between the ages of sixteen and twenty. The share of those who married between the ages of thirty-one and thirty-five was 17%. After the age of 36, the percentage of marriages reached 20.5%, while for women it was only 7%. The highest age upon marriage registration for men was 71. The age profile found for marriages involving Portuguese men and women was no different from that of Brazilians (Cancela 2011). Why did men, regardless of nationality, marry later?

This is related to the construction of the bourgeois order in the modern era, in which men are associated with the role of provider and must invest in work, educational training, and professional consolidation (Nazzari 2001). In the case of Brazil, the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century saw the expansion of cities, an increase in the urban population, and an expansion of the services and production sectors. This movement generated a need for educational and professional qualifications, especially in activities associated with the liberal professions, where young people from the elite and middle classes of the population worked. This training process required time, as did settling into a job, position, or profession that would allow the individual to obtain the resources to marry and support a family (ibid.). These representations of the male provider affected the performances and ideals of hegemonic masculinity of men of various nationalities (Matos 2010; Cancela 2011; Abrantes 2012; Melo 2013), and they help us to understand the need for more time in which to achieve the proper educational and financial condition, a fact that is reflected in the later age of marriage for men compared with that of women, especially for elite men and those from the urban middle classes.

Thus, when looking at the professional and occupational profiles of the Portuguese immigrants who married in Belém between 1890 and 1930, I observed that a significant percentage were involved in commercial activity or were even traders and industrialists, together accounting for around 40% of the newlyweds. These were followed by those registered as “employees” (26%), people who were professionally established. The rest of the grooms were distributed among various professions in the services sector, such as butchers, milkmen, tailors, gardeners, laborers, bricklayers, painters, coopers, shoemakers, and locksmiths. There were also a few fishermen, farmers, and gardeners.

Therefore, most of the newlyweds were people with resources involved in commerce, or people from the middle classes, employed in firms with different activities and services. This corroborates the argument above that the later age of men when marrying is associated with the bourgeois order, which ties the formation of the family unit to the condition of having a male provider who has gone through processes such as educational training, commercial and/or professional establishment.

The same was not necessarily true for women, whose educational background and professional establishment were not seen as a key condition for entering into a marital union. On the other hand, we cannot ignore a whole host of social representations that underlie age-related issues. As well as being markers of time, age groups function as markers of roles assigned to people by cultural tradition, defined and re-signified by gender. Many activities performed by women became associated with domestic work, which functioned as a generic expression used to define different female activities. These activities were devalued from the point of view of gender asymmetry, despite the fact that they were fundamental to the reproduction of the active economy in capitalist society (Souza-Lobo 2021 [1991]; Vergès 2020). Therefore, there were few brides whose professions were declared outside the nomenclature of domestic services or housework. Those whose professions were defined included landladies, teachers, fashion designers, and seamstresses.

Gender asymmetry can also be seen in the representations of women and their bodies. Fragments of these representations can be read in the magazine articles, which help us to understand a little more about the meaning of age and marriage at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although he was not Portuguese, Pará-born writer and politician Paulo Maranhão brought to us representations of age and marriage in the capital when he wrote of his love for a woman he met when she was still fifteen years old. He was not referring to a foreign woman, but the preferred age range for marriage for Portuguese women was no different from that for Brazilian women (Cancela 2011); this points to the confluence of social representations about women, age, and marriage in Pará, regardless of the nationality of those involved. The writer begins his prose by asking:

How old were you when I met you? You never told me, nor have I ever asked you, but one can guess it in the red ribbon of your lips, in the unique brightness of your eyes, in the pink freshness of your cheeks. If a man does not lose the violent language of the senses with marriage, the language of feelings must remain forbidden. What I do know is that it is not without pleasure... but with the instinct of subtle emotion that one experiences when contemplating a young woman, at whose side one would like to live, in constant adoration, and at whom one looks with the feigned indifference of the fox before the opulent grapevine, to which its mouth could not reach.¹²

Jumping ahead several years on from this encounter, he continues:

I am delighted to see that everything, or almost everything, about you has changed physically. Your lips are still red, darkness still reigns in your hair, but the youthful glow of fifteen years no longer graces your face. The delicate matrix of youth is succeeded by the crusty hue of thirty years. The complexion of your face is slowly losing the glow that singes your head. Your eyes—oh, your eyes!—are already like those old mirrors from which age gradually takes away the power of reflection [...]. (Ibid.)

Witnessing the passing of the years and the woman’s advancingold age, the author proclaims that he would know how to extract the warmth from the ashes, writing:

I am the only one following you, looking at you and wanting you. Do not expect anything else. Do not deceive yourself anymore. In the past, when you passed by, a murmur of strange phrases followed you. Not today. Today, no one turns around to see you, because there are thousands of girls in their twilight years who defy men’s gaze. Your shape sags. Your waist resists the lacing of the corset. Your step loses the grace and lightness of a gazelle’s stride... Forgive me if I tell you that I am happy because you are getting older. It is just that now I am calm: no one else will covet you... Only I have remained faithful. Only I have not changed. I am the only one left to whisper to you at thirty-five years of age what I did not have the courage to confide in you when you were fifteen. (Ibid.)

According to the author, at fifteen the girl still kindled men’s desire; as a woman of thirty, she was a memory of youth that was beginning to fade; and at thirty-five, all that remained was the memory of the girl she had once been, and no man would want her. This ideal, that associated a woman of thirty-five with old age and decadence is an important element that helps us comprehend the small percentage of women who married after turning thirty.

It is also worth emphasizing that, although marriage was a reality for some immigrants, many families were formed without an official civil or even religious marriage. The practice of concubinage was a reality for Brazilian and Portuguese people alike—not least because the rates of illegitimate unions were high in Portuguese society, especially in the northern counties, from which most of those who migrated to Pará and Brazil originated (Scott 2002).

Thus, when analyzing the records of the Portuguese Consulate in Pará, it was not difficult to find information about single women who lived in the state with their daughters in arrangements created by single mothers. Women who were not officially married, might or might not have lived with a man, or lived alone with their sons and daughters. This was the situation for Olivia de Jesus, a single, thirty-seven-year-old Portuguese laundress from Paredes da Beira, São João da Pesqueira, Viseu. Olivia traveled to Belém for the first time in 1906 from the Port of Leixões. In Belém, she lived in Rua Paes de Carvalho with her six underage children: Antônio (eleven), Virginia (nine), Raul (six), Celeste (four), Izilda (two), and Joaquim (six months old). Another was Beatriz Augusta Gomes, a single, thirty-three-year-old servant born in Sindim, Tabuaço, Viseu, who lived at Rua Lauro Sodré with her three children: Ana (fifteen), Aires (twelve), Hilda (nine).

It is possible to give multiple examples like these, but the important thing here is to emphasize that institutional marriage coexisted with arrangements created by single mothers and with conjugal relationships that were illegitimate in the eyes of the state and the church. Concubinage was a common practice among Portuguese and Brazilian immigrants, with social class being an important social marker for understanding the recurrence of this practice among the working class. These people had to deal with the costs of marriage, the difficulty of obtaining the documentation required by the state and the church, constant mobility, the loss of documentation, and having few or no assets.

Housing, work, and social networks

Despite their shared nationality, the profile of the Portuguese immigrants to Pará is quite heterogeneous. Some arrived with no income or standing and, over the years or across several generations, achieved social mobility. However, many of them continued to work in poorly paid jobs, such as selling milk and water around the city, transporting cargo, or working as a streetcar driver, bricklayer, furniture maker, laborer, milkmaid, maid, or laundress, or even as a clerk for a commercial business. As the Portuguese consul in Belém wrote in a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Services such as freight, hauls, cleaning houses etc., which in Lisbon, for example, are performed by Galicians, are carried out here exclusively by our compatriots. The young man on the corner in Pará is Portuguese.”¹³

Many of the Portuguese immigrants lived in unhealthy accommodation: in small rooms and shared areas, or even in rooms located in the bakeries and stores where they worked. These living arrangements were not uncommon, and I found several examples in the criminal cases I collected. Examples include the clerks Antônio de Mello and Antônio Saldanha, who lived in the upper floors of the warehouse where they worked, together with their Portuguese boss, Joaquim.¹⁴ The same housing situation was experienced by the bakers Mariano and Gonçalo: both of whom were single, the latter Portuguese and the former Spanish. They worked and lived in a bakery on Travessa São Pedro, which was owned by Ceará-born Cosme, another single man.

Some couples, too, lived where they worked. These people included the Portuguese Avelino Xavier da Costa (a clerk) and his twenty-three-year-old wife, Rosa Maria de Jesus (a housewife). They arrived in Pará in 1896 and lived on Travessa Sete de Setembro, upstairs from the business where they worked, which belonged to the 31-year-old Portuguese businessman José Osório, who also lived there.¹⁵ Avelino had been married for three years to Rosa Maria de Jesus and had come to Brazil in search of work. On the ship, they met a Portuguese man, Augusto Bello, who had before lived in Belém and recommended José Osório's business to them. José Osório was married, but his wife had gone to live in Europe, taking a nephew with her, so he was left alone in the house he lived in above his business. He employed the newly arrived Portuguese couple, with Rosa in charge of doing the housework and cooking (Cancela 2011, 233).

While, in this case the Portuguese couple found somewhere to live through a lead from a fellow countryman, others accessed accommodation through newspaper advertisements, such as those in A Província do Pará, where they read about the rental of “a flat on the upper floor of the Flora store, with good rooms, suitable for people employed in commercial work. Contact for further information at Flora store.”¹⁶

The spaces and types of housing used by the Portuguese immigrants in the city were varied. Those who made their living from selling milk in the streets of Belém usually lived in cowsheds located on the edges of the neighborhoods and the central streets. One of these cowsheds, located on Rua das Flores, was home to its owner and his workers, all Portuguese, aged between twenty-two and forty-six. Among them, two were married and four, including the owner of the establishment, were single.¹⁷

It was common for immigrants to live in close proximity on the same street, as was the case for the many washerwomen who lived on Avenida Tamandaré—many of whom were single and widowed, living with their offspring. In addition, some immigrants even lived in one residence made up of individual rooms and shared areas. An example of these living arrangements is described by Araújo (2023), who talks about the ranches of the twenty-two-year-old Portuguese immigrant Francisco Henrique Serafim, where several of his countrymen lived, many of whom were from the same parish, São Vicente da Raia, in the district of Vila Real.

I also encountered rarer situations in which women were living in hospitals or asylums; for example, the widow and seamstress Josefa Botelho de Carvalho (aged seventy) lived with her single daughter, Maria José de Carvalho (aged thirty-five) in the Domingos Freire Hospital. They were also from the Vila Real district. There were few religious women, such as Maria da Conceição de Magalhaes Aguiar (thirty-nine, born in Braga) and Maria do Rosario Alves (forty, born in Castelo Branco), who lived in the Santo Antônio nursing home.

In addition, I identified immigrants with the same trade, sometimes from the same Portuguese municipality, who were living together (Cancela 2023). A good example of this is the situation of the business belonging to the Portuguese carpenter Manoel Pedro da Silva Neto, from the municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia. Manoel arrived in the state of Pará in 1893, having gained social mobility and wealth by processing and exporting wood. In his company he employed more than fifty workers, most of whom came from the same Portuguese municipality as he did, Vila Nova de Gaia, and some even from in or around the same parish, Vilar do Paraíso (Cancela 2023, 98). When I analyzed the records of the workers at Manoel’s company, I was struck by the fact that many of them lived in the same establishment, Rua Bragança No. 3—probably one of the company’s properties.

These close working and living arrangements among Portuguese immigrants from the same municipality point to the existence of social networks being used as support mechanisms for migrating and finding a place to live and work, thus minimizing uncertainty in the destination society. Immigrants’ social standing, marked by the difficulty of earning an income, placed them on the outskirts of the capital, living in unsanitary housing such as cowsheds and ranches, with little or no infrastructure; they lived with other poor residents, some of whom were also foreign or national migrants, or even from Pará.

Hence, social networks that connected individuals, families, and fellow citizens, which could remain active despite the end of public policies to encourage immigration, private projects, or travel agencies and promoters, were important. This was especially the case in the context of the crisis of the rubber economy in 1911, when Pará’s economy lost its liquidity, income from public investments fell, and several companies went bankrupt. There was less incentive to migrate to Pará, not least because of the lack of funding and advertising policies. However, despite the economic crisis, immigrants regularly continued to arrive at Belém’s ports, even if this was in smaller numbers than during the heyday of the rubber economy.

