Changing lusospheres – Europe, Brazil, Africa

On old and new connections between centers and peripheries

Current trends in Luxembourg studies - Volume 7

Edited by Peter Gilles, Markus Hesse, Michel Pauly, Christian Schulz

Published in Melusina Press (Universität Luxemburg), 2025
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ISSN (Web): | 2716-7518
DOI (Publication): | 10.26298/1981-5708
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2025

# Contents

- 0. Introduction
  - Changing lusospheres – Europe, Brazil, Africa. On old and new connections between centers and peripheries. Introduction
- 1. From and to Portugal
  - Portuguese immigration to the Amazon: Arrivals, marriages, and social networks (Brazil‍/‍Pará: 1850–1930)
  - The Portuguese Emigration to the Amazon (Brazil) (1887‍-‍1919)
  - Modern, skilled, entrepreneurs: Is there a “new” discourse about Brazilian women in the Portuguese media?
  - The sense of belonging among Portuguese first-generation immigrants and their descendants in Luxembourg
- 2. Luxembourgers in Brazil
  - Jean-Philippe Bettendorff and the Jesuit mission network in the Amazon region (1661–1693)
  - Luxembourg in Brazil. Some historical perspectives and recent developments
  - A Colônia Luxemburguesa: Unearthing a century of steel ties between Luxembourg and Brazil (1921–2022)
  - Luxembourgers in the global exploitation of natural resources in the lusophone world. From Édouard Luja to the Société-coloniale-​luso-luxembourgeoise
- 3. Coming from Africa
  - Unearthing migration pathways: A journey from Angola, across the Congo to Luxembourg
  - Diversity, conviviality, and entangled traditions. The case of Cape Verdean funerary practices in Luxembourg
  - Lusophone migration into Luxembourg: (post)colonial entanglements
  - Quitéria and other lives across the ocean: Mazagan immigration in the colonial Amazon, Grão Pará (1769–1778)

# 0. Introduction

## Changing lusospheres – Europe, Brazil, Africa. On old and new connections between centers and peripheries

Most of the chapters in this volume were originally contributions to a symposium that brought together an international and interdisciplinary group of migration scholars at the University of Luxembourg in November 2022. The topic of the symposium was historical and contemporary connections between Portugal, Brazil, Luxembourg, and certain African countries. The vagueness of the title—“old and new connections”—hints at the objective of this joint project: to understand the migrations and relationships between Portugal, Brazil, and other parts of the world as historico-politically and socio-culturally interconnected processes. The papers deal with specific migrations and diaspora experiences, as well as with the complexity and multiplicity of the relationships within the space that is created by these processes and that we tentatively describe as “changing lusospheres.”

A starting point for the idea of a meeting in Luxembourg was the fact that the diverse—and in part, intensive—movements and encounters between Brazil and Luxembourg are currently attracting considerable attention in academia, as well as in the wider public perception in Luxembourg. One reason for this is the recent immigration from Brazil, which is connected to historical relations of migration between the two countries and has added a new element to Luxembourg’s significant lusophone population. The choice of location was thus related to the resolution to mark Luxembourg as part of a universe of migrations and encounters that is historically and contemporarily constituted by Portuguese and wider lusophone mobilities.

The idea was strongly supported by colleagues in Brazil: Karl Heinz Arenz from the Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA) in Belém, who is working on early modern migration and missionary history and, in that context, on the link between the Amazon and the River Alzette in Luxembourg (Arenz 2020); as well as Carlo Krieger, anthropologist and diplomat, who, during his time as Luxembourg’s ambassador to Brazil, gained insight into the very heterogenous group of descendants of Luxembourgish immigrants.

These specific research interests and objectives met with the intensive work on migration in the longue durée as it is undertaken within the framework of the research group População, Família e Migração na Amazônia (RUMA) at the UFPA and with parallel structures and research priorities at the Faculty of Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences of the University of Luxembourg (Key Research Area Migration and Inclusive Societies/MIS). The project was also supported by representatives of Portuguese research institutions (Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia, Instuto Universitário de Lisboa and Departamento de História, Universidade de Lisboa) with whome there are longstanding collaborations. These brief notes give an idea of the institutional framework and the related support of cooperation. Mention must also be made of the support provided by the Centre de Documentation sur les Migrations Humaines (CDMH) in Dudelange/Luxembourg, whose research and documentation activities have for some time already included diverse projects on lusophone migration to Luxembourg1 We would also like to thank the City of Dudelange for supporting the symposium. .

The fact that about 15 percent of Luxembourg’s inhabitants hold Portuguese citizenship and the resulting presence of the Portuguese language in the country has inspired a multitude of social science studies in recent years2 The following selection of doctoral theses completed at the University of Luxembourg may give an impression of the range of topics covered: Martins (2019); Hinger (2017); Schiltz (2013). . In comparison, the connections between Luxembourg and other parts of the lusophone world—both those that go further back in history and those that are more recent—have received relatively little attention. Systematic research on these historically and culturally complex migration processes is still largely lacking, not least comparative interdisciplinary work on longstanding relationships and movements that connect Europe, Latin America, and Africa.

One objective of the symposium was to reveal this complex and, in part, still invisible field by a broadening of perspective, more precisely, by a partial shift of focus to the “periphery”, which is represented by Luxembourg in a factual as well as in an emblematic sense. As implied by the title of this volume, it is important to emphasize that center and periphery do not constitute a clear and static relation. By bringing together scholars with different geographical research foci and disciplinary approaches, we hope to foster curiosity about the spatial and temporal complexities of migration and socio-cultural relations in changing lusospheres. Combined, these contributions not only reveal historical change but also show that change can become a fundamental epistemic attitude. The space changes with the object of study, the specific groups and individuals who migrate, and their movement; the relationships that produce space overlap and become visible in their compactness. This becomes particularly clear when following the life paths of individuals and families which are off the major routes usually conceived as movements between center and periphery. With the present volume, we hope to contribute to overcoming the bipolar—and mostly binational—perspective that despite the recent interest in transnationalism, transmigration, and diaspora continues to dominate migration research.

Most of the articles collected here are already available in a publication in Portuguese (Vieira Junio et al. 2025). The English version of the publication has been expanded to include three further texts (by Goergen, Santana, and Tavares) that deal with movements to and from Luxembourg. The volume is organized in three parts, which can be roughly described as follows: (1) From and to Portugal; (2) Luxembourgers in Brazil; and (3) Coming from Africa. The first four contributions are dedicated to migrations from and to Portugal between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first century. The authors’ disciplinary and methodical approaches range from the historical analysis of serial data to qualitative social sciences research and media analysis.

The opening text by Cristina Donza Cancela looks at Portuguese immigration to the Amazon region in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. This immigration had its starting point in the state of Pará. The author is interested in the social differentiation of the migrant group, the workplace conditions, and the social networks. She combines the analysis of serial data with a micro-historical study that is based on the examination of ego-documents. The second paper is by João Cosme; it is concerned with the same migration movements but looks at their starting points in two districts in the interior of Portugal. Cosme is interested in the quantitative development and demographic composition of the group of emigrants in the period from 1878 to 1911.

Moving into the twenty-first century, Thaís França and Beatriz Padilla also focus on Portuguese-Brazilian migration relations, but they look at the complementary movement across the ocean from America to Europe. The authors present an overview of these migrations from the 1980s onwards, focusing in particular on female immigrants. They are mainly interested in the question of how changes in the social composition of this specific group in the wake of the financial crises during the years 2008 to 2014 are reflected in the group’s representation in the Portuguese media.

The last contribution to the first part is dedicated to Portuguese migrants in Luxembourg. Isabelle Albert presents the results of a large-scale social sciences study on the characteristics and conditions of multiple belonging to Luxembourg and Portugal. The survey is specifically interested in the importance of intergenerational relations and in the question of how the link between the two cultures and identities is realized by the first generation of migrants and their children, respectively.

The second part of this volume brings together four articles concerned with connections between Luxembourg and Brazil. The examples cover a long period and encompass a wide range of types of movement. The first contribution takes us to the Amazon of the seventeenth century. Karl Heinz Arenz traces part of the life path of Jean-Philippe Bettendorf, a Jesuit from Luxembourg whose work contributed to the consolidation of the Jesuit missionary project and thus influenced the development of colonial society in the Amazon region.

The second paper seeks to portray a comprehensive picture of Luxembourg’s presence in Brazil. Carlo Krieger takes the reader on a search for places and forms of memory. This leads to Minas Gerais and the important immigration at the beginning of the twentieth century, which was associated with Luxembourg’s steel industry. It also takes us to immigration communities from the early nineteenth century, whose descendants have only recently recovered their origins in the context of the (temporarily introduced) possibility of regaining Luxembourgish citizenship.

In Dominique Santana’s article, we get to know the previously mentioned industrial colony in Minas Gerais in more detail. The author provides a brief introduction to her doctoral thesis, which, among other things in the form of an interactive transmedia platform, gives some insight into the history of the “Colônia Luxemburguesa,” the social life of its inhabitants, and the close relationships to their country of origin and to Brazilian society.

The chapter that follows also deals with Luxembourgish–Brazilian relationships; however, these are presented as part of the more-encompassing luso-luxembourgish colonial entanglements. Using the example of a Luxembourgish biologist and explorer, Régis Moes illustrates “the possibilities that global coloniality offered to people from a non-colonial country.” He also mentions the activities of the private Société coloniale luso-luxembourgeoise, which have remained largely unexplored until now.

The first chapter in the volume’s third and final part is an excellent complement to Moes’ article. This paper, by Kevin Goergen, also deals with an individual life path, albeit a radically different one. Taking a micro-historical approach, the author explores the migration pathways of Amélia Lopes da Cruz and her family from Angola, through Congo, to Luxembourg, her husband’s country of origin. By shedding light on the frequently overlooked experiences of marginalized people in colonial structures, Goergen offers an unusual perspective on the interconnectedness of different colonial empires.

As we see in the articles by Moes and Goergen, Luxembourg’s colonial entanglements were not limited to its widely known engagement in the Belgian Congo but extended to other regions, including lusophone Africa. However, similar to the case of Belgium, these engagements rarely resulted in significant movements in the opposite direction—the migration of Amalia Lopez Da Cruz being a rare exception3 On Belgium, see Swyngedouw & Swyngedouw (2009). . The African presence in Luxembourg, which only began to become significant in the 1970s, has its origins in lusophone colonial and post-colonial regions. The next two articles of the third part concentrate on this presence.

The massive immigration of Portuguese workers to Luxembourg is already touched upon in Isabelle Albert’s contribution. Among these migrants there were numerous Cape Verdeans, who, different from the inhabitants of other Portuguese colonies in Africa, held Portuguese citizenship until the archipelago gained independence in 1975. In my contribution, I discuss the funeral culture of the Cape Verdean inhabitants of Luxembourg. Focusing on public and collective forms of mourning, the article explores the question of how cultural differences are perceived and experienced as an element of coexistence in a super-diverse society like Luxembourg. In doing so, I also intend to contribute to the broader field of research on the mobility of religion, and especially on migrations and re-migrations within the Christian churches.

Bernardino Tavares studies Luxembourg’s Cape Verdean inhabitants as part of the country’s encompassing and increasingly diversified lusophone population, which, as already mentioned, also includes a growing number of Brazilians with Luxembourgish nationality. Tavares is interested in the “Luso-Afro-Brazilian colonial matrix of (re)encounters of people historically connected by Portuguese colonialism.” His analysis shows how, in a country at the “colonial margins,” colonialism has shaped migration patterns and conflicts over citizenship, language, and race.

The final chapter provides an example of African lusophone mobility to Brazil. This article, by Antonio Otaviano Vieira Junior, takes us back to the Amazon. The author investigates the eighteenth-century displacement of an entire city, where more than 2,000 people set sail from Mazagão, Morocco, and anchored in Grão-Pará (Amazonia). They were “immigrants of Portuguese origin, but who since the sixteenth century have lived surrounded by the desert and Islam.” Beyond the physical displacement, the author addresses the immigrants’ attempt to adapt to their new land, valorizing their agency associated with multiple social markers of difference.

The collection thus closes with several papers in which the described problem of overcoming binary perspectives and rigid spatial conceptions becomes especially clear. The conditions described in the contributions by Tavares, by Vieira and by me not only call into question the center-periphery relation but also show that the categories “Portuguese,” “European,” “African,” and “Brazilian” hardly do justice to the historical and contemporary encounters and identifications.

To conclude, it should be noted that some of the contributions are exploratory sketches, which are intended to draw attention to the relevant topics and research lacunae. This is the case for the chapters by Moes, Goergen, and Krieger, that is, for the papers on colonial movements from Luxembourg and Luxembourgish immigrants in Brazil, two research fields that have only very recently begun to attract attention. With this edited volume, we hope to help strengthen these recent research efforts by presenting them as part of a larger international and interdisciplinary collaborative endeavor.

### References

1. Arenz, Karl Heinz, De l'Alzette à l'Amazone. Jean-Philippe Bettendorff et les jésuites en Amazonie portugaise (1661–1693). Saarbrücken: Éditions Universitaires Européennes, 2010.
2. Hinger, Thierry, In Luxemburg mit Portugal verbunden. Eine Verflechtungsgeschichte portugiesischer Migrantenvereine in Luxemburg und Portugals Emigrationspolitik (1974–1997). PhD diss., Université du Luxembourg & Universität Trier, 2017.
3. Martins, Heidi, Dynamiques de (des)appartenance au cours de la vie: Le cas des Portugais ‘seconde génération’ au Grand-Duché de Luxembourg. PhD diss., Université du Luxembourg, 2019.
4. Schiltz, Aline, Migrations et développement dans un espace politique changeant. Analyse de la mobilité intra-européenne entre le Portugal et la Luxembourg. PhD diss., Université du Luxembourg, 2013.
5. Swyngedouw, Eva, and Erik Swyngedouw, “The Congolese Diaspora in Brussels and Hybrid Identity Formation: Multi-Scalarity and Diasporic Citizenship.” Urban Research & Practice 2, no. 1 (2009): 68–90, https://doi.org/10.1080/17535060902727074
6. Vieira Junior, Antonio Otaviano, Cristina Donza Cancela, Elisabeth Boesen, and Karl Heinz Arenz, eds., Migrações e diásporas em múltiplos espaços: antigas e novas conexões entre Brasil, África e Europa. Belèm: Paka Tatu, 2025.

# 1. From and to Portugal

## Portuguese immigration to the Amazon: Arrivals, marriages, and social networks (Brazil‍/‍Pará: 1850–1930)

### Introduction

According to a Portuguese Immigration and Borders Service report for 2022, Brazilians “remain the main foreign resident community, accounting for 30.7% of the total.” (SEF 2022) This very significant percentage has been rising since the 1990s, with several waves of Brazilians migrating to Portugal between then and today. It is a diversified immigration, sometimes more focused on workers with low levels of education and qualifications, sometimes combining this profile with that of students, specialized workers with higher incomes, and even retirees with stable resources (Fernandes, Peixoto & Oltramari 2021). This immigration of middle- and upper-class people is reflected in the mainly positive representations of Brazilian immigration by the Portuguese (França & Padilla 2018), although cases of xenophobia are constantly in the news and are denounced in social networks. In relation to Brazilian women in particular, stigmas and prejudices remain “the result of mechanisms of sexualization, coloniality and racialization that constructed Brazilian women as exotic and sexually available bodies” (França & Padilla 2018, 3; França & Padilha 2025).

I begin with these considerations because it is important to be aware that while today Brazilians make up the largest group of foreigners migrating to Portugal, it was once the Portuguese who represented the majority of foreigners migrating to Brazil. Likewise, just as the profile of today’s immigrants has various social markers—including social class, which is reflected in the different levels of professional training, schooling, income, and social insertion—this heterogeneity also existed in the profile of the Portuguese immigrants who previously arrived in Brazil, with multiple experiences and affiliations. In the Amazon of the 1800s, Portuguese merchants, owners of rubber-trading1 The trading firms were commercial establishments that supplied the rubber plantations with general goods, such as food, clothing, and utensils, for which they received payment in kind in rubber. or export firms, bank directors, trade association members, and members of literary and philanthropic institutions might have been more visible in the Brazilian and Portuguese newspapers, but it was the thousands of men and women who worked in rubber extraction, at the ovens in the bakeries, at the counters in the dry and wet stores, in the sale of water and milk, and in the domestic services of washing, cooking, and breastfeeding, who made up the vast majority of the immigrant population from the second half of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Despite the specificities, contexts, consequences, and prejudices of class, race, and gender relating to the migratory experiences of the present and the past, it is important to explore this avenue and combine more elements to think sociologically about immigration, remembering its different spaces and temporalities and going back over practices, difficulties, and forms of support to better understand the processes of displacement and their challenges.

In this article, I analyze Portuguese immigration to the Brazilian Amazon—in particular, the state of Pará—in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. I combine a quantitative approach to the migratory flow, migratory profile, and marriages, with a micro-social approach to living and working practices, social support networks, and representations of age and marriage. The discussion is presented from the perspective of the social markers of difference (class, gender, and generation) of the immigrants because, despite their shared nationality, they were not a homogeneous population, and neither are they a homogenous group today; they occupy different social positions and experience more-or-less asymmetrical relations of power according to those social markers.

To carry out the analysis, I worked with passport records for the period 1850–1930 from the district of Porto, the main place of origin of those who migrated to Pará or other parts of Brazil.2 Passports were issued by the civil governments of Portugal. For this research, 18,308 passport records were collected from the district of Porto for the years 1850–1930. The passport records can be found in digitized books available on the website of the Porto District Archive. The books were downloaded, and the records were collected and organized in an Access database. I also used the immigrant registration books kept by the Portuguese Consulate in Pará from 1834 to 1930.3 For this research, 12,035 records for 1834–1930 were collected in the books of the Portuguese Consulate of Pará, which belong to the collection of the Library of the Portuguese Literary Guild of Pará. In addition, I consulted official letters, newspapers published in Pará, and criminal proceedings. These documents allowed me to cross-reference the quantitative and serial analysis with the individual stories of people in various social positions, in a game of scales that is typical of micro-history and its possibilities for dialog between the broader socio-economic structures and people’s individual experiences and capillary networks of social interaction.

### Immigration, colonization, and flow

Modern international migration was driven by the industrialization of Europe, the globalization of the market, and the massive flows of capital, raw materials, and goods. The movement of people in this period had a marked influence on the demographic profile of European countries, since displacements were recurrent not only in industrialized countries (such as England, where the percentage of outflows peaked at above 41% in relation to its total population) but also in countries with a pre-capitalist economy (such as Portugal, where the percentage of displacements reached 30%) (Massey 2003, 2). A large part of this population went to the Americas, in particular the United States, Argentina, and Brazil. Several Brazilian states received an inflow of people, especially Rio de Janeiro, the country’s capital at the time. However, along the migratory routes were other states, including those in the north of the country, in the area of the Brazilian Amazon where Pará is located.

It is always important to point out that the state of Pará, since the colonial period, was part of the Portuguese colonization process; it was a target of the metropolis’s migratory colonization policies, which were responsible for the arrival of individuals and families from the mainland and the Azores Islands (Vieira Júnior 2017). Whether under the tutelage of institutional policies, through initiatives of private agents or business owners, or even through individuals and families, population movements were constant in the state, stimulated by the inclusion of Pará on the global trade route as a result of the export of spices and cocoa. Many of these immigrants settled in the state and were fundamental in setting up social support networks for future immigrants—especially those who came to work in the services and commerce sectors, even after Brazil gained independence in 1822.

It must also be mentioned that, in addition to the immigration of free or semi-free workers, the state of Pará witnessed the forced migration of enslaved Africans from two areas: Bantu Africa, with enslaved people coming from the ports of Benguela, Luanda, Loango, and Angola; and the Senegambia area, through the ports of Cacheu and Bissau. These port names, as Diego Pereira Santos points out, “often ended up being given to the slaves, [and] correspond to the ports of embarkation/procedure, and are therefore, meta-ethnic, not translating into self-identification in Africa”.4 Santos 2023, 206; translation by the author. These people migrated by force, having been traded by companies and private individuals, from the eighteenth century until 1888, when legal slavery was abolished in Brazil. The end of slavery resulted in an increased search for a free labor force, preferably made up of white and European populations who fit the characteristics of the ideology of “whitening”—which was based on the country’s ideal of modernity and civilization, associated with the whitening of its population and was propagated by the intellectual and economic elite (Schwarcz 1993).

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the state of Pará experienced intense economic growth linked to the exploitation of rubber, a substance that had more market value thanks to new vulcanization technology making it useful in the manufacture of strategic products, including tires. The demand in the international market, the growth of rubber exports, and the higher liquidity of the state of Pará were important factors in the increased flow of migrants that took place in the state and throughout the Brazilian Amazon as a whole.

To attract European immigrants, who were migrating in droves to America and Brazil in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Brazilian states, including Pará, began to create public policies to form colonization centers and to offer land and work through advertisements that were circulated outside the country. In parallel with these state policies, travel agencies and private agents facilitated and controlled the obtaining of passports that made immigration possible and placed the workers in private estates, colonial centers, and, in the case of Pará, in rubber extraction areas, all of which were located in the interior of the state. The precarious infrastructure in these areas made it difficult to access the means of production, sanitation facilities, and healthcare. Faced with these adverse conditions, many immigrants preferred to remain in the capital, Belém, where they worked mainly in the tertiary services sector (as discussed later).

Although the Portuguese made up the largest share of the free immigrants who settled in the state capital, other nationalities were also present, especially Spaniards and, to a lesser extent, Italians, English, French, Turkish-Arabs and Turkish-Asians (as the Syrians and Lebanese were referred to in the official statistics), Americans, Germans, and Japanese. To provide some idea of the difference between the Portuguese presence and that of the other nationalities mentioned above, the statistics in the demographic population censuses of 1872 and 1920 on the presence of foreigners in the state of Pará show that there were 4,463 Portuguese in 1872, which had risen to 14,211 by 1920. This is followed by the presence of Spaniards, with 158 people in 1872 and 3,355 by 1920. Italians were the third-largest group to arrive in the state, with 37 people in the 1872 census and 3,355 in the 1920 census (Emmi 2009, 265).5 Census data should be interpreted with caution, as the surveys have several gaps and deficiencies in information, and the numbers are higher than those surveyed (Cancela, 2011). However, even with this caveat, they are important sources of reference.

The intense Portuguese immigration to Brazil and to the state of Pará in the second half of the nineteenth century is directly related to the fact that Portugal was a dependent country in an unequal position in the expansion of European capitalism. Portugal lived with the “failure of the respective national markets to absorb the enormous mass of peasants that the breakdown of the Old Regime and the development of capitalist relations in the countryside had freed” (Pereira 2002, 18). In turn, in the destination countries there was a need for hired labor to replace slave labor, in addition to an expansion of markets and services—similar to the situation in Pará with the development of the rubber economy.

As mentioned previously, most of the Portuguese immigration was to Rio de Janeiro (the capital of Brazil at the time) and, at the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, to São Paulo, a state whose coffee-oriented economy led to intense economic liquidity. Nevertheless, at the end of the nineteenth century, the state of Pará was in second place as a destination for Portuguese men and women.

To analyze the flow of Portuguese men and women arriving in the state of Pará, several researchers from the Population, Family and Migration in the Amazon Research Group (RUMA) based at the Federal University, Pará State (UFPA) surveyed the passport records of Portuguese districts known in historiography for their significant outflow of migrants to Brazil and arrived at the following figures: for the district of Porto, 18,308 passport records were collected for Pará between 1834 and 1930 (Cancela, 2019); for the district of Aveiro, 13,680 passport records were collected for Pará between 1882 and 1918 (Tavares, 2021); for the district of Braga, a total of 3,841 passports to Pará were recorded between 1868 and 1912;6 The Population, Family and Migration in the Amazon Research Group (Ruma) had access to the database of the Braga District Archive, kindly provided by one of the group members, Luiz Antônio Valente Guimarães. and for the district of Lisbon, 1,121 passport files were recorded between 1886 and 1900 (Cosme, 2015). Therefore, even though the years surveyed in the different districts mentioned above do not coincide, the researchers identified a total of 36,950 Portuguese immigrants to Pará at the turn of the twentieth century.

Much of this survey focused on the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, when there was an increase in immigration to Brazil in general and to the state of Pará in particular. By reducing the scale and working with one of the main districts of immigrant origin—Porto—we can get an exact idea of this increase.

Figure 1: Flow of immigrants from the district of Porto to Pará between 1834 and 1930, by number of passports (annual and five-year moving average; Source: Passport registration book of the Civil Government of Porto. Collection of the Porto District Archive)

As shown by my analysis in a previous article (Cancela, 2019), the line representing the five-year moving average in Figure 1 highlights that immigration intensified in the mid-1850s,7 The year 1855 was a year of great immigration, related to the cholera epidemic in Portugal and other parts of Europe. maintained an upward trend throughout the decades of the rubber economy’s expansion (1850–1911), before decreasing significantly in the years of the rubber trade crisis (from 1911), when exports of rubber were in decline.

The same happened in the district of Aveiro, as analyzed by Tavares (2021). According to the author, in 1882, 105 people from Aveiro moved to the state of Pará. This number jumped to 888 in 1900 and stayed high (with annual entries of over 500 people) until 1913, the year before the First World War, when immigration numbers dropped to fewer than 150 people a year (Tavares 2021, 121–2).

When we expand the sample to include the various Portuguese districts as a whole, using the records of the Portuguese Consulate in Pará we can see that the data follows the same upward trend shown for the districts of Porto and Aveiro. The numbers rose from the 1850s, reaching a total of 6,661 entries in forty-nine years (1850 to 1899). Between 1900 and 1918, a period of eighteen years, there were 2,746 entries, a significant increase that corresponds to 41% of the total recorded in the second half of the nineteenth century.

These figures show the importance of the rubber economy in attracting immigrants, with the international situation and mass migrations from Europe to the Americas also contributing. However, in addition to these macroeconomic issues, we must consider the importance of social networks in the migratory processes. These networks made travel to and settling in a destination possible and minimized uncertainty, thus building bridges that helped immigrants to find housing and work, as discussed later.

### Social markers of gender, age, and marital status

Most of the immigrants who moved to the state of Pará were men (Cancela 2019; Fontes 2016). However, the small number of female immigrants in the first half of the nineteenth century increased considerably in the early decades of the twentieth century, in a process of feminization of immigration that occurred not only among Portuguese women but in a broader process of mass international immigration from Europe to America, with more and more women participating in intercontinental and transoceanic immigration (Lutz, 2010).

The numbers help us understand this process of feminization of immigration. In Pará, for every ninety-nine men who migrated from the district of Porto in the first half of the nineteenth century there was one woman. This flow changed dramatically in the 1920s and 1930s, when the ratio fell to two men for every one woman arriving in the state. The same trend was observed for the Aveiro district, where we found that 160 men for every one woman migrated in the years 1882 and 1883. This ratio fell to twenty-six men for every one woman in the early twentieth century (1904–1908) (Tavares 2020, 135). These figures reflect the increase and prominence of women in international mass migration (Cancela & Tavares 2023).

In terms of age, most of the men and women from Porto who arrived in the state of Pará were between twenty and thirty-four years old (43%). Children between the ages of zero and fourteen were also present, accounting for around 12% of immigration. Those aged between fifteen and nineteen (8.2%) and between thirty-five and thirty-nine (10.3%) were also significant, although at a lower percentage. Above this age group, the numbers fell substantially for both sexes and did not exceed 7%. The data indicate that a large section of immigration was made up of young people of working age, which has been corroborated in other studies that have discussed Portuguese immigration—whether to the state of Pará (Tavares 2021; Cancela 2019; Cosme 2015; Emmi 2009; Fontes 2016; Carvalho 2011) or to other Brazilian states (Menezes & Matos 2017).

The age profile of the immigrants is reflected in their marital status upon arrival in the state, given that the percentage of single people and married people were fairly similar. It should be noted that migration subsidized by public or private authorities was not significant in the state of Pará, unlike in places where the coffee economy was taking hold and governments and landowners were encouraging families to come to the plantations. In Pará, although there was an immigration policy and official and private subsidies were available to promote agricultural nuclei, immigration was organized by the individuals themselves and sometimes by their networks of kinship, friendship, and fellow citizens, who pooled resources and made housing and work possible (Cancela 2023). According to this model, men and women often migrated alone; once they had settled down they could call on their spouses, children, relatives, or acquaintances to settle in the state.

Thus, although a significant proportion of the men who arrived in Pará from the district of Porto between 1850 and 1930 were married (42%), the percentage of single men was very similar (40.2%). The same profile was maintained among women, with the percentage of single women (42.5%) being practically the same as that of married women (43%). However, by analyzing the marriage profile of another Portuguese district, Lisbon, between 1886 and 1900, Cosme (2015) observed a wider variation in the marriage profile of immigrants. The percentage of married men was approximately 42%, while the percentage of single men was 55%. Among women, there was also a gap. Married women made up only 19%, in contrast with 67.5% for single women. When I analyzed the records from the Portuguese Consulate in Pará, where we found immigrants from the various Portuguese districts, single men (70%) and single women (72%) outnumbered married men (26%) and married women (13%).8 It should be noted that the data above excludes children under the age of eighteen.

These percentages indicate that immigration to the state of Pará was made up of a large contingent of single people, which could increase, decrease, or remain balanced in relation to that of married people, depending on the district and the number of documents collected. This profile may be related to the fact that we are looking at a migration that is predominantly made up of young people. It may also be related to the absence of an effective and broad public and private policy to attract subsidized family labor to work in the state, which would have increased the number of married immigrants.

To some extent, the fact that many of these immigrants arrived as single women was reflected in their significant presence in the marriage registers that I found in the state, especially in relation to men, who accounted for a total of 17% of the grooms who got married in Belém between 1891 and 1930. In other words, out of every ten marriages that took place in the capital, roughly two involved a Portuguese spouse.

### Immigration and marriage

In a previous study, I analyzed civil marriage records with Daniel Barroso. The earliest documents date from 1891, the year in which civil marriage was introduced in Brazil by the newly formed republican state. For the purposes of that work, we looked at records from 1891 to 1920,9 It is worth noting that the civil marriage records belong to the Civil Marriage Registry and are in the archives of the Amazon Memory Center. Although the registers begin in 1891, there were few registrations up to 1907 (a total of only 39), and they actually began in 1908. This may be explained by the loss of the documentation or even by the Catholic Church’s campaign against civil marriage, which threatened excommunication to those who performed the practice (Cancela 2011). since we wanted to go beyond the context of the crisis of the rubber economy that emerged in 1910 and 1911. In our survey, we found that Portuguese men outnumbered Portuguese women (75% men; 25% women) (Cancela & Barroso 2011). With regard to the endogamy of the marriages, the fact that Portuguese men preferentially married women from Pará stands out; only 25.5% of them married a fellow countrywoman and only 18% married a woman with another immigrant background, such as a Spanish woman. The Portuguese women, on the other hand, preferentially married their fellow countrymen (80.5%). “Only 9.5% of them married men from Pará, 5% national migrants and 5% men of other nationalities, especially Spaniards.”10 Cancela & Barroso 2011, 62; translation by the author. This reflects the fact that more men migrated than women did.

