Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Introduction: Setting the Scene

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Postcolonial Portuguese Migration to Angola

Part of the book series: Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship ((MDC))

  • 277 Accesses

Abstract

For the first time in postcolonial history, a substantial number of migrants from a European ex-colonial power are seeking a better life in an African ex-colony. This unexpected process has its origins in the conjuncture of the financial crisis hitting Portugal and an oil-fuelled economic boom happening simultaneously in Angola. Building on ethnographic interviews, this book analyses how Portuguese migrants and Angolan residents reconstruct their identities and relations of power when they interact in Luanda. At the forefront are questions about postcolonial continuities and ruptures in a macro-context of radical change. The present chapter provides a historical, political and economic background to the contemporary encounters between Angolans and Portuguese in Luanda. It also describes the methods and material that the book is based on.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    As I will make clear, the recent criticism levelled against the narrative of “Africa rising” (e.g. Melber 2016) is also valid for the exaggerated stories that have been circulating about Angola’s economic wonder.

  2. 2.

    Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), Angola’ ruling party since 1975; União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA); and Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (FNLA ).

  3. 3.

    For an in-depth political, social and cultural account of the retornados, see Valente Cardoso (forthcoming).

  4. 4.

    The plight of this population is described by Andrade (2000).

  5. 5.

    In connection with the elections in August 2017, Eduardo dos Santos stepped away from the formal office of Angolan presidency, but he will continue as the leader of MPLA . It remains to be seen what room to manoeuvre this leaves for the new president, João Lourenço.

  6. 6.

    According to some of my Portuguese informants, a parallel process of angolanization has taken place during the last decade in Portuguese popular culture. Angolan music and dance styles, such as kizomba and kuduro, have become immensely popular, especially among young people, in Portugal.

  7. 7.

    For an in-depth analysis of intimate relationships between Portuguese and Angolans, see Valente Cardoso (forthcoming).

References

  • Agência Brasil. 2014. Oportunidades e proximidade cultural atraem brasileiros para Angola. agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br. Accessed 25 Jan 2017.

  • Åkesson, Lisa, and Maria Eriksson Baaz. 2015. Introduction. In Africa’s return migrants: The new developers?, ed. Lisa Åkesson and Maria Eriksson Baaz. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amit, Vered, ed. 2007. Going first class: New approaches to privileged travel and movement. Oxford: Berghahn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Andrade, Filomena. 2000. Isto é uma vida de improvisos: Estudo sobre deslocados em Malanje e Benguela (1997). Luanda: Editora Humbi-Humbi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ball, Jeremy. 2005. Colonial labor in twentieth-century Angola. History Compass 3: 1–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Zygmunt. 2006. Liquid fear. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bender, Gerald. 1978. Angola under the Portuguese: The myth and the reality. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bettocchi, Guillermo, and Arafat Jamal. 2002. UNHCR and internally displaced persons in Angola: A programme continuation review. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

    Google Scholar 

  • Birmingham, David. 2015. A short history of modern Angola. London: Hurst Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 2005. The social structures of the economy. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brettell, Caroline. 2003. Anthropology and migration: Essays on transnationalism, ethnicity and identity. Walnut Creek/Oxford: Altamira Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Candeias, Pedro, Jorge Malheiros, José Carlos Marques, and Ermelinda Liberato. 2016. A nova emigração para Angola: Integração diferenciada e forte ligação a Portugal. In Regresso ao future: A nova emigração e a sociedade Portuguesa, ed. João Peixote, Isabel Tiago de Oliveira, Joana Azevedo, José Carlos Marques, Pedro Góis, Jorge Malheiros, and Paulo Miguel Madeira. Lisbon: Gradiva.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castelo, Cláudia. 2007. Passagens para África: O povoamento de Angola e Moçambique com naturais de metrópole (1920–1974). Porto: Edições Afrontamento.

    Google Scholar 

  • Costa, Jorge, João Teixiera Lopes, and Francisco Louçã. 2014. Os donos Angolanos de Portugal. Lisbon: Bertrand Editora.

    Google Scholar 

  • dos Santos, José Eduardo. 2013. Discurso do Presidente da República sobre Estado da Nação. angop.ao. Accessed 31 Oct 2016.

  • Eriksson Baaz, Maria. 2005. The paternalism of partnership: A postcolonial reading of identity in development aid. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Faier, Lieba. 2009. Intimate encounters: Filipina women and the remaking of rural Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Faier, Lieba, and Lisa Rofel. 2014. Ethnographies of encounter. Annual Review of Anthropology 43: 363–377.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fechter, Anne-Meike, and Katie Walsh. 2010. Examining ‘expatriate’ continuities: Postcolonial approaches to mobile professionals. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36 (8): 1197–1210.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman-Bianco, Bela. 1992. Multiple layers of time and space: The construction of class, ethnicity, and nationalism among Portuguese immigrants. In Towards a transnational perspective on migration: Race, class, ethnicity, and nationalism reconsidered, ed. Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Green Basch, and Cristina Szanton Blanc. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2001. Colonialism as a continuing project: The Portuguese experience. Identities 8 (4): 477–482.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Governo de Angola. 2016. Resultados definitivos do recenseamento geral da população e habitação de Angola 2014. Luanda.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Stuart. 1996a. When was the postcolonial? Thinking at the limit. In The postcolonial question: Common skies, divided horizons, ed. Ian Chambers and Lidia Curti. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1996b. Who needs identity? In Questions of cultural identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hindman, Heather. 2013. Mediating the global: Expatria’s forms and consequences in Kathmandu. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Instituto Nacional de Estatística. 2016. ine.pt. Accessed 7 Dec 2016.

