Abstract
This chapter links up with migration studies through exploring how the familiar keywords of “migrant”, “expatriate”, “return” and “integration” work in relation to the Portuguese in Luanda. The analysis centres on the different meanings that Angolans and Portuguese ascribe to these concepts and it relates these meanings to the two parties’ understandings of the social, economic and cultural incorporation of the Portuguese in Luanda. As the chapter demonstrates, these understandings are linked to the identities and power positions of the Portuguese. In addition, by discussing local understandings of these keywords, the chapter illuminates some bias and limitations inherent to the ways these concepts commonly are applied in globalised discourses on human migration. Obviously, these keywords are classed and racialised, and they are intrinsically tied to South-North mobility.
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Notes
- 1.
In 2013, I met a person employed by a transnational oil company who told me that his employer paid $2,500 USD per day for his apartment.
- 2.
Historically, Luanda has been divided between the cidade, the colonial cement city, and the musseques, the surrounding informal quarters built on sandy ground.
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Åkesson, L. (2018). Mobile Subjects. In: Postcolonial Portuguese Migration to Angola. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73052-3_3
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