However, when I observed the increase in female migration and the feminization of immigration in the twentieth century, as already highlighted here, I wondered whether this process would change the profile of marriages involving Portuguese immigrants. For this reason, I extended the survey to the year 1930, when Getúlio Vargas was sworn in as president of Brazil and drew up a nationalist policy that imposed restrictive measures on immigration within the ideology of valuing the national worker.11 On December 12, 1930, the nationalist government of Getúlio Vargas passed Decree No. 19.482, which limited the entry of foreigners to Brazil, particularly those arriving in third class, considered immigrants (Santos 2017).

The first thing that stands out in the analysis is that the majority of the Portuguese marriages took place between 1908 and 1917, with an average of sixty-four marriages per year, even during the First World War. The average dropped to forty-two marriages a year between 1918 and 1930, a period marked by both the end of the international conflict and a decline in the flow of immigrants into the state of Pará, as shown in Figure 1. Therefore, the majority of the marriages took place up until 1917, and extending the survey to 1930 did not have much impact on the marriage profiles.

When I analyzed these figures by gender, the marriage trends by period remained the same. The marriages of Portuguese women were more likely to take place in the period before the First World War, with an average of twenty-six marriages between 1908 and 1913. During the war period (1914–1918), this average dropped but was still significant, standing at seventeen marriages a year. After the war, the average number of marriages did not increase again but fell to a low of ten marriages a year between 1919 and 1930. This profile was the same for men. Most of their marriages took place in the run-up to the First World War, with a total of sixty-six marriages between 1908 and 1913. During the years of the international conflict (1914–1918) this number dropped a little but was still significant at fifty-six marriages per year. After the war, the average dropped to thirty-seven marriages a year between 1919 and 1930—the year of the last marriage recorded among Portuguese men.

Similarly, in the sample that was extended up to 1930, there were more Portuguese grooms than brides. Men were involved in 76% of the marriages and women in 24% of them, despite the increase in female immigration and the fact that this migration was mostly of young, single women.

In terms of age at marriage, the differences were more pronounced according to the sex of the spouses (figure 2). The majority of Portuguese women (34%, to be exact) married when they were between sixteen and twenty years old. 29% were in the 21–25 age group when they married, and 18% were between the ages of twenty-six and thirty. Only 11% of the women married between the ages of thirty-one and thirty-five, and 7% after the age of thirty-six. One Portuguese woman had her first wedding at fifty-six years old, which was the limit for our sample.

Figure 2: Ages of Portuguese women and men upon marriage (Source: Amazon Memory Center. Fund: private marriage registry office. Civil marriage registry 1908–1930)

As for Portuguese men, this profile is reversed. The majority of men married between the ages of twenty-six and thirty (32%); 28% married between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five. Only 2.2% married between the ages of sixteen and twenty. The share of those who married between the ages of thirty-one and thirty-five was 17%. After the age of 36, the percentage of marriages reached 20.5%, while for women it was only 7%. The highest age upon marriage registration for men was 71. The age profile found for marriages involving Portuguese men and women was no different from that of Brazilians (Cancela 2011). Why did men, regardless of nationality, marry later?

This is related to the construction of the bourgeois order in the modern era, in which men are associated with the role of provider and must invest in work, educational training, and professional consolidation (Nazzari 2001). In the case of Brazil, the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century saw the expansion of cities, an increase in the urban population, and an expansion of the services and production sectors. This movement generated a need for educational and professional qualifications, especially in activities associated with the liberal professions, where young people from the elite and middle classes of the population worked. This training process required time, as did settling into a job, position, or profession that would allow the individual to obtain the resources to marry and support a family (ibid.). These representations of the male provider affected the performances and ideals of hegemonic masculinity of men of various nationalities (Matos 2010; Cancela 2011; Abrantes 2012; Melo 2013), and they help us to understand the need for more time in which to achieve the proper educational and financial condition, a fact that is reflected in the later age of marriage for men compared with that of women, especially for elite men and those from the urban middle classes.

Thus, when looking at the professional and occupational profiles of the Portuguese immigrants who married in Belém between 1890 and 1930, I observed that a significant percentage were involved in commercial activity or were even traders and industrialists, together accounting for around 40% of the newlyweds. These were followed by those registered as “employees” (26%), people who were professionally established. The rest of the grooms were distributed among various professions in the services sector, such as butchers, milkmen, tailors, gardeners, laborers, bricklayers, painters, coopers, shoemakers, and locksmiths. There were also a few fishermen, farmers, and gardeners.

Therefore, most of the newlyweds were people with resources involved in commerce, or people from the middle classes, employed in firms with different activities and services. This corroborates the argument above that the later age of men when marrying is associated with the bourgeois order, which ties the formation of the family unit to the condition of having a male provider who has gone through processes such as educational training, commercial and/or professional establishment.

The same was not necessarily true for women, whose educational background and professional establishment were not seen as a key condition for entering into a marital union. On the other hand, we cannot ignore a whole host of social representations that underlie age-related issues. As well as being markers of time, age groups function as markers of roles assigned to people by cultural tradition, defined and re-signified by gender. Many activities performed by women became associated with domestic work, which functioned as a generic expression used to define different female activities. These activities were devalued from the point of view of gender asymmetry, despite the fact that they were fundamental to the reproduction of the active economy in capitalist society (Souza-Lobo 2021 [1991]; Vergès 2020). Therefore, there were few brides whose professions were declared outside the nomenclature of domestic services or housework. Those whose professions were defined included landladies, teachers, fashion designers, and seamstresses.

Gender asymmetry can also be seen in the representations of women and their bodies. Fragments of these representations can be read in the magazine articles, which help us to understand a little more about the meaning of age and marriage at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although he was not Portuguese, Pará-born writer and politician Paulo Maranhão brought to us representations of age and marriage in the capital when he wrote of his love for a woman he met when she was still fifteen years old. He was not referring to a foreign woman, but the preferred age range for marriage for Portuguese women was no different from that for Brazilian women (Cancela 2011); this points to the confluence of social representations about women, age, and marriage in Pará, regardless of the nationality of those involved. The writer begins his prose by asking:

> How old were you when I met you? You never told me, nor have I ever asked you, but one can guess it in the red ribbon of your lips, in the unique brightness of your eyes, in the pink freshness of your cheeks. If a man does not lose the violent language of the senses with marriage, the language of feelings must remain forbidden. What I do know is that it is not without pleasure... but with the instinct of subtle emotion that one experiences when contemplating a young woman, at whose side one would like to live, in constant adoration, and at whom one looks with the feigned indifference of the fox before the opulent grapevine, to which its mouth could not reach.12 Magazine A Semana. Anno I, no. 44, January 25, 1919.

Jumping ahead several years on from this encounter, he continues:

> I am delighted to see that everything, or almost everything, about you has changed physically. Your lips are still red, darkness still reigns in your hair, but the youthful glow of fifteen years no longer graces your face. The delicate matrix of youth is succeeded by the crusty hue of thirty years. The complexion of your face is slowly losing the glow that singes your head. Your eyes—oh, your eyes!—are already like those old mirrors from which age gradually takes away the power of reflection [...]. (Ibid.)

Witnessing the passing of the years and the woman’s advancingold age, the author proclaims that he would know how to extract the warmth from the ashes, writing:

> I am the only one following you, looking at you and wanting you. Do not expect anything else. Do not deceive yourself anymore. In the past, when you passed by, a murmur of strange phrases followed you. Not today. Today, no one turns around to see you, because there are thousands of girls in their twilight years who defy men’s gaze. Your shape sags. Your waist resists the lacing of the corset. Your step loses the grace and lightness of a gazelle’s stride... Forgive me if I tell you that I am happy because you are getting older. It is just that now I am calm: no one else will covet you... Only I have remained faithful. Only I have not changed. I am the only one left to whisper to you at thirty-five years of age what I did not have the courage to confide in you when you were fifteen. (Ibid.)

According to the author, at fifteen the girl still kindled men’s desire; as a woman of thirty, she was a memory of youth that was beginning to fade; and at thirty-five, all that remained was the memory of the girl she had once been, and no man would want her. This ideal, that associated a woman of thirty-five with old age and decadence is an important element that helps us comprehend the small percentage of women who married after turning thirty.

It is also worth emphasizing that, although marriage was a reality for some immigrants, many families were formed without an official civil or even religious marriage. The practice of concubinage was a reality for Brazilian and Portuguese people alike—not least because the rates of illegitimate unions were high in Portuguese society, especially in the northern counties, from which most of those who migrated to Pará and Brazil originated (Scott 2002).

Thus, when analyzing the records of the Portuguese Consulate in Pará, it was not difficult to find information about single women who lived in the state with their daughters in arrangements created by single mothers. Women who were not officially married, might or might not have lived with a man, or lived alone with their sons and daughters. This was the situation for Olivia de Jesus, a single, thirty-seven-year-old Portuguese laundress from Paredes da Beira, São João da Pesqueira, Viseu. Olivia traveled to Belém for the first time in 1906 from the Port of Leixões. In Belém, she lived in Rua Paes de Carvalho with her six underage children: Antônio (eleven), Virginia (nine), Raul (six), Celeste (four), Izilda (two), and Joaquim (six months old). Another was Beatriz Augusta Gomes, a single, thirty-three-year-old servant born in Sindim, Tabuaço, Viseu, who lived at Rua Lauro Sodré with her three children: Ana (fifteen), Aires (twelve), Hilda (nine).

It is possible to give multiple examples like these, but the important thing here is to emphasize that institutional marriage coexisted with arrangements created by single mothers and with conjugal relationships that were illegitimate in the eyes of the state and the church. Concubinage was a common practice among Portuguese and Brazilian immigrants, with social class being an important social marker for understanding the recurrence of this practice among the working class. These people had to deal with the costs of marriage, the difficulty of obtaining the documentation required by the state and the church, constant mobility, the loss of documentation, and having few or no assets.

### Housing, work, and social networks

Despite their shared nationality, the profile of the Portuguese immigrants to Pará is quite heterogeneous. Some arrived with no income or standing and, over the years or across several generations, achieved social mobility. However, many of them continued to work in poorly paid jobs, such as selling milk and water around the city, transporting cargo, or working as a streetcar driver, bricklayer, furniture maker, laborer, milkmaid, maid, or laundress, or even as a clerk for a commercial business. As the Portuguese consul in Belém wrote in a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Services such as freight, hauls, cleaning houses etc., which in Lisbon, for example, are performed by Galicians, are carried out here exclusively by our compatriots. The young man on the corner in Pará is Portuguese.”13 Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Correspondence from the Portuguese Consulate in Pará. Serial B, doc. 40, letter to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, 1912; translation by the author.

Many of the Portuguese immigrants lived in unhealthy accommodation: in small rooms and shared areas, or even in rooms located in the bakeries and stores where they worked. These living arrangements were not uncommon, and I found several examples in the criminal cases I collected. Examples include the clerks Antônio de Mello and Antônio Saldanha, who lived in the upper floors of the warehouse where they worked, together with their Portuguese boss, Joaquim.14 Amazon Memory Center. Criminal proceedings. 2nd District. Libel. Year: 1877. Doc 01. Box 01. The same housing situation was experienced by the bakers Mariano and Gonçalo: both of whom were single, the latter Portuguese and the former Spanish. They worked and lived in a bakery on Travessa São Pedro, which was owned by Ceará-born Cosme, another single man.

Some couples, too, lived where they worked. These people included the Portuguese Avelino Xavier da Costa (a clerk) and his twenty-three-year-old wife, Rosa Maria de Jesus (a housewife). They arrived in Pará in 1896 and lived on Travessa Sete de Setembro, upstairs from the business where they worked, which belonged to the 31-year-old Portuguese businessman José Osório, who also lived there.15 Amazon Memory Center. Criminal proceedings. 3rd Criminal District. Minor injuries. Box: 1.896. Doc: 03. Year: 1896. Avelino had been married for three years to Rosa Maria de Jesus and had come to Brazil in search of work. On the ship, they met a Portuguese man, Augusto Bello, who had before lived in Belém and recommended José Osório's business to them. José Osório was married, but his wife had gone to live in Europe, taking a nephew with her, so he was left alone in the house he lived in above his business. He employed the newly arrived Portuguese couple, with Rosa in charge of doing the housework and cooking (Cancela 2011, 233).

While, in this case the Portuguese couple found somewhere to live through a lead from a fellow countryman, others accessed accommodation through newspaper advertisements, such as those in A Província do Pará, where they read about the rental of “a flat on the upper floor of the Flora store, with good rooms, suitable for people employed in commercial work. Contact for further information at Flora store.”16 A Província do Pará newspaper, April 16th, 1876, p. 3; translation by the author.

The spaces and types of housing used by the Portuguese immigrants in the city were varied. Those who made their living from selling milk in the streets of Belém usually lived in cowsheds located on the edges of the neighborhoods and the central streets. One of these cowsheds, located on Rua das Flores, was home to its owner and his workers, all Portuguese, aged between twenty-two and forty-six. Among them, two were married and four, including the owner of the establishment, were single.17 Amazon Memory Center. Criminal proceedings. 2nd District. Serious injuries. Year: 1888. Doc 01. Box: 1.888.

It was common for immigrants to live in close proximity on the same street, as was the case for the many washerwomen who lived on Avenida Tamandaré—many of whom were single and widowed, living with their offspring. In addition, some immigrants even lived in one residence made up of individual rooms and shared areas. An example of these living arrangements is described by Araújo (2023), who talks about the ranches of the twenty-two-year-old Portuguese immigrant Francisco Henrique Serafim, where several of his countrymen lived, many of whom were from the same parish, São Vicente da Raia, in the district of Vila Real.

I also encountered rarer situations in which women were living in hospitals or asylums; for example, the widow and seamstress Josefa Botelho de Carvalho (aged seventy) lived with her single daughter, Maria José de Carvalho (aged thirty-five) in the Domingos Freire Hospital. They were also from the Vila Real district. There were few religious women, such as Maria da Conceição de Magalhaes Aguiar (thirty-nine, born in Braga) and Maria do Rosario Alves (forty, born in Castelo Branco), who lived in the Santo Antônio nursing home.

In addition, I identified immigrants with the same trade, sometimes from the same Portuguese municipality, who were living together (Cancela 2023). A good example of this is the situation of the business belonging to the Portuguese carpenter Manoel Pedro da Silva Neto, from the municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia. Manoel arrived in the state of Pará in 1893, having gained social mobility and wealth by processing and exporting wood. In his company he employed more than fifty workers, most of whom came from the same Portuguese municipality as he did, Vila Nova de Gaia, and some even from in or around the same parish, Vilar do Paraíso (Cancela 2023, 98). When I analyzed the records of the workers at Manoel’s company, I was struck by the fact that many of them lived in the same establishment, Rua Bragança No. 3—probably one of the company’s properties.

These close working and living arrangements among Portuguese immigrants from the same municipality point to the existence of social networks being used as support mechanisms for migrating and finding a place to live and work, thus minimizing uncertainty in the destination society. Immigrants’ social standing, marked by the difficulty of earning an income, placed them on the outskirts of the capital, living in unsanitary housing such as cowsheds and ranches, with little or no infrastructure; they lived with other poor residents, some of whom were also foreign or national migrants, or even from Pará.

Hence, social networks that connected individuals, families, and fellow citizens, which could remain active despite the end of public policies to encourage immigration, private projects, or travel agencies and promoters, were important. This was especially the case in the context of the crisis of the rubber economy in 1911, when Pará’s economy lost its liquidity, income from public investments fell, and several companies went bankrupt. There was less incentive to migrate to Pará, not least because of the lack of funding and advertising policies. However, despite the economic crisis, immigrants regularly continued to arrive at Belém’s ports, even if this was in smaller numbers than during the heyday of the rubber economy.

The continuity of the arrival of these people may in part be associated with the social networks formed by the newcomers with immigrants who had been established in the state for a long time. In turn, although the rubber crisis left a hole in the public accounts and bankrupted several fortunes, other products began to enter the export market, such as Brazil nuts and timber, although even with these commodities, the state did not achieve the same liquidity generated by the rubber economy. An example of this is the timber extraction and processing company owned by the Portuguese Manoel Pedro, which welcomed immigrants to work there even after the collapse of the rubber economy in 1911 (Cancela 2023).

Similarly, I came across situations of Portuguese women living in the state in the 1920s, while the rubber economy was still in crisis, who, having lived and worked in Pará for some time, welcomed a newly migrated sister to share their home. Among these stories is that of sisters Maria Clotilde Marçal and Felizarda Roza Marçal. Maria Clotilde, a maid, who was twenty-seven, single, and a native of Penela in the district of Viseu, arrived in Belém in 1910 and lived on Avenida São Jerônimo. Her sister, Felizarda, was also single and a maid, having arrived in Belém twelve years later, in 1922. The two sisters lived on Avenida São Jerônimo. There was also a third sister, Genoveva de Jesus Marçal, who arrived in 1914—just after Clotilde’s arrival—when she was fourteen years old. At the age of twenty-three, in 1923, Genoveva no longer lived with her sisters. She lived on Travessa São Matheus, and moved again in 1924 after she got married. Another example is that of the sisters Amélia and Tereza de Jesus. Amélia was from Escurquela, in the municipality of Sernancelhe, in the district of Viseu. She was twenty-one, single, and a maid when she arrived in Belém in 1921. She lived on Avenida Generalíssimo Deodoro with her younger sister, Tereza, aged eleven, who migrated to the state in 1923.

I would like to reiterate here that the examples of the sisters mentioned above refer to their arrival in Belém in the 1920s, during a downturn in the rubber economy. Thus, a younger sister (single or married) arrived in Belém and had the support network of an older sister (single or married) who was already living in the state and whose home she could share, reducing the difficulties of settling down and encouraging mutual support.

This points to the need to think about immigration in a way that considers macroeconomic issues but does not dissociate them from the networks of kinship, friendship, and fellow citizenship that stem from capillary relationships that are formed by immigrants and involve people who have lived in a place for longer providing support for newcomers. From this perspective, when immigrants moved, their mobility was only possible because of this collective practice, which did not necessarily involve only people they knew. There could be various levels of proximity and contact between those who were part of this support network, which could be based on symmetrical or asymmetrical power relations, as in the relationship between a boss and his or her employees (Cancela 2023).

### Closing remarks

In the social history of the city of Belém, there have been many successful and economically mobile Portuguese immigrants, mostly people who were linked to commerce and were politically active in the city (such as Francisco and João Gualberto, and João Jorge Correia), some of whom had noble titles (such as the Baron of Monte Córdova, José Martins), and many others. Countless pieces of information can be retrieved about these people, whose names appeared in Pará and Portuguese newspapers, and they serve as examples of social mobility and conquered wealth.

In general, the Portuguese who achieved the greatest fortunes were those who opened commercial and trading businesses, occupying lands traditionally marked by the presence of indigenous, Afro-descendant, and Quilombola [Maroon] populations, in a movement marked by conflict, tension, and expropriation of territory, and the work of these populations, who lived on small properties and worked in extractivism, farming, and animal husbandry.

The wealthy immigrants, along with many others who were generally well-off and were linked to commerce, qualified professions and positions, made their presence known by creating and maintaining institutions including the Sociedade Portuguesa Beneficente do Pará (1854), the Gabinete Português de Leitura (1867), the Tuna-Luso Caixeiral (1903), later called the Tuna Luso Comercial (1923). All these still exist in Belém today and were important spaces for sociability, visibility, and the dissemination of Portuguese culture, bringing together immigrants—especially those who had a higher social standing’ with resources and education to compose and reinvent the idea of a Portuguese colony in Pará. Imagined communities (Anderson 2008) are strengthened and renewed in the sociability and ethos of a Portuguese identity activated from these institutions and far beyond them when they mobilize symbols such as the language, the classic writers like Camões, the artists, and the commemorations that celebrate important events in Portuguese history, such as the birthday of a king or Vasco da Gama’s voyage to the Indies (Cancela & Guimarães 2018).

Some of the individuals who made up the local elite and fostered these Portuguese institutions owned newspapers, had businesses and positions, and did not see themselves as immigrants. The immigrant was “the other,” the poor person, with no education or income, who arrived in Belém having traveled in third class on a ship. The immigrant migrated “seeking” work, while the Portuguese with an income “traveled to” work. The immigrant was subjected to the stereotypes and prejudices from which the Portuguese elite wanted to differentiate themselves—maintaining their nationality and the institutions that reinforced the Portuguese identity, such as those mentioned above, but distancing themselves from the label of immigrant.

On the other hand, there were countless difficulties for those who did arrive in third class on the ships. Some would make a livelihood in crime or cheating (Sarges & Morgado 2010; Araújo 2023), but many others would seek their fortune in various activities and jobs in the city’s service sector. Having an acquaintance or a relative already living in Pará could make it easier for these newcomers to settle by providing them with housing and employment, but that did not make them immune to the difficulties and lack of resources in a city with expensive rents, unhealthy housing, and low-paying jobs.

In this article, I have shown how the flow of Portuguese immigration boomed in the second half of the nineteenth century, driven by the rubber economy. Even after the crisis generated by the sudden drop in rubber exports, immigration remained constant despite the numbers falling. After all, other products were entering the scene, such as wood and Brazil nuts. In addition, social networks were fundamental practices that continued to connect multiple generations of immigrants, even after the economic crisis.

Although it was an eminently male-dominated immigration, women’s presence grew sharply in the twentieth century, and migration became more feminized. Men and women, many of them single, who found a spouse in Belém, entering civil marriages that were preferably endogamous in the case of women and exogamous in the case of men. Portuguese men were a significant presence in the marriages that took place in the capital of Pará, appearing in 17% of the unions, meaning that a Portuguese man was involved in around two out of every ten marriages that took place in Belém.

Men were marrying at an older age than women, which was related to the new bourgeois social order and the values attached to the family and the capitalist division of labor, which were based on the ideal of the male producer and the female reproducer—commonly, but not exclusively, in the middle and upper classes. Thus, a large share of the people who sought civil marriage were business owners and qualified, educated professionals. On the other hand, customary unions, which were not officialized by the state and the church, were part of the behavior and reality of unskilled and low-income workers, not only in Pará but also in Portugal (Scott 2002).

Many different housing arrangements were used by these immigrants. While the business owners lived in houses and mansions, the workers lived in rooms in the same building as the businesses where they worked, or in ranches, cowsheds, or houses located in outlying areas or with a poorer infrastructure. Many of these living spaces had shared areas and the conditions were often unsanitary. Social networks could guarantee a place to live and work. The house or shed in Rua Bragança No. 03 was home to several carpenters, joiners, blacksmiths, bricklayers, and clerks who worked for Manoel Pedro da Silva’s timber export firm. A sister living in the state could give a younger sister the route, incentive, and justification to set out and have her family’s consent to follow the same path.

The quantitative data on the immigration flow, profile, and marriages were important for getting closer to people’s names and practices, in a game of scales that is so dear to micro-history. Likewise, the approach centered around the social markers of difference that highlight the distinctions among immigrants, countering the picture of a homogeneous group that the idea of a Portuguese colony might trigger.

These migratory stories of difficulty, difference, and asymmetry, but also of welcome and support can remind us of a not-so-distant past and reinforce the need to think about immigration, and the immigrant of yesterday and of today, with practices and policies of respect and citizenship.

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## The Portuguese Emigration to the Amazon (Brazil) (1887‍-‍1919)

### Introduction

The conquest of Ceuta in 1415 is considered to be the starting point of the Portuguese diaspora around the world. Given the wide chronological and geographical range of this dispersion, Godinho (1978: 5–32) states that emigration is one of the structural marks of Portuguese history.

From a theoretical point of view, it is important to distinguish between two concepts: “spontaneous emigration” (personal, uncontrolled initiative) and “contracted or directed emigration” (part of a project to occupy space by the political power in effect). In the latter situation, the migratory phenomenon is essentially marked by the movement of families (couples)—married men and women accompanied by their children—with a certain percentage balance between the number of people of each sex, who are mainly going to work in agriculture. For this reason, they mostly have agricultural know-how and are heading for a rural area that has been previously designated by the ruling political power, which wants to occupy a certain geographical area. As a general rule, these particularities make this type of migration definitive, with a very small number of returnees; they are therefore not mentioned in social memory.

On the other hand, a significant proportion of spontaneous emigration is not permanent, which means that there are returnees. These migrants dedicate themselves to activities in which they already have expertise, and they tend to be heading for an urban area. They give rise to the concept of “Brazilian,” which at the time meant a Portuguese emigrant to Brazil who had become rich.

Various authors have studied Portuguese emigration over the years. At first, macro approaches predominated (Ferreira 1976; Serrão 1974), with special emphasis on Portuguese emigration from the mid-nineteenth century.

Based on passport applications filed in the Oporto District Archives, Alves (1994), using microanalytical methodology, began a new phase in the study of Portuguese emigration to Brazil, paying particular attention to the return of emigrants. “Between 1836 and 1899 there was a clear evolution in the geography of these destinations, although Rio de Janeiro always absorbed the majority of emigrants (...). At the end of the [nineteenth] century, competition for Rio de Janeiro (55%) also came from Pará, with renewed strength (17%) and São Paulo (10%)” (Alves 1994, 242–4).

Immigration to Pará [State] has also been studied by, among others, Carvalho (2011) and Cancela (2009, 149–161). Based on microanalytical methodology, in this article I will try to describe some of the particularities that characterized Portuguese emigration to the Amazon (Brazil) in the period from 1887 to 1910, originating from two districts in the interior of Portugal: Castelo Branco and Vila Real.

### Material and methods

The source materials used in this paper were the passport applications filed in the district archives of Castelo Branco and Vila Real. From a methodological point of view, the aim was to carry out a longitudinal microanalysis; in other words, to find out whether migrants applied for passports more than once during the period concerned, in order to retrace, as far as possible, the migrant’s journey. To do this, we created a grid sorted alphabetically and chronologically by applicant name and included the variables listed in the passport applications: parents, place of birth, age, marital status, occupation, and any other observations that we felt were relevant in order to understand “who” emigrated.

The use of microanalytical techniques allows us to see the world from the viewpoint of the individual who emigrates. Using microanalysis makes it possible to “complete the overview of macrostructural analysis and be able to uncover local dynamics and regional variations; longitudinal analysis or life histories; analysis of the individual from the family perspective; and the importance of intermediate factors” (García Abad 2005, 64).

This approach allowed us to find instances of several applications made by the same person, which, from a statistical perspective, distorts the results. Therefore, to avoid repeating data, in our calculations we will use only the information contained in the earliest application (first reference) that we found for the various migrants.

Table 1 provides a better understanding of the data on repeated applications.

Table 1: Passport applications
Number of applications | ADCB 1 ADCB = Castelo Branco District Archive. | ADVR 2 ADVR = Vila Real District Archive.
| absolute value | % | absolute value | %
First reference | 332 | 92.22 | 1.481 | 83.53
Repeated | 28 | 7.78 | 292 | 16.47
Total applications | 360 | 100 | 1,773 | 100

The data presented shows that the universe of analysis is 332 applications in the case of the Castelo Branco district, and 1,481 in the case of Vila Real; this means that in Vila Real, 16.47% of the applications were made by applicants who had applied for a passport previously, while in Castelo Branco these types of applications constituted 7.78%. These figures allow us to envision that emigration was marked by a certain dynamic of going back and forth (pendular dynamics) between Portugal and Brazil. In a study of Portuguese emigration through passport applications at the civil government of Lisbon, we found that 11.6% of the passport applications were repeat applications (Cosme 2015, 3).

### Historical context

In order to gain a better understanding of migration dynamics, we will present the districts/counties where these migrants came from and give a brief demographic picture of those areas. In both districts, some of the municipalities border Spain; examples include Montalegre and Chaves in Vila Real, and Penamacor and Idanha-a-Nova in Castelo Branco. For a better understanding of the size and demographic evolution of the different municipalities, we provide a list of their inhabitants in Table 2 and Table 3.

Table 2: Population in the municipalities according to the 1878, 1890, 1900, and 1911 censuses
Castelo Branco district | 1878 | 1890 | 1900 | 1911
Belmonte | 5,180 | 5,704 | 6,579 | 7,273
Castelo Branco | 26,645 | 28,926 | 37,643 | 41,887
Covilhã | 33,474 | 47,881 | 44,347 | 48,272
Fundão | 30,285 | 32,637 | 35,390 | 38,813
Idanha-a-Nova | 17,575 | 20,285 | 22,725 | 26,853
Oleiros | 9,360 | 10,430 | 11,072 | 11,919
Penamacor | 10,006 | 12,519 | 13,074 | 14,978
Proença-a-Nova | 9,132 | 10,289 | 11,544 | 13,384
Sertã | 16,511 | 18,315 | 20,479 | 22,594
S. Vic. da Beira3 São Vicente da Beira was a municipality in the Castelo Branco district that was abolished at the end of the 19th century, becoming part of the Castelo Branco district. | 5,010 | 5,852 | - | -
Vila de Rei | 5,725 | 6,340 | 6,687 | 7,334
Vª Velha Ródão | 5,050 | 6,033 | 7,068 | 7,877
TOTAL | 173,953 | 205,211 | 216,608 | 241,184

Table 3: Population in the municipalities according to the 1878, 1890, 1900, and 1911 censuses
Vila Real district | 1878 | 1890 | 1900 | 1911
Alijó | 18,871 | 19,127 | 21,059 | 20,005
Boticas | 10,480 | 11,027 | 10,628 | 10,637
Chaves | 33,370 | 41,707 | 36,664 | 37,834
Mesão Frio | 7,254 | 8,106 | 6,898 | 7,289
Mondim de Basto | 7,255 | 7,360 | 7,634 | 7,910
Montalegre | 19,026 | 19,581 | 20,596 | 21,820
Murça | 6,022 | 6,030 | 6,783 | 7,418
Peso da Régua | 16,227 | 17,138 | 18,531 | 18,983
Ribeira de Pena | 8,006 | 8,262 | 9,590 | 10,256
Sabrosa | 13,768 | 12,678 | 15,259 | 12,408
Stª Marta Penaguião | 10,548 | 11,321 | 11,415 | 11,210
Valpaços | 26,008 | 25,379 | 25,070 | 25,175
Vª Pouca Aguiar | 15,143 | 15,999 | 16,017 | 17,424
Vila Real | 32,350 | 33,587 | 36,052 | 37,178
Total | 224,328 | 237,302 | 242,196 | 245,547

The data above show that between 1878 and 1911, the population increased in both districts overall. Another visible finding is that on the one hand, the population increased in all the municipalities of the Castelo Branco district during this period. On the other hand, in several municipalities of the Vila Real district, population figures fell from one census to the next. To give some examples, we can mention the municipalities of Alijó, Sabrosa, and Santa Marta de Penaguião, where the population in 1911 was lower than it was in 1900, and Chaves, Mesão Frio, and Valpaços, where the population in 1900 was lower than it was in 1890.

From a demographic perspective, a population shrinks when it has a negative physiological balance (the difference between numbers of births and numbers of deaths) and/or a negative migratory balance (the difference between inflows and outflows). We believe that the most plausible explanation for these differences lies in the emigration of residents.