The continuity of the arrival of these people may in part be associated with the social networks formed by the newcomers with immigrants who had been established in the state for a long time. In turn, although the rubber crisis left a hole in the public accounts and bankrupted several fortunes, other products began to enter the export market, such as Brazil nuts and timber, although even with these commodities, the state did not achieve the same liquidity generated by the rubber economy. An example of this is the timber extraction and processing company owned by the Portuguese Manoel Pedro, which welcomed immigrants to work there even after the collapse of the rubber economy in 1911 (Cancela 2023).

Similarly, I came across situations of Portuguese women living in the state in the 1920s, while the rubber economy was still in crisis, who, having lived and worked in Pará for some time, welcomed a newly migrated sister to share their home. Among these stories is that of sisters Maria Clotilde Marçal and Felizarda Roza Marçal. Maria Clotilde, a maid, who was twenty-seven, single, and a native of Penela in the district of Viseu, arrived in Belém in 1910 and lived on Avenida São Jerônimo. Her sister, Felizarda, was also single and a maid, having arrived in Belém twelve years later, in 1922. The two sisters lived on Avenida São Jerônimo. There was also a third sister, Genoveva de Jesus Marçal, who arrived in 1914—just after Clotilde’s arrival—when she was fourteen years old. At the age of twenty-three, in 1923, Genoveva no longer lived with her sisters. She lived on Travessa São Matheus, and moved again in 1924 after she got married. Another example is that of the sisters Amélia and Tereza de Jesus. Amélia was from Escurquela, in the municipality of Sernancelhe, in the district of Viseu. She was twenty-one, single, and a maid when she arrived in Belém in 1921. She lived on Avenida Generalíssimo Deodoro with her younger sister, Tereza, aged eleven, who migrated to the state in 1923.

I would like to reiterate here that the examples of the sisters mentioned above refer to their arrival in Belém in the 1920s, during a downturn in the rubber economy. Thus, a younger sister (single or married) arrived in Belém and had the support network of an older sister (single or married) who was already living in the state and whose home she could share, reducing the difficulties of settling down and encouraging mutual support.

This points to the need to think about immigration in a way that considers macroeconomic issues but does not dissociate them from the networks of kinship, friendship, and fellow citizenship that stem from capillary relationships that are formed by immigrants and involve people who have lived in a place for longer providing support for newcomers. From this perspective, when immigrants moved, their mobility was only possible because of this collective practice, which did not necessarily involve only people they knew. There could be various levels of proximity and contact between those who were part of this support network, which could be based on symmetrical or asymmetrical power relations, as in the relationship between a boss and his or her employees (Cancela 2023).

Closing remarks

In the social history of the city of Belém, there have been many successful and economically mobile Portuguese immigrants, mostly people who were linked to commerce and were politically active in the city (such as Francisco and João Gualberto, and João Jorge Correia), some of whom had noble titles (such as the Baron of Monte Córdova, José Martins), and many others. Countless pieces of information can be retrieved about these people, whose names appeared in Pará and Portuguese newspapers, and they serve as examples of social mobility and conquered wealth.

In general, the Portuguese who achieved the greatest fortunes were those who opened commercial and trading businesses, occupying lands traditionally marked by the presence of indigenous, Afro-descendant, and Quilombola [Maroon] populations, in a movement marked by conflict, tension, and expropriation of territory, and the work of these populations, who lived on small properties and worked in extractivism, farming, and animal husbandry.

The wealthy immigrants, along with many others who were generally well-off and were linked to commerce, qualified professions and positions, made their presence known by creating and maintaining institutions including the Sociedade Portuguesa Beneficente do Pará (1854), the Gabinete Português de Leitura (1867), the Tuna-Luso Caixeiral (1903), later called the Tuna Luso Comercial (1923). All these still exist in Belém today and were important spaces for sociability, visibility, and the dissemination of Portuguese culture, bringing together immigrants—especially those who had a higher social standing’ with resources and education to compose and reinvent the idea of a Portuguese colony in Pará. Imagined communities (Anderson 2008) are strengthened and renewed in the sociability and ethos of a Portuguese identity activated from these institutions and far beyond them when they mobilize symbols such as the language, the classic writers like Camões, the artists, and the commemorations that celebrate important events in Portuguese history, such as the birthday of a king or Vasco da Gama’s voyage to the Indies (Cancela & Guimarães 2018).

Some of the individuals who made up the local elite and fostered these Portuguese institutions owned newspapers, had businesses and positions, and did not see themselves as immigrants. The immigrant was “the other,” the poor person, with no education or income, who arrived in Belém having traveled in third class on a ship. The immigrant migrated “seeking” work, while the Portuguese with an income “traveled to” work. The immigrant was subjected to the stereotypes and prejudices from which the Portuguese elite wanted to differentiate themselves—maintaining their nationality and the institutions that reinforced the Portuguese identity, such as those mentioned above, but distancing themselves from the label of immigrant.

On the other hand, there were countless difficulties for those who did arrive in third class on the ships. Some would make a livelihood in crime or cheating (Sarges & Morgado 2010; Araújo 2023), but many others would seek their fortune in various activities and jobs in the city’s service sector. Having an acquaintance or a relative already living in Pará could make it easier for these newcomers to settle by providing them with housing and employment, but that did not make them immune to the difficulties and lack of resources in a city with expensive rents, unhealthy housing, and low-paying jobs.

In this article, I have shown how the flow of Portuguese immigration boomed in the second half of the nineteenth century, driven by the rubber economy. Even after the crisis generated by the sudden drop in rubber exports, immigration remained constant despite the numbers falling. After all, other products were entering the scene, such as wood and Brazil nuts. In addition, social networks were fundamental practices that continued to connect multiple generations of immigrants, even after the economic crisis.

Although it was an eminently male-dominated immigration, women’s presence grew sharply in the twentieth century, and migration became more feminized. Men and women, many of them single, who found a spouse in Belém, entering civil marriages that were preferably endogamous in the case of women and exogamous in the case of men. Portuguese men were a significant presence in the marriages that took place in the capital of Pará, appearing in 17% of the unions, meaning that a Portuguese man was involved in around two out of every ten marriages that took place in Belém.

Men were marrying at an older age than women, which was related to the new bourgeois social order and the values attached to the family and the capitalist division of labor, which were based on the ideal of the male producer and the female reproducer—commonly, but not exclusively, in the middle and upper classes. Thus, a large share of the people who sought civil marriage were business owners and qualified, educated professionals. On the other hand, customary unions, which were not officialized by the state and the church, were part of the behavior and reality of unskilled and low-income workers, not only in Pará but also in Portugal (Scott 2002).

Many different housing arrangements were used by these immigrants. While the business owners lived in houses and mansions, the workers lived in rooms in the same building as the businesses where they worked, or in ranches, cowsheds, or houses located in outlying areas or with a poorer infrastructure. Many of these living spaces had shared areas and the conditions were often unsanitary. Social networks could guarantee a place to live and work. The house or shed in Rua Bragança No. 03 was home to several carpenters, joiners, blacksmiths, bricklayers, and clerks who worked for Manoel Pedro da Silva’s timber export firm. A sister living in the state could give a younger sister the route, incentive, and justification to set out and have her family’s consent to follow the same path.

The quantitative data on the immigration flow, profile, and marriages were important for getting closer to people’s names and practices, in a game of scales that is so dear to micro-history. Likewise, the approach centered around the social markers of difference that highlight the distinctions among immigrants, countering the picture of a homogeneous group that the idea of a Portuguese colony might trigger.

These migratory stories of difficulty, difference, and asymmetry, but also of welcome and support can remind us of a not-so-distant past and reinforce the need to think about immigration, and the immigrant of yesterday and of today, with practices and policies of respect and citizenship.

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Introduction

The conquest of Ceuta in 1415 is considered to be the starting point of the Portuguese diaspora around the world. Given the wide chronological and geographical range of this dispersion, Godinho (1978: 5–32) states that emigration is one of the structural marks of Portuguese history.

From a theoretical point of view, it is important to distinguish between two concepts: “spontaneous emigration” (personal, uncontrolled initiative) and “contracted or directed emigration” (part of a project to occupy space by the political power in effect). In the latter situation, the migratory phenomenon is essentially marked by the movement of families (couples)—married men and women accompanied by their children—with a certain percentage balance between the number of people of each sex, who are mainly going to work in agriculture. For this reason, they mostly have agricultural know-how and are heading for a rural area that has been previously designated by the ruling political power, which wants to occupy a certain geographical area. As a general rule, these particularities make this type of migration definitive, with a very small number of returnees; they are therefore not mentioned in social memory.

On the other hand, a significant proportion of spontaneous emigration is not permanent, which means that there are returnees. These migrants dedicate themselves to activities in which they already have expertise, and they tend to be heading for an urban area. They give rise to the concept of “Brazilian,” which at the time meant a Portuguese emigrant to Brazil who had become rich.

Various authors have studied Portuguese emigration over the years. At first, macro approaches predominated (Ferreira 1976; Serrão 1974), with special emphasis on Portuguese emigration from the mid-nineteenth century.

Based on passport applications filed in the Oporto District Archives, Alves (1994), using microanalytical methodology, began a new phase in the study of Portuguese emigration to Brazil, paying particular attention to the return of emigrants. “Between 1836 and 1899 there was a clear evolution in the geography of these destinations, although Rio de Janeiro always absorbed the majority of emigrants (...). At the end of the [nineteenth] century, competition for Rio de Janeiro (55%) also came from Pará, with renewed strength (17%) and São Paulo (10%)” (Alves 1994, 242–4).

Immigration to Pará [State] has also been studied by, among others, Carvalho (2011) and Cancela (2009, 149–161). Based on microanalytical methodology, in this article I will try to describe some of the particularities that characterized Portuguese emigration to the Amazon (Brazil) in the period from 1887 to 1910, originating from two districts in the interior of Portugal: Castelo Branco and Vila Real.

Material and methods

The source materials used in this paper were the passport applications filed in the district archives of Castelo Branco and Vila Real. From a methodological point of view, the aim was to carry out a longitudinal microanalysis; in other words, to find out whether migrants applied for passports more than once during the period concerned, in order to retrace, as far as possible, the migrant’s journey. To do this, we created a grid sorted alphabetically and chronologically by applicant name and included the variables listed in the passport applications: parents, place of birth, age, marital status, occupation, and any other observations that we felt were relevant in order to understand “who” emigrated.

The use of microanalytical techniques allows us to see the world from the viewpoint of the individual who emigrates. Using microanalysis makes it possible to “complete the overview of macrostructural analysis and be able to uncover local dynamics and regional variations; longitudinal analysis or life histories; analysis of the individual from the family perspective; and the importance of intermediate factors” (García Abad 2005, 64).

This approach allowed us to find instances of several applications made by the same person, which, from a statistical perspective, distorts the results. Therefore, to avoid repeating data, in our calculations we will use only the information contained in the earliest application (first reference) that we found for the various migrants.

Table 1 provides a better understanding of the data on repeated applications.

The data presented shows that the universe of analysis is 332 applications in the case of the Castelo Branco district, and 1,481 in the case of Vila Real; this means that in Vila Real, 16.47% of the applications were made by applicants who had applied for a passport previously, while in Castelo Branco these types of applications constituted 7.78%. These figures allow us to envision that emigration was marked by a certain dynamic of going back and forth (pendular dynamics) between Portugal and Brazil. In a study of Portuguese emigration through passport applications at the civil government of Lisbon, we found that 11.6% of the passport applications were repeat applications (Cosme 2015, 3).

Historical context

In order to gain a better understanding of migration dynamics, we will present the districts/counties where these migrants came from and give a brief demographic picture of those areas. In both districts, some of the municipalities border Spain; examples include Montalegre and Chaves in Vila Real, and Penamacor and Idanha-a-Nova in Castelo Branco. For a better understanding of the size and demographic evolution of the different municipalities, we provide a list of their inhabitants in Table 2 and Table 3.