  • International Monetary Fund. 2015. Press release: IMF executive board concludes 2015 article IV consultation with Angola. imf.org. Accessed 31 Oct 2016.

  • Jerven, Morten. 2013. Poor numbers: How we are misled by African development statistics and what to do about it. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kitari, Miguel. 2014. Mais de 50 empresas portuguesas querem entrar em Angola. Seminário Economico, 24 Oct.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laczko, Frank, and Tara Brian. 2013. North-South migration: A different look at the migration and development debate. Migration Policy Practice 3 (3): 14–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leonard, Pauline. 2010. Expatriate identities in postcolonial organizations: Working whiteness. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lubkemann, Stephen. 2002. The moral economy of Portuguese postcolonial return. Diaspora 1 (2): 189–213.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Machado, Fernando Luís, Cristina Roldão, and Alexandre Silva. 2011. Estratégias de integração de imigrantes Africanos em Portugal. Lisbon: Tinta-da-China.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marques, José Carlos, and Pedro Góis. 2016. Um passado presente: A emigração recente de portugueses para o Brasil. Unpublished paper.

    Google Scholar 

  • Melber, Henning, ed. 2016. The rise of Africa’s middle class: Myths, realities and critical engagements. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Messiant, Christine. 1994. Angola, les voies de l’ethnisation et de la décomposition. I. De la guerre à la paix (1975–1991): le conflit armé, les interventions internationales et le peuple angolais. Lusotopie 155–210.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1995. Angola, les voies de l’ethnisation et de la décomposition. II. Transition à la démocratie ou marche à la guerre? L’épanouissement des deux ‘partis armés’ (mai 1991–septembre 1992). Lusotopie 181–212.

    Google Scholar 

  • Observatório da Emigração. 2015. Emigração Portuguesa: Relatório Estatístico 2015. Lisbon.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. observatorioemigracao.pt. Accessed 8 Dec 2016.

  • OECD. 2011. Economic diversification in Africa: A review of selected countries. Paris: OECD Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2013. Phase 3 report on implementing the OECD anti-bribery convention in Portugal. OECD Working Group on Bribery.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olwig, Karin Fog, and Ninna Nyberg Sørensen. 2002. Mobile livelihoods: Making a living in the world. In Work and migration: Life and livelihoods in a globalizing world, ed. Ninna Nyberg Sørensen and Karen Fog Olwig. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pearce, Justin. 2015. Political identity and conflict in central Angola 1975–2002. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Peixote, João, Isabel Tiago de Oliveira, Joana Azevedo, José Carlos Marques, Pedro Góis, Jorge Malheiros, and Paulo Miguel Madeira, eds. 2016. Regresso ao future: A nova emigração e a sociedade Portuguesa. Lisbon: Gradiva.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peralta, Elsa, and Lars Jensen. 2017. From austerity to postcolonial nostalgia: Crisis and national identity in Portugal and Denmark. In Austere histories in European societies: Social exclusion and the contest of colonial memories, ed. Stefan Jonsson and Julia Willén. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pires, Rui Pena, Fernando Luís Machado, João Peixoto, and Maria João Vaz. 2010. Portugal: An atlas of international migration. Lisbon: Tinta-da-China.

    Google Scholar 

  • Portugal, Pedro. 2015. The Portuguese economic crisis: Policies and outcomes. Policy brief, Bertelsmann Stiftung.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schubert, Jon. 2015. Review of Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (2015) Magnificent and beggar land: Angola since the civil war. Africa Spectrum 50 (3): 142–144.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016a. A culture of immediatism: Co-optation and complicity in post-war Angola. Ethnos. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015.1133687.

  • ———. 2016b. Emerging middle class political subjectivities in post-war Angola. In The rise of Africa’s middle class: Myths, realities and critical engagements, ed. Henning Melber. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Soares de Oliveira, Ricardo. 2015. Magnificent and beggar land: Angola since the civil war. London: Hurst & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. The struggle for the state and the politics of belonging in contemporary Angola, 1975–2015. Social Dynamics 42 (1): 69–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sogge, David. 2011. Angola: Reinventing pasts and futures. Review of African Political Economy 38 (127): 85–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sousa Santos, Boaventura de. 2002. Between Prospero and Caliban: Colonialism, postcolonialism, and inter-identity. Luso-Brazilian Review 39 (2): 9–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • The Africa Report. 2013. Top 500 companies in Africa 2013. theafricareport.com. Accessed 31 Oct 2016.

  • Valente Cardoso, Carolina. forthcoming. The new “Portuguese presence in Angola”: An ethnographic account of (post)colonial traces, emplacements and interactions. PhD dissertation, Gothenburg University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Visão. 2012. Angola: Cerca de 259000 chineses vivem actualmente no pais. http://visao.sapo.pt. Accessed 25 Jan 2017.

  • Waldorff, Pétur. 2014. The informal city: Candonga, governmentality and corruption in post-conflict Luanda. PhD dissertation, McGill University, Montreal.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Under review. Renegotiated (post)colonial relations and the new Portuguese migration to Angola.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Lisa Åkesson

Authors
  1. Lisa Åkesson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Åkesson, L. (2018). Introduction: Setting the Scene. In: Postcolonial Portuguese Migration to Angola. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73052-3_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73052-3_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73051-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73052-3

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation