Abstract
Portuguese migrants’ subjection to the rulings of the powerful Angolan party-state represents a fundamental rupture with colonial power relations. The migrants’ difficulties in acquiring Angolan immigration documents exemplifies these new dynamics. As in other migration destinations, payment of bribes is often necessary. The same is true in the migrants’ encounters with bribe-seeking police, where whiteness sometimes prompts a special targeting. In business life, Portuguese managers are dependent on Angolan company owners and business partners (i.e. on the party-state’s elite clients). Yet, in terms of corruption, many Portuguese companies are well integrated into the workings of Angolan business. In conclusion, the chapter shows that Portuguese migrants’ vulnerability in relation to the party-state may bring out feelings of pity as well as postcolonial score settling among residents in Luanda.
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Notes
- 1.
In 2011, Angolan authorities detected that at least 42 Portuguese construction workers employed by one of the mayor Portuguese construction companies were working without a permit (Público 2011).
- 2.
Besides that, it is perfectly possible for the global elite to legally buy residency rights or citizenship through sizeable investments in, for example, the UK, Portugal and the Netherlands (Sumption and Hooper 2014).
- 3.
Probably he is referring to the legalisation campaigns that took place in Portugal in the 1990s.
- 4.
For a comparison with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, see Eriksson Baaz and Olsson 2011.
- 5.
In the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index from 2015, Angola ranks 182 out of 190 countries.
- 6.
A similar observation was made by the historian Malyn Newitt (2007: 58) when describing how the Salazar colonial regime bureaucratised public life in Angola and put in place centralised, inefficient and corrupt administrative procedures.
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Åkesson, L. (2018). Changing Relations of Power and the Party-State. In: Postcolonial Portuguese Migration to Angola. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73052-3_4
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