The data above show that between 1878 and 1911, the population increased in both districts overall. Another visible finding is that on the one hand, the population increased in all the municipalities of the Castelo Branco district during this period. On the other hand, in several municipalities of the Vila Real district, population figures fell from one census to the next. To give some examples, we can mention the municipalities of Alijó, Sabrosa, and Santa Marta de Penaguião, where the population in 1911 was lower than it was in 1900, and Chaves, Mesão Frio, and Valpaços, where the population in 1900 was lower than it was in 1890.

From a demographic perspective, a population shrinks when it has a negative physiological balance (the difference between numbers of births and numbers of deaths) and/or a negative migratory balance (the difference between inflows and outflows). We believe that the most plausible explanation for these differences lies in the emigration of residents.

Let’s now briefly characterize the destination: the Amazon. The year 1840 would be a decisive one for the Amazon region, with the discovery of the rubber vulcanization process by Charles Goodyear. For this reason, the 1850s would be a pivotal decade of great significance, as the decade marked the transition from a regional economy characterized by the exploitation of the “hinterland drugs,” livestock, and timber, which was dependent on slave and indigenous labor, to an economy based on the extraction and exploitation of latex. In the first phase, Pará’s manufacturing sector developed, producing rubber shoes for export to the United States of America, while in the second phase, with the invention of the pneumatic tire, the export of rubber, facilitated by steam navigation, introduced in 1853, generated an exceptional spurt of development in this region. This new surge had its golden age between 1870 and 1910 (Sarges 2010, 91–9).

At the same time as the Amazon was undergoing this boom in economic development, the constraints and abolitionist dynamics of slavery were taking hold in this South American region. In a very schematic way, we remember that from March 13, 1827, Brazilian ships were no longer allowed to ship slaves off the coast of Africa. The Lei do Ventre Livre (Free Womb Act) of September 28, 1871, determined that children born to slave mothers would already be free. In 1879, Senator Joaquim Nabuco was elected, and in 1880 he founded the Brazilian Society Against Slavery. In 1884, slaves in several municipalities began to be freed. The Saraiva-Cotegipe Act, dated September 28, 1885, established the freedom of all slaves over the age of 65, and the abolition of slavery came with the publication of the Golden Act on May 13, 1888.

Thus, to meet the need for labor, people emigrated from Europe, and from Portugal in particular. It was in this economic and sociological context that Pará emerged as a highly attractive area for the Portuguese.

Residence of migrants by municipality

In order to better systematize the data, we now outline the municipalities of residence mentioned in the passport applications.

The data shown in Table 8 and Table 9 is quite clear about the origin of the migrants. As far as male emigrants from the Castelo Branco district are concerned, the most quantitatively significant municipalities in relation to Pará were Sertã, Covilhã, Proença-a-Nova, and Oleiros. These are also the municipalities with the highest number of residents going to Manaus, with the exception of Proença-a-Nova. A somewhat similar dynamic was found in the applications made to the civil government of Lisbon by migrants destined for Pará; in this case, the municipalities in the Castelo Branco district with the highest representation were Oleiros, Vila de Rei, and Sertã, with the figures highest in the parishes of Cernache do Bonjardim and Pedrógão Pequeno in the latter municipality (ibid., 9).

With regard to emigration from the Vila Real district, the municipalities of Alijó, Vila Pouca de Aguiar, Chaves, Vila Real, and Sabrosa had the highest numbers of passport applications. These same municipalities, with the addition of Peso da Régua, also recorded a high number of passport applications for Manaus. In the case of women emigrating to Pará, the figures for Alijó, Sabrosa, Chaves, and Vila Pouca de Aguiar should be highlighted, and for Manaus, the municipalities of Chaves, Alijó, and Peso da Régua deserve special mention. It should also be noted that a very significant number of people applied to the civil government of Vila Real for a passport, most of whom lived in the city and district of Porto.

Continuous or “anthill” emigration

“A migratory journey (or migratory itinerary) is the set of steps, actions or situations taken or experienced by a migrant individual that are relevant to the process in which they are involved.”⁵ Within this journey, the phase in which the intention to leave materializes and the preparations for departure are made are extremely important. In this phase, the intention to leave materializes by means of taking concrete steps, such as obtaining documents (a passport and a transport permit, among others).

According to the theoretical model, in the migratory journey, after arriving in the country of destination, the first installation takes place, which is followed by insertion, and then by the decision to return to the country of origin or settle permanently. However, the methodology used in this research allows us to provide some information of a microanalytical nature that confirms the existence of a continuous or “anthill”⁶ migration dynamic, which means that this dynamic was not always based on a simple journey between the place of origin and the destination, but could involve the existence of constant journeying between these two places.

Once the migrants had arrived in Brazil, a very significant proportion of them moved on a commuting pattern, meaning that they went to Portugal and back several times. They did this not only to take care of business but also to consort or introduce members of their families.

We are dealing with a plurality of actions integrated into a single desire to migrate. As mentioned previously, we classify this migratory practice as continuous emigration, since the option is neither to settle nor to return, but to move with some regularity between the place of origin and the place of destination. To better document this idea, here are four examples.

Originating in the district of Vila Real

1. João Casimiro, resident of Almorfe (Moreiras) in the municipality of Chaves, married, traveled to Pará twelve times⁷.
2. João Guedes Coutinho, resident of Santa Quitéria (Fontes) in the municipality of Santa Marta de Penaguião, single, clerk/commercial employee, went to Manaus five times between March 26, 1897, and January 13, 1905.
3. Carminda Rodrigues Borges, resident of Vila Boa (Fontela) in the municipality of Peso da Régua, married, business owner, went to Manaus twice⁸.

Originating in the district of Castelo Branco

1. António de Oliveira, born and residing in Barco, Covilhã, has two passport application records: one dated August 16, 1898, and the other dated December 20, 1902. On the 1898 application, there is a note stating that this is the second time he is going to Pará and that he now intends to dedicate himself to agriculture. This means that the 1902 registration corresponds to a third trip.

In the examples we have just given, we can see that in terms of the migration process, there is a repetition of journeys, integrated into a dynamic of mobility between Portugal and the Amazon. It was this specificity that led us to use the “anthill emigration” metaphor as the one that best defines this process.

This constant migratory dynamic between Portugal and the Amazon facilitated the mobility of those who wanted to go to the other side of the Atlantic for the first time. To better document this assertion, here are just two examples.

1. On December 10, 1908, Guilherme Cardoso, aged forty, married, and from Pegarinhos in the municipality of Alijó, applied for a passport for the third time in Vila Real. On the same day and in the same district capital, Jerónimo Moreira Gião, aged forty-eight, a widower from Pegarinhos (Alijó), also applied for a passport. Two days later, on December 12, 1908, at the civil government of Vila Real, Manuel Paixão (aged ten) and Julieta (aged twenty-one), both single and born and living in Pegarinhos (Alijó), applied for their first passports to Pará.
2. On November 20, 1908, Bríseda Ribeiro, a twenty-year-old single seamstress from Canhedo-Adoufe (Vila Real), applied for a passport to Manaus for the second time. On December 1, 1908, António Benigno (aged twenty-three and single) and Francisco Álvares Ferreira (aged twenty-six and married), both born and living in Canhedo-Adoufe (Vila Real), took their turns to apply for passports to Manaus.

If we take into account the chronology of the applications, the places of birth, places of residence and perhaps the family ties, we can easily see that mobility took place collectively and with solidarity, because traveling with someone else who had made the same trip before was much safer and more comfortable. As already mentioned, we consider that micro-factors are valuable in explaining these migratory dynamics, because we believe that structural factors are the necessary cause and micro-mechanisms are the sufficient cause (Garcia Abad 2002, 23–4), which, in our opinion, is clearly visible here.

Emigration in “two steps”

The microanalytical methodology allows the various databases to be interconnected. Thus, by cross-referencing the names of those born/residing in the district of Castelo Branco and of Vila Real with other data, we were able to identify six applicants from Castelo Branco and one from Vila Real who had already applied for their passport in the Civil District of Lisbon. The distance to and consequent attractiveness of the Portuguese capital certainly had a greater impact on the residents of Castelo Branco, which is much closer to Lisbon, than it did on Vila Real. Given the interesting nature of these cases, we share them here.

Originating in the district of Castelo Branco

1. Adrião Madeira Gonçalves, from Oleiros, had already applied for a passport to Pará in Lisbon on November 22, 1888. On May 6, 1891, the Portuguese Consulate in Pará renewed his visa. He then applied for a new passport in Lisbon on July 29, 1891, using the address of 13 Rua de S. Nicolau and giving his marital status as married, stating his occupation as a merchant, and claiming that he wished to continue doing business in Brazil. We found him applying for a new passport in Castelo Branco on November 5, 1897, stating that he wanted to go to Pará for the third time.
2. António da Silva Leitão, a native of Nesperal in the municipality of Sertã, was twelve years old and lived at 18 Largo do Chafariz de Dentro in Lisbon, where he was employed in commerce. On June 23, 1891, he applied for a passport to Pará with the intention of going to work there. On July 30, 1903, and July 13, 1910, he again applied for a passport to Pará, but then in Castelo Branco.
3. António Domingues da Silva, married, was born in Casal de Gafos in the municipality of Sertã, and lived at 48 Rua da Madalena in Lisbon. In this city, on April 13, 1895, he applied for a passport to Pará, claiming that he wanted to join his brother. On August 29, 1896, he applied for a new passport in Castelo Branco, in which he stated that he was going to trade and that he was emigrating for the second time.
4. Januário da Silva Mata, born in Cernache do Bonjardim in the municipality of Sertã, was twenty-two years old, employed in commerce, and resided at the Hotel Duas Nações in Lisbon when he applied for a passport to Pará on June 25, 1890. Attached to his application was a passport to Manaus that had been issued by the civil government of Lisbon on November 21, 1884, on the back of which there was a visa granted in Manaus on December 24, 1884, and a visa issued by the Consulate of Portugal in Pará dated June 15, 1889, for the purpose of going to Portugal. On March 8, 1898, he applied for a passport in Castelo Branco, stating that he wished to go to Pará for a third time to engage in commerce, taking his wife with him.
5. Januário Rodrigues da Silva, born in Cernache do Bonjardim in the municipality of Sertã, was thirteen years old, worked as a clerk, and lived at 50 Travessa de Santa Ana in Lisbon when, on April 19, 1895, he applied for a passport to Pará to engage in commerce. On September 21, 1903, he applied for a passport in Castelo Branco for Pará, reporting that he was employed in commerce.
6. On August 8, 1895, José Henriques Alves Froes, a merchant, applied to the civil government in Lisbon for a passport to go to Pará. Attached to this application was a passport issued by the Consulate of Portugal in Pará dated March 16, 1895, for the purpose of going to Portugal. On October 20, 1900, he applied again for a passport for Pará. Attached to this application was a passport issued by the civil government of Lisbon on August 18, 1897, in which José claimed that he lived in Pará. On the back of this passport there was a visa from the Portuguese Consulate in Pará dated March 29, 1899, authorizing him to go to Portugal. On February 25, 1905, he applied to the civil government of Castelo Branco for a new passport to Pará.

Originating in the district of Vila Real

1. Nuno Pereira de Oliveira, a native of Ervededo in the municipality of Chaves, residing at 183 Rua dos Corrieiros in Lisbon, applied for a passport to Pará at the civil government of Lisbon on March 18, 1900. The application stated that he lived in Pará and had been in Lisbon for six months. He was bringing his wife (a native of Pará), his sister-in-law, and a maid, who was a native of Ervededo. In Vila Real on December 31, 1905, he applied for a passport to Pará. The application states that this was his third trip to Pará and that he was taking his siblings Germano and Serafina with him. On the same date, December 31, 1905, eleven-year-old António da Silva Oliveira from Ervededo (Chaves) also applied for a passport in Vila Real.

In view of the examples we have just given, it is clear that this mobility can be considered a “two-step emigration,” and it can be concluded that the city of Lisbon was an important point in the migratory dynamics of some of the residents of the two districts studied, not only in terms of making the decision to emigrate and implementing the measures that made this option feasible but also in terms of socio-professional learning. Certainly, the social learning they acquired in Lisbon and the contacts they had with migrants over a long period helped them to structure their choice to emigrate.