Let’s now briefly characterize the destination: the Amazon. The year 1840 would be a decisive one for the Amazon region, with the discovery of the rubber vulcanization process by Charles Goodyear. For this reason, the 1850s would be a pivotal decade of great significance, as the decade marked the transition from a regional economy characterized by the exploitation of the “hinterland drugs,” livestock, and timber, which was dependent on slave and indigenous labor, to an economy based on the extraction and exploitation of latex. In the first phase, Pará’s manufacturing sector developed, producing rubber shoes for export to the United States of America, while in the second phase, with the invention of the pneumatic tire, the export of rubber, facilitated by steam navigation, introduced in 1853, generated an exceptional spurt of development in this region. This new surge had its golden age between 1870 and 1910 (Sarges 2010, 91–9).

At the same time as the Amazon was undergoing this boom in economic development, the constraints and abolitionist dynamics of slavery were taking hold in this South American region. In a very schematic way, we remember that from March 13, 1827, Brazilian ships were no longer allowed to ship slaves off the coast of Africa. The Lei do Ventre Livre (Free Womb Act) of September 28, 1871, determined that children born to slave mothers would already be free. In 1879, Senator Joaquim Nabuco was elected, and in 1880 he founded the Brazilian Society Against Slavery. In 1884, slaves in several municipalities began to be freed. The Saraiva-Cotegipe Act, dated September 28, 1885, established the freedom of all slaves over the age of 65, and the abolition of slavery came with the publication of the Golden Act on May 13, 1888.

Thus, to meet the need for labor, people emigrated from Europe, and from Portugal in particular. It was in this economic and sociological context that Pará emerged as a highly attractive area for the Portuguese.

#### Distribution by year

One variable that it is important to understand is the distribution of applications over the years. So, in order to show how this has evolved, we provide the following data.

Table 4: Distribution of applications by five-year period
Years/ | ADCB | ADVR
| PARÁ | MANAUS | PARÁ | MANAUS
Five years | M | W | M | W | M | W | M | W
1887–1890 | - | - | - | - | 136 | 10 | 16 | 1
1891–1895 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 58 | 9 | 35 | 5
1896–1900 | 76 | 3 | 6 | 0 | 185 | 36 | 64 | 9
1901–1905 | 85 | 2 | 11 | 0 | 244 | 26 | 97 | 22
1906–1910 | 110 | 4 | 29 | 0 | 278 | 58 | 156 | 36
TOTAL | 275 | 9 | 48 | 0 | 901 | 139 | 368 | 73

The figures in Table 4 are very clear: Migration from the Vila Real district was far more significant than that from Castelo Branco district. The number of applications made in the northeastern Portuguese city was more than three times as high than in Castelo Branco. In the case of this district, the applicants were mainly men heading for Pará; in the case of Vila Real, not only was there a very significant number of women applying for passports, but also a significant percentage were going to Manaus.

The year 1887 marks the beginning of applications in the Vila Real district. For the Castelo Branco district we only have data from 1891 onwards, but the figures for the five-year period 1891–1895 are not significant—as is the case for the Vila Real district, where the number of applications prior to 1896 is not very significant. The chronological distribution of applications makes perfect sense since the effective abolition of slavery took place only upon the publication of the act dated May 13, 1888. In addition to this social cause were the political events inherent to the establishment of the Republic in Brazil. After the government of Pará joined the Republic on November 16, 1889, there was a fierce struggle between the main figures in the state’s political parties, especially between the elements of the Democratic Republican Party and those of the Republican Party of Pará. These rivalries materialized in the revolts of June 1891 and 1893. This climate of political and social instability was intensified by tension and criticism against the Portuguese, who were often accused of defending the monarchy. This mistrust led to diplomatic relations between Portugal and Brazil being severed, and they were not re-established until March 16, 1895. This instability fully explains the figures found for the first half of the 1890s in both districts.

In this sense, it is understandable that the number of passport applications for the Amazon region increased significantly only as of the second five-year period of the 1890s, reaching a peak in the 1906–1910 period as a result of the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries and the social calm and great economic prosperity that began to be seen in Brazil.

#### Distribution by gender and marital status

The gender and marital status of the migrants are two other important variables, and the statistics are presented in Table 5.

Table 5: Distribution of applications by gender and marital status
Marital status | ADCB | ADVR
| PARÁ | MANAUS | PARÁ | MANAUS
| M | W | M | W | M | W | M | W
Single | 61 | 5 | 10 | - | 494 | 97 | 208 | 48
Married | 22 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 379 | 27 | 149 | 15
Widowed | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 15 | 7 | 9
Not known | 190 | 4 | 32 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 1
TOTAL | 275 | 9 | 48 | 0 | 901 | 139 | 368 | 73

As we have already pointed out, emigration to the Amazon was predominantly undertaken by men. Of the 284 passport applications made in Castelo Branco and destined for Pará, 275 were made by men and only nine by women, corresponding to 96.8% and 3.2%, respectively. More emblematic is the number of applications made in this district and destined for Manaus, as all the applicants were men. The applications made in Vila Real corroborate this assumption: the number of male applicants was much higher than the number of female applicants. In this district, in the case of those going to Pará, the number of applications made by men amounted to 86.6% of the total, while the number of applications made by women comprised 13.4%. In the case of those going to Manaus, applications made by men accounted for 83.4% and applications made by women accounted for 16.6%.

It is worth highlighting the figures found for female applications. Thus, in the case of Vila Real, the percentages found for applications made by women were significant, especially when the destination was Manaus. However, they were lower than the 21.1% we found for applications made in Lisbon (Cosme 2015, 6).

The demographic impact of this emigration, mostly of men, can be seen in the various municipalities of origin through the male ratios.4 The male ratio = the number of men divided by the number of women, multiplied by 100.

Table 6: Male ratio according to the 1900 and 1911 censuses
Census | 1900 | 1911 | Census | 1900 | 1911
Castelo Branco district |  |  | Vila Real district |  |
Belmonte | 95 | 93 | Alijó | 103 | 90
Castelo Branco | 95 | 93 | Boticas | 88 | 87
Covilhã | 96 | 97 | Chaves | 92 | 88
Fundão | 96 | 95 | Mesão Frio | 89 | 88
Idanha-a-Nova | 95 | 96 | Mondim de Basto | 91 | 88
Oleiros | 90 | 91 | Montalegre | 88 | 89
Penamacor | 99 | 100 | Murça | 93 | 89
Proença-a-Nova | 95 | 97 | Peso da Régua | 91 | 90
Sertã | 91 | 89 | Ribeira de Pena | 89 | 89
Vila de Rei | 96 | 95 | Sabrosa | 105 | 84
Vila Velha Ródão | 101 | 102 | Stª Marta Penaguião | 93 | 89
- |  |  | Valpaços | 90 | 87
- |  |  | Vila Pouca Aguiar | 86 | 87
- |  |  | Vila Real | 90 | 85
District | 95 | 95 | District | 92 | 88

In the 1911 census, compared with the census for 1900 the male ratio fell in five of the eleven municipalities in the Castelo Branco district, and the ratio was higher than 100 in the municipality of Vila Velha de Rodão only. The overall figure for the district remained stable at 95 in both censuses. In turn, in the Vila Real district, the overall value for the sex ratio in the 1911 census was 88; a significant drop compared with 1900, and similar to what happened in almost all the municipalities.

In our opinion, these results are a reflection of the impact of emigration, which was mainly driven by the departure of men, since the male ratio at birth is 105 (Nazareth 1996, 91)—meaning that for every 100 female births, 105 male children are born—and in 1911 there are only 88 men for every 100 women in the district as a whole.

With regard to the marital status of the applicants, the unmarried group predominated for both sexes. However, we should point out that, in relative terms, the percentage of single women exceeded that of men in the case of applications made in Vila Real. For those heading to Pará, the percentage of single men was 54.8%, while the percentage of single women was 69.8%. This figure is very similar to that found for those heading to Manaus, where the percentage of single men was 56.5% and the percentage of single women was 65.8%. A similar pattern was found in the case of passport applications made to the civil government of Lisbon, where the percentage of unmarried women was 67.5% while that of unmarried men stood at 54.6% (Cosme 2015, 6).

Within the civil status of married and widowed, there were marked differences between men and women: While the percentage of married men was significant (42.1% for Pará and 40.5% for Manaus), the percentage of married women was much lower (19.4% for Pará and 20.5% for Manaus). The percentages for widowhood were paradoxically different, with the percentage of widows (10.8% for Pará and 12.3% for Manaus) being much higher than that of widowers (2.5% for Pará and 1.9% for Manaus).

The figures for single and married people are in line with what was happening in the Porto district at the end of the 1970s. As far as widowers are concerned, the figures in our study are similar to those presented for the district of Porto, where, according to Alves (1994, 185), “the share of widowers over the years fluctuates only between 1 and 2%.” In the case of the women, the data found is rather different: The number of single women and widows is much higher than that found for the Porto district, since in this district it was “largely passive emigration, processed by family accompaniment” (ibid., 81).

#### The age of the emigrants

Age is an important factor that influences decisions and events in people’s lives, so we paid attention to the variable age at which applicants applied for their passport. The data, by age group, is shown below.

Table 7: Distribution of applicants by age group
Age group | ADCB | ADVR
| PARÁ | MANAUS | PARÁ | MANAUS
| M | W | M | W | M | W | M | W
0–4 years | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0
5–9 years | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3
10–14 years | 16 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 104 | 1 | 36 | 1
15–19 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 25 | 21 | 7
20–24 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 183 | 39 | 73 | 24
25–29 | 12 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 181 | 26 | 83 | 12
30–34 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 146 | 14 | 48 | 9
35–39 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 127 | 12 | 51 | 6
40–44 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 62 | 5 | 26 | 3
45–49 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 36 | 4 | 17 | 3
50–54 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18 | 4 | 9 | 4
55–59 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 1 | 2 | 0
60–64 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0
65–69 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0
70–74 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1
NR | 227 | 9 | 38 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0
TOTAL | 275 | 9 | 48 | 0 | 901 | 139 | 368 | 73

In terms of age groups, we can immediately see that the modal figure for emigration from Vila Real was in the 20–24 age group for both genders— for those who went to Pará and for the women who went to Manaus. In the case of men going to Manaus, the age group with the highest statistical representation was 25–29 years. It can therefore be concluded that the highest number of departures took place at the beginning of a person’s working life, when, regardless of destination and gender, around two-thirds of the applications fell into the 20–30 age bracket.

Based on the data in Table 7, we can conclude that military recruitment did not significantly influence the choices made by male emigrants. These figures are in line with the results obtained for the Porto district up to 1855. However, they diverge from the trend that began to emerge in this district at the end of the nineteenth century, because “from then on, the trend is clearly upwards, slowly but steadily, settling in the 30s by the end of the 1970s” (ibid., 191), while in Lisbon, at the end of the century the age group was 22–23 years (Cosme 2015, 7).

### Residence of migrants by municipality

In order to better systematize the data, we now outline the municipalities of residence mentioned in the passport applications.

Tables 8: Municipalities of residence of passport applicants
| ADCB
Municipality | PARÁ | MANAUS
Castelo Branco District | M | W | M | W
Belmonte | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0
Castelo Branco | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0
Covilhã | 67 | 2 | 24 | 0
Fundão | 2 | 3 | 2 | 0
Idanha-a-Nova | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0
Oleiros | 36 | 1 | 7 | 0
Penamacor | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0
Proença-a-Nova | 50 | 0 | 1 | 0
Sertã | 95 | 2 | 10 | 0
Vila de Rei | 15 | 0 | 2 | 0
Vila Velha Ródão | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0
- | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0
- | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0
- | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0
NR | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0
TOTAL | 275 | 9 | 48 | 0

Table 9: Municipalities of residence of passport applicants
| ADVR
Municipality | PARÁ | MANAUS
Vila Real District | M | W | M | W
Alijó | 203 | 26 | 43 | 12
Boticas | 11 | 0 | 8 | 0
Chaves | 118 | 20 | 47 | 17
Mesão Frio | 9 | 1 | 6 | 1
Mondim de Basto | 17 | 2 | 3 | 0
Montalegre | 30 | 4 | 0 | 0
Murça | 7 | 4 | 12 | 1
Peso da Régua | 21 | 3 | 52 | 11
Ribeira de Pena | 8 | 2 | 12 | 2
Sabrosa | 77 | 25 | 21 | 6
Stª Marta Penaguião | 41 | 7 | 22 | 3
Valpaços | 39 | 3 | 18 | 4
Vila Pouca Aguiar | 177 | 19 | 50 | 5
Vila Real | 118 | 15 | 61 | 8
Outside the district | 25 | 8 | 13 | 3
TOTAL | 901 | 139 | 368 | 73

The data shown in Table 8 and Table 9 is quite clear about the origin of the migrants. As far as male emigrants from the Castelo Branco district are concerned, the most quantitatively significant municipalities in relation to Pará were Sertã, Covilhã, Proença-a-Nova, and Oleiros. These are also the municipalities with the highest number of residents going to Manaus, with the exception of Proença-a-Nova. A somewhat similar dynamic was found in the applications made to the civil government of Lisbon by migrants destined for Pará; in this case, the municipalities in the Castelo Branco district with the highest representation were Oleiros, Vila de Rei, and Sertã, with the figures highest in the parishes of Cernache do Bonjardim and Pedrógão Pequeno in the latter municipality (ibid., 9).

With regard to emigration from the Vila Real district, the municipalities of Alijó, Vila Pouca de Aguiar, Chaves, Vila Real, and Sabrosa had the highest numbers of passport applications. These same municipalities, with the addition of Peso da Régua, also recorded a high number of passport applications for Manaus. In the case of women emigrating to Pará, the figures for Alijó, Sabrosa, Chaves, and Vila Pouca de Aguiar should be highlighted, and for Manaus, the municipalities of Chaves, Alijó, and Peso da Régua deserve special mention. It should also be noted that a very significant number of people applied to the civil government of Vila Real for a passport, most of whom lived in the city and district of Porto.

### Continuous or “anthill” emigration

“A migratory journey (or migratory itinerary) is the set of steps, actions or situations taken or experienced by a migrant individual that are relevant to the process in which they are involved.”5 Rocha-Trindade 1995, 37; translated by the author. Within this journey, the phase in which the intention to leave materializes and the preparations for departure are made are extremely important. In this phase, the intention to leave materializes by means of taking concrete steps, such as obtaining documents (a passport and a transport permit, among others).

According to the theoretical model, in the migratory journey, after arriving in the country of destination, the first installation takes place, which is followed by insertion, and then by the decision to return to the country of origin or settle permanently. However, the methodology used in this research allows us to provide some information of a microanalytical nature that confirms the existence of a continuous or “anthill”6 “Anthill motion” means to be restless, to move like in an anthill. This expression perfectly characterizes the continuous action that these migrants performed between their places of origin and destination. migration dynamic, which means that this dynamic was not always based on a simple journey between the place of origin and the destination, but could involve the existence of constant journeying between these two places.

Once the migrants had arrived in Brazil, a very significant proportion of them moved on a commuting pattern, meaning that they went to Portugal and back several times. They did this not only to take care of business but also to consort or introduce members of their families.

We are dealing with a plurality of actions integrated into a single desire to migrate. As mentioned previously, we classify this migratory practice as continuous emigration, since the option is neither to settle nor to return, but to move with some regularity between the place of origin and the place of destination. To better document this idea, here are four examples.

Originating in the district of Vila Real

1. João Casimiro, resident of Almorfe (Moreiras) in the municipality of Chaves, married, traveled to Pará twelve times7 According to the passport application data, the sixth time was on February 10, 1903, and the twelfth time was on March 2, 1909. This means that he had already made this trip five times before 1903..
2. João Guedes Coutinho, resident of Santa Quitéria (Fontes) in the municipality of Santa Marta de Penaguião, single, clerk/commercial employee, went to Manaus five times between March 26, 1897, and January 13, 1905.
3. Carminda Rodrigues Borges, resident of Vila Boa (Fontela) in the municipality of Peso da Régua, married, business owner, went to Manaus twice8 The first time was on January 9, 1904, when she was accompanied by her thirteen-year-old brother, José Rodrigues. The second time was on March 3, 1909, when she was accompanied by her thirteen-year-old maid, Maria Margarida de Azevedo..

Originating in the district of Castelo Branco

1. António de Oliveira, born and residing in Barco, Covilhã, has two passport application records: one dated August 16, 1898, and the other dated December 20, 1902. On the 1898 application, there is a note stating that this is the second time he is going to Pará and that he now intends to dedicate himself to agriculture. This means that the 1902 registration corresponds to a third trip.

In the examples we have just given, we can see that in terms of the migration process, there is a repetition of journeys, integrated into a dynamic of mobility between Portugal and the Amazon. It was this specificity that led us to use the “anthill emigration” metaphor as the one that best defines this process.

This constant migratory dynamic between Portugal and the Amazon facilitated the mobility of those who wanted to go to the other side of the Atlantic for the first time. To better document this assertion, here are just two examples.

1. On December 10, 1908, Guilherme Cardoso, aged forty, married, and from Pegarinhos in the municipality of Alijó, applied for a passport for the third time in Vila Real. On the same day and in the same district capital, Jerónimo Moreira Gião, aged forty-eight, a widower from Pegarinhos (Alijó), also applied for a passport. Two days later, on December 12, 1908, at the civil government of Vila Real, Manuel Paixão (aged ten) and Julieta (aged twenty-one), both single and born and living in Pegarinhos (Alijó), applied for their first passports to Pará.
2. On November 20, 1908, Bríseda Ribeiro, a twenty-year-old single seamstress from Canhedo-Adoufe (Vila Real), applied for a passport to Manaus for the second time. On December 1, 1908, António Benigno (aged twenty-three and single) and Francisco Álvares Ferreira (aged twenty-six and married), both born and living in Canhedo-Adoufe (Vila Real), took their turns to apply for passports to Manaus.

If we take into account the chronology of the applications, the places of birth, places of residence and perhaps the family ties, we can easily see that mobility took place collectively and with solidarity, because traveling with someone else who had made the same trip before was much safer and more comfortable. As already mentioned, we consider that micro-factors are valuable in explaining these migratory dynamics, because we believe that structural factors are the necessary cause and micro-mechanisms are the sufficient cause (Garcia Abad 2002, 23–4), which, in our opinion, is clearly visible here.

### Emigration in “two steps”

The microanalytical methodology allows the various databases to be interconnected. Thus, by cross-referencing the names of those born/residing in the district of Castelo Branco and of Vila Real with other data, we were able to identify six applicants from Castelo Branco and one from Vila Real who had already applied for their passport in the Civil District of Lisbon. The distance to and consequent attractiveness of the Portuguese capital certainly had a greater impact on the residents of Castelo Branco, which is much closer to Lisbon, than it did on Vila Real. Given the interesting nature of these cases, we share them here.

Originating in the district of Castelo Branco

1. Adrião Madeira Gonçalves, from Oleiros, had already applied for a passport to Pará in Lisbon on November 22, 1888. On May 6, 1891, the Portuguese Consulate in Pará renewed his visa. He then applied for a new passport in Lisbon on July 29, 1891, using the address of 13 Rua de S. Nicolau and giving his marital status as married, stating his occupation as a merchant, and claiming that he wished to continue doing business in Brazil. We found him applying for a new passport in Castelo Branco on November 5, 1897, stating that he wanted to go to Pará for the third time.
2. António da Silva Leitão, a native of Nesperal in the municipality of Sertã, was twelve years old and lived at 18 Largo do Chafariz de Dentro in Lisbon, where he was employed in commerce. On June 23, 1891, he applied for a passport to Pará with the intention of going to work there. On July 30, 1903, and July 13, 1910, he again applied for a passport to Pará, but then in Castelo Branco.
3. António Domingues da Silva, married, was born in Casal de Gafos in the municipality of Sertã, and lived at 48 Rua da Madalena in Lisbon. In this city, on April 13, 1895, he applied for a passport to Pará, claiming that he wanted to join his brother. On August 29, 1896, he applied for a new passport in Castelo Branco, in which he stated that he was going to trade and that he was emigrating for the second time.
4. Januário da Silva Mata, born in Cernache do Bonjardim in the municipality of Sertã, was twenty-two years old, employed in commerce, and resided at the Hotel Duas Nações in Lisbon when he applied for a passport to Pará on June 25, 1890. Attached to his application was a passport to Manaus that had been issued by the civil government of Lisbon on November 21, 1884, on the back of which there was a visa granted in Manaus on December 24, 1884, and a visa issued by the Consulate of Portugal in Pará dated June 15, 1889, for the purpose of going to Portugal. On March 8, 1898, he applied for a passport in Castelo Branco, stating that he wished to go to Pará for a third time to engage in commerce, taking his wife with him.
5. Januário Rodrigues da Silva, born in Cernache do Bonjardim in the municipality of Sertã, was thirteen years old, worked as a clerk, and lived at 50 Travessa de Santa Ana in Lisbon when, on April 19, 1895, he applied for a passport to Pará to engage in commerce. On September 21, 1903, he applied for a passport in Castelo Branco for Pará, reporting that he was employed in commerce.
6. On August 8, 1895, José Henriques Alves Froes, a merchant, applied to the civil government in Lisbon for a passport to go to Pará. Attached to this application was a passport issued by the Consulate of Portugal in Pará dated March 16, 1895, for the purpose of going to Portugal. On October 20, 1900, he applied again for a passport for Pará. Attached to this application was a passport issued by the civil government of Lisbon on August 18, 1897, in which José claimed that he lived in Pará. On the back of this passport there was a visa from the Portuguese Consulate in Pará dated March 29, 1899, authorizing him to go to Portugal. On February 25, 1905, he applied to the civil government of Castelo Branco for a new passport to Pará.

Originating in the district of Vila Real

1. Nuno Pereira de Oliveira, a native of Ervededo in the municipality of Chaves, residing at 183 Rua dos Corrieiros in Lisbon, applied for a passport to Pará at the civil government of Lisbon on March 18, 1900. The application stated that he lived in Pará and had been in Lisbon for six months. He was bringing his wife (a native of Pará), his sister-in-law, and a maid, who was a native of Ervededo. In Vila Real on December 31, 1905, he applied for a passport to Pará. The application states that this was his third trip to Pará and that he was taking his siblings Germano and Serafina with him. On the same date, December 31, 1905, eleven-year-old António da Silva Oliveira from Ervededo (Chaves) also applied for a passport in Vila Real.

In view of the examples we have just given, it is clear that this mobility can be considered a “two-step emigration,” and it can be concluded that the city of Lisbon was an important point in the migratory dynamics of some of the residents of the two districts studied, not only in terms of making the decision to emigrate and implementing the measures that made this option feasible but also in terms of socio-professional learning. Certainly, the social learning they acquired in Lisbon and the contacts they had with migrants over a long period helped them to structure their choice to emigrate.

### In conclusion: Looking for an emigrant profile

The majority of migrants were men; the unmarried group predominated, both male and female in the 20–29 age group, with special emphasis on the 20–24 age group. It was an emigration strongly marked by the influence of networks or chains in the migratory process, i.e. most of the time, migrants were accompanied by others who had already made the same journey and to whom they were linked by ties of origin, residence (parish or municipality), or kinship. This group mobility has traces of solidarity and, therefore, a degree of security. This specificity influenced the characterization of this mobility as an “anthill” or continuous mobility, where journeys were made with some regularity between the place of origin and destination.

In many cases, it was a “two-step emigration,” meaning that the migrants first left their homeland for Lisbon, from where, after some time and already equipped with some knowledge of another profession, especially that of a sales clerk, they then decided to head for the Amazon.

The majority were leaving to work in agriculture and commerce, as well as to be barbers, tailors, or carpenters, while the women, especially those who were unmarried, were going to work as seamstresses or maids.

### References

1. Alves, Jorge Fernandes. Os brasileiros: emigração e retorno no Porto Oitocentista, Porto: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 1994.
2. Cancela, Cristina Donza. “Imigração portuguesa, casamento e riqueza em Belém (1870–1920)”. In Nas duas margens: os portugueses no Brasil, edited by Fernando de Sousa, 149–161. Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 2009.
3. Cancela, Cristina Donza, and João Santos Ramalho Cosme. “Entre fluxos, fontes e trajetórias: imigração portuguesa para uma capital da Amazônia (1850–1920)”. Estudos Ibero-Americanos:Dossiê – Pensamentos e Práticas Políticas Conservadoras no Século XX 42, no. 1 (2016): 232–54. https://doi.org/10.15448/1980-864X.2016.1
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6. Cosme, João. “Quadros de emigração portuguesa para o Pará (Brasil): 1886–1900)”. Naveg@mérica. Revista electronica editada por la Asociación Española de Americanistas, no. 15 (2015). http://hdl.handle.net/10201/46764
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9. García Abad, Rocío. Historias de emigración. Factores de expulsión y selección de capital humano en la emigración a la Ría de Bilbao (1877–1935). Bilbao: Editorial Universidad del País Vasco, 2005.
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## Modern, skilled, entrepreneurs: Is there a “new” discourse about Brazilian women in the Portuguese media?

### Introduction

In the last three decades (since the 1990s), Brazilian immigration to Portugal has been studied intensively from both the Brazilian and the Portuguese perspective (Finotelli et al. 2013; Malheiros 2007; Padilla et al. 2015). It was mainly the work of Brazilian anthropologists Feldman-Bianco (1997) and Machado (1999) that opened up this research field in the 1990s.The first decade of the 2000s witnessed a notable transformation of the composition of the flows of migrants and of the Brazilian community in the country. This shift coincided with a new reality: the growing number of women, aligning with what is commonly referred to in the literature as the feminization of migration (Padilla 2007a). Hence, during this time, special attention was paid to addressing the stereotypes, hyper-sexualization, and stigmatization dynamics surrounding these women, which was having a strong impact on their integration into local society (Gomes 2013; Pontes 2004). Thus, since then, the Portuguese media has played an important role in reproducing and highlighting discourses that portrayed them as exotic, sensual, submissive, inferior, and sexually available.

From 2010 to 2016, due to the impact of the international financial crisis (2008–2014), and the policies of the Troika, Portugal experienced a harsh economic shock that led to a sudden decrease in flows of immigration and broke the steady growth observed in previous years (SEF 2011). It was only in 2016 that immigration to Portugal began to rise again (SEF 2017); this fostered a perception of the country as a desirable migration destination, boosting national pride and self-esteem. In this context, Brazilian immigration to Portugal began to show novel and distinct features: in stark contrast to the more homogeneous working-class profile observed in previous waves, there were now large numbers of international students, investors, and entrepreneurs. The Portuguese media gave visibility to the new arrivals, celebrating these new characteristics and presenting them as the consequence of Portugal’s modernity, advancement, and cosmopolitism (França & Padilla 2018).

This chapter investigates the discourse in the Portuguese media about the Brazilian migration to Portugal, adopting a gender perspective and critical discourse analysis (CDA) as methodological tools to answer the following questions: (1) What features has the Portuguese press portrayed about Brazilian women throughout time? (2) What social markers of difference (race, gender, class, nationality) are mobilized and depicted toward those images?

### Gender, race, nationality, coloniality, and social class: Daily intersectional challenges for Brazilian migrants

Migration as a social phenomenon is an entirely gendered process, because women’s immigration experience is shaped by gender relations, which force constant negotiations of their identity and behavior in both their home country and their destination country (Donato et al. 2006; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2007). Additionally, because of their location within the power relation matrixes—at the crossroads of distinct axes of differentiation, such as gender, race, nationality, ethnicity, class, and religion—migrant women experience an intense convergence of stereotypes, racism, and further discrimination (Crenshaw 1991). Therefore, the concept of intersectionality is key for understanding the effects of gender in the migration process (Anthias 2012), as intersectional analysis makes it possible to frame migrant women’s experience in a dynamic context within multiple systems of power, hierarchy, and identity.

Introducing an intersectionality standpoint to gender studies has been fundamental to determining certain types of oppression and discrimination that had not been identified before. Crenshaw introduced the concept by revealing how various forms of inequalities and disadvantages often intersect, creating barriers that cannot be fully understood through a single, isolated analytical approach (ibid.). Black women’s feminism has embraced intersectionality as a fundamental prism that allows them to fully understand their joint experiences of racial and gender discrimination and their distinct social realities (Collins & Bilge 2016). Hence, intersectionality has obligated researchers to analyze gender in interaction with other diverse markers of difference, such as race, origin, ethnicity, social class, age, sexuality, and religion.

Lugones (2008), focusing the concept of coloniality (Quijano 1992), reveals another complex aspect of women’s migration experience. For Quijano, coloniality is the continuation of the societal system of exploitation based on the control of territory, the labor force, the economy, knowledge, subjectivity, gender, and sexuality resulting from the European expansion through colonialism. Among other things, this system of control and domination has led to specific social and geo-cultural identities and classification categories that gravitate around race differences (ibid.). However, as Gutierrez-Rodriguez (2014, 49) underscores, “[t]his logic of subjugation inherent in the establishment of a racially coded social system still reverberates in the construction of the nation’s Other in Western Europe, although it does not always explicitly operate in racial terms. Though wrapped in a vocabulary of culture that refers to differences regarding religious beliefs, language, norms, and values, the construction of the ‘Other’ in Western Europe bears the traces of a pattern of thinking reminiscent of colonial times.”

In the case of migrant women, coloniality shapes their experience by exposing them to processes of subalternity, racialization, and othering, enforcing dynamics of internalization supported by the unequal power relations that were established during colonialism (Lugones 2008). Hence, migrant women from the former colonies tend to be seen as national women’s Other in the Global North and are thus categorized as colonial/racial subjects (Grosfoguel 2004).

Likewise, social class, as a power system, impacts migrants’ position within a given society (Fresnoza-Flot & Shinozaki 2017). In this study, following a Bourdieusian approach, social class is seen both as a material as well as a cultural and symbolic form of stratification (Anthias 2012). It is directly linked to the possession of economic and political power (Sklair 2000), limiting or increasing immigrants’ access to opportunities, privileges, and rights.

The current literature on transnationalism emphasizes that social class should not be viewed as a static concept, because its meaning can evolve across various contexts and periods (Fresnoza-Flot & Shinozaki 2017). As Parreñas (2015) points out, migrants can occupy different and contradictory class positions in their home and destination countries; for instance, even if they hold a less qualified job than they had in their home country, they might still enjoy higher economic power than previously. For our study, however, social class refers exclusively to the position that the press assigns to a migrant in their host society upon arrival, which fails to acknowledge the less visible aspects of their personal experiences—for example, education level, previous working experience in Brazil, migration trajectory—which would be necessary for a more comprehensive understanding of their experience of social mobility. This perspective adds to the literature by unveiling the power of media discourses in building static images of Brazilian immigrants in Portugal that are based on fragmented elements of their migration path.

### Brazilian migration to Portugal: Gender and the colonial discourse

Brazilian immigration to Portugal has been a consolidated feature of migration flows since the turn of the twenty-first century. Since the first immigrants arrived in the early 1980s, the numbers have grown steadily and overall three main different configurations have arisen (Padilla et al. 2015). In this sense, numbers, qualification levels, and feminization happened to be the key distinguishing features across the different waves of migration. The patterns of Brazilian immigration to Portugal can be divided into three distinct waves. The first wave, extending from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, saw a relatively modest influx, predominantly consisting of Portuguese returnees from Brazil and their families. This group displayed a noteworthy prevalence of highly qualified individuals. In contrast, the second wave, from the late 1990s to 2015, witnessed a substantial increase in immigrant numbers. These newcomers were often perceived as predominantly lower-qualified workers, and this surge was accompanied by a noticeable trend of feminization (ibid.).

As a result of the Portuguese economic crisis (2008–2014), which was simultaneous with the Brazilian economic boom during BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China, and South Africa) block development (Caldas 2017), Brazilian immigration flows to Portugal declined slightly for the first time between 2012 and 2015 (Fernandes & Castro 2013; Nunan & Peixoto 2012). In 2016, however, the number of Brazilians arriving in Portugal began rising again (SEF 2017), with some previously unseen features: a consolidated flow of students and a growing number of investors and entrepreneurs. These characteristics allow us to define this new phase as the third wave of Brazilian immigration to Portugal (França & Padilla 2018).

In the early 2000s, the increasing feminization of the flow of Brazilians to Portugal was a novelty, but by 2005 the number of Brazilian women arriving in Portugal was higher than that of Brazilian men (SEF 2005). Since then, feminization has become a characteristic, reaching 64% by 2022. In addition to this feminization, Brazilian migration overall has continued to grow, with Brazilians currently representing over 30% of foreign residents in Portugal (SEF 2023).

Figure 1 summarizes two different lenses through which to view the periodization of Brazilian immigration to Portugal, accounting for the waves (based on certain features of the migration flows, such as social class, education, occupation, and insertion in the labor market) and for the feminization trend.

Figure 1: Start of feminization change to incipient feminization. Source: author's own elaboration.

Coloniality has played a central role in shaping Brazilian women’s experiences in Portugal and has been legitimized by Freyrean Lusotropicalist ideas (Castelo 2011; Gomes 2013). Freyre (1933) argued that Portugal’s predisposition to diversity, multiculturalism, and racial fusion became evident in their common practice of mixing with the African and indigenous women in Portugal’s colonies. Hence, within the Lusotropicalist discourse, these women play a pivotal role in embodying the realization of Portuguese “benevolent” colonialism (Gomes 2013). However, the Lusotropicalist discourse neglects to acknowledge the portrayal of these women as racialized and sexualized bodies, subjected to forcible exploitation by Portuguese men.

Moreover, coloniality enforced a given gender hierarchy by portraying Brazilian women as a sexualized colonial body in comparison to Portuguese women in particular and European women in general (ibid.; Malheiros & Padilla 2017). This articulation of race, ethnicity, and sex is seen by Bhabha (1983) as crucial to the construction of the colonial subject discourse that, by the binding of a range of differences and discriminations, supports racial and cultural hierarchization in discursive and political practice. Consequently, in Portuguese society, Brazilian women are intensely exposed to the dynamics of racialization, class subordination, and sexualization that portray them as hypersexualized, exotic, available, and sexualized bodies (Gomes 2013; Padilla 2007a).

The colonial imaginary also shapes migrants’ experiences of the labor market in Portugal. Because of the gender and racial segregation dynamics in the labor market, Brazilian women can easily find jobs in low-qualified activities in the care sector as cleaners and domestic workers (Anthias & Metha 2003; França 2012; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2007). However, it is in the service sector—sales, tourism, customer services, dancing, and waiting tables at restaurants and bars—that the majority of these migrants are concentrated, constituting what Machado (2009) and Fernandes (2008) call the “happiness” and “entertainment” markets, respectively.

Further, Brazilian women are notably present in the beauty and aesthetics sector—composed of “body services,” such as manicuring, waxing, hairdressing, or selling clothing and beauty commodities, such as bikinis, beachwear, and hair products—both as entrepreneurs and as regular employees. In this case, they take advantage of the general naturalized/essentialized and socially constructed attributes assigned to Brazilian women—friendly, sensual, and beautiful—and use them as an aesthetic–corporal capital to support, promote, and legitimize their business (Malheiros & Padilla 2017).

The presence of Brazilian women in these two segments—services and beauty—is directly linked to the racist colonial discourse toward these women that portrays them as happy, joyful, seductive, exotic, and sexy (ibid.; Padilla 2007a). However, in practice, there is ambivalence in the way they instrumentalize this situation, because even if Brazilian women suffer sexualization and erotization that condition their experience, “these imaginaries sometimes could also facilitate worthy resources in marriage and labour markets” (Padilla 2016, 280), becoming strategies for survival or empowerment, and no less contradictory for that.

The Portuguese media has been one of the main actors that has contributed to the reinforcement and diffusion of the colonial discourse and the image of Brazilian women as a colonial body (Gomes 2013). We will turn to this discussion next.

### The Portuguese media and Brazilian women

A report published by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) stresses the relevance of media discourse in shaping society’s opinions and attitudes toward migration and cultural and ethnic diversity (Ter Wal 2002). Given that the media is people’s main source of social and political knowledge, it is considered to be the most influential form of public discourse in modern society. Media discourse plays a central role in the creation and reproduction of public opinion, and in shaping knowledge and beliefs about a social phenomenon (Torkington & Ribeiro 2019). However, space in the media is not equally distributed (Dijk 2000b). Because migrants do not occupy many influential positions—such as, politicians, corporation managers, professors, or journalists—and have reduced access to media sources—such as press conferences, documentation, and interviews—their perspectives and opinions tend to be mostly ignored (ibid.). Hence, the media is inclined to polarize the discourse on migration, treating immigrants as a problem or a menace, reinforcing a differentiation between the nationals (us) and the migrants (the Other) (ibid.).

In Portugal, migration is a topic that has already been consolidated in the national media agenda (Ferin et al. 2008) and covers different matters in the field—migration laws, inclusion, integration, crime, and nationality-acquisition policy. A negative approach toward the phenomenon, however, has prevailed (Oliveira 2001). In particular, during the 2000s, the media discourse associated migration with criminality, illegal affairs, documentation irregularities, human trafficking, and unemployment (Ferin et al. 2008). Specifically, the focus on immigrant women has been through the lenses of sexual activity and prostitution (Pontes 2004; Santos 2007).

In general, the image of Brazilian immigrants in the Portuguese media is associated with the previously identified stereotypes: on the one hand, happiness, joyfulness, and amusement; on the other hand, laziness, dishonesty, unreliableness, and trickery (Fernandes 2008; Machado 2009; Padilla & Gomes 2016). In the case of Brazilian women, the dominant media discourse tends to present them as exotic sexual objects, connecting them to the sex industry (Santos 2007). In addition, news on Brazilian urban violence, criminality, poverty, social inequality, and corruption is highly prevalent in the Portuguese media (Lisboa 2017; Vitorio 2007), and it is used by many to blame Brazilians for bringing violent crime to Portugal.

It is also important to consider that since the late 1970s, Brazilian soap operas have been very popular among the Portuguese audience; according to Cunha (2003), these programs have influenced the dominant discourse about Brazil and Brazilians in the Portuguese media. Padilla (2007b) argues that soap operas and tourist marketing have both projected the image of an exacerbated sensuality of Brazilian women. Even if gendered and sexist tourist advertising is now forbidden, the consequences still prevail. All these images have contributed to reinforcing the colonial myths about the tropics—exoticism, exuberance, and native women’s sensuality—and, simultaneously, the narratives about Portugal’s imperial past, where Brazil was its biggest conquest (Lisboa 2017).

In this context, the image of Brazilian women in the Portuguese media is loaded with the stigma of a racialized and sexualized colonial body—erotic, seductive, and sexually available (Padilla & Gomes 2016). Building on Stolke’s (2006) analysis of the reproduction of Iberian morality from the colonial period up to the present time, Gomes (2013) reveals how colonial imaginary and stereotypes about European women as mothers/wives/Marys (alluding to the Virgin Mary) and Brazilian women as sinners/prostitutes/Eves are operationalized by the media discourse in Portugal.

One episode involving Portuguese and Brazilian women in the north of the country clearly illustrates this point. In 2003, Time-Europe magazine published an article giving visibility to a movement organized by Portuguese women in Bragança, a small town in the north of Portugal, to rally against Brazilian women who were working in town as sex workers. The Mães de Bragança (“Mothers of Bragança”)—what these women called themselves even if their discourse was that of abandoned wives—argued that the Brazilian women who worked in the town’s brothels had “bewitched/seduced” their husbands (Pais 2010). Although they insisted on the women’s removal from the town, they did not request any punitive measures against either the brothel owners or the business establishments involved (Padilla 2007b). The local press coverage of the occurrence was strongly shaped by coloniality, sexualization, and racialization practices (Padilla & Gomes 2012). This article in the national and European media reproduced the image of Portuguese women as decent, pure, impeccable, and incorruptible, while portraying Brazilian women as indecent, promiscuous, and immoral (Gomes 2013). Minga (2018) notes that in alignment with the approach of Times-Europe magazine, the Portuguese press portrayed the episode in articles akin to tabloid discourse, replete with gender and racial stereotypes; thus, reinforcing the link of Brazilian women to prostitution, irregular migration, and illegal activities.

Eight years later, in 2011, during the economic crisis, another episode involving Brazilian women’s representation in the Portuguese media gained visibility. A Portuguese animation TV show presented one female character, Gina, among its five protagonists. Gina is portrayed as a Brazilian easy-going and loose female, who always wears sensual clothes, while all her lines, spoken with a heavy Brazilian accent, are strongly sexualized, for instance: “If it was me to decide the country’s future, sex would rule it all.” The hyper-sexualization of Gina reflected in her image and discourse was classified by Padilla and Gomes (2016) as an act of media symbolic violence that reinforced the colonial imaginary about Brazilian women as colonized bodies devoted to sex.

Many other examples of colonial discourse manipulating, stereotyping, and stigmatizing Brazilian women in the Portuguese media can be found during the 2000s. However, in recent years, accompanying the third wave of Brazilian migration, the press discourse in Portugal has shown some changes. The following sections are dedicated to this analysis.

### Methodology

This study adopts a critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Dijk 2000a) approach to investigate the discursive patterns of representation of Brazilian immigrant women in Portuguese newspapers. In CDA, discourse is a way of representing and signifying the world by (re)contextualizing social practices (Dijk 2009). Discourse is therefore an action that shapes, and is formed by, social interactions and dynamics in a reciprocal process. This process, however, is not neutral in terms of political and ideological content, as it operates within power matrixes and may reproduce social inequalities and dominance relations.

Dijk (ibid.) highlights the strong relationship between media discourse and social power. According to the author, newspapers today still maintain an influence on public opinion by guiding who the actors to be represented in the public arena are, what is said about them and how it is said (the amount and quality of the information given, and the selection of arguments and rhetorical practices), and the opportunity to make their voices heard. Hence, CDA allows us to investigate the links between discourse, power, and ideology and analyze how discourse reinforces the construction and legitimization of certain “social problems,” namely discrimination, racism, sexism, and power inequalities (Dijk 2000b). Therefore, by using CDA methods we intended to uncover existing practices related to Brazilian women in the Portuguese press discourse.

The primary data used in this study comprised 108 articles published in Público, one of the main national newspapers in circulation, online and in print, from 2000 to April 2019. Público, published daily, is considered to be a quality publication because of its high level of prestige, its objectivity, its verification of facts using reliable sources, and its focus on hard news, which includes topics such as global and local politics and economic issues (Berrocal Gonzalo, Redondo García & Torres Chico 2015), in contrast with other publications that could be considered tabloid. Regarding its political standpoint, Público is considered to be mostly center-left (Torkington & Ribeiro 2019). Following the periodization presented in Figure 1, the chosen time interval comprises four different moments in Brazilian immigration through the lens of its feminization trend, which can be divided as follows: the beginning of visibility (2000–2005), boom (2005–2011), stagnation (2011–2015) and rebound (2016–present days).

To get a more precise picture of discursive press representation of Brazilian women in Portugal, we searched for any article discussing Brazilian immigrant women in Portugal or discussing immigration in general and Brazilian women in particular. To avoid sampling bias, the articles were selected regardless of their political, social, or cultural perspective. The collected material was analyzed on two levels: textual and contextual (Dijk 2000a). All articles containing references to the mentioned topics were scrutinized chronologically, screened for relevance, retrieved in full and individually analyzed for structure, themes, and rhetorical strategies. The collected material was also considered together to categorize some of the recurrent themes and discourses and the ideological differences within the material.

### Analysis

From 2000 to 2019, 108 news articles regarding Brazilian migration, either specifically or indirectly, were found in Público. The examination of the articles was conducted through content analysis to identify empirical observations associated with validity claims, outlining the predominant arguments and assessing their frequency. This analytical approach encompassed a two-stage coding procedure. Initially, attention was focused on discerning speech dimensions indicative of each validity claim. Subsequently, a refined coding phase was implemented to augment the precision of the initial coding outcomes (Cukier et al. 2009). The quotes presented here were chosen as deemed the most representative of some of the ideas identified during the coding process. They were translated from Portuguese into English by the authors. Because of the large volume and overlap of information, the full news analyses will not be presented here.

In the researched time frame, Público’s content discourse concerning Brazilian women associated them with the sex trade, prostitution, human trafficking, illegal activities, illiteracy, and poverty.

> Prison sentences for brothel managers; Brazilian women who enticed other women to work in Portugal will be expelled from the country—May 28, 2002

> A Brazilian citizen, named Roberta Silva, who was accused of enticing alleged prostitutes in Brazil to work at the Sassarico bar in Cerdal, Valença (. . .) the judges sentenced her to two and a half years, suspended for three years, but with an order to expel her from the country for ten years.

> RNP [National Republican Party] member accused of supporting illegal immigration—October 31, 2008

> According to the accusation, the prostitution business set up by the nationalist militant party had the support of two Brazilian women, who were in an illegal situation and who were helped by him [the RNP’s party member accused of supporting illegal immigration] to enter Portugal, and also with the participation of his wife, whom the MP accuses of being in charge of interviewing the candidates who would provide sexual services.

> Captured nightlife businessman who was the origin of “Mothers of Bragança” restlessness—November 20, 2013

> A lawsuit was filed by the Mothers of Bragança, who complained that the influx of Brazilian prostitutes into the city was breaking up many homes.

> GNR [National Guard Police] member accused of warning brothels of inspections—November 10, 2017

> In addition to the militaries, the Public Ministry accused another four people of pimping, irregular migration support, improper receipt of benefits, and active and passive corruption. “The facts refer to the exploitation of prostitution by four of the defendants, with a majority appeal to Brazilian women in an irregular situation in the national territory.”

> Manifesto condemns prejudice against Brazilian women—September 20, 2011

> To express the repudiation of the “prejudice against Brazilian women in Portugal” and “demand that steps be taken by the competent authorities” a manifesto is being published by the organization World March of Women Portugal.

> Foreigners detained at Lisbon airport are “most exposed” to harassment—October 3, 2018

> When Antónia [fictitious name], born in Brazil, arrived at the Lisbon airport from Fortaleza, her entrance was denied by the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF). When looking at her visa, the SEF employee had some suspicions and told her: “She is coming as a tourist but only has 30% of the accommodation paid.”

The first four articles address various events in different years (2002, 2008, 2013, and 2017) linking Brazilian women to prostitution. As the literature has shown, the immigration of Brazilian women to Portugal represents different waves and characteristics (Padilla 2007b; Padilla & França 2015); Público’s coverage, however, almost exclusively alludes to cases involving the sex industry and illegal activities. The majority of the articles analyzed (73 out of 108) refer to episodes of prostitution, trafficking, and irregular migration . Moreover, there seems to be an intentional decision by Público to constantly and unnecessarily mention the nationality of these women, as in many of the articles, the nationalities of other people involved in the events are not mentioned. Furthermore, in Portugal, prostitution encompasses a range of nationalities, including the Portuguese (Couto et al. 2012); hence, the frequent reference to Brazilians contributes to consolidating the false idea that Brazilian women are the only sex workers in Portuguese society.

Despite the particularities presented by Brazilian women migrating to Portugal, the constant reference to prostitution and irregularity suggests the strong influence of the colonial imaginary in shaping Portuguese press discourse. Further, these women’s voices are never heard in the articles referred to, as their testimonies are not cited and were probably never consulted. Dijk (2000a) argues that immigrants’ views tend to be ignored or unpublished because they are considered to be less reliable and less trustworthy.

The article regarding the manifesto against the prejudice against Brazilian women in Portugal is emblematic in this sense. As mentioned previously, the manifesto was organized mainly by Brazilian women who were immigrants in Portugal; however, in the text it is wrongly credited to the World March of Women. Neither the women who led the manifesto nor any Brazilian feminists who were in Portugal at the time were contacted. This serious fault can be seen as a negligent approach to issues involving Brazilian women’s self-organization, assuming that Brazilian women are not capable of organizing themselves in such an engaged way. Hence, although visibility is given to the issue, not all perspectives are taken into account in the coverage. This diminishes the real protagonism of Brazilian women, which resembles Mohanty’s (1984) denouncement of how a discursive colonization practice still operates nowadays, building the image of women from the ex-colonies as victims and submissive subjects who need to be represented by Western women. No Brazilian women involved in the manifesto or who experienced prejudice in Portugal were interviewed, even if they were the agents and the subjects of the manifesto. Thus, the newspaper opted for an approach that excludes immigrants’ voices while reinforcing the image of them as speechless actors (Dijk 2000a) and that minimizes the gravity of discrimination practices in Portugal by not offering concrete examples of their daily experiences in society.

The final article suggests a shift in the Portuguese immigration policy paradigm. In line with the European Union’s recommendations, Portugal has been enforcing a tougher approach to human trafficking and irregular migration (Clemente 2017). Notably, two distinct measures have been implemented to address these challenges. First, a zero-tolerance policy has been instituted to prevent individuals potentially implicated in human trafficking violations from returning to their home country (ibid.). A second, simultaneous measure focuses on facilitating the return of third-country nationals whose stay is irregular (ibid.; Baldaccini 2009). Hence, the article offers a positive assessment of Portuguese strategies to combat human trafficking.

The issue of mixed marriage between Brazilian women and Portuguese men has also been a frequent topic in Público. On the one hand, mixed marriages have been analyzed from a positive point of view, as a sign of immigrants’ integration and as a contributor to the country’s demographic growth as a result of the slightly higher childbirth rate among immigrant women (Rosa, Seabra & Santos 2005). On the other hand, as the discussion on the European agenda about marriages of convenience became more intense (Maskens 2015), the phenomenon gained more visibility in Portugal and was raised by authorities, scholars, and newspapers Togni & Raposo 2009).

> Marriage between Portuguese and foreigners doubled in the last five years—October 26, 2003

> . . . but the Brazilians already made history in the national registers. “Sometimes, we notice something weird, a very young and pretty Brazilian girl, with bad-looking Portuguese men, says Joaquim Martins, from the Register Workers trade union. We already hear about Brazilian women who pay five thousand contos (25,000 euro) to marry someone,” he states.

> The majority of the Brazilian citizens who marry in Portugal choose a Portuguese partner—August 18, 2008

> Some numbers, in 2005, 78.3% of the women and 59% of the men born in Brazil who got married chose a Portuguese partner.

> Mixed marriages more than quadrupled—November 2, 2008

> Maria boarded in Minas Gerais and landed in Portugal three years ago. Shortly afterwards she met a Portuguese man who she liked: “It was right after my arrival. It was too much suffering. I needed to work, I couldn’t pay the rent.”

Despite also presenting some discussion on mixed marriages as a sign of immigrant integration and as a contributor to minimizing the demographic crisis, Público’s discourse on the matter focuses mainly on two specific angles. The first two articles focus on marriages of convenience as a strategy for obtaining Portuguese nationality, and the third portrays the image of the poor immigrant who marries a Portuguese man for a better quality of life.

The arguments in these articles depart from the colonial discourse, as they employ the stereotypes of Brazilian women as poor, involved in illegal activities, and having special attributes (beauty, magic, witchery) to seduce Portuguese men. Moreover, these news articles present a biased coverage of the phenomenon and a moral judgment of Brazilian women’s intimacy choices, whereas, in general, they make no comments on Portuguese men’s choice to marry Brazilian women. If focusing on the time frame, these articles embrace two different moments in Brazilian migration to Portugal: the beginning of visibility (2000–2005) and boom (2005–2011), promoting and feeding the “moral panic” existing in Portuguese society about Brazilian women bewitching Portuguese men and persuading them to marry them (Alvim & Togni 2010; Pais 2010).

A shift in the content of the press articles can be identified during the Portuguese economic crisis (2008–2014), when Brazilian immigration to Portugal declined for the first time (2011–2015) and Brazil became a global emerging power, integrated into the BRICS block. At this time, emigration became the focus of attention in Portugal (Padilla & Ortiz 2017), and many skilled Portuguese workers and businessmen moved to or invested in Brazil (Cervo 2010). Thus, following the Portuguese colonial imaginary that tends to present Brazil’s successes and accomplishments as outcomes of the Portuguese intervention during the colonization period (Almeida 2008), positive discourses regarding Brazil became more common.

> They choose Portugal and not even the economic crises push them away—March 17, 2013

> Flavia is part of the group of thousands of Brazilians who continue their studies in Portugal. But her path is unique. This student in the Master’s in Education of the New University of Lisbon shares with a Swedish businessman based in Portugal, Jonas Lundberg, a fast-paced romance, marked by improbable decisions and uniting three continents. [. . .] Flavia, a 31-year-old woman from Rio de Janeiro, graduated in Portuguese Language and Literature and founded a theatre company. “I had to think a lot because this decision implied leaving my job, but I’m very happy, I came because my love was here.”

> Brazilians in Portugal: four voices of the same trip—April 8, 2014

> Thaís Helena dos Santos arrived in September 2013, to pursue a PhD degree in Information and Communication in Digital Platforms at the University of Porto. [. . .] In the case of Auxiliadora Siza, the issue was the impossibility of survival in Portugal. “It was a trap, I was misled,” she recalls “[. . .] I was working as a caretaker, my wage was 500 euros and my rent 400 euros [. . .].” After nine months she decided to go back to Brazil, “I was completely broke,” she said.

For the first time, Público’s discourse approaches different examples of Brazilian women’s experience in Portugal, rather than taking a single perspective that links them to sexual and irregular activities. On the one hand, this approach responds to Portugal’s interests in improving its international image as a developed country suitable for skilled migrants and investors. On the other hand, it continues to reproduce the images of Brazilian women as poor, illiterate, and performing low-skilled jobs, hence being responsible for the failure of their migratory project.

By referring to the case of two Brazilian women taking postgraduate courses, Público portrays an image of these women not previously illustrated—educated and skilled. Nothing is mentioned regarding their appearance or seductive behavior. As will be discussed later, more specifically in the context of the third wave, the discourse shifted and started to “celebrate” the increase in the number of Brazilian international students through positive coverage.

A preliminary analysis of these two articles could suggest a paradigm shift in the use of the colonial discourse, but a deeper examination reveals a more complex situation that involves a mix of elements, some linked to the classic stereotypes about Brazilian women. In the first article, although Flávia’s qualifications and career are mentioned, the reference to her marital relationship with a “Swedish businessman” resembles the “romantic tale” of the poor immigrant who marries a rich European man and gives up everything for a love story (Brennan 2004; Groes-Green 2014). Moreover, it indirectly sheds some light on the link between Brazilian women and marriages of convenience. The second article, after positively presenting Thaís Helena dos Santos as a PhD student, introduces the example of Auxiliadora Siza, returning to the image of Brazilian women as deprived and unskilled workers. Hence, the change presented in Público’s discourse regarding Brazilian women in Portugal is a rather minor one, as it continues to reproduce traces of the colonial discourse through different angles: (i) by a negative representation of Brazilian women, and (ii) by stressing Portugal’s greatness and level of development.

In the years after the official end of the economic crisis, migration began to rise again (2016–2019) and a shift from emphasizing the low-qualified worker associated with illegal activities and the sex industry toward new images of immigrants as valuable investor, skilled worker and international student. This change is evident in the increasing number of articles about middle-class Brazilian skilled workers, entrepreneurs, and students, which offered a positive and enthusiastic discourse toward this “new flow.” At the same time, Portugal’s image as a prosperous and advanced country was repeatedly underlined, whereas the Brazilian political, social, and economic crises were stressed over and over. Here, the metropole-colony relation is re-elaborated, with Portugal being represented as a civilized, modern society and Brazil being pictured as an inferior, underdeveloped country. Moreover, by denouncing the political situation in Brazil since the coup d’état that led to the dismissal of former President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the ascension of the extreme right and conservatism there (Löwy 2016), Portugal’s media has reinforced its superior image as a society that praises democratic values. Portugal portrays itself as a developed “European” nation, valued by and suitable for these women who want to improve their qualifications, invest, or join the skilled labor market, elevating Portugal’s national pride and self-esteem after the difficult times during the period of economic crisis. On the other hand, Brazil is described as an economically and politically unstable country, experiencing high levels of violence, which is enhancing the willingness of these educated women to escape.

In this context, however, Brazilian women are portrayed in an “unusual” way.

> Brazilians are the majority of foreign students of the University of Algarve—October 1, 2016

> Two years ago, she [Ana Luiza Velo, a Brazilian student from Rio de Janeiro] applied for a Marine Biology degree at a university in Rio de Janeiro and the University of the Algarve. “I was accepted in both places,” she says. When she compared the costs in the two countries, she concluded that “the cost would be the same, but the safety and quality of life here are incomparable.” The possibility of developing a professional career in the European area is another incentive: “I am in Europe, and I love this course,” she emphasizes.

> Brazilian Elite brings new business to Portugal—August 20, 2017

> The 50-year-old Carioca is installing the family business in Lisbon and launching the furniture brand created by her father. “The idea is to make Portugal the base for the European market,” explains Andreia, who in recent months has come to Lisbon several times in search of a space to install her showroom. [. . .] Andreia—with a degree in History and who also studied French Literature at the Sorbonne and Art at the Inch Bald School of Arts in London—says that her lawyer is analyzing the best way to change country, admitting to using the Gold Visa mechanism as an option.

> Hopeless Brazilian found a house in Portugal—August 20, 2018

> It was this same feeling [of hopelessness surrounding Brazil] that influenced Juliana Montenegro. After the excitement reported by her boyfriend Júlio Morais, she also packed and moved from the northeast of Brazil to Lisbon about a month ago. “Like 99% of Brazilians, not to say all of them, we were dissatisfied with our country. It’s an old thing, but after Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, it all got worse. And as incredible as it seems, it keeps getting worse.”

Following on from the tendency identified in the previous analyses, Público’s discourse regarding these Brazilian women is now rather cheerful. Moreover, the women are identified by their qualifications and are explicitly quoted, expressing their opinions and views about their professional and personal experiences. Thus, Brazilian women are portrayed as empowered, skilled, and active in opposition to the image of the humble, illiterate, and passive immigrant shared by the articles analyzed previously. Furthermore, Público’s discourse indicates that these women belong to the middle/upper class by highlighting their qualifications, skills, and educational background.

The increase in well-off Brazilian women migrating to Portugal is presented by the press as a positive phenomenon that shows the new Portugal as cosmopolitan and open to diversity, with advanced migration policies, and, hence, an outstanding migration destination. Additionally, it obliges these women by welcoming them and recognizing their valuable contribution to the country’s economic development. During the last two decades, Portugal has developed policies to attract international students, skilled workers, investors, and lifestyle migrants as a strategy for strengthening its image as a modern country and to boost its economy (França et al. 2021).

The coverage of the third wave shows how a perceived change in social class has impacted Público’s discourse, as becomes evident in its presentation of the image of Brazilian women in Portugal. Overall, the overlapping periodization of waves and feminization trends in Brazilian migration is rendered productive, as it makes it possible to identify the paradigm shifts. While the second wave overlaps with the beginning (2000–2005) and boom (2005–2011) of the visibility of feminization, the stagnation (2011–2015), which coincided with the economic crisis, an increasing emigration of Portuguese abroad and a decline of immigration to the country, introduced a period of silent reflection, with mixed feelings around outbound and inbound migration. This phase involved a certain nostalgia for immigration as a period in which Portugal was desirable; thus, immigrants coming to Portugal in this period were seen as more valuable than before, especially if they were qualified.

As soon as the crisis was over, and coinciding with a deacceleration of the Brazilian economy followed by political turmoil (impeachment, advance of the right, and elections), the third wave of Brazilian migration began with a fast rebound that translated into the largest ever percentage of Brazilians among foreign residents in the country, reaching 30%, along with a new shift in the media discourse. This new paradigm may still include some elements that are associated with coloniality, however, other elements are a novelty. For example, elements of the old paradigm involve mentions of the Brazilian nationality in relation to sex work or illegal activities, whereas elements of the new paradigm include mentions of students and middle-class women’s previous experiences abroad, their qualification levels, and their positive opinions about Portugal, etc. Moreover, the new paradigm goes further, as Brazilian women who arrive in the country as professionals or to perform skilled jobs are not referred to as immigrants, but rather as businesswomen or international students. Hence, media discourse has evolved from the old paradigm, which associated Brazilian women with poor, problematic individuals and threats to the social order, to the new one, which portrays these women as members of the transnational cultural and capitalist class who are contributing to society’s progress (Florida 2002).

Yet, simultaneously, the colonial imaginary has not been fully overcome, as the stereotypes that present Brazilian women as irregular, poor, and low-skilled immigrants has continued to be present in Público’s articles.

> The case of the finance inspector who did not pay the immigrants who took care of his mother—13.02.2017

> They are all immigrant women, most of them Brazilians, many without regular residence authorization. All were said to have been providing care or cleaning services, on average for two weeks, some more and some less, until they received a message that they had been dismissed.

> The lives of immigrants waiting to regularize their documents—07.03.2017

> Mary Lane Tavares, 53, a Brazilian, living in Portugal consecutively since 2005, has been trying to regularize her situation for years. She has already had several jobs [. . .]. It was difficult to get a contract. For three years she worked as a domestic worker.

> Joziana and Wolner dream of returning to Brazil to “start again from scratch”—03.02.2019

> Joziana does not sleep because of her anxiety [about returning to Brazil]. She is afraid of the bills and of the debts. “Our life is suspended, the mortgage on the house is delayed. None of the family has a way to support us: it’s five plane tickets.”

The three articles suggest a shift in the way Público represents Brazilian immigration to Portugal, providing different examples of Brazilian experiences and trajectories in the country. It gives visibility to the experiences of Brazilian students and middle-class women, but it also covers situations involving underprivileged Brazilian women. Presenting different examples of Brazilian immigration to Portugal offers a more accurate picture of the phenomenon in the country. Despite that, the influence of the colonial discourse in portraying these women as poor immigrants cannot be minimized. The case of the couple who want to go back to Brazil, while presenting Joziana as a Brazilian woman married to a Brazilian man and worried about her family’s well-being, stresses the impoverished situation that they are living in, their debts, and their dependence on policies to assist them to return to Brazil. No discussion, however, is provided on the efficiency of the Portuguese integration policies.

### Conclusion

In our analysis covering the period from 2000 to 2019, we observed different trends in the representation of Brazilian women as migrants in Público discourse. The conventional image, deeply rooted in the colonial imagination, has been dominant, and even if other images have emerged, it still persists. The colonial imaginary that portrays Brazilian women as stigmatized, second-class citizens associated with sexual and irregular activities has not disappeared. However, within this image, our analysis shows a notable shift toward a more positive perspective, emphasizing both the women’s professional qualifications and their capacity for entrepreneurship, which portrays them as sophisticated modern citizens. This change in discourse seems to be linked to recent shifts in the Portuguese context and migration policy after emerging from the international financial crisis. Moreover, the women’s elevated social class has positioned them favorably in the social hierarchy, mitigating the impact of the influences of the colonial imaginary on their experience in Portugal.

