Home and Overseas: The Janus Faces of Cape Verdean Identity

Abstract

Cape Verde's history of colonial neglect, drought, famine and forced migration, coupled with its arid climate, poor resource base, and dependence upon foreign aid has turned migration into a structural survival strategy. Cape Verdean identity is thus marked by a collective looking forward towards other geographical locations where relatives and friends have made a new home and a collective looking backwardsto relatives and friends left behind in what becomes an imaginary and desired homeland. Wherever Cape Verdeans are located, their identity claims are conditioned by this double-sided gaze: looking outwards towards the influences of other locations and of the external categorizations Cape Verdeans are subjected to by others and looking inwards towards a more intimate "homing" space of memory, meaning and self-ascription. The paper examines these processes through a discussion of the challenges posed to young Cape Verdeans pursuing education in northern Portugal and examines how identity claims are constructed through nation, citizenship and personhood elucidating the ways in which these may become intertwined in processes of diasporization and of creolization. Cape Verde offers a paradigmatic case for distinguishing between creolization and creoleness since an analytical usage of the concept 'creole' may be used to deconstruct normative interpretations of the term Creole in social and political practice.

Intercultural Relations Among Cape Verdean Immigrants Living in Portugal

“…BThese educated Cape Verdeans assimilated easily within mainstream Portuguese society (Batalha 2008, p. 63). ( 2) Students who left their home country to attend tertiary education under aegis of bilateral agreements with Portugal (Challinor 2008;Wilks and Neto 2016). (3) Immigrant workers who began to migrate to Portugal in the 1960s and their descendants (França 1992;Fikes 2009).…”

Creole chronotopes: the convergences of time and place in becoming black

“…Cape Verde shares with other archipelagoes an identification anxiety (Challinor 2008;Cohen and Sherringham 2008;Vergés 2007). Due to their multiple relationships of (inter)dependency, including but not limited to Portugal, England, Holland, Italy, the US, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, which have shaped transatlantic migration trajectories since the 15 th century, Cape Verdeans identify as "European," "African," "American" "black," "crioulo", "kriolu" or simply from the "good soil" (di terra sabi).…”

Cape Verde: Rethinking Diaspora in Development Policy

“…Voluntary emigration began as early as the mid‐eighteenth century, first to the United States and later to Europe. Cape Verde's people, culture, society, economy and identity are intimately shaped by and through its diaspora and history of migration (Challinor, ; Batalha and Carling, ). Despite this historical and economic significance of the diaspora, there are few works in English on the subject.…”

“…This is a study on the political economy of migration and development. Most scholarly works on the Cape Verdean diaspora have focused on questions of transnational identity and social formation, the historical evolution of migration, culture and immigrant integration, and other ethnographic subjects (Halter, ; Challinor, ; Batalha and Carling, ; Carling and Akensson, ; Cardoso, ). Very few have focused on political economy questions (Bourdet and Falck, ; Rocha, Tolentino and Tolentino, ).…”