In conclusion: Looking for an emigrant profile

The majority of migrants were men; the unmarried group predominated, both male and female in the 20–29 age group, with special emphasis on the 20–24 age group. It was an emigration strongly marked by the influence of networks or chains in the migratory process, i.e. most of the time, migrants were accompanied by others who had already made the same journey and to whom they were linked by ties of origin, residence (parish or municipality), or kinship. This group mobility has traces of solidarity and, therefore, a degree of security. This specificity influenced the characterization of this mobility as an “anthill” or continuous mobility, where journeys were made with some regularity between the place of origin and destination.

In many cases, it was a “two-step emigration,” meaning that the migrants first left their homeland for Lisbon, from where, after some time and already equipped with some knowledge of another profession, especially that of a sales clerk, they then decided to head for the Amazon.

The majority were leaving to work in agriculture and commerce, as well as to be barbers, tailors, or carpenters, while the women, especially those who were unmarried, were going to work as seamstresses or maids.

References

1. Alves, Jorge Fernandes. Os brasileiros: emigração e retorno no Porto Oitocentista, Porto: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 1994.
2. Cancela, Cristina Donza. “Imigração portuguesa, casamento e riqueza em Belém (1870–1920)”. In Nas duas margens: os portugueses no Brasil, edited by Fernando de Sousa, 149–161. Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 2009.
3. Cancela, Cristina Donza, and João Santos Ramalho Cosme. “Entre fluxos, fontes e trajetórias: imigração portuguesa para uma capital da Amazônia (1850–1920)”. Estudos Ibero-Americanos:Dossiê – Pensamentos e Práticas Políticas Conservadoras no Século XX 42, no. 1 (2016): 232–54. https://doi.org/10.15448/1980-864X.2016.1
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5. Cosme, João. “Subsídios para a história da emigração dos concelhos a Norte do rio Douro para o Brasil (1886–1891)”. In Nas duas margens: os portugueses no Brasil, edited by Fernando de Sousa, 401–409. Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 2009.
6. Cosme, João. “Quadros de emigração portuguesa para o Pará (Brasil): 1886–1900)”. Naveg@mérica. Revista electronica editada por la Asociación Española de Americanistas, no. 15 (2015). http://hdl.handle.net/10201/46764
7. Ferreira, Eduardo Sousa. Origens e formas da emigração. Lisboa: Iniciativas Editoriais, 1976.
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9. García Abad, Rocío. Historias de emigración. Factores de expulsión y selección de capital humano en la emigración a la Ría de Bilbao (1877–1935). Bilbao: Editorial Universidad del País Vasco, 2005.
10. Godinho, Vitorino Magalhães. “L’emigration portugaise (XV^e–XX^e siècles). Une constante structurale et les réponses aux changements du monde”. Revista de História Económica e Social, no. 1 (1978): 5–32.
11. Lobo, Eulália Maria Lahmeyer. Imigração portuguesa no Brasil. São Paulo: Editora Hucitec, 2001.
12. Nazareth, J. Manuel. Introdução à demografia, teoria e prática. Lisboa: Editorial Presença, 1996.
13. Rocha-Trindade, Maria Beatriz Sociologia das migrações. Lisboa: Universidade Aberta, 1995.
14. Sarges, Maria de Nazaré. Belém: riquezas produzindo a Belle Époque (1870–1912). 3rd ed. Belém: Editora Paka-Tatu, 2010.
15. Serrão, Joel. A emigração portuguesa. Sondagem histórica. 2nd ed. Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1974.

Introduction

In the last three decades (since the 1990s), Brazilian immigration to Portugal has been studied intensively from both the Brazilian and the Portuguese perspective (Finotelli et al. 2013; Malheiros 2007; Padilla et al. 2015). It was mainly the work of Brazilian anthropologists Feldman-Bianco (1997) and Machado (1999) that opened up this research field in the 1990s.The first decade of the 2000s witnessed a notable transformation of the composition of the flows of migrants and of the Brazilian community in the country. This shift coincided with a new reality: the growing number of women, aligning with what is commonly referred to in the literature as the feminization of migration (Padilla 2007a). Hence, during this time, special attention was paid to addressing the stereotypes, hyper-sexualization, and stigmatization dynamics surrounding these women, which was having a strong impact on their integration into local society (Gomes 2013; Pontes 2004). Thus, since then, the Portuguese media has played an important role in reproducing and highlighting discourses that portrayed them as exotic, sensual, submissive, inferior, and sexually available.

From 2010 to 2016, due to the impact of the international financial crisis (2008–2014), and the policies of the Troika, Portugal experienced a harsh economic shock that led to a sudden decrease in flows of immigration and broke the steady growth observed in previous years (SEF 2011). It was only in 2016 that immigration to Portugal began to rise again (SEF 2017); this fostered a perception of the country as a desirable migration destination, boosting national pride and self-esteem. In this context, Brazilian immigration to Portugal began to show novel and distinct features: in stark contrast to the more homogeneous working-class profile observed in previous waves, there were now large numbers of international students, investors, and entrepreneurs. The Portuguese media gave visibility to the new arrivals, celebrating these new characteristics and presenting them as the consequence of Portugal’s modernity, advancement, and cosmopolitism (França & Padilla 2018).

This chapter investigates the discourse in the Portuguese media about the Brazilian migration to Portugal, adopting a gender perspective and critical discourse analysis (CDA) as methodological tools to answer the following questions: (1) What features has the Portuguese press portrayed about Brazilian women throughout time? (2) What social markers of difference (race, gender, class, nationality) are mobilized and depicted toward those images?

Gender, race, nationality, coloniality, and social class: Daily intersectional challenges for Brazilian migrants

Migration as a social phenomenon is an entirely gendered process, because women’s immigration experience is shaped by gender relations, which force constant negotiations of their identity and behavior in both their home country and their destination country (Donato et al. 2006; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2007). Additionally, because of their location within the power relation matrixes—at the crossroads of distinct axes of differentiation, such as gender, race, nationality, ethnicity, class, and religion—migrant women experience an intense convergence of stereotypes, racism, and further discrimination (Crenshaw 1991). Therefore, the concept of intersectionality is key for understanding the effects of gender in the migration process (Anthias 2012), as intersectional analysis makes it possible to frame migrant women’s experience in a dynamic context within multiple systems of power, hierarchy, and identity.

Introducing an intersectionality standpoint to gender studies has been fundamental to determining certain types of oppression and discrimination that had not been identified before. Crenshaw introduced the concept by revealing how various forms of inequalities and disadvantages often intersect, creating barriers that cannot be fully understood through a single, isolated analytical approach (ibid.). Black women’s feminism has embraced intersectionality as a fundamental prism that allows them to fully understand their joint experiences of racial and gender discrimination and their distinct social realities (Collins & Bilge 2016). Hence, intersectionality has obligated researchers to analyze gender in interaction with other diverse markers of difference, such as race, origin, ethnicity, social class, age, sexuality, and religion.

Lugones (2008), focusing the concept of coloniality (Quijano 1992), reveals another complex aspect of women’s migration experience. For Quijano, coloniality is the continuation of the societal system of exploitation based on the control of territory, the labor force, the economy, knowledge, subjectivity, gender, and sexuality resulting from the European expansion through colonialism. Among other things, this system of control and domination has led to specific social and geo-cultural identities and classification categories that gravitate around race differences (ibid.). However, as Gutierrez-Rodriguez (2014, 49) underscores, “[t]his logic of subjugation inherent in the establishment of a racially coded social system still reverberates in the construction of the nation’s Other in Western Europe, although it does not always explicitly operate in racial terms. Though wrapped in a vocabulary of culture that refers to differences regarding religious beliefs, language, norms, and values, the construction of the ‘Other’ in Western Europe bears the traces of a pattern of thinking reminiscent of colonial times.”

In the case of migrant women, coloniality shapes their experience by exposing them to processes of subalternity, racialization, and othering, enforcing dynamics of internalization supported by the unequal power relations that were established during colonialism (Lugones 2008). Hence, migrant women from the former colonies tend to be seen as national women’s Other in the Global North and are thus categorized as colonial/racial subjects (Grosfoguel 2004).

Likewise, social class, as a power system, impacts migrants’ position within a given society (Fresnoza-Flot & Shinozaki 2017). In this study, following a Bourdieusian approach, social class is seen both as a material as well as a cultural and symbolic form of stratification (Anthias 2012). It is directly linked to the possession of economic and political power (Sklair 2000), limiting or increasing immigrants’ access to opportunities, privileges, and rights.

The current literature on transnationalism emphasizes that social class should not be viewed as a static concept, because its meaning can evolve across various contexts and periods (Fresnoza-Flot & Shinozaki 2017). As Parreñas (2015) points out, migrants can occupy different and contradictory class positions in their home and destination countries; for instance, even if they hold a less qualified job than they had in their home country, they might still enjoy higher economic power than previously. For our study, however, social class refers exclusively to the position that the press assigns to a migrant in their host society upon arrival, which fails to acknowledge the less visible aspects of their personal experiences—for example, education level, previous working experience in Brazil, migration trajectory—which would be necessary for a more comprehensive understanding of their experience of social mobility. This perspective adds to the literature by unveiling the power of media discourses in building static images of Brazilian immigrants in Portugal that are based on fragmented elements of their migration path.

Brazilian migration to Portugal: Gender and the colonial discourse

Brazilian immigration to Portugal has been a consolidated feature of migration flows since the turn of the twenty-first century. Since the first immigrants arrived in the early 1980s, the numbers have grown steadily and overall three main different configurations have arisen (Padilla et al. 2015). In this sense, numbers, qualification levels, and feminization happened to be the key distinguishing features across the different waves of migration. The patterns of Brazilian immigration to Portugal can be divided into three distinct waves. The first wave, extending from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, saw a relatively modest influx, predominantly consisting of Portuguese returnees from Brazil and their families. This group displayed a noteworthy prevalence of highly qualified individuals. In contrast, the second wave, from the late 1990s to 2015, witnessed a substantial increase in immigrant numbers. These newcomers were often perceived as predominantly lower-qualified workers, and this surge was accompanied by a noticeable trend of feminization (ibid.).

As a result of the Portuguese economic crisis (2008–2014), which was simultaneous with the Brazilian economic boom during BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China, and South Africa) block development (Caldas 2017), Brazilian immigration flows to Portugal declined slightly for the first time between 2012 and 2015 (Fernandes & Castro 2013; Nunan & Peixoto 2012). In 2016, however, the number of Brazilians arriving in Portugal began rising again (SEF 2017), with some previously unseen features: a consolidated flow of students and a growing number of investors and entrepreneurs. These characteristics allow us to define this new phase as the third wave of Brazilian immigration to Portugal (França & Padilla 2018).

In the early 2000s, the increasing feminization of the flow of Brazilians to Portugal was a novelty, but by 2005 the number of Brazilian women arriving in Portugal was higher than that of Brazilian men (SEF 2005). Since then, feminization has become a characteristic, reaching 64% by 2022. In addition to this feminization, Brazilian migration overall has continued to grow, with Brazilians currently representing over 30% of foreign residents in Portugal (SEF 2023).

Figure 1 summarizes two different lenses through which to view the periodization of Brazilian immigration to Portugal, accounting for the waves (based on certain features of the migration flows, such as social class, education, occupation, and insertion in the labor market) and for the feminization trend.

Coloniality has played a central role in shaping Brazilian women’s experiences in Portugal and has been legitimized by Freyrean Lusotropicalist ideas (Castelo 2011; Gomes 2013). Freyre (1933) argued that Portugal’s predisposition to diversity, multiculturalism, and racial fusion became evident in their common practice of mixing with the African and indigenous women in Portugal’s colonies. Hence, within the Lusotropicalist discourse, these women play a pivotal role in embodying the realization of Portuguese “benevolent” colonialism (Gomes 2013). However, the Lusotropicalist discourse neglects to acknowledge the portrayal of these women as racialized and sexualized bodies, subjected to forcible exploitation by Portuguese men.

Moreover, coloniality enforced a given gender hierarchy by portraying Brazilian women as a sexualized colonial body in comparison to Portuguese women in particular and European women in general (ibid.; Malheiros & Padilla 2017). This articulation of race, ethnicity, and sex is seen by Bhabha (1983) as crucial to the construction of the colonial subject discourse that, by the binding of a range of differences and discriminations, supports racial and cultural hierarchization in discursive and political practice. Consequently, in Portuguese society, Brazilian women are intensely exposed to the dynamics of racialization, class subordination, and sexualization that portray them as hypersexualized, exotic, available, and sexualized bodies (Gomes 2013; Padilla 2007a).

The colonial imaginary also shapes migrants’ experiences of the labor market in Portugal. Because of the gender and racial segregation dynamics in the labor market, Brazilian women can easily find jobs in low-qualified activities in the care sector as cleaners and domestic workers (Anthias & Metha 2003; França 2012; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2007). However, it is in the service sector—sales, tourism, customer services, dancing, and waiting tables at restaurants and bars—that the majority of these migrants are concentrated, constituting what Machado (2009) and Fernandes (2008) call the “happiness” and “entertainment” markets, respectively.

Further, Brazilian women are notably present in the beauty and aesthetics sector—composed of “body services,” such as manicuring, waxing, hairdressing, or selling clothing and beauty commodities, such as bikinis, beachwear, and hair products—both as entrepreneurs and as regular employees. In this case, they take advantage of the general naturalized/essentialized and socially constructed attributes assigned to Brazilian women—friendly, sensual, and beautiful—and use them as an aesthetic–corporal capital to support, promote, and legitimize their business (Malheiros & Padilla 2017).

The presence of Brazilian women in these two segments—services and beauty—is directly linked to the racist colonial discourse toward these women that portrays them as happy, joyful, seductive, exotic, and sexy (ibid.; Padilla 2007a). However, in practice, there is ambivalence in the way they instrumentalize this situation, because even if Brazilian women suffer sexualization and erotization that condition their experience, “these imaginaries sometimes could also facilitate worthy resources in marriage and labour markets” (Padilla 2016, 280), becoming strategies for survival or empowerment, and no less contradictory for that.

The Portuguese media has been one of the main actors that has contributed to the reinforcement and diffusion of the colonial discourse and the image of Brazilian women as a colonial body (Gomes 2013). We will turn to this discussion next.

The Portuguese media and Brazilian women

A report published by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) stresses the relevance of media discourse in shaping society’s opinions and attitudes toward migration and cultural and ethnic diversity (Ter Wal 2002). Given that the media is people’s main source of social and political knowledge, it is considered to be the most influential form of public discourse in modern society. Media discourse plays a central role in the creation and reproduction of public opinion, and in shaping knowledge and beliefs about a social phenomenon (Torkington & Ribeiro 2019). However, space in the media is not equally distributed (Dijk 2000b). Because migrants do not occupy many influential positions—such as, politicians, corporation managers, professors, or journalists—and have reduced access to media sources—such as press conferences, documentation, and interviews—their perspectives and opinions tend to be mostly ignored (ibid.). Hence, the media is inclined to polarize the discourse on migration, treating immigrants as a problem or a menace, reinforcing a differentiation between the nationals (us) and the migrants (the Other) (ibid.).

In Portugal, migration is a topic that has already been consolidated in the national media agenda (Ferin et al. 2008) and covers different matters in the field—migration laws, inclusion, integration, crime, and nationality-acquisition policy. A negative approach toward the phenomenon, however, has prevailed (Oliveira 2001). In particular, during the 2000s, the media discourse associated migration with criminality, illegal affairs, documentation irregularities, human trafficking, and unemployment (Ferin et al. 2008). Specifically, the focus on immigrant women has been through the lenses of sexual activity and prostitution (Pontes 2004; Santos 2007).

In general, the image of Brazilian immigrants in the Portuguese media is associated with the previously identified stereotypes: on the one hand, happiness, joyfulness, and amusement; on the other hand, laziness, dishonesty, unreliableness, and trickery (Fernandes 2008; Machado 2009; Padilla & Gomes 2016). In the case of Brazilian women, the dominant media discourse tends to present them as exotic sexual objects, connecting them to the sex industry (Santos 2007). In addition, news on Brazilian urban violence, criminality, poverty, social inequality, and corruption is highly prevalent in the Portuguese media (Lisboa 2017; Vitorio 2007), and it is used by many to blame Brazilians for bringing violent crime to Portugal.

It is also important to consider that since the late 1970s, Brazilian soap operas have been very popular among the Portuguese audience; according to Cunha (2003), these programs have influenced the dominant discourse about Brazil and Brazilians in the Portuguese media. Padilla (2007b) argues that soap operas and tourist marketing have both projected the image of an exacerbated sensuality of Brazilian women. Even if gendered and sexist tourist advertising is now forbidden, the consequences still prevail. All these images have contributed to reinforcing the colonial myths about the tropics—exoticism, exuberance, and native women’s sensuality—and, simultaneously, the narratives about Portugal’s imperial past, where Brazil was its biggest conquest (Lisboa 2017).

In this context, the image of Brazilian women in the Portuguese media is loaded with the stigma of a racialized and sexualized colonial body—erotic, seductive, and sexually available (Padilla & Gomes 2016). Building on Stolke’s (2006) analysis of the reproduction of Iberian morality from the colonial period up to the present time, Gomes (2013) reveals how colonial imaginary and stereotypes about European women as mothers/wives/Marys (alluding to the Virgin Mary) and Brazilian women as sinners/prostitutes/Eves are operationalized by the media discourse in Portugal.

One episode involving Portuguese and Brazilian women in the north of the country clearly illustrates this point. In 2003, Time-Europe magazine published an article giving visibility to a movement organized by Portuguese women in Bragança, a small town in the north of Portugal, to rally against Brazilian women who were working in town as sex workers. The Mães de Bragança (“Mothers of Bragança”)—what these women called themselves even if their discourse was that of abandoned wives—argued that the Brazilian women who worked in the town’s brothels had “bewitched/seduced” their husbands (Pais 2010). Although they insisted on the women’s removal from the town, they did not request any punitive measures against either the brothel owners or the business establishments involved (Padilla 2007b). The local press coverage of the occurrence was strongly shaped by coloniality, sexualization, and racialization practices (Padilla & Gomes 2012). This article in the national and European media reproduced the image of Portuguese women as decent, pure, impeccable, and incorruptible, while portraying Brazilian women as indecent, promiscuous, and immoral (Gomes 2013). Minga (2018) notes that in alignment with the approach of Times-Europe magazine, the Portuguese press portrayed the episode in articles akin to tabloid discourse, replete with gender and racial stereotypes; thus, reinforcing the link of Brazilian women to prostitution, irregular migration, and illegal activities.

Eight years later, in 2011, during the economic crisis, another episode involving Brazilian women’s representation in the Portuguese media gained visibility. A Portuguese animation TV show presented one female character, Gina, among its five protagonists. Gina is portrayed as a Brazilian easy-going and loose female, who always wears sensual clothes, while all her lines, spoken with a heavy Brazilian accent, are strongly sexualized, for instance: “If it was me to decide the country’s future, sex would rule it all.” The hyper-sexualization of Gina reflected in her image and discourse was classified by Padilla and Gomes (2016) as an act of media symbolic violence that reinforced the colonial imaginary about Brazilian women as colonized bodies devoted to sex.

Many other examples of colonial discourse manipulating, stereotyping, and stigmatizing Brazilian women in the Portuguese media can be found during the 2000s. However, in recent years, accompanying the third wave of Brazilian migration, the press discourse in Portugal has shown some changes. The following sections are dedicated to this analysis.

Methodology

This study adopts a critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Dijk 2000a) approach to investigate the discursive patterns of representation of Brazilian immigrant women in Portuguese newspapers. In CDA, discourse is a way of representing and signifying the world by (re)contextualizing social practices (Dijk 2009). Discourse is therefore an action that shapes, and is formed by, social interactions and dynamics in a reciprocal process. This process, however, is not neutral in terms of political and ideological content, as it operates within power matrixes and may reproduce social inequalities and dominance relations.

Dijk (ibid.) highlights the strong relationship between media discourse and social power. According to the author, newspapers today still maintain an influence on public opinion by guiding who the actors to be represented in the public arena are, what is said about them and how it is said (the amount and quality of the information given, and the selection of arguments and rhetorical practices), and the opportunity to make their voices heard. Hence, CDA allows us to investigate the links between discourse, power, and ideology and analyze how discourse reinforces the construction and legitimization of certain “social problems,” namely discrimination, racism, sexism, and power inequalities (Dijk 2000b). Therefore, by using CDA methods we intended to uncover existing practices related to Brazilian women in the Portuguese press discourse.

The primary data used in this study comprised 108 articles published in Público, one of the main national newspapers in circulation, online and in print, from 2000 to April 2019. Público, published daily, is considered to be a quality publication because of its high level of prestige, its objectivity, its verification of facts using reliable sources, and its focus on hard news, which includes topics such as global and local politics and economic issues (Berrocal Gonzalo, Redondo García & Torres Chico 2015), in contrast with other publications that could be considered tabloid. Regarding its political standpoint, Público is considered to be mostly center-left (Torkington & Ribeiro 2019). Following the periodization presented in Figure 1, the chosen time interval comprises four different moments in Brazilian immigration through the lens of its feminization trend, which can be divided as follows: the beginning of visibility (2000–2005), boom (2005–2011), stagnation (2011–2015) and rebound (2016–present days).

To get a more precise picture of discursive press representation of Brazilian women in Portugal, we searched for any article discussing Brazilian immigrant women in Portugal or discussing immigration in general and Brazilian women in particular. To avoid sampling bias, the articles were selected regardless of their political, social, or cultural perspective. The collected material was analyzed on two levels: textual and contextual (Dijk 2000a). All articles containing references to the mentioned topics were scrutinized chronologically, screened for relevance, retrieved in full and individually analyzed for structure, themes, and rhetorical strategies. The collected material was also considered together to categorize some of the recurrent themes and discourses and the ideological differences within the material.

Analysis

From 2000 to 2019, 108 news articles regarding Brazilian migration, either specifically or indirectly, were found in Público. The examination of the articles was conducted through content analysis to identify empirical observations associated with validity claims, outlining the predominant arguments and assessing their frequency. This analytical approach encompassed a two-stage coding procedure. Initially, attention was focused on discerning speech dimensions indicative of each validity claim. Subsequently, a refined coding phase was implemented to augment the precision of the initial coding outcomes (Cukier et al. 2009). The quotes presented here were chosen as deemed the most representative of some of the ideas identified during the coding process. They were translated from Portuguese into English by the authors. Because of the large volume and overlap of information, the full news analyses will not be presented here.

In the researched time frame, Público’s content discourse concerning Brazilian women associated them with the sex trade, prostitution, human trafficking, illegal activities, illiteracy, and poverty.

Prison sentences for brothel managers; Brazilian women who enticed other women to work in Portugal will be expelled from the country—May 28, 2002

A Brazilian citizen, named Roberta Silva, who was accused of enticing alleged prostitutes in Brazil to work at the Sassarico bar in Cerdal, Valença (. . .) the judges sentenced her to two and a half years, suspended for three years, but with an order to expel her from the country for ten years.

RNP [National Republican Party] member accused of supporting illegal immigration—October 31, 2008

According to the accusation, the prostitution business set up by the nationalist militant party had the support of two Brazilian women, who were in an illegal situation and who were helped by him [the RNP’s party member accused of supporting illegal immigration] to enter Portugal, and also with the participation of his wife, whom the MP accuses of being in charge of interviewing the candidates who would provide sexual services.

Captured nightlife businessman who was the origin of “Mothers of Bragança” restlessness—November 20, 2013

A lawsuit was filed by the Mothers of Bragança, who complained that the influx of Brazilian prostitutes into the city was breaking up many homes.

GNR [National Guard Police] member accused of warning brothels of inspections—November 10, 2017

In addition to the militaries, the Public Ministry accused another four people of pimping, irregular migration support, improper receipt of benefits, and active and passive corruption. “The facts refer to the exploitation of prostitution by four of the defendants, with a majority appeal to Brazilian women in an irregular situation in the national territory.”

Manifesto condemns prejudice against Brazilian women—September 20, 2011

To express the repudiation of the “prejudice against Brazilian women in Portugal” and “demand that steps be taken by the competent authorities” a manifesto is being published by the organization World March of Women Portugal.

Foreigners detained at Lisbon airport are “most exposed” to harassment—October 3, 2018

When Antónia [fictitious name], born in Brazil, arrived at the Lisbon airport from Fortaleza, her entrance was denied by the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF). When looking at her visa, the SEF employee had some suspicions and told her: “She is coming as a tourist but only has 30% of the accommodation paid.”

The first four articles address various events in different years (2002, 2008, 2013, and 2017) linking Brazilian women to prostitution. As the literature has shown, the immigration of Brazilian women to Portugal represents different waves and characteristics (Padilla 2007b; Padilla & França 2015); Público’s coverage, however, almost exclusively alludes to cases involving the sex industry and illegal activities. The majority of the articles analyzed (73 out of 108) refer to episodes of prostitution, trafficking, and irregular migration . Moreover, there seems to be an intentional decision by Público to constantly and unnecessarily mention the nationality of these women, as in many of the articles, the nationalities of other people involved in the events are not mentioned. Furthermore, in Portugal, prostitution encompasses a range of nationalities, including the Portuguese (Couto et al. 2012); hence, the frequent reference to Brazilians contributes to consolidating the false idea that Brazilian women are the only sex workers in Portuguese society.

Despite the particularities presented by Brazilian women migrating to Portugal, the constant reference to prostitution and irregularity suggests the strong influence of the colonial imaginary in shaping Portuguese press discourse. Further, these women’s voices are never heard in the articles referred to, as their testimonies are not cited and were probably never consulted. Dijk (2000a) argues that immigrants’ views tend to be ignored or unpublished because they are considered to be less reliable and less trustworthy.

The article regarding the manifesto against the prejudice against Brazilian women in Portugal is emblematic in this sense. As mentioned previously, the manifesto was organized mainly by Brazilian women who were immigrants in Portugal; however, in the text it is wrongly credited to the World March of Women. Neither the women who led the manifesto nor any Brazilian feminists who were in Portugal at the time were contacted. This serious fault can be seen as a negligent approach to issues involving Brazilian women’s self-organization, assuming that Brazilian women are not capable of organizing themselves in such an engaged way. Hence, although visibility is given to the issue, not all perspectives are taken into account in the coverage. This diminishes the real protagonism of Brazilian women, which resembles Mohanty’s (1984) denouncement of how a discursive colonization practice still operates nowadays, building the image of women from the ex-colonies as victims and submissive subjects who need to be represented by Western women. No Brazilian women involved in the manifesto or who experienced prejudice in Portugal were interviewed, even if they were the agents and the subjects of the manifesto. Thus, the newspaper opted for an approach that excludes immigrants’ voices while reinforcing the image of them as speechless actors (Dijk 2000a) and that minimizes the gravity of discrimination practices in Portugal by not offering concrete examples of their daily experiences in society.

The final article suggests a shift in the Portuguese immigration policy paradigm. In line with the European Union’s recommendations, Portugal has been enforcing a tougher approach to human trafficking and irregular migration (Clemente 2017). Notably, two distinct measures have been implemented to address these challenges. First, a zero-tolerance policy has been instituted to prevent individuals potentially implicated in human trafficking violations from returning to their home country (ibid.). A second, simultaneous measure focuses on facilitating the return of third-country nationals whose stay is irregular (ibid.; Baldaccini 2009). Hence, the article offers a positive assessment of Portuguese strategies to combat human trafficking.

The issue of mixed marriage between Brazilian women and Portuguese men has also been a frequent topic in Público. On the one hand, mixed marriages have been analyzed from a positive point of view, as a sign of immigrants’ integration and as a contributor to the country’s demographic growth as a result of the slightly higher childbirth rate among immigrant women (Rosa, Seabra & Santos 2005). On the other hand, as the discussion on the European agenda about marriages of convenience became more intense (Maskens 2015), the phenomenon gained more visibility in Portugal and was raised by authorities, scholars, and newspapers Togni & Raposo 2009).

Marriage between Portuguese and foreigners doubled in the last five years—October 26, 2003

. . . but the Brazilians already made history in the national registers. “Sometimes, we notice something weird, a very young and pretty Brazilian girl, with bad-looking Portuguese men, says Joaquim Martins, from the Register Workers trade union. We already hear about Brazilian women who pay five thousand contos (25,000 euro) to marry someone,” he states.

The majority of the Brazilian citizens who marry in Portugal choose a Portuguese partner—August 18, 2008

Some numbers, in 2005, 78.3% of the women and 59% of the men born in Brazil who got married chose a Portuguese partner.

Mixed marriages more than quadrupled—November 2, 2008

Maria boarded in Minas Gerais and landed in Portugal three years ago. Shortly afterwards she met a Portuguese man who she liked: “It was right after my arrival. It was too much suffering. I needed to work, I couldn’t pay the rent.”

Despite also presenting some discussion on mixed marriages as a sign of immigrant integration and as a contributor to minimizing the demographic crisis, Público’s discourse on the matter focuses mainly on two specific angles. The first two articles focus on marriages of convenience as a strategy for obtaining Portuguese nationality, and the third portrays the image of the poor immigrant who marries a Portuguese man for a better quality of life.

The arguments in these articles depart from the colonial discourse, as they employ the stereotypes of Brazilian women as poor, involved in illegal activities, and having special attributes (beauty, magic, witchery) to seduce Portuguese men. Moreover, these news articles present a biased coverage of the phenomenon and a moral judgment of Brazilian women’s intimacy choices, whereas, in general, they make no comments on Portuguese men’s choice to marry Brazilian women. If focusing on the time frame, these articles embrace two different moments in Brazilian migration to Portugal: the beginning of visibility (2000–2005) and boom (2005–2011), promoting and feeding the “moral panic” existing in Portuguese society about Brazilian women bewitching Portuguese men and persuading them to marry them (Alvim & Togni 2010; Pais 2010).

A shift in the content of the press articles can be identified during the Portuguese economic crisis (2008–2014), when Brazilian immigration to Portugal declined for the first time (2011–2015) and Brazil became a global emerging power, integrated into the BRICS block. At this time, emigration became the focus of attention in Portugal (Padilla & Ortiz 2017), and many skilled Portuguese workers and businessmen moved to or invested in Brazil (Cervo 2010). Thus, following the Portuguese colonial imaginary that tends to present Brazil’s successes and accomplishments as outcomes of the Portuguese intervention during the colonization period (Almeida 2008), positive discourses regarding Brazil became more common.

They choose Portugal and not even the economic crises push them away—March 17, 2013

Flavia is part of the group of thousands of Brazilians who continue their studies in Portugal. But her path is unique. This student in the Master’s in Education of the New University of Lisbon shares with a Swedish businessman based in Portugal, Jonas Lundberg, a fast-paced romance, marked by improbable decisions and uniting three continents. [. . .] Flavia, a 31-year-old woman from Rio de Janeiro, graduated in Portuguese Language and Literature and founded a theatre company. “I had to think a lot because this decision implied leaving my job, but I’m very happy, I came because my love was here.”

Brazilians in Portugal: four voices of the same trip—April 8, 2014

Thaís Helena dos Santos arrived in September 2013, to pursue a PhD degree in Information and Communication in Digital Platforms at the University of Porto. [. . .] In the case of Auxiliadora Siza, the issue was the impossibility of survival in Portugal. “It was a trap, I was misled,” she recalls “[. . .] I was working as a caretaker, my wage was 500 euros and my rent 400 euros [. . .].” After nine months she decided to go back to Brazil, “I was completely broke,” she said.

For the first time, Público’s discourse approaches different examples of Brazilian women’s experience in Portugal, rather than taking a single perspective that links them to sexual and irregular activities. On the one hand, this approach responds to Portugal’s interests in improving its international image as a developed country suitable for skilled migrants and investors. On the other hand, it continues to reproduce the images of Brazilian women as poor, illiterate, and performing low-skilled jobs, hence being responsible for the failure of their migratory project.

By referring to the case of two Brazilian women taking postgraduate courses, Público portrays an image of these women not previously illustrated—educated and skilled. Nothing is mentioned regarding their appearance or seductive behavior. As will be discussed later, more specifically in the context of the third wave, the discourse shifted and started to “celebrate” the increase in the number of Brazilian international students through positive coverage.

A preliminary analysis of these two articles could suggest a paradigm shift in the use of the colonial discourse, but a deeper examination reveals a more complex situation that involves a mix of elements, some linked to the classic stereotypes about Brazilian women. In the first article, although Flávia’s qualifications and career are mentioned, the reference to her marital relationship with a “Swedish businessman” resembles the “romantic tale” of the poor immigrant who marries a rich European man and gives up everything for a love story (Brennan 2004; Groes-Green 2014). Moreover, it indirectly sheds some light on the link between Brazilian women and marriages of convenience. The second article, after positively presenting Thaís Helena dos Santos as a PhD student, introduces the example of Auxiliadora Siza, returning to the image of Brazilian women as deprived and unskilled workers. Hence, the change presented in Público’s discourse regarding Brazilian women in Portugal is a rather minor one, as it continues to reproduce traces of the colonial discourse through different angles: (i) by a negative representation of Brazilian women, and (ii) by stressing Portugal’s greatness and level of development.

In the years after the official end of the economic crisis, migration began to rise again (2016–2019) and a shift from emphasizing the low-qualified worker associated with illegal activities and the sex industry toward new images of immigrants as valuable investor, skilled worker and international student. This change is evident in the increasing number of articles about middle-class Brazilian skilled workers, entrepreneurs, and students, which offered a positive and enthusiastic discourse toward this “new flow.” At the same time, Portugal’s image as a prosperous and advanced country was repeatedly underlined, whereas the Brazilian political, social, and economic crises were stressed over and over. Here, the metropole-colony relation is re-elaborated, with Portugal being represented as a civilized, modern society and Brazil being pictured as an inferior, underdeveloped country. Moreover, by denouncing the political situation in Brazil since the coup d’état that led to the dismissal of former President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the ascension of the extreme right and conservatism there (Löwy 2016), Portugal’s media has reinforced its superior image as a society that praises democratic values. Portugal portrays itself as a developed “European” nation, valued by and suitable for these women who want to improve their qualifications, invest, or join the skilled labor market, elevating Portugal’s national pride and self-esteem after the difficult times during the period of economic crisis. On the other hand, Brazil is described as an economically and politically unstable country, experiencing high levels of violence, which is enhancing the willingness of these educated women to escape.

In this context, however, Brazilian women are portrayed in an “unusual” way.

Brazilians are the majority of foreign students of the University of Algarve—October 1, 2016

Two years ago, she [Ana Luiza Velo, a Brazilian student from Rio de Janeiro] applied for a Marine Biology degree at a university in Rio de Janeiro and the University of the Algarve. “I was accepted in both places,” she says. When she compared the costs in the two countries, she concluded that “the cost would be the same, but the safety and quality of life here are incomparable.” The possibility of developing a professional career in the European area is another incentive: “I am in Europe, and I love this course,” she emphasizes.

Brazilian Elite brings new business to Portugal—August 20, 2017

The 50-year-old Carioca is installing the family business in Lisbon and launching the furniture brand created by her father. “The idea is to make Portugal the base for the European market,” explains Andreia, who in recent months has come to Lisbon several times in search of a space to install her showroom. [. . .] Andreia—with a degree in History and who also studied French Literature at the Sorbonne and Art at the Inch Bald School of Arts in London—says that her lawyer is analyzing the best way to change country, admitting to using the Gold Visa mechanism as an option.

Hopeless Brazilian found a house in Portugal—August 20, 2018

It was this same feeling [of hopelessness surrounding Brazil] that influenced Juliana Montenegro. After the excitement reported by her boyfriend Júlio Morais, she also packed and moved from the northeast of Brazil to Lisbon about a month ago. “Like 99% of Brazilians, not to say all of them, we were dissatisfied with our country. It’s an old thing, but after Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, it all got worse. And as incredible as it seems, it keeps getting worse.”

Following on from the tendency identified in the previous analyses, Público’s discourse regarding these Brazilian women is now rather cheerful. Moreover, the women are identified by their qualifications and are explicitly quoted, expressing their opinions and views about their professional and personal experiences. Thus, Brazilian women are portrayed as empowered, skilled, and active in opposition to the image of the humble, illiterate, and passive immigrant shared by the articles analyzed previously. Furthermore, Público’s discourse indicates that these women belong to the middle/upper class by highlighting their qualifications, skills, and educational background.