In today’s context, it is crucial for Portugal to actively shape its image as a thriving, cosmopolitan, and appealing destination for skilled migrants, reinforcing its reputation as an open and culturally diverse country. The influx of skilled female Brazilian business investors aligns perfectly with these objectives. Furthermore, the substantial economic and cultural capital possessed by these women contributes significantly to fostering a more positive discourse surrounding their presence. Lastly, at both the European Union and the national level, the increasing regulation of press content and initiatives to prioritize coverage of discrimination and diversity have also played a role in driving this positive change. However, it remains to be seen whether at any point in history, the colonial imaginary will ever be forgotten.

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## The sense of belonging among Portuguese first-generation immigrants and their descendants in Luxembourg1 Acknowledgements: This chapter is largely based on work within the IRMA project funded by a grant from FNR Luxembourg (C12/SC/4009630/IRMA/Albert - Intergenerational Relations in the Light of Migration and Ageing, PI: Dr. Isabelle Albert). The present chapter summarizes published and unpublished work from this project. This project was carried out in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Luxembourg and received approval from the Ethics Review Panel of the University of Luxembourg (ERP-15-001 IRMA). Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study. Special thanks go to Dr. Stephanie Barros, who was the main research collaborator on this project. She carried out the interviews presented in this chapter and was significantly involved in all the different steps of the project implementation. Her collaboration was essential for the success of the project. I would also like to thank the student assistants and participants for their invaluable help with data collection. I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Dieter Ferring (1958–2017) as project supervisor and to Prof. Dr. Jaan Valsiner as the IRMA project mentor.

Population aging and migration are often cited as key societal issues of our time. In recent decades, growing numbers of people have been residing in countries other than where they were born. The International Organization for Migration estimates that there were 281 million international migrants worldwide in 2020 (IOM 2022). Luxembourg takes a special place in this picture, given the high proportion of people there who do not have Luxembourgish nationality (currently 47.2%); in addition, among those who are Luxembourgers, 18% have a second nationality. Recently published statistics show that Luxembourg is very culturally diverse: in addition to new arrivals, there are older waves of migrants and their descendants. In fact, 73.7% of the population has a direct or indirect migration background (Statec 2022). While the number of immigrants is higher in the younger age groups, 29% of people over 70 years old do not have Luxembourgish nationality.

The majority of the immigrants is from other European countries, and Portuguese nationals make up the largest group, accounting for 14.5% of the whole population. The first large waves of Portuguese immigration took place in the 1970s, when Luxembourg was searching for workers in the industrial, construction, and service sectors, and immigration from Portugal has continued since then. Aging first-generation immigrants have thus become a topic of interest in Luxembourg, and questions about their plans for the future have become more and more relevant. This trend is similar in other European countries, where members of the first waves of labor migration in past decades are now entering retirement age (Mandres 2014). Studies suggest that only a portion of immigrants return permanently to their country of origin after their professional life comes to an end, even if they had initially planned to do so. Instead, a transnational lifestyle might become an alternative that is favored by many, especially given that they build up their social and personal links to their country of settlement over time (Nedelcu et al. 2023; Kahveci, Karacan & Kosnick 2020). Considering these dynamics, it is important to understand how migrants establish a sense of belonging to their receiving country while often also retaining links to their country of origin. Studies have shown that the integration of immigrants is a multifaceted process (Fajth & Lessard-Phillips 2022): immigrants might take on some habits or values that they encounter in their country of settlement but retain other traditions and preferences. Interestingly, migrants do not necessarily take on the presumed majority culture; on the contrary, they might also adapt to subgroups in the population of the receiving country (Portes & Zhou 1993). Given that the entire population is becoming more and more culturally diverse, the question of how immigrants orient themselves in the multicultural acculturation context of Luxembourg becomes even more pertinent for societal cohesion and inclusion (Murdock 2016). Migration from Portugal to Luxembourg was typically characterized by its family dimension: The offspring of first-generation migrants have now entered adulthood, having spent most or all their childhood in Luxembourg (Hartmann-Hirsch 2007; Hartmann-Hirsch & Amétépé 2023, 1-11). Families play a key role when it comes to questions of support and care in old age. Intergenerational solidarity and mutual expectations between first-generation immigrants and their adult children can thus be interesting aspects that influence planning and well-being after retirement (Albert, Ferring & Lang 2016).

These general reflections were the starting points for the FNR-funded IRMA project on intergenerational relations in the light of migration and aging, which focused on comparisons between Portuguese immigrant families in Luxembourg and Luxembourgish families. The main interrelated topics were cultural identity construction, intergenerational solidarity, and needs and expectations for intergenerational support. The project also focused on the transmission of values between the generations, and the well-being of older parents and their adult children, in migrant and non-migrant families. Furthermore, perceptions of the multicultural society of Luxembourg, involvement in associations, and individual migration history were taken into account.

The research questions were formulated alongside an integrative model on intergenerational family relations in the light of migration and aging (Albert & Barros Coimbra 2017). This model proposed that parent–child relations are embedded in a specific family culture, in which rules and routines are negotiated, and which is embedded in a larger cultural context. Depending on earlier socialization processes, the family system can be either aligned with or different from the context in which it is situated, for instance, when a family has migrated, the family members were socialized in a different societal context before moving to a new place. Also, historical time and life stage have an impact on the specific preferences, needs, and constraints of different family members (Baltes, Reese & Lipsit 1980; Manzi et al. 2006; Trommsdorff 2006).

The IRMA project consisted of two parts: a larger quantitative questionnaire survey and a qualitative interview study. Altogether, n = 72 Portuguese families living in Luxembourg and n = 85 Luxembourgish families (one adult child together with one of their parents in each family) filled out a standardized questionnaire, making up a full sample size of N = 438 participants. Furthermore, ten parent–adult child pairs in each of the two subgroups were invited to discuss topics that included migration, multiculturalism in Luxembourg, and the intergenerational transmission of traditions and values within families.

The present contribution will summarize the results of the IRMA study described above with regard to the perspectives of first-generation Portuguese immigrants and their descendants in Luxembourg, their plans for the future, how they negotiate multiple aspects of their cultural identity, their feelings of belonging, and their intergenerational relations and well-being.

### Future plans

First-generation immigrants have often expressed a desire to return to their country of origin. The underlying idea is to earn enough money in the receiving country to build up an economic base for retirement back home. Studies in several countries have, however, shown that these plans are often not realized or that they change over time (Carling 2014). In fact, many choose to stay or to commute between countries after retirement instead of returning permanently as initially envisaged (Hunter 2011). Several factors related to a person’s choice of where to live after retirement have been identified; for instance, they may have gotten used to the lifestyle in their country of settlement, which has gained personal importance, and other family members—in particular, their own children—will often continue to live there (Attias-Donfut, Tessier & Wolff 2005; Bolzman, Fibbi & Vial 2006). Structural or practical considerations, such as health issues and the availability of healthcare provision, legal issues, and financial concerns, can also play a decisive role (Mandres 2014). As life in the receiving country goes on, what is experienced as “home” can also change over time (Kunuroglu et al. 2018). Nonetheless, multiple attachments are possible, and special bonds with one’s country of origin often seem to be retained (Klok et al. 2017, Palladino 2019). The practice of commuting between both countries after retirement has been described in a survey of middle-aged international immigrants in France on their future plans for retirement (Attias-Donfut, Tessier & Wolff 2005). Recently, a retirement mobilities approach has been proposed as a new analytical framework for addressing the complexities of transnational lifestyles in older age (Nedelcu et al. 2023). This approach takes into account that the lifestyles of many older people are characterized by transnational movements and that the assumption of immobility as the norm is no longer valid.

When it came to the future plans of the first-generation Portuguese immigrants who participated in the IRMA project, we were able to identify similar patterns to those found in earlier European studies (Attias-Donfut, Tessier & Wolff 2005). We asked participants if they had planned—at the beginning of their stay in Luxembourg—to return to their country of origin in the future, and we wanted to know what their current plans were at the time of data collection.2 https://repository.mruni.eu/handle/007/14580 Although 69% indicated that when they came to Luxembourg years ago they had envisaged that they would return to Portugal, the picture had evolved in the meantime: about 20% of our participants stated clearly that they would still like to return. A proportion of 41% were planning to stay in Luxembourg, whereas 21% preferred to commute between Luxembourg and Portugal and 18% were undecided about what to do after retirement. Further questions revealed that participants had often immigrated to Luxembourg for economic reasons but had formed emotional bonds with the receiving country over the years. Especially family and other social relationships were mentioned as reasons for staying in Luxembourg or for commuting, in addition to practical considerations (Bolzman, Fibbi & Vial 2006). The main reasons driving future plans to return to Portugal tended to be personal, such as a continuing strong attachment to the cultural heritage and lifestyle in the country of origin. Notably, the proportion of people planning to return in the future was slightly higher among those who were still gainfully employed; presumably, for them, the decision-making process was still ongoing. The likelihood of staying in Luxembourg increased with the length of time in the Grand Duchy and with already having grandchildren in Luxembourg. It should be mentioned that all the participants had children living in Luxembourg (due to our study design), but only a portion of them already had grandchildren. The immigrants’ adult children were also asked about their future plans. As expected, the majority were planning for a future in the Grand Duchy, where they had grown up and had sometimes already started a family of their own. Notably, they often reported also having close bonds with their parents’ country of origin. Interestingly, the majority of participants, irrespective of their future plans, were homeowners in Luxembourg. However, participants who wanted to stay in Luxembourg permanently were less likely to own property in Portugal than those who wanted to return or commute. This could indicate not only the importance of opportunity structures but also the planning ahead of some participants.

However, for the first generation, having plans to stay in Luxembourg did not mean that their ties with their country of origin were completely broken. On the contrary, no differences in the emotional attachment to Portugal were found among this group; however, those who wanted to stay in Luxembourg or commute indicated a stronger attachment to Luxembourg than those who wanted to return to Portugal. The latter group also indicated scarcer Luxembourgish language competences. This confirms earlier claims that when migrants build ties in their country of migration, a permanent return to their country of origin becomes less likely a choice (ibid.). A transnational lifestyle and continued cross-border mobility resulting from multiple social and personal links to both countries then become more probable (Nedelcu et al. 2023).

This brings us to the question of how first-generation migrants establish new bonds and define their cultural identity and belonging across their life course.

### Cultural identity

Settling in a new country can be regarded as a critical life transition that requires sociocultural and psychological adaptation, a process termed acculturation (Berry 2005; Redfield, Linton & Herskovitz 1936). Whereas earlier theories regarded acculturation as being a unidimensional adaptation to the receiving culture, it has become evident that migrants build new bonds with their receiving country while retaining aspects of their culture of origin, as described in two-dimensional or multidimensional models of acculturation (Berry 2005; Kunuroglu et al. 2018). In fact, migration might trigger changes in cultural, social, and emotional belonging, as migrants leave behind a familiar living context and an established social network when moving to new surroundings. Nonetheless, people do not migrate without a past. The recently introduced concept of proculturation accounts for the fact that people who migrate as adults have been enculturated in other cultural contexts and carry with them a kind of imprint—that is, they see and interpret the world and new experiences through the cultural lenses acquired earlier (Gamsakhurdia 2019). Therefore, individuals differ in how they internalize old and new cultural influences and integrate them into the self (Schwartz et al. 2010). The bicultural identity integration model refers to different ways in which people might view their belonging to different cultures: The first dimension refers to the perception of both cultures as blended or distant, while the second dimension describes whether people experience their cultures as rather harmonious or conflicted (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos 2005). People might also engage in cultural frame-switching; that is, adapting their behavior to the specific cultural context when moving between different cultural systems (Hong et al. 2000; No 2013). On the basis of these cognitive and behavioral components, earlier research identified different ways of being bicultural: blended biculturals perceived their cultures as overlapping and felt competent in different cultural contexts, whereas alternating biculturals were found to make a clear distinction between both cultures but were able to move between them without problems (Phinney & Devich-Navarro 1997). Importantly, a third group was labeled as separate: although living with multiple cultural influences, they did not identify as bicultural but felt that they belonged only to one or the other culture. More recently, a transformative theory of biculturalism has been proposed (West et al. 2017). This theory suggests frame-switching, hybridizing, or integrating as ways in which people dynamically negotiate different aspects of their different cultural identity. Following the above-described approaches, the bicultural identity integration of first-generation Portuguese immigrants and their adult children was examined in the IRMA project. We considered the dimensions of compatibility, conflict, and frame-switching (Barros & Albert 2020a). We assumed that first-generation migrants face different developmental tasks from those in the second generation when reconciling and negotiating different cultural aspects. Whereas the former group were socialized in a different cultural context before they migrated, the latter have grown up with multiple cultural influences (Birman 2006). Interestingly, both first- and second-generation participants indicated on average low conflict with regard to their multiple cultural belonging, and both groups engaged equally in frame-switching, adapting their behavior when navigating between different cultural systems. However, there were significant differences in the dimension of compatibility. More precisely, the older generation experienced both cultures as more separate, whereas the younger generation saw both cultures as more overlapping.

When taking a closer look at patterns based on the combination of the aforementioned dimensions, we found four different identity types among participants from the first generation and their adult children: (a) blended biculturals, (b) alternating biculturals, (c) ambivalent, and (d) separated (Barros & Albert 2020b). Blended, alternating, and separated types have already been described in earlier studies; the newly discovered ambivalent type included participants who identified with both cultures but experienced them as conflicting. Participants with this pattern also indicated more explicitly that they use cultural frame-switching and adapt their behavior depending on the context they find themselves in. Portuguese migrant fathers were most frequently found to be among the alternating biculturals and the ambivalent types. Both these types engaged in frame-switching, but the alternating biculturals perceived their multiple belonging more positively than the ambivalent types did. The latter seemed to feel conflicted about the two distinct cultures they belonged to, although they felt capable of alternating between them. For Portuguese migrant mothers, the most frequent pattern seemed to be separated types, followed by blended biculturals and alternating biculturals. For first-generation migrants, cultural contact with their culture of origin and the receiving culture occurs one after the other, as they are socialized in one country before settling into a new context with new values, norms, and practices. The asynchronous sequence of experiences in different cultural contexts could account for the higher numbers of people from the first generation who clearly distinguished their multiple cultural aspects. Among the adult children we found the same patterns as for the first generation in that blended biculturals were the most common. Having grown up in and between two cultures, members of the second generation in migrant families might have simultaneously internalized both the culture of their parents and that of the societal context in which they lived during their formative years. This simultaneity of cultural influences could have contributed to the perception of a certain overlap of both cultures. However, the results also showed that, especially for the second generation, reconciling different cultural identities can be a difficult task depending on a person’s life experiences and contexts. This was further demonstrated in the qualitative interviews.

Most of the respondents from the second generation regarded Luxembourg as their focus of life while recognizing their Portuguese roots. The majority said they felt a sense of belonging to both cultures, but there was variety in how they reconciled both influences (Barros & Albert 2020a). Some participants reported experiencing ambivalences concerning their bicultural identity (Barros & Albert 2020b). More precisely, some of the respondents reported that the views of others had undermined their own cultural identity constructions in relation to one or the other culture—being labeled as Portuguese by Luxembourgers and being seen as a Luxembourger when in Portugal (Barros & Albert 2020a). This denial of cultural identity has been described by other authors and is recurrent in reports of second-generation offspring in migrant families (Clark, Glick & Bures 2009).

The next section will focus more closely on the sense of belonging and how it evolves in the context of migration.

### Sense of belonging

A sense of belonging gives meaning to individuals’ lives (Lambert et al. 2013), and it speaks to their basic need for communion and agency (Abele & Wojciszke 2007). Belonging is a basic need (Baumeister & Leary 1995) inherent in the processes of acculturation and cultural identity. However, while the sense of belonging has been widely addressed in migration research, it is still difficult to find a common definition. It has been defined in different ways depending on the disciplinary perspective; for instance as identification, connectedness, or attachment to a group (Halse 2018). People can feel they belong to social groups on different levels (such as family or friends, or other groups that share similar values or characteristics), to social institutions (e.g., school), or to transnational networks (ibid.). Apart from the social aspects, some authors have underlined the importance of place in belonging (Antonsich 2010). For instance, one might feel that one belongs to a geographic area or to a symbolic space, and the immediate neighborhood where migrants settle and interact with the other inhabitants might have an impact on feelings of belonging too (Wessendorf 2019). Importantly, these neighborhoods can be characterized by high levels of cultural diversity or be inhabited by specific groups (e.g., peer migrants from the same or a different community), or there might be a majority of long-established local residents in the neighborhood. This can, of course, have an impact on how social contacts unfold. Further, language competence is an important factor for the sense of belonging (Amit & Bar-Lev 2015). Notably, a sense of belonging in the country of settlement does not necessarily entail the desire to become a full part of what is perceived as majority culture or to take over the apparent characteristics of the majority (Blachnicka-Ciacek et al. 2021). It is also possible for migrants to develop a sense of belonging to the migrant community or to other subgroups in their country of settlement.

In the IRMA project, we addressed the question of immigrants’ sense of belonging by drawing on qualitative interviews with n = 10 Portuguese immigrant family dyads (one parent and one adult child each). The focus was on several facets of belonging, namely, spatial, social, and cultural. As expected, for most of the first-generation migrants interviewed, Luxembourg as their country of settlement and as their living context had over the years become a home to which they felt they belonged. Interestingly though, their connection to fellow Portuguese migrants in the Grand Duchy and to Portuguese culture was stronger than their feeling of being a member of the Luxembourgish community or being part of Luxembourgish culture. This was different for their adult children: they not only reported a greater attachment to Luxembourg in more general terms as a living context that provided economic stability but also expressed a strong attachment and identification with the Luxembourgish social and cultural setting (Afonso, Barros & Albert 2023). Interestingly, within the second generation a difference became obvious between those who were born in Luxembourg and those who were born in Portugal and migrated to Luxembourg with their parents at a young age: the latter underlined the importance of the multicultural context, whereas those born in Luxembourg identified more strongly with the Luxembourgish culture as their own.

Migrants’ experiences during their acculturation process are key for their development of a sense of belonging. To examine the pathway of how a sense of belonging evolves over time, we focused on a case study with one selected mother–daughter dyad, retracing their remembered migration history (Albert & Barros 2021). The selected case included a mother in her sixties, who had been living in Luxembourg for forty years and who was interviewed with one of her daughters. The daughter had been born in Portugal but migrated to Luxembourg with her family at the age of seven. She was in her forties at the time of the interview. It should be noted that while the mother had been employed as a low-skilled worker, her daughter had a professional degree and worked in an administrative position in the health sector.

The conversation provided a detailed account of how, in retrospect, an unfamiliar context that was experienced as hostile and even ugly at first, changed meaning over time, and eventually became a home for the mother. Her clearly stated intent to stay in Luxembourg and not to move back to Portugal permanently was in stark contrast to what she remembered as her initial thoughts; namely, a strong impulse to take a train back to Portugal immediately. It should be noted, however, that at the time of the interview she was in retirement and practicing a transnational lifestyle, commuting between both countries and spending part of the year in Portugal. Within this case study, the practical restrictions and opportunities that shape life became evident: the lack of a house in Portugal and a comparatively worse living situation back there eventually pushed our interviewee to stay in Luxembourg. She also remembered that her living conditions had a significant impact on her well-being. In addition, she identified turning points, for instance, an important improvement in the initially very difficult and poor living conditions in Luxembourg. When she started to receive an adequate salary and felt that her work was finally being recognized, her perception of Luxembourg changed, and she started to see it as a friendly and welcoming context (ibid.).

The qualitative interviews underlined the importance of experiences that are shared by first-generation migrants and their descendants, but they also demonstrated that memories can differ between family members as they undergo the same experiences at different points in their life course. Recollections from the past also have an impact on the regulation of relationships between older, first-generation migrants and their adult children (Albert, Barros Coimbra & Boulanger 2020). In the final part of this chapter, we will therefore focus on the regulation of intergenerational relations in the context of migration.

### Intergenerational relations

Our focus was on the intergenerational relations in Portuguese migrant families, which we compared with Luxembourgish families. Past studies have shown that in families with a migration history, expectations that each generation has on the other generation(s) can be particularly high (Baykara-Krumme & Fokkema 2019), and intergenerational solidarity is negotiated in relation to the well-being of members of the family (Barros et al. 2023). Notably, in our research we found that conflict around cultural identity is related to intergenerational conflict and loneliness (Albert 2021). A motive behind the migration of first-generation parents might have been to provide a better life for their children (Kang & Larson 2014), and this can be recognized by the children. Strong mutual expectations of solidarity and supporting older parents might be related to the parents’ earlier efforts and sacrifices (Merz et al. 2009). For instance, in the Turkish 2000 families’ study (Baykara-Krumme & Fokkema 2019), migrant families more often corresponded to the full-solidarity family type than to the autonomous type. At the same time, research has shown that younger generations might have adopted values and norms from the country of settlement and not fully agree with parental expectations. Such a generational or acculturation gap can lead to intergenerational ambivalences and conflicts (Albert, Abbey & Valsiner 2018).

In the IRMA project, we took a closer look at the family cultures in Luxembourgish and Portuguese families living in Luxembourg. Our interviews suggested that intergenerational relations and mutual expectations are, not only in Portuguese families but also in Luxembourgish ones, characterized by high cohesion: a sense of being there for each other in case of need (Albert & Barros Coimbra 2017). But we also found differences between these two groups: intergenerational support between Luxembourgish parents and their adult children was mostly downward, whereas support patterns were more reciprocal in the Portuguese families living in Luxembourg, who also rated family obligations higher (Albert, Ferring & Michels 2013)—a finding that was in line with the results of earlier studies (Fleury et al. 2011). We carried out cluster analyses to identify different relationship patterns in our survey data. More of the Luxembourgish adult children were found to be in clear-cut clusters—characterized either by high adherence to obligations or by independence—while more of the Portuguese adult children were found in ambivalent clusters. Thus, some adult children might find it difficult to reconcile their striving for independence with their family obligations, especially in the context of migration.

In order to delve deeper into the topic of relationship regulation and better understand the processes and mechanisms behind different relationship patterns, we then carried out thematic content analyses of our qualitative interview data. In doing so, we focused on the specific topic of moving out of the parental home. We expected to find differences in how autonomy and relatedness or solidarity and reciprocity are negotiated when comparing Portuguese families with Luxembourgish families (Albert & Barros Coimbra 2017). A typical pattern was that of Portuguese parents exhibiting a tendency to move back and forth between granting autonomy and holding their children back, while their young adult children reassured them of their solidarity. Luxembourgish parents assumed the need to let their children grow into independence, because this is an expected part of children growing up that parents must come to terms with. As a tendency, these results hinted at a dyadic co-regulation of autonomy and relatedness in the Portuguese families and at more individual cognitive regulatory strategies in the Luxembourgish families. As described above, cohesion was strongly expressed in both the Luxembourgish and the Portuguese families, but the Portuguese families had higher expectations around frequency of contact than the Luxembourgish families did, and they underlined more clearly the importance of geographical closeness between family members from different generations. The Luxembourgish participants placed more emphasis on the importance of being there for each other in case of need, whereas frequency of contact seemed to be less important. These observations were in line with a theoretical model on assurance (which is typical for intergenerational relations in interdependent cultural contexts) versus trust (which is more central in independent cultural contexts) (Rothbaum & Trommsdorff 2007).

The Portuguese adult children in our project were aware that their parents had worked hard to provide their families with a good life. In exchange, they helped their parents with administrative issues and translation. Recently, the sense of indebtedness has been introduced into the study of intergenerational relations in migrant families. This refers to second-generation members of immigrant families and their wish to give something back to their immigrant parents, who have made many sacrifices to provide a better life for their children Pfammatter & Schwarz 2022). Feelings of gratitude, shame, and guilt have also been described in relation to intergenerational transfers (Carling 2014; Simoni & Voirol 2021).

### Conclusions

The present contribution has focused on the first generation of Portuguese migrants to Luxembourg, who have started to reach the retirement age. While it was once unknown whether a large number of them would return to Portugal after completing their professional life, it has now become evident that many are choosing to continue living in Luxembourg or are opting for a transnational lifestyle, where they spend some time in Luxembourg and some in Portugal. The research results from the IRMA project have indicated that Portuguese migrants who were part of the first waves of immigration have formed strong ties and roots in the Grand Duchy; they have found their place in their country of settlement and have become an integral part of the culturally diverse society of Luxembourg. At the same time, these first-generation immigrants have retained strong links to Portugal and have transmitted their cultural traditions to their offspring who have grown up in the Grand Duchy. Despite adopting cultural influences from Portugal and from Luxembourg, the first generation continues to keep the two cultural contexts more separate; but for their offspring, both cultures have become integral, and sometimes blended, parts of their identities. The IRMA study has shed light on intergenerational regulatory efforts and on the intraindividual negation processes that take place when reconciling these two cultural influences. We have discussed the challenges and opportunities of living with diverse cultures and outlined the importance of intergenerational relations in the context of migration.

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# 2. Luxembourgers in Brazil

## Jean-Philippe Bettendorff and the Jesuit mission network in the Amazon region (1661–1693)

“Me, rector, preacher, administrator, procurator, confessor, missionary; but, in the end, I am just a useless servant”1 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, cod. Bras 26, fol. 45v (07/05/1678). Translated from Latin by the author.: This is how Father Jean-Philippe Bettendorff (1625–1698), a native of Luxembourg, described his multiple activities in a letter from 1678, almost the mid-point of his thirty-seven years in the Amazon region. At that time, Bettendorff did not know that still greater responsibilities would fall upon him. Having left a Europe torn apart by incessant war, he arrived in the north of Portuguese America, which was immersed in a rather recent but complex process of colonization. Entirely a man of the seventeenth century, this Jesuit and graduate of philosophy, law, and theology worked for more than half his life in the Mission of Maranhão, occupying some of its most important administrative positions.

As one of the successors of the famous Portuguese Jesuit Antônio Vieira (1608–1697), Bettendorff made the autonomy of the catechetical villages and, in doing so, the consolidation of the Jesuit project, the priorities of his work in the Amazon region. In this chapter we present Bettendorff’s trajectory in the context of implementing the mission network: the main socio-spatial infrastructure implemented by the colonizers, which was essential in strengthening the local economy through the extraction of tropical rainforest products and extensive agricultural exploitation.

### A concise biographical overview

Jean-Philippe Bettendorff was born on August 25, 1625, in Lintgen, in the Alzette valley, into a wealthy and pious family. His father, Matthieu André Bettendorff, served as a local administrator (mayeur) in the surrounding area under the authority of the abbey of Saint-Maximin in Trier—the largest landowner in the region at the time. His mother, Marguerite Reinerts, died when Jean-Philippe was a teenager. He had an older brother, Nicolas, and a younger half-sister, Susanne (the latter from his father’s second marriage). Despite being born into a century of continuous war—the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) and the Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659)—Bettendorff managed to acquire a solid humanist education. From 1635 to 1659, he lived in various towns along the long strip of land in Western Europe that marked the intersection of the Latin and the Germanic cultures. During this period he studied humanities at the Jesuit college in Luxembourg, philosophy at the University of Trier on the Moselle River, civil law at the University of Cuneo in Piedmont, doing the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Tournai, the regencies in several Jesuit colleges in the Spanish Netherlands (Douai, Lille, Dinant, Luxembourg, Namur, and Huy) to acquire pedagogical skills and, finally, theology in Douai.

According to Bettendorff, he was fluent in six languages: Latin, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Spanish. Like most young Jesuits at that time, he wanted to be sent to the Orient (Japan and China); however, in spring 1659 he was assigned to the Mission of Maranhão, which was considered to be one of the most difficult. In autumn that year, shortly after his priestly ordination, Bettendorff set out for Portugal with a Flemish confrere from the Artois region. Along the way, the two young missionaries were confronted with the realities of their century. First, while they were still in Flanders, German mercenaries tried to attack them. Then, while waiting in Holland for a ship to set sail for Portugal, they had to remove their cassocks and celebrate mass in secret in this predominantly Calvinist republic—which, incidentally, they admired because of the cleanliness of its cities and the industriousness of its wealthy merchants. Finally, as they approached the port of Lisbon, the young religious could see in the distance the ships of the Moroccan corsairs, who sought to intercept the Portuguese caravels returning from South Asia, Brazil, or Africa. In the Lusitanian metropolis, the young Luxembourgish missionary learned Portuguese as well as Tupi, the most widely spoken indigenous language in Portuguese America.

On January 20, 1661, Bettendorff, in the company of his friend and compatriot Gaspar Misch, who had joined him in Lisbon a few months earlier, reached the port of São Luís—then the main city of the State of Maranhão and Grão-Pará—where they would both spend the rest of their lives. The two Luxembourgers were immediately sent to remote missions in the vast Amazonian floodplain: Misch to assist a Portuguese confrere near the fort of Gurupá, and Bettendorff to build a mission in the strategic area at the mouth of the Tapajós River (today, the city of Santarém). A few months later, an uprising of the Portuguese settlers led to the expulsion of most of the missionaries, including the superior, Father Antônio Vieira. Very quickly, Bettendorff stood out among the reduced group of Jesuits who had managed to escape exile. Indeed, from 1662 until 1693, he occupied, almost without interruption, the posts of rector of the two urban colleges and superior of the Mission.

In 1684, after a second uprising of settlers and merchants in São Luís, Bettendorff traveled to Lisbon, where as procurator he pleaded the cause of the Jesuit missionaries. This resulted in the introduction of a framework law, the Regimento das Missões (1686), which guaranteed the full autonomy of the missions under the authority of the priests, who were recognized as tutors of the native neophytes and catechumens. This regulation also provided the red thread for the Portuguese—and, from 1822, the Brazilian—authorities’ policies on the native peoples until the middle of the twentieth century. After returning to the Amazon, in 1688, Bettendorff sought to complete the consolidation of the Jesuit project in the region by introducing all the stages of religious formation, standardizing the catechetical discourse, imposing a shared daily regime for all missionaries, and rebuilding the urban colleges in Belém and São Luís.

Bettendorff was also involved in many other spheres. As a pragmatic economist, he prioritized the cultivation of cacao for export. As a talented artist, he propagated the Baroque style by painting altarpieces and by building churches and chapels. As a conscientious jurist, he examined the condition of the indigenous (índios) captured during the official expeditions and criticized the excesses committed against them by certain governors, captains, and soldiers. As an attentive ethnographer, he described some of the rites and customs of the indigenous peoples, especially those of the Tapajós. Lastly, as a zealous missionary, he wrote at least four catechisms in indigenous languages and founded spiritual brotherhoods for settlers in the main towns of the colony. Although the historical sources are biased (over-complimentary) about Bettendorff’s activities, they nevertheless allow us to perceive the pragmatic character of his multiple actions.

Thus, over the last four decades of the seventeenth century, the Luxembourgish Jesuit left an imprint on the formation of colonial society in the Portuguese Amazon. Bettendorff died of liver disease on August 5, 1698, in Belém, just one year after the death of his compatriot Gaspar Misch. The corpus of his writings—composed in Portuguese, Latin, and French—includes a detailed chronicle on the Mission of Maranhão, a bilingual Portuguese–Tupi catechism, and an abundant correspondence archived in Rome, Évora, Brussels and Luxembourg.2 Concerning the biographical information on this topic, see Arenz (2022 and 2010).

### The Portuguese Amazon in the seventeenth century

The second half of the seventeenth century, when Bettendorff was living in the Amazon region, can be considered as a time of profound crisis on account of the uninterrupted series of wars, epidemics, and violent conquests that affected large areas of nearly all continents. The Portuguese Empire, with its global network of trade routes and trading posts, was no exception. Thus, a long-lasting economic depression (1670–1700) accompanied the waning of the Lusitanian influence, especially in South Asia, and its subsequent concentration on the Atlantic space. There were several reasons for this development: first, the increasing competition from sugar and tobacco produced on the Caribbean islands under French, English, and Dutch dominion; second, the indebtedness of the Portuguese Crown as a consequence of quarrelling with the Castilians since the ascent of the Bragança dynasty in 1640; and thirdly, the eventual suppression of the long-tolerated and profitable smuggling of slaves to the Spanish colonies in South America. As a response, Portugal, like other Western European countries at that time, began to centralize and rationalize its administrative structures and launch new economic initiatives (Alencastro 2006, 71–74; Labourdette 2000, 343–423; Mauro 1972, 70).

In this context, it is necessary to highlight the policy of King Pedro II and his finance minister, Luís de Meneses, the Count of Ericeira. In the 1670s, they began seeking to promote domestic production (mostly of textiles and wine) in continental Portugal in order to equalize the trade balance, which was marked by an excess of imports and a decline in exports. The Crown also prioritized certain overseas possessions, in particular agricultural and silvicultural production in its two American colonies: Brazil and Maranhão.3 From 1621 to 1772, the Portuguese possessions in South America consisted of two separate administrative entities: the State of Brazil and the State of Maranhão and Grão-Para (from 1751, Grão-Pará and Maranhão). Most of the Amazon basin was located in the latter state. Yet Portugal’s economic recovery was compromised by another commercial depression, which followed the overproduction of sugar and tobacco in the 1680s and the suicide of Luís de Meneses in 1690 (Serrão & Marques 2001, 197–213 and 271–274; Bourdon 1994, 70–74; Chambouleyron 2010, 77–169).

Throughout this period, the Society of Jesus proved to be a loyal supporter of the Bragança dynasty, which came to power in 1640. Indeed, Father Antônio Vieira had even been one of the closest counsellors of João VI, the first Bragança king, before crossing the ocean in 1652 to re-establish the Maranhão Mission, which then comprised the entire Amazon region under Portuguese rule (Alencastro 2006, 80–81; Cardoso 2000). In 1655, Vieira obtained the official tutorship of the Society of Jesus over the colony’s indigenous populations and succeeded in extending the mission network by founding, according to Dauril Alden, more than fifty establishments (Alden 1996, 113). Dissatisfied with this Jesuit monopoly over the only workforce available (the indigenous people), the settlers expelled the religious in 1661. Some years later, the fathers regained some influence as they supported the new prince regent, Pedro—who would become King Pedro II—and his economic initiatives for the Amazon colony. In 1680, Vieira thus helped to conceive a law that made the labor force more accessible by declaring the indigenous people free, while simultaneously maintaining the fathers’ control over them. But growing discontent among the Portuguese settlers, who felt marginalized by the Crown’s policy, led to another uprising, and the Jesuits were expelled from São Luís in 1684. Subsequent negotiations in Lisbon resulted in the Regimento das Missões, a statute that granted considerable autonomy to the missions and regulated the annual allocation of indigenous laborers to settlers and authorities. Bettendorff was directly involved in these negotiations (Arenz 2022, 242–253; Perrone-Moisés 1992, 117–123).

### The mission network and the indigenous populations

The main purpose of the missions in the Amazon region was to evangelize the indigenous populations and ensure their submission to a Catholic sovereign by confining them to a network of interconnected rural settlements. There, the natives lived as neophytes and catechumens under a regime of repetitive catechesis and compulsory labor. For example, in all missions, before going to work in the fields or in the pottery and carpentry workshops, the indigenous were obliged (even before dawn) to attend mass and listen to a brief catechetical instruction, which was repeated in the evening followed by certain baroque devotional practices (processions, litanies, and chants).4 “Direção do que se deve observar nas Missões do Maranhão,” in Leite, 1943, vol. 4, 112–113 [§§ 14 and 16]. One of the rules established by Father Vieira determined that:

> Every day of the week, once morning prayer is over, a Mass will be said so that the Indians can hear it before going to their fields; and for this purpose, prayer will be held in time so that when the sun rises, Mass will at least begin, and when finished, the Indians will be taught aloud the ordinary prayers: namely Our Father, Hail Mary, the Creed, the Commandments of the Law of God, and of the Holy Mother Church; and the sacraments, act of contrition, and confession, generally the dialogues of the brief catechism, which contain the mysteries of faith.5 “Direção do que se deve observar nas Missões do Maranhão,” 112 [§ 14]; translated from Portuguese by the author.

In order to maintain this convent-like way of life, preferably without any external interference, the fathers would set up the missions at some distance from the European settlements (small towns, farms, and forts), but always alongside the strategic natural axis constituted by the Amazon River and its numerous tributaries. According to their specific tasks, there were four main types of missions: a) the farms, or fazendas, which were attached to one of the two urban Jesuit colleges in Belém and São Luís (generally situated in the surroundings of these main towns); b) the villages exclusively designated to royal service (such as the saltworks on the Atlantic coast); c) the so-called aldeamentos de repartição (“villages of partition”), missions whose male labor force was annually inventoried and assigned to either external (settlers or authorities) or internal work; and d) the aldeamentos de doutrina (“villages of doctrine”), small establishments dedicated to religious instruction—especially of recently contacted groups, which were exempt from external labor for at least two years.6 Cf. Leite (1943, vol. 4, 99–103); Meier & Aymoré (2005, 106). Concerning the rural nature of the missions, see Chambouleyron, Arenz & Melo (2020).

The farms played an essential role in the subsistence of the urban colleges and the production of supplies for the missions in the distant backcountry, then known as sertão. The bigger ones possessed sugar mills, plantations of sugar cane, cacao trees and cassava roots, as well as facilities and pasture for livestock-breeding and small workshops for producing canoes, furniture, ceramics, or cotton cloth (Leite 1943, vol. 3, 249 and 279–280; Alden 1996, 421). The farms, run by the missionaries, concentrated most of the specialized labor force that was also urgently needed by the settlers (as farm workers) or the authorities (as rowers, auxiliary soldiers, or workers for the construction of public buildings). In this context, the Jesuits were repeatedly accused of accumulating wealth and retaining native workers for their own ventures (Souza Júnior 2012, 143–329; Neves Neto 2013, 17–109).

Bettendorff saw for himself how useful the chain of well-functioning farms along the river routes was for the missionaries. When he was appointed to the Tapajós mission in 1661, on his way upstream he stopped at the mission farms of Mortigura and Cametá. From the first of these he received manioc flour, the most important travelling provisions at that time, and from the second he obtained some live turtles, which were either captured in the river or bred at the farm (Bettendorff 1990, 159). Another report which he wrote in 1665—just four years after his arrival, when he had already become the rector of the central residence in São Luís—provides a general overview of the mission’s economic situation and details the productiveness of some of the farms.7 Bettendorff, (1990, 303–308); Bettendorff’s interest in economic issues was emphasized clearly by the Jesuit historian Serafim Leite (1943, vol. 4: 317–318). Bettendorff’s report begins with a description of one of the most relevant and prosperous rural establishments in the Maranhão captaincy:

> Seven miles from the town, we possess a farm called Anindiba. It has a chapel dedicated to Saint Ignatius, where the [indigenous] servants attend divine services and instruction of the doctrine. The whole property occupies one square mile and is very fertile, ideal for manioc and sugar cane. It has many trees that can be cut easily. Four villages of Indians inhabit our property. At that farm, we have more than sixty servants, children, and adults altogether, to cultivate the fields. A curiboca or cafuzo, that is, a son of an Ethiopian [African] man and an Indian woman, who is our servant, administers the farm. The poor ones, although born more to sleep, eat, and drink than to work, provide us with manioc flour, enough for one year, maize, oil, and brandy, as well as cloth made of cotton, and other things.8 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, cod. Bras 26, fol. 12v (11/08/1665). Translated from Latin by the author.

The report also mentions smaller properties in the outskirts of São Luís. One of them occupied an entire island of one and a half square miles on which “lives a fisherman with his wife and children, an Ethiopian [African], with an Ethiopian [African] wife, a daughter and other descendants, and also three servants, and he takes care of a herd of cattle, which includes 67 animals, some goats, about 30 pigs and chicken. The women are our laundresses and weavers.”9 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, cod. Bras 26, fol. 12v–13r (11/08/1665). The document continues presenting succinctly diverse rural scenes in farms and missions throughout the Amazon estuary and valley, revealing a clear concern with the precarious and constantly fluctuating supplies of manioc flour and fish for the Mission and for the Colony.10 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, cod. Bras 26, fol. 13v,16v,14r and 17v (11/08/1665).

In the official annual statistics (or Catalogus) that Bettendorff sent to the General Superior in Rome in 1671, he reports the existence of several small properties that had been donated by benefactors in Belém and São Luís. Just as they did on their farms, on these land strips the Jesuits produced a wide variety of food to sustain the residents of their urban colleges (mainly young students and novices, but also a growing number of elderly and sick missionaries) and, to a lesser extent, they produced commodities for export. Bettendorff emphasizes the production of salt (a royal monopoly) and animal products in Maranhão, and the production of sugar, cotton, and cacao, as well as manioc flour, in Pará. He also records that most of their indigenous workers in Maranhão were legal slaves, while those in Pará were officially free but obligated to live on the farms—just as those in the inland missions were.11 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, cod. Bras 27, fol. 2v (1671).

In this context it is important to point out that the Jesuits never denied compulsory labor, and even allowed the enslavement of indigenous people under certain conditions. In this regard, they were largely in agreement with the settlers and the authorities on the exploitation of the native populations and their integration into colonial society. The crucial disagreement was over the interpretation and implementation of laws on indigenous labor. In January 1662, Father Vieira clarified his order’s position in Lisbon after being expelled from the Amazon region for categorically denouncing any kind of illegal indigenous slavery:

> It is not my intention that there may not be any slaves; after all, I tried at this royal court [in 1655], as it is well known, and one can see from my proposal […] that a council of the greatest scholars should be established to discuss this item and that the cases of legal captivity should be defined by law. But because we [the Jesuits] are in favor of the legal cases and against the illegal ones, they [the settlers] don’t like to have us in that land and, therefore, they throw us out of it.12 Vieira, (2004, 175); translated from Portuguese by the author.

In some ways, beyond being fierce competitors, the settlers and the missionaries were close and interdependent partners—at least as far as the regional economy was concerned. Every year, these two main agent groups not only divided the indigenous workers among themselves according to the legal provisions (albeit they frequently disagreed on the terms of allocation, treatment, and remuneration) but also produced and traded very similar commodities. Nevertheless, it was mainly traditional indigenous know-how that made possible the relatively stable production of food (primarily manioc flour, the main staple food) and the seasonal gathering of tropical rainforest products (especially cacao, clove bark, sarsaparilla, and copaiba oil). For this reason, in the early days of colonization, formal alliances with the most important indigenous groups—mostly speakers of Tupi languages—were vital for the European colonizers, because these groups acquainted the settlers with the unfamiliar tropical environment. To use a metaphor employed by Nádia Farage, certain indigenous peoples became the colonizers’ “bulwark of the hinterland” (Farage 1991).

This aside, from the mid-seventeenth century onward, the insertion of more and more indigenous groups into colonial society, primarily by confining and supervising them in the missions, was fundamental to the further economic development of the missionary establishments, as has already been emphasized. Bettendorff was (after Vieira) the Jesuit who made his voice most heard regarding the treatment of indigenous people in the colony. Unlike his predecessor, instead of insisting on the “freedom of the Indians,” the priest from Luxembourg used arguments that were less idealistic, resolutely advocating for the autonomy of the missions as legally recognized institutions.

### The autonomy of the missions

In December 1686, King Pedro II enacted the previously mentioned Regimento das Missões, a law concerning the status of the missions and the governance of its indigenous inhabitants. Bettendorff, a graduate in law, followed the negotiations in the metropolis in his role as extraordinary procurator of the Maranhão Mission. He had traveled to Lisbon with a recommendation from the provincial superior in Brazil, although some of the older confreres, among them Vieira, had certain doubts concerning the ability of “that German father.” But thanks to the mediation of some influential Jesuits at court, Bettendorff was granted two receptions with the king. Later, his close relationship with the new queen consort, Maria Sophia of Neuburg, a German princess, facilitated his access to the royal family. Nevertheless, his most important ally was the royal secretary Roque Monteiro Paim, who not only kept Bettendorff informed but also conveyed his opinions to the extraordinary commission nominated by the king to solve the “Amazonian question”—that is, the disagreement between the Society of Jesus and the residents of the colony (Arenz 2010, 49–53).

The most controversial issues were the annual distribution of indigenous laborers among settlers, authorities, and missions, and the restoration of the missionaries’ temporal (civilian) power over the indigenous population. In both cases, the commission formulated two strategic compromises after hearing the representatives of the residents and the religious. Regarding the distribution of laborers, this became bipartite—between residents and villages—instead of tripartite. In addition, the periods of work outside the missions were extended and made more flexible to accommodate the seasonal harvests. As for the temporal administration of the priests, the residents’ representative insisted on its complete abolition, arguing that the Jesuits should dedicate themselves exclusively to evangelization. In response, Father Bettendorff categorically demanded the restoration of temporal power over the indigenous population, pointing out that “without the temporal administration of the Indians, the Mission cannot subsist.”13 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, cod. Bras 26, fol. 129r (01/01/1686). Translated from Latin by the author. After the new governor of the colony, Gomes Freire de Andrade, had been consulted, the “dual administration” (temporal and spiritual) of the missionaries was definitively restored.

The Regimento das Missões, which Mathias Kiemen considers to be a “masterpiece of legislation” (Kiemen 1954, 163), stemmed from these two compromises to “give a convenient form to the reduction of the Gentiles of the State of Maranhão, […], and to the distribution, […] for the good of their souls, and to advance the life of all by honest work.”14 Regimento & Leys sobre as Missoens do Estado do Maranhaõ, & Parà, & sobre a liberdade dos Indios (Lisboa: Officina de Antonio Manescal, 1724), 1 [§1]. The twenty-four paragraphs can be summed up under four main topics. First, it stated that the villages would have significant autonomy, guaranteed through the restoration of the “dual administration,” the appointment of two “Procurators of the Indians,” and the supervision of the entry of non-indigenous people. Second, the villages were to be regrouped in strategic locations, with a minimum population of 150 couples per village, thus ensuring the presence of enough workers and facilitating, if necessary, populational and commercial exchanges within the network. Third, services within and outside the villages were to be organized according to the annual inventory of the male labor force, which was to be divided so that one half remained in the missions and the other half was sent outside. Fourth, in exceptional circumstances, the settlers and the authorities would be able to request indigenous workers for urgent services, mainly as rowers (men), wet nurses, or helpers in the production of manioc flour (women).15 Regimento & Leys sobre as Missoens, 1-16.

The compromises established by the Regimento das Missões were intended to satisfy the two groups that were most concerned. The law ensured that the settlers had more indigenous workers available (and for a longer period), while the Jesuits not only regained temporal administration but also managed to expand the autonomy of the missions. Although excluded from the negotiations, the indigenous people obtained through the autonomy clause the conditions under which they could conceive a certain normality of daily life based on the continuation and transmission of certain traditions. In addition, the complex ongoing process of cultural mediation between the indigenous population and the Jesuits was intensified, compelling them to create, despite the asymmetric character of their relationship, “shared codes” (terms or practices) that resulted in a certain convergence of their respective symbolic horizons.16 Concerning the concept of cultural mediation, see Montero (2006) Furthermore, despite the obligatory confinement, the new law permitted more mobility and increasing interaction of the indigenous with other members of colonial society while working outside the missions.17 Concerning the negotiations on the Regimento das Missões in Lisbon, see Arenz (2022, 242–253); Mello (2009, 48–55); Mattos (2012).

In all his writings, Bettendorff insisted in the strict fulfillment of legal regulations, especially those dealing with the status of the natives. In his final years, when he understood the difficulties inherent in making the new law work, the Luxembourger father vehemently denounced the

> men who seek nothing but their own advantage, and employ the Indians at their will, since they [the indigenous people] never consented to be governed except by the laws of His Majesty, and, moreover, many of them were brought down to the missions by the priests of the Society of Jesus, or came by their own will, and they are where they want to be, for these lands belong to the Indians, natives to them, and no one can take them away from them without committing a great injustice, nor force them to work except in accordance with the laws of His Majesty, for neither they nor their ancestors committed themselves to more.18 Bettendorff (1990, 481); translated from Portuguese by the author.

Despite the difficulties in fully implementing the law, the Regimento das Missões remained in force until June 1755, when the indigenous were emancipated from guardianship and the religious removed from the temporal administration. It should be noted that the law of 1686 not only shaped the lives of the native peoples and fostered a specific ethnogenesis among them, but also shaped colonial society as a whole.

### The production of cacao

From the end of the seventeenth century, rainforest products became very popular in Europe—as ingredients in remedies and for refining and preserving food.19 Concerning the medical-therapeutic effects attributed to Amazonian spices, see Arenz (2017, 530–541). With some exceptions, such as cacau manso (cultivated cacao, differing from the “wild” or bravo variety), most of the native spices were gathered in the sertões and transported in canoes rowed by indigenous to the seaport in Belém, where they were shipped to the metropolis. In a certain manner, the native groups’ traditions of collecting plants, roots, and vegetal oils was established as a new production system, which also included strategic commercialization. This junction of traditional activities and mercantilist logic is comprised in the term “extractivism” (Droulers 2001, 71).

One of the most common services performed by indigenous laborers for the colonial authorities, private merchants, and religious orders was the gathering of cacao. Indeed, cacao was a key forest product, as it was very abundant in the vast sertões. The natives knew where to find the widely dispersed cacao groves, and how and when to collect their fruits. Bettendorff mentions the considerable concentration of cacao trees along the riverbanks of the Amazon and its many tributaries, especially in the western part of the basin in the valley of the Madeira River (Bettendorff 1990, 464).

From the 1670s, cacao was definitively the most important product in the region that was being exported to Lisbon. The Jesuits, who were among the first to become aware of the success of this commodity in the European markets, started to cultivate it systematically and even involved the settlers in this venture. In a letter from 1677, Bettendorff informs the General Superior, Giovanni Paolo Oliva, that he had introduced the cacao tree, common in the captaincy of Pará, to the coastal plain of neighboring Maranhão:

> Three years ago [1674], I planted twice a thousand cocoa trees, of which more than a thousand became trees. Apart from the flowers, they are already producing fruits, called cocoa, from which chocolate is made. All the residents of Maranhão are very pleased with this help for their lives and their businesses, which, thanks to my care and zeal, was brought to them from Pará to Maranhão. To some I gave fruits, each of which contains at least forty-six grains, and the same number of trees [seedlings]. By continuing to share with all these people, they will be well off in the future or at least live comfortably. Six trees and, at most, ten give one arroba each year, as the measure is called [here]; one thousand trees yield a hundred arrobas [of grains], which are sold for more than a thousand cruzados. This year, I intend to plant at least six thousand trees as a source of income for the Mission. May God favor their growth, for it is for his greater glory that they will be planted.20 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, cod. Bras 26, fol. 43v (10/09/1677). Translated from Latin by the author. One arroba corresponds to approximately 15 kilograms.

In another report, written one year later, Bettendorff clarifies that his initiative of planting the cacao trees and, in particular, his decision to involve the settlers was in response to a request from “the Governor to satisfy the wish of the Most Serene Prince [the future King Pedro II].”21 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, cod. Bras 26, fol. 47r (07/05/1678). Prince Pedro was regent from 1667 to 1683, when he declared himself king. Many other letters in his official correspondence as superior refer to cacao as one of the most valuable products for the sustenance of the mission and the colony.22 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, cod. Bras 27, fol. 2v (1671); cod. Bras 26, fol. 27r (21/07/1671); cod. Bras 9, fol. 298r (15/01/1672); cod. Bras 26, fol. 43v (20/09/1677); cod. Bras 26, fol. 47r (07/05/1678); cod. Bras 26, fol. 48v–49r (1678). His successor, the Italian-born Father Pedro Luís Consalvi, stressed Bettendorff’s role in the cacao enterprise by informing the General Superior that “in a very innovative way, Father Rector planted cacao, from which is made the beverage known as chocolate.”23 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, cod. Bras 26, fol. 53v (02/08/1678). Translated from Latin by the author.

The steady growth of demand for cacao in Europe even motivated the colonial authorities to transfer the capital of the colony from São Luís to Belém on the ground that the harbor in the Amazon estuary provided better access to the cacao-producing forests and plantations (Magalhães 2001, 8; Bettendorff 1990, 648). However, the production and export of cacao were not as successful as Bettendorff's letters from the early 1670s claimed. Fluctuations in the colonial market and the climate affected this relatively new economic activity. For example, in 1691, Father Aloísio Conrado Pfeil mentioned a crisis stemming from the lack of cacao and clove bark for export after some bad harvests.24 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, cod. Bras 26, fol. 366v (27/02/1691). Furthermore, the settlers continued to complain about the perceived over-commitment of the Jesuits to the cacao trade, reminding them of their spiritual obligations. With regard to this growing discontent, Dauril Alden explains that the

> Jesuits, along with the other Orders active in the Amazon, produced some cacao on their own plantations, but they depended primarily upon their Amerindian charges in the interior missions to collect it. Such reliance brought the fathers into direct conflict with vested settler interests. (Alden 1996, 546).

These tensions point to the increasing prospects of profit from cacao and explain the interest of settlers, authorities, and religious orders in increasing its quantity by adapting the once wild-growing tree to rational plantation methods. Referring explicitly to the experience of the Spanish in their colonies, even the regent Dom Pedro insisted in 1675 that cacao should be cultivated in the Amazon region “as it is done in the Indies of Castile.”25 Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon, cod. 268, fol. 9v–10r (03/04/1675). With regard to the importance of cacao in the Spanish colonies, see Farías (1950); Norton (2010). Nonetheless, as mentioned previously, the continuity of seasonal gathering in the sertão missions linked indigenous practices and knowledge with the far-reaching intercontinental trading system that developed around cacao. Father Bettendorff was fully aware that this profitable and extensive business was a means to making the mission self-sufficient.

Lastly, severe epidemics made cacao production extremely precarious. Two outbreaks of contagious disease, in 1661–1662 and 1695–1696, depopulated entire aldeamentos. Besides the high level of mortality, a considerable number of indigenous workers fled the missions during these periods (Neves 2013; Bettendorff 1990, 214–216 and 587–588). Despite these near-regular catastrophic interruptions, however, in general the economy developed advantageously. Therefore, in 1697, at the very end of the seventeenth century, Bettendorff wrote that a ship bound for Portugal could only be loaded with one-third of all the “sugars, tobaccos and, particularly, clove bark and cacao” that had been piled up in the ports of São Luís and Belém (Bettendorff 1990, 648–649). This brief mention reveals, on the one hand, the extent to which agriculture (sugar, tobacco, and cultivated cacao) was intermingled with extractivism (clove bark and wild-growing cacao) around the turn of the eighteenth century and, on the other hand, how far the Amazon region was from being a miserable and precarious periphery—a position that has long been conveyed by historiography.26 Concerning the diversity of aspects of the economy in the Amazon region and its central position within the Portuguese trade system, see Chambouleyron (2010, 121–169).

### Conclusion

The intense agency of indigenous populations inside and outside the missions is clearly noticeable in most of the reports written by Jesuit authors, although the priests tended to emphasize inconstancy and rusticity when writing about their native catechumens and neophytes. In this context, it is important to highlight the role of Father Bettendorff, a missionary from Luxembourg who became a central figure in consolidating the Jesuit missionary network in the second half of the seventeenth century. His lengthy chronicle, and many of his more than fifty official letters, reveal his evident interest in juridical-political and socioeconomic issues and thus testify to his historic contribution to the development of the Amazon region in the first century of Portuguese colonization.

Autonomous missions, which gave protection (at least to some extent) to indigenous groups and their traditional way of life, and cacao production, which sustained (also to some extent) the multiple activities of the religious orders, helped to make the network of missions a crucial socioeconomic and ethnocultural framework that encompassed the vast Amazon basin and its diverse inhabitants. In a certain way, Father Bettendorff’s origins and formative years in a multicultural environment in the “old world” predetermined that this multitalented missionary would become a key agent in this historical process in the “new world.”

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13. Farías, Eduardo Arcila. Comercio entre Venezuela y México en los siglos XVII y XVIII. México: El Colegio de México, 1950.
14. Kiemen, Mathias Charles. The Indian Policy of Portugal in the Amazon Region: 1614–1693. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1954.
15. Labourdette, Jean-François. Histoire du Portugal. Paris: Fayard, 2000.
16. Leite, Serafim. História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, vol. 3 & vol. 4. Rio de Janeiro/Lisbon: Instituto Nacional do Livro/Livraria Portugalia, 1943.
17. Magalhães, Joaquim Romero. “Le Portugal et les dynamiques de l’économie atlantique du XVe au XVIIIe siècle.” In Le Portugal et l’Atlantique: XVe–XXe siècles, edited by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 3–10. Lisbon/Paris: Centre culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 2001.
18. Mattos, Yllan de. “Regimento das Missões do Estado do Maranhão e Grão-Pará, de 21 de dezembro de 1686.” Revista 7 Mares 1, no. 1 (2012): 112–122.
19. Mauro, Frédéric. Des produits et des hommes: essais historiques latino-américains XVIe–XXe siècles. Paris/La Haye: Mouton/École Pratique des Hautes Études, 1972.
20. Meier, Johannes, and Fernando Amado Aymoré. Jesuiten aus Zentraleuropa in Portugiesisch- und Spanisch-Amerika: ein bio-bibliographisches Handbuch, vol. 1. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2005.
21. Mello, Maria Eliane Alves de Souza e. “O Regimento das Missões: poder e negociação na Amazônia Portuguesa.” Clio – Revista de Pesquisa Histórica 27, no. 1 (2009): 46–75.
22. Montero, Paula. “Índios e missionários no Brasil: para uma teoria da mediação cultural.” In Deus na aldeia: missionários, índios e mediação cultural, edited by Paula Montero, 31–66. São Paulo: Globo, 2006.
23. Neves Neto, Raimundo Moreira das. Um patrimônio em contendas: os bens jesuíticos e a magna questão dos dízimos no Estado do Maranhão e Gráo-Pará (1650–1750). Jundiaí: Paco Editorial, 2013.
24. Neves, Tamyris Monteiro. “A ira de Deus e o fogo que salta: a epidemia de bexigas no Estado do Maranhão (1695).” Amazônica – Revista de Antropologia 5, no. 2 (2013): 344–361.
25. Norton, Marcy. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010.
26. Perrone-Moisés, Beatriz. “Índios livres e índios escravos: os princípios da legislação indigenista do período colonial (séculos XVI a XVIII).” In História dos índios no Brasil, edited by Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, 115–132. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1992.
27. Serrão, Joel, and António Henrique de Oliveira Marques (eds.). Nova história de Portugal, vol. 7. Lisbon: Presença, 2001.
28. Souza Júnior, José Alves de. Tramas do cotidiano: religião, política, guerra e negócios no Grão-Pará dos setecentos. Belém: ed.ufpa, 2012.
29. Vieira, Antônio. Sermões escolhidos: texto integral. São Paulo: Martin Claret, 2004.

## Luxembourg in Brazil. Some historical perspectives and recent developments1 This article is based, inter alia, on personal impressions gathered in the years between 2017 and 2022 and presents my subjective overview of Luxembourgish immigration to Brazil. It grew out of a presentation that I gave on November 16, 2022, in the framework of the symposium “Portugal—Brazil—Luxembourg. Old and new connections” at the University of Luxembourg and an article co-authored with Jean Ensch (Ensch & Krieger 2023).

### Introduction

Talking about historical relations between Brazil and Luxembourg might at first seem a bit strange; here are two countries, continents apart, with breathtaking differences in size and population: Brazil is 3,290 times bigger in size, with a population that is 338 times larger than Luxembourg’s. When I arrived in Brasilia in 2017 to work in the capital of the fifth-largest country in the world, I was greeted with open arms and warm welcomes. What I found the most astonishing was that links with Luxembourg could be found nearly everywhere in Brazil, from the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the far south to the state of Amapá in the northern Amazon River delta. I set out to discover and document some of these connections, many of which are still alive today. My visits took me to the places where a Luxembourg presence is still visible and where there are testimonies—historical and contemporary—as well as a number of descendants of the Luxembourgish immigrants. Let me take you on a Brazilian journey from north to south, and through the centuries.

The first two stops on our Brazilian voyage will be among familiar faces. Indeed, extensive research has been done on João Felipe Bettendorff, the Luxembourg-born Jesuit who played an important role in the lower Amazon region of the senventeenth century. His own published work is considered as the classic description of this region and is extensively quoted by historians, biologists, anthropologists, and so on. Numerous Brazilian publications have focused on some of the things that Bettendorff first described to the Portuguese and European world. Even though he has not been translated, he ranks among the key historical figures of his time. Much is already known about him, so I will not dwell upon this here.

The same holds true for the centenary presence of ARBED, through its Brazilian subsidiary Belgo-Mineira, which today remains an important part of the largest steel company in the world: ArcelorMittal. The history is known, well-researched, and remains alive in the memories of the descendants of the Luxembourgers who went to Brazil to work for the company, and it is well-documented in the company archives in Sabará. This presence continues to contribute greatly to the economic success of ARBED’s successor company.

In this brief article, I have chosen to highlight some of the lesser-known history of the nineteenth-century Luxembourg immigration to southern Brazil. This topic is particularly interesting given that the descendants of these immigrants have taken on numerous prominent positions in Brazil. They have also become increasingly visible and relevant in Luxembourg. My hope is that these sketches will inspire readers to look into this topic further, to consult the excellent archival sources quoted in the text, or to conduct their own research and delve even further into this segment of history.

The places on the map (Figure 1) correlate, from north to south, with three different periods of immigration from Luxembourg:

1. In the second half of the seventeenth century, João Felipe Bettendorff was active from Parintins to São Luis, throughout the states of Amazonas (AM), Pará (PA), and Maranhão (MA).

2. BelgoMineira/ArcelorMittal has been active in the Monlevade area, in the state of Minas Gerais (MG), since 1921.

3. In the nineteenth century, immigrants settled in the states of Espirito Santo (ES), Paraná (PR), Santa Catarina (SC), and Rio Grande do Sul (RS), stretching from Luxemburgo to Walachai.

Figure 1: Luxembourg presences in Brazil covered in the article (© Stephan Dierckx)

1. The presence of a few Luxembourgish missionaries has been documented in the history of Portuguese Brazil. Among them one stands out: João Felipe Bettendorff (b. 1625 in Lintgen). He lived in the Amazon from 1661 and died in 1698 in Belém do Pará. For some time, he was the Jesuit superior in the Amazon, in the historical Estado do Maranhão e Grão-Pará. During his travels, Bettendorff founded several mission stations, as far away as Parintins, in today’s state of Amazonas. One of these was established in 1661 on the Tapajo River and later became the city of Santarém, in the state of Pará. In 1698, he wrote a reference work on the history of the Lower Amazon—Crônica da Missão dos Padres da Companhia de Jesus no Estado do Maranhãoa—a region roughly encompassing today’s states of Pará, Amapá, and Maranhão. Testimonies of his presence are to be found in Santarém (see Figure 2), where he is remembered as the founder of that large city on the Amazon, midway between Belém and Manaus. In-depth research about Bettendorff’s life and his work has been done by Professor Karl Heinz Arenz, who published extensively on this subject.2 Arenz (2007); see also the chapter by Arenz in this volume.

Figure 2: Statue of João Filipe Bettendorff in Santarém, PA3 All photographs have been taken by the author, unless indicated otherwise.

2. Further south, we jump forward a few centuries and arrive in more recent times. From the 1920s, several hundred engineers and technicians from Luxembourg brought their know-how to Minas Gerais in order to build and operate the first modern Brazilian steelworks. This substantial investment by ARBED created what would become Luxembourg’s largest economic diaspora in the country’s history. The comprehensive interactive project “colonia.lu” created by Dominique Santana is packed with historical details and oral histories of Luxembourgish economic migrants to the steel industry towns of Sabará and João Monlevade.4 See the chapter by Santana in this volume.

One of the first Luxembourgish honorary consulates was opened in Belo Horizonte, and the successive directors of BelgoMineira, the ARBED investment in Brazil, became the honorary consuls. They functioned as heads of the company and as honorary representatives of Luxembourg’s government at the same time. This greatly improved the lives of engineers and technicians from Luxembourg and Europe, as the consuls authorized their entries, exits, passport renewals, and so on. During the Nazi occupation, this community assisted the Luxembourg government in exile and even hosted a historic visit by Prince Jean in 1942 (see Figure 3). The honorary consulate still continues to serve the interests of Luxembourg as well as the local historical community, though today it is no longer linked to ArcelorMittal.

The close economic connection remains alive as documented by two State visits, first by Grand-Duc Jean in 1964 and later by Grand-Duc Henri in 2007, in which they visited ArcelorMittal and the Luxembourg community in Minas Gerais. The steel industry’s strong link with Luxembourg continues to this day; BelgoMineira is still an integral part of the ArcelorMittal corporation, many emblematic buildings of the new futuristic capital Brasilia contain steel produced in these mills, and some of the descendants of those pioneers live in Belo Horizonte while others have spread throughout Brazil.

Figure 3: Prince Jean (fourth from left) visits Director Louis Ensch at BelgoMineira, 1942 (© Belgo-Mineira Memory Center, Sabará, MG ; cf. Moyen 2007, 72)

3. The major immigrations in the nineteenth century also brought Luxembourgers to Brazil. During my stay in Brazil, I was able to visit many communities of descendants of Luxembourgish immigrants from the nineteenth century. What struck me most was their strong emotional relationship with Luxembourg, which stems from their respect for their ancestors and the hardship they lived through when they immigrated to this faraway country in order to provide their descendants with a better life than they would have had in Luxembourg in those times. This feeling unites all of them. But first, some historical background about the country that actively invited these European immigrants.

### The politico-historical context of nineteenth century immigration to Brazil

On September 7, 1822, Dom Pedro, the Brazilian Prince Regent and son of the Portuguese King Dom Joao VI, proclaimed himself Emperor of Brazil (Dom Pedro I), and cut the links to Portugal, declaring Brazilian independence. Independent Brazil bordered the new states which had emerged from strong Spanish colonies that had provided Spain and the rest of Europe with riches. The first Spanish settlements dated from the early 1500s (for example, Buenos Aires from 1536 and Asuncion from 1537). After the collapse of Spanish rule in South America during the Napoleonic period, new states emerged from the old vice-kingdoms. On Brazil’s southwestern borders these states were Argentina (1816) and Paraguay (1811). On the Brazilian side it was all jungle, inhabited by the native population. In the eyes of the Brazilian emperor, there was therefore an urgent need to counteract possible territorial claims by these neighbors. This was best done by sending immigrants there to settle and secure the borders of the independent Brazil (Jochem 2024). This immigration gave rise to today’s three federal states in the south: Paraná (Curitiba), Santa Catarina (Florianopolis), and Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre).

However, these areas of southern Brazil, like most of the rest of the country, were already well populated before the arrival of the first Europeans in the region, Portuguese immigrants from the Azores Islands who had settled along the coast of today’s Santa Catarina around 1750. Indigenous villages of the Guarani, Kaingang, Xokleng, and other peoples still existed along the coast and the rivers, although their populations had steadily been declining since the arrival of the first Europeans in the 16th century. The indigenous people were victims of large-scale exploitation, slavery, removal, and disease, particularly at the hands of the bandeirantes slavery expeditions originating in São Paulo (Green & Skidmore 2021).

The idea of creating incentives for Europeans to settle in the country’s vast spaces was probably also inspired by immigration policy in the United States (Santos 2004, 67). There had been initial efforts in Brazil even before independence. The Portuguese King Joao VI, who fled from Napoleon to Rio de Janeiro in 1807, saw that the small local population was not enough to develop an economic output on a European scale. In November 1808 he issued a decree (Decreto de 25 de novembro de 1808), based on an old Portuguese law, to allow people to clear land (sesmarias). This was the first formal policy of encouraging immigration to certain regions in Portuguese Brazil.

The immigration policy launched by Dom Pedro I foresaw European immigrants settling in so-called colonias and lasted from 1824 until 1830 (Costa, De Souza & Dos Anjos Barros 2019). At that time, the opening up might have been influenced by the emperor’s wife, Dona Leopoldina, who was Archduchess Maria Leopoldine of Austria, daughter of Emperor Franz I. European immigrants came mostly from the Austrian Empire, especially from Trento (Italians) and from German areas (Pomerania, both sides of the Moselle River, Luxembourg and the Hunsrück, the neighboring Eifel, etc.).

In the areas of Luxembourg, the Eifel, the Moselle, and the Hunsrück, recruiters became active, calling on the local population to emigrate. This gave rise to a “Brazil fever” (Wey 2005). Among these emigrants were veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, who were of particular interest for Brazil because they could help secure the borders if the need should arise. The emigrants from the Hunsrück, the Eifel, and the Trier area were joined by some individuals and families from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and from the old Duchy of Luxembourg; the areas on the eastern side of the Sauer and Our rivers were transferred to Prussia at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The emigrants followed promises (of free land, and so on) and together they went, either on foot or by boat on the Moselle and the Rhine rivers, to Bremen and to Hamburg. Upon reaching Brazil in Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro, they underwent health controls and were then sent to the southern border states, usually by ship.

Starting in the late 1820s, a small number of emigrants from Luxembourg were among these settlers in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Paraná. Research indicates that 80% of Luxembourgish immigrants arrived in these three states, of which more than 50% arrived in Santa Catarina (Steiner & Loyo 2022). In the following pages I do not endeavor to present a complete study of this immigration, a vast topic in itself. Nor do I claim these lines to be a scientific treatise. The chapters that follow will in part present fragments, like pieces of a mosaic; stories and histories of individuals and places linked to the Luxembourgish immigration and other presences in Brazil. I therefore offer a contribution which helps to give context and background to the emigration from Luxembourg in the early nineteenth century.

Much has been written in Brazil about these immigrants, however, it is mostly limited to very detailed biographies of individuals, as well as detailed information about the villages they founded. Most of these very valuable publications reflect the perspective of genealogists. Often, these publications have been written by descendants, and thus benefit from invaluable firsthand information. However, this also means that circulation is limited and there is no translation into other languages. This body of work would merit in-depth consideration by social historians and anthropologists, as it deals with a unique phase in the history of early Brazilian colonization that is most distinct from the earlier and later Portuguese population, which in the south also has regional particularities.

### Early Luxembourgish settlements

The Luxembourgish immigrants founded and co-founded villages in several states:

#### Rio Grande do Sul

Mathias Mombach arrived in 1829 and built the first house in Morro Reuter (Figure 4). He died there on November 7, 1878, at the age of ninety-one. Mombach was one of the very first Luxembourgers who came to this state. He not only represents an ideal immigrant from the Brazilian perspective back then, but his life reflects important events from that time in the south of the country, especially in the mountain ranges around the valley of Sinos, not far from Porto Alegre.

Mathias Mombach was born in Echternach on March 10, 1787, to Apollonia Reuter and Johann Mombach. He fought in the Napoleonic armies from 1807 to 1813 and took part in the campaigns in Calabria and Sicily, Russia, and Saxony. In August 1813, he was injured in a battle, which marked the end of his military career (Schaack 1909–1910). Back in Echternach, Mombach was recruited by one of the emigration agents who traveled the countryside and sold passages to Brazil. Dom Pedro I wanted European war veterans, mostly from the Napoleonic wars, to settle in southern Brazil in order to defend the borders.

Mombach arrived in the German colony of São Leopoldo on the Sinos River in the state of Rio Grande do Sul on March 18, 1829 with his wife Anna Maria Dietrich. From there, he moved straight into the mountains and was the first to settle the hamlet of Walachai in a remote valley in the township of Reutersberg (Morro Reuter).5 Cf. https://www.morroreuter.rs.gov.br/web/ historia Today, Walachai is a lively village that, among other things, has a thriving shoe factory. According to the mother of local historian João Benno Wendling, it was said that Mombach spoke French better than German. Wendling’s grandmother reported that she had to learn French words like “malheur, plaisir, misérable” (Wendling 2013, 47).

Because of his military skills, Mombach came to play a role in the war of secession which took place in this southern province of Brazil. During the Farroupilha Revolution (1835–1845), he joined the head of the Imperial and the “Legalists” militia in the colony, led by Dr. Hillebrand. The German colonists were not interested in the revolution; they wanted to live and work in peace. In the wake of this unrest, they organized themselves against the bandits who were terrorizing their colony. The best known, according to reports, was a certain Antonio Joaquim da Silva, “Menino Diabo” (“devil child”), so called because of his small stature. Wendling describes how Mathias Mombach was an ensign in a militia unit that hunted this bandit’s group. At one point, Mombach recognized the bandit and caught him with his militia near the town of Baumschneis (Dois Irmãos). During a shootout, the bandit was injured in the leg and Mombach, being a good soldier, gave the order to transfer him to the town of Dois Irmãos to face trial there. Menino Diabo was locked up and guarded, but relatives of his victims killed him during the night (Wendling 2003, 75–76).

German-Luxembourg immigration historian Felipe Kuhn Braun and other local historians quote this story repeatedly and in detail. Mombach’s great-granddaughter Teresa Henrich also wrote about him, and probably embellished the story quite a bit. Nevertheless, Mombach must have been a local personality because, according to a contemporary report, the Argentine statesman, one-time foreign minister, historian, and poet Juan María Gutierrez, visited him in 1844. Here is how Gutierrez remembered the visit to Mombach’s home: “The main pieces are made of cedar wood and are arranged for defense against wild Indians. As I entered these rooms, I sensed a scent that I soon identified: it came from cedar wood, the only material used to build this type of ark, dedicated to the protection of an old man (Mombach). Soldier of the Emperor Napoleon and now lieutenant of Emperor Dom Pedro II. Half a block from the building, a very clear stream flows over the stony ground. Anyone who is near the house will find everything they need in Ensign Mombach’s realm: rifles, dogs, the company of one of his children. And just a few steps away there is a black tiger, a wild boar, a deer to choose from.”6 Carlos de Souza Moraes (1981) quoted in Kuhn Braun 2013; translated from Portuguese by the author. Mombach’s death was reported in this way: “He died at a very old age in little Wallachia, already a widower, under the care of his son Shang (João).”7 Ibid.

Figure 4: Mombach’s house in Walachai, Morro Reuter (Rio Grande do Sul)

#### Santa Catarina

The State of Santa Catarina, founded in 1738 by secession from the state of São Paulo, went so far as to create its own immigration authority from 1840 onward (Piazza 1982, 79). European immigration had begun even earlier, when the Brazilian government founded the Colonia São Pedro de Alcântara in Santa Catarina in the coastal mountains in order to settle “German” emigrants there. The areas for the German and Italian immigrants were located in the mountain ranges above Florianopolis, and in the Itajaí and Rio Negro valleys.

In November 1828, 635 emigrants arrived there, of which 523 had traveled from the port of Bremen and 112 from the “Legião Alemã,” a German mercenary force that was stationed in Rio and was no longer needed there (Piazza 1982, 85). No Brazilian historians mention Luxembourgers, but there were a few who were already part of the first group. In Brazil, anyone who spoke a Germanic language was considered a German. The numbers of Luxembourgish immigrants were never very high, but the few who came did not go unnoticed. They were documented by local historians, such as Aderbal Philippi. His publications are an important source for this article (Philippi 1995). In the local history museum of São Pedro de Alcântara, a room is dedicated to these first Luxembourg immigrants.8 Thanks to Dr Gustavo Goedert and the local historian Daniel Knabben Silveira.

The first Luxembourgish immigrant was probably Peter Steil from Mertzig, who arrived in Santa Catarina on August 17, 1828. He settled in the river valley in Tijucas. In November 1828, 276 more immigrants from the Brig Luiza disembarked in Desterro, today’s Florianopolis, including Joannes Kirbag from Berburg, Nicolas Wild from Garnich, and Mathias Roden from Heisdorf. Immediately afterward, in 1829 or 1830, Nicolas and Georg Mannes arrived there from Echternach. They count among the very first settlers of São Pedro de Alcântara.

Another family with an interesting history is the Schwindens. Their experience helps us better understand the situation and lives of the first European settlers. They came to Santa Catarina as part of the “German” immigration from 1829 and 1863 to the colonies of Santa Isabel, Vargem Grande, and many other localities in the greater Florianopolis area. The Rancho Queimado colony accepted the following settlers on July 19, 1862: Mathias Schwinden (twenty-eight years old), his wife Margretta Schwinden (thirty-three years old), and their children Johann, Mathias, and Johann Peter Schwinden (ten, six, and three years old). The eldest son, Mathias Schwinden (thirteen years old) did not arrive in Brazil until July 16, 1863 because he got lost in Antwerp when the family embarked in 1862.

Upon the family’s arrival in 1862, Mathias Schwinden received the first piece of colonial land in Estrada de Lages, on the Taquaras River, from the Directorate of Public Lands and Colonization of the Ministry of Agriculture, Trade and Public Works of the Imperial Government of Brazil. The Taquaras district belongs to the municipality of Rancho Queimado, a region that had been familiar to the drovers of livestock of Campos de Lages since the 18th century.

As soon as they arrived, they immediately set about planting the first fields of corn, cassava, beans, and sugar cane, which were sold in the region that now forms the Florianopolis metropolitan area, as well as in the cities of Bom Retiro and Lages. But they had to face many difficulties in their new land. The frequent attacks by indigenous people in the region created a situation of permanent insecurity. In addition, these lands were not very fertile and were littered with rocks. This situation led the Schwinden family to decide on a new direction and move to a less “problematic” area. At that time, there were still more indigenous people living in Santa Catarina than there were immigrants.

Another factor that made life in the colony difficult was the geomorphology of the region, which consisted of very steep terrain that made it difficult to grow crops. The Schwindens sold their land and moved to Sul do Rio, a town in the municipality of Santo Amaro da Imperatriz in the fertile plain of the Rio Cubatão, closer to the coast (Fraga 1998). Another descendant, Nicolau Schwinden, was a tropeiro, a trader and cattle driver, and leader of caravans that sold goods along the all-important domestic trade routes. These traders were of enormous importance; they made cross-regional trade possible because they traveled along the old routes between the coastal area and the inland plateau. Later, he also ran a slaughterhouse.

I came upon another interesting Luxembourg descendant during a visit to the botanical garden in Rio de Janeiro. I noticed a name, Dr. Paulino Reitz, whose monument I had previously seen in the town of Antônio Carlos, SC (see Figure 5). Reitz was a very interesting personality. He was of Luxembourgish descent through his mother, Anna Wilvert, the Brazilian-born daughter of Joseph Wollwert/Wilwert (b. 1843 in Heiderscheidergrund), who emigrated at the age of eighteen with his family from Kocherei, Marnach, on board the ship Massilius and settled in São Pedro de Alcântara. Like many in southern Brazil, Dr. Paulino Reitz (b. September 19, 1919, in Antônio Carlos, SC; d. November 19, 1990, in Itapema, SC) believed that his ancestors were German. He was a priest and a botanist, and he was considered the world specialist for bromeliads in his time; some varieties also bear his name. He founded the Barbosa Rodrigues Herbarium in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul, and was director of the botanical garden in Rio de Janeiro from 1971 to 1975, where he had the Bromeliad House installed. He then served as director of the Environmental Foundation of Santa Catarina (FATMA). He has received the United Nations Global 500 Prize for his scientific work.

Figure 5: Reitz monument in Antônio Carlos (Santa Catarina)

#### Paraná

The village of Rio Negro, named after the local river, was founded on the border river between Santa Catarina and Paraná by immigrants from Trier, with a Luxembourg co-founder, Nikolau(s) Bley (February 8, 1808 – October 8, 1877). From Feulen, Bley left in 1828 for Bremen, together with Izabel Guebert and twelve “German” families, the others from around Trier and the Eifel. They arrived in Rio de Janeiro in October 1828 and were sent together to the south, to a place called Colônia da Estrada da Mata on a trail that soon linked São Paulo to the southern areas and which was used by the tropeiros, the cattle drovers. There, on February 6, 1829, they set up Rio Negro, the first German colony in Paraná. The story goes that Bley first built a chapel in order to marry Izabel Guebert. Their nine children were all born in Rio Negro, and they went on to marry children of other immigrants from their community.

The prosperous agricultural colony lies not far from Curitiba, the state capital. It counts among its original settlers the Bley and the Grein families, whose descendants are very numerous today, as well as the Schuler and the Stro(e)sser families, also from Luxembourg (Bley Júnior 1987).

#### Espirito Santo

In 1858, in addition to those three states in the south, a group of more than 50 people immigrated to the state of Espirito Santo, where they founded the small village of Luxemburgo, located in the district of Santa Leopoldina, nestled deep in the coastal mountains (see Figure 6). They too did not forget their origin, and they settled on lands reserved by the local authorities for European immigration and named for their home regions and countries (France, Switzerland, Tyrol, Pomerania, etc.) as documented in the Arquivo publico do Estado do Espirito Santo.9 Arquivo publico do Estado do Espirito Santo. Vitoria: Registro de entrada de imigrante. https://ape.es.gov.br/registro-de-entrada-de-imigrante At the time, there was a state company in Brazil that was making land available to newly arrived immigrants (Steiner & Loyo 2022).

Figure 6: A partial view of the village of Luxemburgo (Espirito Santo)

The purpose of this article is to briefly describe Luxembourgish immigration to Brazil, and therefore I include this unique later immigration because it created a single coherent community that even carries the name of the country. I do not want to dwell on later immigrations, though it is worth noting that another big wave of emigration took place in Europe in the years 1855–1864. During this emigration from Luxembourg, a larger number of emigrants chose to go to the United States, which then occasionally led to siblings separating and emigrating to different countries. Today, some descendants of Luxembourgish immigrants in Brazil have direct relatives in the United States Midwest.

### The descendants of the immigrants today

In the south of Brazil, elements of the migrants’ language have survived, and we can sometimes hear Luxembourgish at village festivals and family gatherings, where people celebrate and pay homage to the courage of their ancestors. Some cultural elements have also remained, even though the Hunsrück language and culture were very strong. But we have to be honest, some foods and traditions are regional and were shared historically in the region of the old Duchy of Luxembourg and beyond the Moselle, the Sauer, and the Our.

Figure 7: Traditional Luxembourgish carnival pastry
Figure 8: Grupo Folclôrico, “Feierwon,” Curitiba (Paraná)

The most recent “discovery” of a large diaspora in southern Brazil, as well as the increased attention given to the better-known community in the United States Midwest, partly result from a temporary law (2008–2018) that allowed the descendants of Luxembourgers who had emigrated to reclaim the nationality of their ancestors. The procedure for applying for Luxembourgish nationality created a big boost in genealogy studies, and many Brazilians were surprised by the fact that their ancestors were not German, as they had always thought. A number of descendants of Luxembourgish immigrants, some of whom, in past centuries, had been prominent in society, politics, or religion, had never found out that they were of Luxembourgish descent. A new awareness has been created due to the results of genealogical research. During the process of applying for the nationality of their ancestors, many applicants traveled to Luxembourg and discovered the land of their forebears for the first time. This has created new bonds for the future.

Today, several tens of thousands of Brazilians, descendants of Luxembourgish immigrants, cherish their roots and identify with this unknown homeland of their forefathers. They are making great efforts to adopt more cultural elements to complement the few that were passed down by the immigrants, who were few in number and could not help but partially merge these elements with some of the traditions of the much more numerous German immigrants from neighboring regions, such as Trier and the Hunsrück. Thus, Luxembourg has become their newfound spiritual homeland, next to Brazil. The Luxembourg-Brazilians are connecting with each other through social media and creating a multitude of exchanges about all things Luxembourg.

The new Luxembourger double nationals living in Brazil today actively request cultural activities in order to strengthen this link, such as language classes and information about traditional activities. St. Nicolas’s day, Luxembourg’s main holiday for children, is now celebrated again by our honorary consuls with Luxembourg ancestry among the descendants’ communities in the three southern states and elsewhere. Some traditional foods brought over by the first immigrants have survived, other recipes are being revived, and new ones are appearing (see Figure 7). Traditional cookery classes take place, and a folk-dancing group named “Feierwon, mir wölle bleiwe wat mir sin” has been founded in Curitiba (see Figure 8). A network of ten honorary consulates all over Brazil has been put in place, which is also serving the new Luxembourgish citizens.

A new tendency, albeit fairly small, has developed in the form of a “reimmigration.” Having received their Luxembourg nationality, some families have already moved to Luxembourg to start a new life for themselves and their children in the home country of their ancestors. The multilingual society of Luxembourg is an immense challenge, which they are facing with courage. This big step is different, of course, but in a way not that different, from the one their ancestors took when they moved to a new world in southern Brazil.

This newfound closeness between the Brazilian Luxembourgers and the land of their ancestors has created another interesting dynamic: during the election campaign of 2023, some active members of the descendants’ community used the impressive number of citizens with double nationality, who all have the right to vote, as a reason to invite Luxembourgish politicians from all parties represented in parliament to visit southern Brazil and present their party programs.

This population of “new and old” Luxembourg-Brazilians, their cultural needs, and their search to identify with modern Luxembourg society is indeed worthy of scientific research and should interest historians and sociologists alike. I encourage the reader and future traveler to Brazil to look for Luxembourg’s heritage and cultural activities in the presences that are to be found among the descendants of these nineteenth century immigrants all over Brazil.

### References

1. Arenz, Karl Heinz. De l’Alzette à l’Amazone: Jean-Philippe Bettendorff et les jésuites en Amazonie portugaise (1661–1693). PhD diss., Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2007.
2. Bley Júnior, Waldemiro. Genealogia da família Bley. Curitiba: Self-published, 1987.
3. Cavallaro, Glacy Weber Ruiz. “Imigrantes luxemburgueses em São Pedro de Alcântara.” In 1829: São Pedro de Alcântara, páginas de sua história, edited by Toni Jochem, and Daniel Silveira. São Pedro de Alcântara: Casa da Cultura, 2020. Accessed September 2, 2021. https://www.facebook.com/groups/123925132899781/permalink/141285447830416
4. Costa, Luiz Rosado, José Eduardo Melo De Souza, and Lívia Cristina Dos Anjos Barros. “Um historico da política migratória brasileira a partir de seus marcos legais (1808–2019).” GeoPantanal 14, no. 27 (2019): 167–184. https://periodicos.ufms.br/index.php/revgeo/article/view/9733
5. Fraga, Nilson Cesar. “Schwinden: uma família de imigrantes.” Blumenau em Cadernos 29, no. 6 (1998): 36–46.
6. Green, James N., and Thomas E. Skidmore. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, 3rd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
7. Jochem, Toni Vidal. São Pedro de Alcântara. Primeira colônia alemã em Santa Catarina. Accessed January 28, 2024. http://www.tonijochem.com.br/col_saopedro.htm
8. Krieger, Carlo, and Jean Ensch, “Clerfer Auswanderer in Südbrasilien.” De Cliärrwer Kanton,édition spéciale (2023): 51–65.
9. Kuhn Braun, Felipe. Mathias Mompach, o general caçador de Farrapos. 2013. Accessed July 9, 2023.
10. Moyen, François. A história da Companhia Siderúrgica Belgo-Mineira: uma trajetória de crescimente consistente (1921–2005). Belo Horizonte: ArcelorMittal S/A, 2007.
11. Piazza, Walter Fernando. A Colonização de Santa Catarina. Porto Alegre: Editora Pallotti, 1982.
12. Philippi, Aderbal João. São Pedro de Alcântara. A primeira colônia alemã em Santa Catarina. Florianópolis: Editora Letras Contemporâneas, 1995.
13. Santos, Sílvio Coelho Dos. Nova história de Santa Catarina. Florianópolis: Editora da Ufsc, 2004.
14. Schaack, Charles. Les Luxembourgeois, soldats de la France, 1792–1815. Publication de la Section Historique de l’Institut grand-ducal de Luxembourg 57 & 58. Diekirch: Imprimerie J. Schroell, 1909–10.
15. Steiner, Carlos Eduardo, and Dieter Loyo. “A imigração luxemburguesa em Santa Catarina no século XIX,” in Páginas da colonização: Estudos/subsídios históricos sobre a Colônia Alemã Santa Isabel–175 anos de Fundação, edited by Toni Jochem, and Jonas Bruch, 2022. Accessed January 29, 2024. http://tonijochem.com.br/artigos-paginas-da-colonizacao/
16. Wendling, João Benno. A história de Walachai. Porto Alegre: Companhia Rio-grandense de Artes Gráficas, 2013.
17. Wey, Claude. “Die Beziehungen Luxemburgs mit Portugal und Brasilien vom 17. Jahrhundert bis 1960,” Lëtzebuerger Journal 60, March 26 and 27, 2005.

### Further reading

1. Arquivo publico do Estado do Espirito Santo. Vitoria: Registro de entrada de imigrante.
2. Decker, François. Feulen 963–1963. Luxembourg: Sankt-Paulus-Druckerei, 1963.
3. Ensch, Jean. “L’émigration à travers les actes notariés.” Nos Cahiers 2/3, 2000.
4. Fendrich, Henrique. A família de Nicolau Becker. Rio Negro, Mafra e Itaiópolis. Curitiba: Edited by the author, 2017.
5. Hennico, André. Messancy-Généalogie 1665–2002. Longueil & Québec: A. Hennico, 2003.
6. Hering, Maria Luiza Renaux. Colonização e indústria no Vale do Itajaí: o modelo catarinense de desenvolvimento. Blumenau: Editora da Furb, 1987.
7. Lenfers Ventura, Alexandre A. Trajetória da colonização luxemburguesa em Santa Catarina. B.A. thesis, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 2023.
8. Mombach, Mathias. n.d. Genealogy; Accessed January 3, 2024. https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/mathias-mombach-24-1m2nv9q
9. Muller, Jos. “Die Amerikaauswanderer der Gemeinde Hosingen im 19. Jahrhundert”. In 150 Joer Houser Musek. Luxembourg: n.d.
10. Veber, Fábio, ed., Atlas interativo dos imigrantes luxemburgueses no Brasil. https://www.cidadanialuxemburguesa.com.br/atlas

## A Colônia Luxemburguesa: Unearthing a century of steel ties between Luxembourg and Brazil (1921–2022)

Figure 1: Poster of the transmedia project A Colônia Luxemburguesa. © Samsa Film

### Introduction

In the aftermath of the First World War, in reaction to the major constraints associated with the post-war crisis and the dissolution of the Zollverein, the Belgian–Luxembourgish steel conglomerate Aciéries Réunies de Burbach-Eich-Dudelange (ARBED)—today, ArcelorMittal—established in 1911, launched an ambitious expansion plan with the aim of becoming an important player in the international steel market. In 1920, the sales company Comptoir Métallurgique Luxembourgeois (Columeta) was created to commercialize ARBED’s outputs worldwide. In the same year, the Syndicat du Brésil was created with the purpose of carefully preparing overseas investments for ARBED. In 1921, ARBED established and invested in two subsidiaries in South America: Companhia Siderúrgica Belgo Mineira (CSBM), in the state of Minas Gerais, and Talleres Metalurgicos San Martin (TAMET), in Buenos Aires.

The establishment of the Belgo Mineira in December 1921 was technically a venture by foreign European investors and the Companhia Siderúrgica Mineira, established in Sabará in 1917 by Cristiano Guimarães and Amaro Lanari, who were both well-connected and highly influential mineiros from the Ouro Preto elite (Lourenço Neto 2013, 374). At that time, the lack of a qualified local workforce provoked a massive movement of hundreds of Luxembourgish migrants to Brazil to build a colossal steel plant and a surrounding industrial town called João Monlevade, which became the cradle of the Brazilian steel industry. This fostered the emergence of the so-called Colônia Luxemburguesa and a century of migration trajectories between both regions.

Figure 2: Postcard showing João Monlevade in the 1950s. © Centro de Memória ArcelorMittal Brasil.

This chapter briefly traces this unique history of migration between Luxembourg and Brazil, revealing the multidimensional interconnections between technological, corporate, social, and cultural transfers in a world of growing nationalism and increasing immigration restrictions, and at a time when modernization processes and commercial networks were extending across the globe.

By diving into the nucleus of this migrant community to examine it from various angles, this chapter focuses on the creation and development of the Colônia Luxemburguesa, its ambiguous relationship with its residents’ home country and Brazilian society, as well as its current legacy and remembrance work. Aiming to unearth these historical transatlantic steel ties by actively involving the public in the process, the transmedia project A Colônia Luxemburguesa, developed in the framework of my PhD research, creates a dialogical relationship between corporate archives and different microhistorical, bottom-up perspectives captured through oral history interviews and collected ego-documents. Ultimately, it uncovers the puzzling portrait of the so-called Colônia Luxemburguesa and its remembrance work,1 See Chapter 5 – “Belgostalgia” – of the interactive documentary. and it analyses the consistent use of corporate diplomacy2 See Chapter 6 of the interactive documentary. strategies to ensure the success of the company and the colony in the host society.

### Situating the “imigrante Europeu” in the historical context of Brazil’s colonial heritage

In 1817, almost a century before the arrival of ARBED in Minas Gerais, a French industrialist named Jean-Antoine-Félix Dissandes de Monlevade3 This is the French industrialist Jean de Monlevade’s full name, but he is generally referred to as simply “Jean de Monlevade.” settled in the vast mining area of Minas Gerais. There, he lived in a colonial house, the Fazenda Solar, and “owned” approximately one hundred slaves who worked either as domestic servants or in the exploitation of iron ore for his Catalan forge. Jean de Monlevade lived with his family in a casa-grande(his Fazenda Solar), and his slaves were bunked in an adjacent senzala, in line with the colonial hierarchical standards extensively described by the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre (1934).

