Reconstruindo identidades múltiplas: imigrantes portugueses e luso-africanos em São Paulo

Abstract

In the 1970s & 1980s, migratory flows of Portuguese & luso-Africans from old Portuguese African colonies towards to Sao Paulo were the result of the pressures of difficult & complex African & Portuguese politics. Three very different cultural experiences were in play: that of the portuguese colony, the african context, & the Brazilian character of the destination, Sao Paulo. This paper explores the migrant's complex displacement experiences, the insertion of the migrant into the new context & the conflicts of identity that this migratory process entailed. We concentrate on the recent past, which has not been extensively researched. We use a method we call 'summarized life-histories', which seemed appropriate, as we didn't know what the immigrants would tell us. We present a number of specific cases to exemplify our analysis. Through them, we can see that memories refer to events, people & places from the three continents, through the conscious & unconscious construction of multiple identities.