The increase in well-off Brazilian women migrating to Portugal is presented by the press as a positive phenomenon that shows the new Portugal as cosmopolitan and open to diversity, with advanced migration policies, and, hence, an outstanding migration destination. Additionally, it obliges these women by welcoming them and recognizing their valuable contribution to the country’s economic development. During the last two decades, Portugal has developed policies to attract international students, skilled workers, investors, and lifestyle migrants as a strategy for strengthening its image as a modern country and to boost its economy (França et al. 2021).

The coverage of the third wave shows how a perceived change in social class has impacted Público’s discourse, as becomes evident in its presentation of the image of Brazilian women in Portugal. Overall, the overlapping periodization of waves and feminization trends in Brazilian migration is rendered productive, as it makes it possible to identify the paradigm shifts. While the second wave overlaps with the beginning (2000–2005) and boom (2005–2011) of the visibility of feminization, the stagnation (2011–2015), which coincided with the economic crisis, an increasing emigration of Portuguese abroad and a decline of immigration to the country, introduced a period of silent reflection, with mixed feelings around outbound and inbound migration. This phase involved a certain nostalgia for immigration as a period in which Portugal was desirable; thus, immigrants coming to Portugal in this period were seen as more valuable than before, especially if they were qualified.

As soon as the crisis was over, and coinciding with a deacceleration of the Brazilian economy followed by political turmoil (impeachment, advance of the right, and elections), the third wave of Brazilian migration began with a fast rebound that translated into the largest ever percentage of Brazilians among foreign residents in the country, reaching 30%, along with a new shift in the media discourse. This new paradigm may still include some elements that are associated with coloniality, however, other elements are a novelty. For example, elements of the old paradigm involve mentions of the Brazilian nationality in relation to sex work or illegal activities, whereas elements of the new paradigm include mentions of students and middle-class women’s previous experiences abroad, their qualification levels, and their positive opinions about Portugal, etc. Moreover, the new paradigm goes further, as Brazilian women who arrive in the country as professionals or to perform skilled jobs are not referred to as immigrants, but rather as businesswomen or international students. Hence, media discourse has evolved from the old paradigm, which associated Brazilian women with poor, problematic individuals and threats to the social order, to the new one, which portrays these women as members of the transnational cultural and capitalist class who are contributing to society’s progress (Florida 2002).

Yet, simultaneously, the colonial imaginary has not been fully overcome, as the stereotypes that present Brazilian women as irregular, poor, and low-skilled immigrants has continued to be present in Público’s articles.

The case of the finance inspector who did not pay the immigrants who took care of his mother—13.02.2017

They are all immigrant women, most of them Brazilians, many without regular residence authorization. All were said to have been providing care or cleaning services, on average for two weeks, some more and some less, until they received a message that they had been dismissed.

The lives of immigrants waiting to regularize their documents—07.03.2017

Mary Lane Tavares, 53, a Brazilian, living in Portugal consecutively since 2005, has been trying to regularize her situation for years. She has already had several jobs [. . .]. It was difficult to get a contract. For three years she worked as a domestic worker.

Joziana and Wolner dream of returning to Brazil to “start again from scratch”—03.02.2019

Joziana does not sleep because of her anxiety [about returning to Brazil]. She is afraid of the bills and of the debts. “Our life is suspended, the mortgage on the house is delayed. None of the family has a way to support us: it’s five plane tickets.”

The three articles suggest a shift in the way Público represents Brazilian immigration to Portugal, providing different examples of Brazilian experiences and trajectories in the country. It gives visibility to the experiences of Brazilian students and middle-class women, but it also covers situations involving underprivileged Brazilian women. Presenting different examples of Brazilian immigration to Portugal offers a more accurate picture of the phenomenon in the country. Despite that, the influence of the colonial discourse in portraying these women as poor immigrants cannot be minimized. The case of the couple who want to go back to Brazil, while presenting Joziana as a Brazilian woman married to a Brazilian man and worried about her family’s well-being, stresses the impoverished situation that they are living in, their debts, and their dependence on policies to assist them to return to Brazil. No discussion, however, is provided on the efficiency of the Portuguese integration policies.

Conclusion

In our analysis covering the period from 2000 to 2019, we observed different trends in the representation of Brazilian women as migrants in Público discourse. The conventional image, deeply rooted in the colonial imagination, has been dominant, and even if other images have emerged, it still persists. The colonial imaginary that portrays Brazilian women as stigmatized, second-class citizens associated with sexual and irregular activities has not disappeared. However, within this image, our analysis shows a notable shift toward a more positive perspective, emphasizing both the women’s professional qualifications and their capacity for entrepreneurship, which portrays them as sophisticated modern citizens. This change in discourse seems to be linked to recent shifts in the Portuguese context and migration policy after emerging from the international financial crisis. Moreover, the women’s elevated social class has positioned them favorably in the social hierarchy, mitigating the impact of the influences of the colonial imaginary on their experience in Portugal.

In today’s context, it is crucial for Portugal to actively shape its image as a thriving, cosmopolitan, and appealing destination for skilled migrants, reinforcing its reputation as an open and culturally diverse country. The influx of skilled female Brazilian business investors aligns perfectly with these objectives. Furthermore, the substantial economic and cultural capital possessed by these women contributes significantly to fostering a more positive discourse surrounding their presence. Lastly, at both the European Union and the national level, the increasing regulation of press content and initiatives to prioritize coverage of discrimination and diversity have also played a role in driving this positive change. However, it remains to be seen whether at any point in history, the colonial imaginary will ever be forgotten.

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Future plans

First-generation immigrants have often expressed a desire to return to their country of origin. The underlying idea is to earn enough money in the receiving country to build up an economic base for retirement back home. Studies in several countries have, however, shown that these plans are often not realized or that they change over time (Carling 2014). In fact, many choose to stay or to commute between countries after retirement instead of returning permanently as initially envisaged (Hunter 2011). Several factors related to a person’s choice of where to live after retirement have been identified; for instance, they may have gotten used to the lifestyle in their country of settlement, which has gained personal importance, and other family members—in particular, their own children—will often continue to live there (Attias-Donfut, Tessier & Wolff 2005; Bolzman, Fibbi & Vial 2006). Structural or practical considerations, such as health issues and the availability of healthcare provision, legal issues, and financial concerns, can also play a decisive role (Mandres 2014). As life in the receiving country goes on, what is experienced as “home” can also change over time (Kunuroglu et al. 2018). Nonetheless, multiple attachments are possible, and special bonds with one’s country of origin often seem to be retained (Klok et al. 2017, Palladino 2019). The practice of commuting between both countries after retirement has been described in a survey of middle-aged international immigrants in France on their future plans for retirement (Attias-Donfut, Tessier & Wolff 2005). Recently, a retirement mobilities approach has been proposed as a new analytical framework for addressing the complexities of transnational lifestyles in older age (Nedelcu et al. 2023). This approach takes into account that the lifestyles of many older people are characterized by transnational movements and that the assumption of immobility as the norm is no longer valid.

When it came to the future plans of the first-generation Portuguese immigrants who participated in the IRMA project, we were able to identify similar patterns to those found in earlier European studies (Attias-Donfut, Tessier & Wolff 2005). We asked participants if they had planned—at the beginning of their stay in Luxembourg—to return to their country of origin in the future, and we wanted to know what their current plans were at the time of data collection.² Although 69% indicated that when they came to Luxembourg years ago they had envisaged that they would return to Portugal, the picture had evolved in the meantime: about 20% of our participants stated clearly that they would still like to return. A proportion of 41% were planning to stay in Luxembourg, whereas 21% preferred to commute between Luxembourg and Portugal and 18% were undecided about what to do after retirement. Further questions revealed that participants had often immigrated to Luxembourg for economic reasons but had formed emotional bonds with the receiving country over the years. Especially family and other social relationships were mentioned as reasons for staying in Luxembourg or for commuting, in addition to practical considerations (Bolzman, Fibbi & Vial 2006). The main reasons driving future plans to return to Portugal tended to be personal, such as a continuing strong attachment to the cultural heritage and lifestyle in the country of origin. Notably, the proportion of people planning to return in the future was slightly higher among those who were still gainfully employed; presumably, for them, the decision-making process was still ongoing. The likelihood of staying in Luxembourg increased with the length of time in the Grand Duchy and with already having grandchildren in Luxembourg. It should be mentioned that all the participants had children living in Luxembourg (due to our study design), but only a portion of them already had grandchildren. The immigrants’ adult children were also asked about their future plans. As expected, the majority were planning for a future in the Grand Duchy, where they had grown up and had sometimes already started a family of their own. Notably, they often reported also having close bonds with their parents’ country of origin. Interestingly, the majority of participants, irrespective of their future plans, were homeowners in Luxembourg. However, participants who wanted to stay in Luxembourg permanently were less likely to own property in Portugal than those who wanted to return or commute. This could indicate not only the importance of opportunity structures but also the planning ahead of some participants.

However, for the first generation, having plans to stay in Luxembourg did not mean that their ties with their country of origin were completely broken. On the contrary, no differences in the emotional attachment to Portugal were found among this group; however, those who wanted to stay in Luxembourg or commute indicated a stronger attachment to Luxembourg than those who wanted to return to Portugal. The latter group also indicated scarcer Luxembourgish language competences. This confirms earlier claims that when migrants build ties in their country of migration, a permanent return to their country of origin becomes less likely a choice (ibid.). A transnational lifestyle and continued cross-border mobility resulting from multiple social and personal links to both countries then become more probable (Nedelcu et al. 2023).

This brings us to the question of how first-generation migrants establish new bonds and define their cultural identity and belonging across their life course.

Cultural identity

Settling in a new country can be regarded as a critical life transition that requires sociocultural and psychological adaptation, a process termed acculturation (Berry 2005; Redfield, Linton & Herskovitz 1936). Whereas earlier theories regarded acculturation as being a unidimensional adaptation to the receiving culture, it has become evident that migrants build new bonds with their receiving country while retaining aspects of their culture of origin, as described in two-dimensional or multidimensional models of acculturation (Berry 2005; Kunuroglu et al. 2018). In fact, migration might trigger changes in cultural, social, and emotional belonging, as migrants leave behind a familiar living context and an established social network when moving to new surroundings. Nonetheless, people do not migrate without a past. The recently introduced concept of proculturation accounts for the fact that people who migrate as adults have been enculturated in other cultural contexts and carry with them a kind of imprint—that is, they see and interpret the world and new experiences through the cultural lenses acquired earlier (Gamsakhurdia 2019). Therefore, individuals differ in how they internalize old and new cultural influences and integrate them into the self (Schwartz et al. 2010). The bicultural identity integration model refers to different ways in which people might view their belonging to different cultures: The first dimension refers to the perception of both cultures as blended or distant, while the second dimension describes whether people experience their cultures as rather harmonious or conflicted (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos 2005). People might also engage in cultural frame-switching; that is, adapting their behavior to the specific cultural context when moving between different cultural systems (Hong et al. 2000; No 2013). On the basis of these cognitive and behavioral components, earlier research identified different ways of being bicultural: blended biculturals perceived their cultures as overlapping and felt competent in different cultural contexts, whereas alternating biculturals were found to make a clear distinction between both cultures but were able to move between them without problems (Phinney & Devich-Navarro 1997). Importantly, a third group was labeled as separate: although living with multiple cultural influences, they did not identify as bicultural but felt that they belonged only to one or the other culture. More recently, a transformative theory of biculturalism has been proposed (West et al. 2017). This theory suggests frame-switching, hybridizing, or integrating as ways in which people dynamically negotiate different aspects of their different cultural identity. Following the above-described approaches, the bicultural identity integration of first-generation Portuguese immigrants and their adult children was examined in the IRMA project. We considered the dimensions of compatibility, conflict, and frame-switching (Barros & Albert 2020a). We assumed that first-generation migrants face different developmental tasks from those in the second generation when reconciling and negotiating different cultural aspects. Whereas the former group were socialized in a different cultural context before they migrated, the latter have grown up with multiple cultural influences (Birman 2006). Interestingly, both first- and second-generation participants indicated on average low conflict with regard to their multiple cultural belonging, and both groups engaged equally in frame-switching, adapting their behavior when navigating between different cultural systems. However, there were significant differences in the dimension of compatibility. More precisely, the older generation experienced both cultures as more separate, whereas the younger generation saw both cultures as more overlapping.

When taking a closer look at patterns based on the combination of the aforementioned dimensions, we found four different identity types among participants from the first generation and their adult children: (a) blended biculturals, (b) alternating biculturals, (c) ambivalent, and (d) separated (Barros & Albert 2020b). Blended, alternating, and separated types have already been described in earlier studies; the newly discovered ambivalent type included participants who identified with both cultures but experienced them as conflicting. Participants with this pattern also indicated more explicitly that they use cultural frame-switching and adapt their behavior depending on the context they find themselves in. Portuguese migrant fathers were most frequently found to be among the alternating biculturals and the ambivalent types. Both these types engaged in frame-switching, but the alternating biculturals perceived their multiple belonging more positively than the ambivalent types did. The latter seemed to feel conflicted about the two distinct cultures they belonged to, although they felt capable of alternating between them. For Portuguese migrant mothers, the most frequent pattern seemed to be separated types, followed by blended biculturals and alternating biculturals. For first-generation migrants, cultural contact with their culture of origin and the receiving culture occurs one after the other, as they are socialized in one country before settling into a new context with new values, norms, and practices. The asynchronous sequence of experiences in different cultural contexts could account for the higher numbers of people from the first generation who clearly distinguished their multiple cultural aspects. Among the adult children we found the same patterns as for the first generation in that blended biculturals were the most common. Having grown up in and between two cultures, members of the second generation in migrant families might have simultaneously internalized both the culture of their parents and that of the societal context in which they lived during their formative years. This simultaneity of cultural influences could have contributed to the perception of a certain overlap of both cultures. However, the results also showed that, especially for the second generation, reconciling different cultural identities can be a difficult task depending on a person’s life experiences and contexts. This was further demonstrated in the qualitative interviews.

Most of the respondents from the second generation regarded Luxembourg as their focus of life while recognizing their Portuguese roots. The majority said they felt a sense of belonging to both cultures, but there was variety in how they reconciled both influences (Barros & Albert 2020a). Some participants reported experiencing ambivalences concerning their bicultural identity (Barros & Albert 2020b). More precisely, some of the respondents reported that the views of others had undermined their own cultural identity constructions in relation to one or the other culture—being labeled as Portuguese by Luxembourgers and being seen as a Luxembourger when in Portugal (Barros & Albert 2020a). This denial of cultural identity has been described by other authors and is recurrent in reports of second-generation offspring in migrant families (Clark, Glick & Bures 2009).

The next section will focus more closely on the sense of belonging and how it evolves in the context of migration.

Sense of belonging

A sense of belonging gives meaning to individuals’ lives (Lambert et al. 2013), and it speaks to their basic need for communion and agency (Abele & Wojciszke 2007). Belonging is a basic need (Baumeister & Leary 1995) inherent in the processes of acculturation and cultural identity. However, while the sense of belonging has been widely addressed in migration research, it is still difficult to find a common definition. It has been defined in different ways depending on the disciplinary perspective; for instance as identification, connectedness, or attachment to a group (Halse 2018). People can feel they belong to social groups on different levels (such as family or friends, or other groups that share similar values or characteristics), to social institutions (e.g., school), or to transnational networks (ibid.). Apart from the social aspects, some authors have underlined the importance of place in belonging (Antonsich 2010). For instance, one might feel that one belongs to a geographic area or to a symbolic space, and the immediate neighborhood where migrants settle and interact with the other inhabitants might have an impact on feelings of belonging too (Wessendorf 2019). Importantly, these neighborhoods can be characterized by high levels of cultural diversity or be inhabited by specific groups (e.g., peer migrants from the same or a different community), or there might be a majority of long-established local residents in the neighborhood. This can, of course, have an impact on how social contacts unfold. Further, language competence is an important factor for the sense of belonging (Amit & Bar-Lev 2015). Notably, a sense of belonging in the country of settlement does not necessarily entail the desire to become a full part of what is perceived as majority culture or to take over the apparent characteristics of the majority (Blachnicka-Ciacek et al. 2021). It is also possible for migrants to develop a sense of belonging to the migrant community or to other subgroups in their country of settlement.

In the IRMA project, we addressed the question of immigrants’ sense of belonging by drawing on qualitative interviews with n = 10 Portuguese immigrant family dyads (one parent and one adult child each). The focus was on several facets of belonging, namely, spatial, social, and cultural. As expected, for most of the first-generation migrants interviewed, Luxembourg as their country of settlement and as their living context had over the years become a home to which they felt they belonged. Interestingly though, their connection to fellow Portuguese migrants in the Grand Duchy and to Portuguese culture was stronger than their feeling of being a member of the Luxembourgish community or being part of Luxembourgish culture. This was different for their adult children: they not only reported a greater attachment to Luxembourg in more general terms as a living context that provided economic stability but also expressed a strong attachment and identification with the Luxembourgish social and cultural setting (Afonso, Barros & Albert 2023). Interestingly, within the second generation a difference became obvious between those who were born in Luxembourg and those who were born in Portugal and migrated to Luxembourg with their parents at a young age: the latter underlined the importance of the multicultural context, whereas those born in Luxembourg identified more strongly with the Luxembourgish culture as their own.

Migrants’ experiences during their acculturation process are key for their development of a sense of belonging. To examine the pathway of how a sense of belonging evolves over time, we focused on a case study with one selected mother–daughter dyad, retracing their remembered migration history (Albert & Barros 2021). The selected case included a mother in her sixties, who had been living in Luxembourg for forty years and who was interviewed with one of her daughters. The daughter had been born in Portugal but migrated to Luxembourg with her family at the age of seven. She was in her forties at the time of the interview. It should be noted that while the mother had been employed as a low-skilled worker, her daughter had a professional degree and worked in an administrative position in the health sector.

The conversation provided a detailed account of how, in retrospect, an unfamiliar context that was experienced as hostile and even ugly at first, changed meaning over time, and eventually became a home for the mother. Her clearly stated intent to stay in Luxembourg and not to move back to Portugal permanently was in stark contrast to what she remembered as her initial thoughts; namely, a strong impulse to take a train back to Portugal immediately. It should be noted, however, that at the time of the interview she was in retirement and practicing a transnational lifestyle, commuting between both countries and spending part of the year in Portugal. Within this case study, the practical restrictions and opportunities that shape life became evident: the lack of a house in Portugal and a comparatively worse living situation back there eventually pushed our interviewee to stay in Luxembourg. She also remembered that her living conditions had a significant impact on her well-being. In addition, she identified turning points, for instance, an important improvement in the initially very difficult and poor living conditions in Luxembourg. When she started to receive an adequate salary and felt that her work was finally being recognized, her perception of Luxembourg changed, and she started to see it as a friendly and welcoming context (ibid.).

The qualitative interviews underlined the importance of experiences that are shared by first-generation migrants and their descendants, but they also demonstrated that memories can differ between family members as they undergo the same experiences at different points in their life course. Recollections from the past also have an impact on the regulation of relationships between older, first-generation migrants and their adult children (Albert, Barros Coimbra & Boulanger 2020). In the final part of this chapter, we will therefore focus on the regulation of intergenerational relations in the context of migration.

Intergenerational relations

Our focus was on the intergenerational relations in Portuguese migrant families, which we compared with Luxembourgish families. Past studies have shown that in families with a migration history, expectations that each generation has on the other generation(s) can be particularly high (Baykara-Krumme & Fokkema 2019), and intergenerational solidarity is negotiated in relation to the well-being of members of the family (Barros et al. 2023). Notably, in our research we found that conflict around cultural identity is related to intergenerational conflict and loneliness (Albert 2021). A motive behind the migration of first-generation parents might have been to provide a better life for their children (Kang & Larson 2014), and this can be recognized by the children. Strong mutual expectations of solidarity and supporting older parents might be related to the parents’ earlier efforts and sacrifices (Merz et al. 2009). For instance, in the Turkish 2000 families’ study (Baykara-Krumme & Fokkema 2019), migrant families more often corresponded to the full-solidarity family type than to the autonomous type. At the same time, research has shown that younger generations might have adopted values and norms from the country of settlement and not fully agree with parental expectations. Such a generational or acculturation gap can lead to intergenerational ambivalences and conflicts (Albert, Abbey & Valsiner 2018).

In the IRMA project, we took a closer look at the family cultures in Luxembourgish and Portuguese families living in Luxembourg. Our interviews suggested that intergenerational relations and mutual expectations are, not only in Portuguese families but also in Luxembourgish ones, characterized by high cohesion: a sense of being there for each other in case of need (Albert & Barros Coimbra 2017). But we also found differences between these two groups: intergenerational support between Luxembourgish parents and their adult children was mostly downward, whereas support patterns were more reciprocal in the Portuguese families living in Luxembourg, who also rated family obligations higher (Albert, Ferring & Michels 2013)—a finding that was in line with the results of earlier studies (Fleury et al. 2011). We carried out cluster analyses to identify different relationship patterns in our survey data. More of the Luxembourgish adult children were found to be in clear-cut clusters—characterized either by high adherence to obligations or by independence—while more of the Portuguese adult children were found in ambivalent clusters. Thus, some adult children might find it difficult to reconcile their striving for independence with their family obligations, especially in the context of migration.

In order to delve deeper into the topic of relationship regulation and better understand the processes and mechanisms behind different relationship patterns, we then carried out thematic content analyses of our qualitative interview data. In doing so, we focused on the specific topic of moving out of the parental home. We expected to find differences in how autonomy and relatedness or solidarity and reciprocity are negotiated when comparing Portuguese families with Luxembourgish families (Albert & Barros Coimbra 2017). A typical pattern was that of Portuguese parents exhibiting a tendency to move back and forth between granting autonomy and holding their children back, while their young adult children reassured them of their solidarity. Luxembourgish parents assumed the need to let their children grow into independence, because this is an expected part of children growing up that parents must come to terms with. As a tendency, these results hinted at a dyadic co-regulation of autonomy and relatedness in the Portuguese families and at more individual cognitive regulatory strategies in the Luxembourgish families. As described above, cohesion was strongly expressed in both the Luxembourgish and the Portuguese families, but the Portuguese families had higher expectations around frequency of contact than the Luxembourgish families did, and they underlined more clearly the importance of geographical closeness between family members from different generations. The Luxembourgish participants placed more emphasis on the importance of being there for each other in case of need, whereas frequency of contact seemed to be less important. These observations were in line with a theoretical model on assurance (which is typical for intergenerational relations in interdependent cultural contexts) versus trust (which is more central in independent cultural contexts) (Rothbaum & Trommsdorff 2007).

The Portuguese adult children in our project were aware that their parents had worked hard to provide their families with a good life. In exchange, they helped their parents with administrative issues and translation. Recently, the sense of indebtedness has been introduced into the study of intergenerational relations in migrant families. This refers to second-generation members of immigrant families and their wish to give something back to their immigrant parents, who have made many sacrifices to provide a better life for their children Pfammatter & Schwarz 2022). Feelings of gratitude, shame, and guilt have also been described in relation to intergenerational transfers (Carling 2014; Simoni & Voirol 2021).

Conclusions

The present contribution has focused on the first generation of Portuguese migrants to Luxembourg, who have started to reach the retirement age. While it was once unknown whether a large number of them would return to Portugal after completing their professional life, it has now become evident that many are choosing to continue living in Luxembourg or are opting for a transnational lifestyle, where they spend some time in Luxembourg and some in Portugal. The research results from the IRMA project have indicated that Portuguese migrants who were part of the first waves of immigration have formed strong ties and roots in the Grand Duchy; they have found their place in their country of settlement and have become an integral part of the culturally diverse society of Luxembourg. At the same time, these first-generation immigrants have retained strong links to Portugal and have transmitted their cultural traditions to their offspring who have grown up in the Grand Duchy. Despite adopting cultural influences from Portugal and from Luxembourg, the first generation continues to keep the two cultural contexts more separate; but for their offspring, both cultures have become integral, and sometimes blended, parts of their identities. The IRMA study has shed light on intergenerational regulatory efforts and on the intraindividual negation processes that take place when reconciling these two cultural influences. We have discussed the challenges and opportunities of living with diverse cultures and outlined the importance of intergenerational relations in the context of migration.

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