In the context of the abolition process in Brazil, which started with the “Law of the Free Womb” in 1871 and culminated with the formal abolition of slavery in 1888 (Machado et al. 2021), the businesses of the Monlevade family were no longer profitable, and the descendants decided to end their industrial activities and seek new opportunities in the cities. After the death of Jean de Monlevade in 1872, the local steel forge of Monlevade, which had fallen into disrepair, was sold to the Companhia Nacional de Forjas e Estaleiros. That company went bankrupt in 1897, and the property was passed to a Brazilian bank until 1920, when Gaston Barbanson, the president of ARBED, acquired this vast and abandoned territory (Moyen 2006, 35).

The Fazenda Solar and the activities of the French migrant Jean de Monlevade played a crucial role in Belgo Mineira’s corporate storytelling and were purposely instrumentalized as a successful example of continuing European “pioneerism” in the region of João Monlevade. As such, in the corporate storytelling, Jean de Monlevade’s legacy lays the perfect foundation for Belgo Mineira’s “pioneerism” with the settlement of the Colônia Luxemburguesa in the early twentieth century.4 See Chapter 2 of the interactive documentary.

Figure 3: The tombs of Jean de Monlevade and Louis Ensch, the two European “pioneers, visionaries and founders” of João Monlevade, symbolically resting next to each other in the Cemetery of the Slaves. © Samsa Film

Situating the history of this transatlantic migration in the broader context of the region’s colonial heritage helps us to see the continuity of colonial power structures in the evolution from free slave labor to remunerated industrial workers in João Monlevade—or the evolution “da Senzala à Vila Operária,” from the slaves’ barracks to the industrial village.5 See the following clips from Chapter 2 of the interactive documentary: “Intro,” “Jean de Monlevade,” “Why settle in Monlevade?” and “Colonial Heritage”. https://colonia.lu/chapter2?ending=1 Until its emancipation as a municipality in 1964, João Monlevade was the private property of the steel company and every aspect of the employees’ lives was fully controlled by the company’s senior executives. Today, João Monlevade remains a central industrial hub, with a population of approximately 86,000 inhabitants and where the main economic activities revolve around steel production.6 The cities of João Monlevade (in Brazil) and Esch-sur-Alzette (in Luxembourg) have become sister cities in response to the transatlantic dialogue between the two mining regions, which was initiated with our transmedia project (colonia.lu) to unearth their common social, cultural, and industrial heritage.

In João Monlevade, this migrant community thus forged its own tropical version of Luxembourg, a microcosm surrounded by iron-ore mountains in the heart of the vast mining area of Minas Gerais, building its social and hierarchical structures on the foundations of the region’s colonial heritage.

### Life under “Mother Belgo”

Figure 4: Luxembourgish families living on Rua Siderúrgica in João Monlevade. © Private collection: Steil family.

As a member of the Colônia Luxemburguesa and an employee of Belgo Mineira, you adopted the company values and policies as your own, and “Mother Belgo” was the overarching figure from which you would seek guidance and refuge. This blurred the lines between being an autonomous person and being a form of capital that could be cultivated. Hence, as a member of the “Belgo family,” you had to live the policies and values of the company.

The hierarchical structures of the “Belgo family” were not merely implicit. On the contrary, they can still be felt in the streets of João Monlevade—so explicitly that the verticality of the society is perfectly aligned with the verticality of the valley. The director of the steel plant and the European engineers lived at the top of the valley slopes, the technicians and foremen in the middle, and the workers by the river.

The fourth chapter of the interactive documentary clearly demonstrates how all the houses, the different leisure clubs, and even the church played crucial roles in strategically and systematically segregating the “Belgo family” according to the professional ranking, gender, ethnicity, and social class of each community member.

Figure 5: Drone shot of João Monlevade, 2022. © Samsa Film.

### A Colônia Luxemburguesa: A Participatory Transmedia Project on Steel-Framed Migration from Luxembourg to Brazil (1921–2022)

A Colônia Luxemburguesa (www.colonia.lu) is an interactive experience and a journey of discovery in which, steeped in myth and history, we are confronted with many stories told from various angles and across different platforms.7 The website is free to access in four languages (English, Portuguese, French, and German). What is behind Belgo Mineira’s corporate storytelling? Are we able to find the truth in the midst of all those divergent stories?

This transdisciplinary project was developed in the framework of my doctoral research (Santana 2022). It is an inventive digital public history experiment involving the creative use of digital technology, transdisciplinary co-design techniques, and public engagement. Through this unprecedented collaboration between the University of Luxembourg (Centre for Contemporary and Digital History–C2DH), Samsa Film, and the Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA), we are creating new synergies between scientific research and the world of film and new media.

Figures 6: Stills of the project website www.colonia.lu. © Samsa Film

This 360-degree transmedia project, whose narrative transcends various mediums and platforms, gracefully combines, firstly, the project website www.colonia.lu with an interactive documentary, an interactive map, interactive profiles, and an online crowdsourcing platform with, secondly, two physical and fully participatory platforms called “[L]aço kiosks,” located in Luxembourg and in Brazil. The wordplay [L]aço (laço=tie; aço=steel) literally means ties of steel. Positioned in the public space, close to the target communities, the [L]aço kiosks’ main purpose is to unearth transatlantic steel ties that were woven over a century in collaboration with the communities themselves. It is this mutual exchange—this trading zone between the communities and our various platforms—that is drawing a multifaceted picture of the Colônia Luxemburguesa.8 Please discover this project here: www.colonia.lu.

Figures 7: Stills of the project website www.colonia.lu. © Samsa Film

### References

1. Freyre, Gilberto. Casa Grande & Senzala. Rio de Janeiro: Maya & Schmidt, 1934.
2. Lourenço Neto, Sydenham. “Estado e Empresariado no Nascimento da Questão Siderúrgica Brasileira.” Saeculum Revista de História 29 (2013):365-382. http://periodicos.ufpb.br/ojs/index.php/srh/article/view/19828
3. Machado, Maria Helena P. T., Da Cru Brito, Luciana, Da Silva Viana, Iamara and Flávio dos Santos Gomes (eds.). Ventres livres? Gênero, maternidade e legislação. São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2021.
4. Moyen, François. A História da Companhia Siderúrgica Belgo-Mineira. Uma trajetória de crescimento consistente (1921–2005). Belo Horizonte: Arcelor Brasil S/A, 2007.
5. Santana, Dominique. Intertwined Destinies & Strengthened Ties: “A Colônia Luxemburguese.” A Participatory Transmedia Project on Steel-framed Migration from Luxembourg to Brazil (1921–2022). PhD diss., University of Luxembourg, 2022.

## Luxembourgers in the global exploitation of natural resources in the lusophone world. From Édouard Luja to the Société-coloniale-​luso-luxembourgeoise

The links between Luxembourg and the Portuguese-speaking countries in the first half of the twentieth century can be understood only by taking a global approach, in the context of a period forged by colonialism. We therefore need to be aware of the colonial mindset that underpinned the economic, political, and social relations of the time. The links between different regions of the world cannot be considered without placing them in the context of the colonial and imperial globalization of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Rosenberg 2012). As Sebastian Conrad defines it,

> [The] globalization of the late nineteenth century cannot be conceived outside of the colonial structures that shaped it. The mobility of things, people, ideas and institutions—the interlinking of the world—took place before the First World War under conditions of colonialism. The world economy was based on the asymmetric use of raw materials, labor and demand interests of non-European societies. Colonialism was a condition and central ingredient of the political world order—but also of the legal and ideological legitimacy of that order. [. . .] In any case, globalization around 1900 was directly shaped by the asymmetrical relationships of the colonial situation even outside the effects of formal colonial empires. For that reason, the specific character of global interactions before the First World War can be described as “colonial globality” (Conrad 2010, 40–41).

### Global structures and local networks

The history we are interested in here must therefore be seen through the lens of global mobility and as being marked by strong colonial and social hierarchies, which existed before the First World War (Hoerder 2012). We consider the links between Luxembourg, Brazil, and the Portuguese colonies in Africa to be part of this colonial globality. In the following paragraphs, we will focus on a few examples of how scientific and economic networks enabled Luxembourgers to take part in the colonial economies of Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique before 1940. While Mozambique and Angola were official colonies of Portugal until 1975, Brazil was an independent state from 1822 onward—but the country remained colonial in the sense that the living conditions and modes of social and political participation there were clearly marked by colonial relationships, with persisting differences between Brazilians of European ancestry and indigenous people and descendants of slaves. In view of more recent migratory movements between Luxembourg and Portugal, it is surprising that before 1940 the links between the two countries were less significant than those between Luxembourg and Brazil. The mass immigration of Portuguese workers and people fleeing the dictatorship did not begin until the mid-1960s.

Particularly for a small country like the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (with a population of 296,000 in 1935), it can be very revealing to approach global and colonial history through the prism of individual biographies that allow to understand the workings of certain networks. We will see that the main link between Luxembourg, Brazil, and the Portuguese colonies in Africa was not Portugal, but Belgium. Through a micro-historical approach (i.e., by tracing individual paths), we will try to understand the political and economic channels through which the network of Luxembourgers has been able to operate throughout the Portuguese-speaking world. We will thus draw attention to certain elements of Luxembourg’s involvement in (post)colonial relations and processes of global economic exploitation. The present article must, however, be considered as a first attempt to highlight this hitherto largely neglected research field.

The life histories presented here are part of a broader field of mobilities and places embracing Luxembourgers who emigrated to France, the United States, the Belgian Congo, Algeria, etc. The common elements in these life histories are the importance of work and economic migration. The mobility of the people in question reflects a global mindset that allowed them to go beyond their national borders or identities. Adopting a methodological nationalist approach by focusing on “Luxembourgers” might therefore seem paradoxical. We must bear in mind, however, that these migrations are part of a much wider context of European migrations overseas while at the same time relying on a narrow network of local and national ties. The examples make it possible to look at these different levels and to recognize the overlapping relational structures that constitute the migration networks.

The historiography of the last fifty years shows the contribution that a micro-historical approach can make to understanding global history. Bernd Hausberger has highlighted the explanatory potential of “global life courses” (globale Lebensläufe) as an epistemological contribution to understanding the historical complexity of the world (Hausberger 2006). Micro-history thus tends to understand the globality of the world through particular cases. “Games of scales”, that is, systematic switching between different levels of analysis (global, national, regional, local, individual, company, etc.) always aim for a more complete understanding of history and of the global relationships throughout time (Revel 1996).

### Going to Portuguese Africa through Belgium

A figure who links Luxembourg with both Africa (Mozambique) and Brazil is Édouard Luja. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Luja lived and worked in both of these parts of the Portuguese-speaking world. It is likely that Luja’s personal relationships with his compatriots living in Belgium played an important role in his recruitment for various jobs overseas. The importance of the personal links between certain Luxembourgers living in Belgium and Belgian economic decision-makers—some of whom had attended the same schools or universities or had family ties dating back to the period before the separation of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg from the Kingdom of Belgium in 1839—is a common factor in explaining what appears to have been a veritable chain of migration through Belgium.1 I would like to thank Claude Wey for the inspiring conversations we had on the subject of this article. I am indebted to him for providing me with numerous sources related to the subject and for making me aware of part of the bibliography. In 1835–1836, when the majority of the population of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (except in the capital city) was taking part in the Belgian Revolution that had begun in 1830, two young Luxembourgers who had studied at the Free University of Brussels (ULB), Jean-Jules Linden (1817–1898) and Nicolas Funck (1816–1896), were hired by the Belgian government and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris to collect plants in Brazil. Linden went on to make a fortune as one of Europe’s leading orchid merchants (Ceulemans 2006). It was his son, Lucien Linden, who had taken over the family business (L’Horticole coloniale) at the end of the nineteenth century, who hired the young Édouard Luja in 1897–1898 to harvest plants in the independent state of Congo for the 1900 Paris World Fair (Wey 2016).

Luja’s first contact with the Portuguese-speaking world came when he went overseas again between 1900 and 1902, to the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Half a century later, when he published a travel account in the Bulletin de la Société des naturalistes luxembourgeois, he explained:

> The Zambezi Company, whose head office is in Lisbon, hired me to go and explore its vast concessions in Mozambique from an agricultural point of view. (. . .) The Zambezi Company is a chartered company whose purpose is to explore, exploit and develop the immense territories that the Portuguese Government has granted it on a long lease in its Mozambique colony.2 Cf. Luja 1950, 213; see also “Ed. Luja.” L'indépendance luxembourgeoise 37, no. 329/330 (25.11.1911): 1. [Digitized by the National Library of Luxembourg, https://persist.lu/ark:70795/n6jw7b/pages/1/articles/DTL62].

Luja worked for one of the very large companies colonizing Mozambique. He was involved in establishing Portugal’s modern colonial domination in this part of Africa. The Companhia da Zambezia was a Portuguese company, but it had been created with international capital through the merger of a French and an English company in 1892. It was active mainly in large-scale farming in the Zambezi region.3 See presentation of the Company’s Archives at the Portuguese National Archives in Torre de Tombo Companhia da Zambézia, PT/TT/CMZ-AF-GT/E/22-1, https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=3682215 and also Zambezia Company, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zambezia_Company&oldid=1181111364; The Rhodesian Study Circle, Companhia da Zambezia, https://www.rhodesianstudycircle.org.uk/companhia-da-zambezia/ (last visited Feb. 17, 2024).

Luja had been hired to acclimatize plants, in particular rubber-producing trees, in this part of Portuguese-speaking Africa.4 Anonymous, “Portugal. Companhia da Zambezia.” Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, 13th year, nr.1 (3 January 1901): 6. After returning to Europe in 1902, he was hired by a Belgian company and worked as manager of a coffee plantation in the Belgian Congo from 1903 to 1913. From 1913 to 1921, he was employed in Luxembourg at the museum of the Société des naturalistes before leaving for Brazil to work for ARBED (Aciéries Réunies de Burbach-Eich-Dudelange) and Belgo-Mineira. Luja’s entire career thus revolved around Belgian companies. The episode with the Zambezi Company was an exception, although it is likely that it was his contacts in Brussels—according to his own account, he had been recruited by the Portuguese company in Brussels—that enabled him to be recruited.

Figure 1: Eduard Luja’s voyages of exploration. Luja, Edouard, «Récit d’un voyage au Mozambique (1900-1902)», in Bulletin de la Société des naturalistes luxembourgeois : 44e année, nº 55 (1950), p.194. The map shows how the presence of Luxembourgers in Portuguese-speaking Africa is linked to the Belgian Congo.

In the case of other Luxembourgers who were later active in Portuguese colonial Africa, the link with Belgium is much clearer. They worked directly for companies incorporated under Belgian law. In 1917, Pierre Jentgen (1884–1959), who had studied law in Paris and spent two years as a lawyer at the Luxembourg bar, became manager of La Luinha, a company in Angola, where he supervised cocoa plantations. La Luinha was an agricultural and industrial company founded in 1906 in Brussels. At that time, Jentgen had already been living in Angola for two or three years, where he had been trying to set up his own small trade company.

In 1922, the Dutch consul, who was responsible for defending the interests of Luxembourgers, along with the Portuguese authorities, suspected Jentgen of being a German agent; he was therefore arrested and put in jail. He was released following the intervention of another Luxembourger, Pierre Miny (1883–1958), who had become director of the Agricultural Service of the Belgian Congo after carrying out research missions for Belgian companies around the world, notably in Angola.5 On Pierre Miny’s interesting career, see Staner (1968). Upon release from jail, Jentgen was expelled from the Portuguese colony. In 1928, he went on to begin a brilliant career, first as a prosecutor in the Belgian Congo and then as a senior civil servant at the Ministry of Colonies in Brussels.6 In the “official” biographies devoted to Jentgen after 1945, the years he spent in Angola are rarely mentioned. His lawyer in Luxembourg, G. Ziegler de Ziegleck, wrote in 1921 to Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Émile Reuter that Jentgen had tried to set up his own company in Angola in 1913. His personal file of the Ministry of Colonies in Brussels at the Archives in Brussels, in which his Curriculum Vitae is included, doesn’t mention this earlier episode in Angola and only states his position as director of La Luiha in Angola from 1917 on. See Durieux (1968); see also Ping-Pang [= Frantz Clément], Splitter, Escher Tageblatt 1922. no. 217 (16.09.1922): 3.; Jean Fosty, “La mort et les funérailles de M. Pierre Jentgen,” Luxemburger Wort 112, no. 276/277 (03.10.1959): 21. See also the files in the Archives nationales du Luxembourg (ANLUX) AE-02298 Expulsion of Pierre Jentgen from Angola, 1921 and in the Archives générales du Royaume à Bruxelles (AGR2), Archives du Service du Personnel d'Afrique, AA SPA 4107 (K1730).

Other Luxembourgers also worked for Belgian companies, or companies financed by Belgian capital, in Portuguese Africa; among them was Léon Colbach, who, shortly before the Second World War, worked as a diamond prospector for the Companhia de Diamantes de Angola (DIAMANG), which had been set up with Portuguese, French, American, and Belgian capital. The Société Forestière et Minière (Forminière), a subsidiary of the Société Générale de Belgique, was a shareholder in DIAMANG and was in charge of prospecting in Angola after the First World War.7 “Neues aus Übersee” Obermosel-Zeitung, 58, no. 84 (11.04.1938): 2.; Diamang Digital, https://www.diamangdigital.net/index.php?module=content&id=2; Endiama - Empresa nacional de diamantes de Angola, https://www.endiama.co.ao/en/history (Sites consulted on 18 February 2024). It should be noted that Pierre Miny, mentioned above, worked for the Forminière since 1925 (Staner 1968).

There were also more direct economic interests in Portuguese Africa, as shown by the case of the Luxembourg company Société coloniale luso-luxembourgeoise (Granducol), which was active in Mozambique from 1932 to 1942. Granducol was incorporated under Luxembourg law and its main shareholder was the Grand Ducal family, which held 87% of the shares. Prince Félix, husband of Grand Duchess Charlotte, and Prince de Schwarzenberg, brother-in-law of the grand duchess, sat on the board of directors together with company executives who had worked in the Belgian Congo. With no experience in the field, lacking the necessary capital, and underequipped with machinery, Granducol acquired a reputation for poor agronomic practices in the Namialo region. During the Second World War, the German occupiers tried to take control of the company, prompting the Luxembourg shareholders to sell the concession to a Portuguese firm (Dinerman 2006; Fortuna 1993, 130–132).8 The archives of the Luxembourg Office of GRANDUCOL are today at the Archives of the Grand-Ducal House (Maison du Grand-Duc) in Luxembourg.

Figure 2: Working for Granducol in 1938. Photographs taken from the album presented to the President of the Portuguese Republic, Óscar Carmona, during his visit to Mozambique in 1938. Museu da Presidência da República, Lisboa
Figure 3: Working for Granducol in 1938. Photographs taken from the album presented to the President of the Portuguese Republic, Óscar Carmona, during his visit to Mozambique in 1938. Museu da Presidência da República, Lisboa

In 1934, Granducol’s board of directors was made up of the Belgian Anatole de Bauw, a recognized expert on cotton plantations in the Belgian Congo, and the above-mentioned Luxembourger Pierre Miny. The board was chaired by the Luxembourger engineer Nicolas Cito (1866–1949) who, after directing the construction of the first railway in the Congo between 1892 and 1903, had a long career in railway companies in which the Société Générale de Belgique was a shareholder. In 1913–1914, he inspected the feasibility of modernizing the railway line between Beira and the Zambezi in Mozambique (Lederer 1989). Nicolas Cito, appointed Honorary Consul of Luxembourg in Belgium in 1927 after his definitive return to Brussels, was the Luxembourg colonial figure par excellence who ensured that many Luxembourgers found work in sub-Saharan Africa. His role as intermediary, like that of Pierre Miny, for Luxembourgers who worked in Angola and Mozambique seems to have been crucial. An analysis of the individual biographies of Luxembourgers who left for Portuguese Africa shows that interpersonal relations via the economic, scientific, and political center of Brussels were central to the establishment of this colonial migration.

### Brazil: the special case of Édouard Luja

The fact that these migratory movements were not limited to the African continent, but also included South America, has already been hinted at above. With Jean-Jules Linden and Nicolas Funck, we have encountered two Luxembourgers who were already travelling in Brazil in the nineteenth century. More important in this context, however, is Édouard Luja, who arrived in Brazil in 1921 and worked for a steel company that asked him to study ways of cultivating rapidly growing trees, such as eucalyptus, for use as fuel in the factories. Luja’s arrival in Brazil came at a time when the Luxembourg steel company ARBED had important Belgian shareholders, in particular the Société Générale de Belgique. The fact that the company in question was called Compagnie Sidérurgique Belgo-Mineira, even though it was mainly engineers of Luxembourgish nationality who managed it, is revealing. This confirms once again the importance of the concrete political and economic links between Luxembourg and Belgium in the overall reflections on the integration of Luxembourgers into colonial globalization. The economic importance of the Belgo-Luxembourg Economic Union (UEBL) for the development of Belgo-Mineira is well known and is also relevant in the case of Édouard Luja—though we will not go into detail here on this well-documented history.9 See the Terres rouges series edited by Charles Barthel and Josée Kirps, (Luxembourg: Archives nationales du Luxembourg-Centre d’études et de recherches européennes Robert-Schuman, 2009-2022, 7 volumes); see also Trausch 1995.

Luja arrived in a Brazil that already had numerous links with Luxembourg. In 1924, the memory of several waves of emigration from Luxembourg to Brazil—in 1828, 1850–1860, and especially at the end of the nineteenth century—had not been forgotten. Ties remained between families scattered across two continents.10 On these immigrants and their descendants in present-day Brazil, see Carlo Krieger in the present volume.

Having returned to Europe in 1924, Luja went back to the Belgian Congo for the last time between 1928 and 1931, where he ran coffee plantations. After returning to Luxembourg permanently with his wife and daughter in 1931, Luja worked for a time at the Museum of Natural History (now the Naturmuseum). He died in 1953 at Limpertsberg in Luxembourg-City.

We have tried to present here a very partial history of the links between Luxembourg and the Portuguese-speaking colonial world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Of course, studies also exist on mass migratory movements from Luxembourg during the same period, mainly to Brazil (Krieger 2021; Wey 2010; Even 1993; Gonner 1889). Reading this literature confirms the intuition—which is more or less self-evident, especially in a landlocked country like Luxembourg—that the preconditions and concrete modalities of migration processes are to be sought in larger political-territorial and socio-economic contexts. In the nineteenth century, the German emigration channel was important—and the links between Luxembourg and German colonialism and its globalizing effects would merit a more in-depth study.

### Conclusion

We have tried to show how personal networks played a crucial role in establishing the migratory routes of the travelers presented above. The role played by a number of Luxembourgers in the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique is less well known than the emigration of Luxembourgers to Brazil in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. These migrations to Africa are, however, partly in line with the same logic. Since Portugal did not have the capital needed to set up companies to exploit the natural resources of the African colonies in the early and mid-twentieth century, it had to agree to open up the colonial companies to foreign capital. It was thus, in a way, forced to continue until the interwar years the policy of the globalization of capital that had predominated before the First World War, while other colonial empires could afford to adopt the imperial protectionist policy that was being put in place in the 1920s and 1930s (Enders 2016).

This particular economical context, where Belgian capitalism played an important role in Luxembourg’s economy, explains why Luxembourgers from the fringes of Belgium were able to take advantage of personal relationships with managers and decision-makers of Luxembourgish origin in Belgian companies to obtain positions in the Portuguese colonial empire and in Brazil. It should not be forgotten that all the journeys described above—even if, as in the case of Édouard Luja, they were presented as voyages of exploration—took place in a context of economic exploitation and in the service of major private companies. Despite the fact that these companies were not capitalized in Luxembourg (with the ambiguous exception of Granducol), many Luxembourgers were involved in the expansion of the Belgian economy around the world and personally benefited from the economic and social links between Belgium and Luxembourg. Édouard Luja’s career would have been unthinkable without his links with Brussels: his recruitment as a “plant hunter” in the nineteenth century, as well as his job for ARBED, were closely linked to the expansion of Belgian capitalism overseas. As part of the UEBL, Belgian companies that were active overseas recruited massively in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

By combining the micro-historical biographical approach with a historico-structural perspective, an analysis at different levels (global capital, personal and economic networks, and national politics) makes it possible to understand interesting dynamics. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the links between Luxembourg and the Portuguese-speaking world were marked not by the frank and sincere friendship so often evoked in political discourse, but by complex economic relations between the dominant and the dominated, and unequal power relations. Luxembourgers were part of the colonial elite, as the biographies presented here reveal. Recalling the particular colonial context also helps to qualify and challenge this dominant discourse today.

### References

1. Ceulemans, Nicole. Jean Linden: Explorer - Master of the Orchid. Brussels: Fonds Mercator, 2006.
2. Conrad, Sebastian. Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
3. Dinerman, Alice. Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Revisionism in Postcolonial Africa. The Case of Mozambique, 1975–1994. London & New York: Routledge, 2006.
4. Durieux, André. “Jentgen (Jean-Pierre-Désiré)”, Biographie belge d'Outre-Mer T. VI (1968): 547–550.
5. Fortuna, Carlos José Cândido Guerreiro. O Fio da Meada: o Algodão de Moçambique, Portugal e a economia-mundo (1860-1960). Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 1993.
6. Enders, Armelle. Histoire de l’Afrique lusophone. Paris: Chandeigne, 2016 [1993].
7. Even, Pierre. “Die gescheiterte Beforter Brasilien-Emigration im Jahre 1828.” In Beaufort im Wandel der Zeit, Vol.2, 93–98. Beaufort: Administration communale, 1993.
8. Gonner, Nicolas. Die Luxemburger in der neuen Welt: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Luxemburger, verbunden mit Rathschlägen für luxemburger Auswanderer und einer Karte der Vereinigten Staaten mit den luxemburger Ansiedlungen: Festschrift gelegentlich der fünfzigjährigen Unabhängigkeit des Großherzogthums Luxemburg. Dubuque: Luxemburger Gazette, 1889.
9. Hausberger, Bernd, ed. Globale Lebensläufe: Menschen als Akteure im weltgeschichtlichen Geschehen. Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2006.
10. Hoerder, Dirk. “Migrations and Belongings.” In A World connecting: 1870–1945, edited by Emily S. Rosenberg, 435–592. Cambridge & London: Havard University Press, 2012.
11. Krieger, Carlo. Le Luxembourg et le Brésil: 110 ans de relations diplomatiques / Luxemburgo e Brasil: 110 anos de relações diplomáticas. Lago Sul: Ambassade du Luxembourg au Brésil, 2021
12. Lederer, André. “Cito Nicolas.” Biographie Belge d'Outre-Mer T. VII-C (1989): 83–88.
13. Luja, Édouard. “Récit d'un voyage au Mozambique (1900–1902).”Bulletin de la Société des naturalistes luxembourgeois 44, no. 55 (1950): 213. [Digitized by the National Library of Luxembourg, https://persist.lu/ark:70795/2921r3/pages/213/articles/DTL2854
14. Revel, Jacques, ed. Jeux d'échelles: la micro-analyse à l'éxpérience. Paris: Editions de l’EHESS/Gallimard/Le Seuil, 1996.
15. Rosenberg, Emily S. “Introduction.” In A World Connecting 1870-1945, edited by Akira Iriye, and Jürgen Osterhammel, 3–25. Cambridge & London: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
16. Staner, Pierre. “Miny, Pierre.” In Biographie belge d'Outre-Mer T. VI (1968): 741–742.
17. Trausch, Gilbert, ed. Belgique-Luxembourg: les relations belgo-luxembourgeoises et la Banque Générale du Luxembourg (1919–1994). Luxembourg: Banque générale du Luxembourg, 1995.
18. Wey, Claude. Photographs by Édouard Luja in Congo and Brazil, temporary exposition at National Museum of Natural History, Luxembourg 14.5.–26.6.2016.
19. Wey, Claude. “Luxemburg und die luso-brasilianische Welt: ein typologischer Ansatz zu den Beziehungen Luxemburgs mit Portugal und Brasilien vom 16. Jahrhundert bis 1970.” In Aufbrüche und Vermittlungen: Beiträge zur Luxemburger und europäischer Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte / Nouveaux horizons et médiations: contributions à l'histoire littéraire et culturelle au Luxembourg et en Europe, edited by Claude D. Conter, and Nicolas Sahl, 269–290. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2010.

# 3. Coming from Africa

## Unearthing migration pathways: A journey from Angola, across the Congo to Luxembourg

### Introduction

A micro-historical perspective on migration pathways offers the opportunity to analyze narratives based on the realities and experiences of those directly affected. This approach provides a bottom-up perspective, challenging the master narratives and moving beyond collective interpretations of migration history to explore the individual agency of the actors involved (Cooper 2019; Dewière 2023; Marcocci 2023; Ogborn 2008; Otele 2020). Using the case of Amélia Lopes da Cruz-Heinen and her family, this study focuses on individuals who are often mentioned only in passing in official documents, such as women, children and people of color. Additionally, Amélia’s migration path represents the story of one of the very few African women who moved to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg during the colonial period.

Such stories, existing in the shadows of the dominant narratives, can be uncovered by finding sources and reading them against the grain. While researching archives for records of so-called “métis” (those with one parent of Luxembourgish origin), I discovered the story of Amélia and her family. I encountered the name of Amélia Lopes da Cruz, who was married to the Luxembourger Etienne Heinen. This led me to further documents about Mrs. Heinen and eventually to her children. In this process, the memories and keepsakes of descendants played a crucial role, helping to reconstruct a rich and interesting life story that might never have been intended to be made visible. This paper is dedicated to, and results from, the personal memories of Raymond Heinen and the collective memories of the Heinen family. The family were in possession of various documents, such as employment contracts, birth certificates, marriage certificates, and letters. Additionally, I had several conversations with Raymond Heinen, who had lived in Africa until he was sixteen years old.

This text aims to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of trans-imperial migration. By telling this story, we acknowledge the intricate tapestry of human experiences that transcend borders and empires, enriching our understanding of migration, identity, agency, and resilience. The regions discussed here include Cabinda and Kongo Central (formerly Bas-Congo), as well as the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Belgian province of Luxembourg. These regions are not rigidly separated but are interconnected within the context of migration history.

### Cabinda

Amélia Lopes da Cruz was born on 23 October 1921, in Makaia (Macaia), District of Cabinda.1 Private archive, baptismal certificate of Amélia Lopes da Cruz, 1925. At that time, the borders of the Portuguese colony Angola were still being defined, and Cabinda, though it was geographically separated by the Belgian Congo, was treated as part of the colony. Portugal’s claim to Cabinda dated back to the nineteenth century, and its colonialization of the territory was reinforced by the Treaty of Simulambuco 1885, which made Cabinda a protectorate of the Portuguese Crown.2 Tratado de Simulambuco, 1 February 1885. Portugal thus claimed the territory north of the Congo River, which included the kingdoms of Loango, Kakongo, and Ngoyo.

Like other European colonial powers, before the twentieth century Portugal controlled de facto only a small part of its claimed territory, mainly in the coastal regions (Bender 1978, 97). To strengthen the colonizers’ presence, the Portuguese government encouraged emigration and sent exiled people, so-called “degredados”, to its overseas colonies (Coates 2013). By 1920, approximately 20,700 whites lived in Angola, accounting for less than 0.5 percent of the whole population (Bender 1978, 20).

Amélia would have fallen into the estimated 0.18 percent of the mestiço population. She was one of two daughters of Antonio Lopes da Cruz and N’Kezu Graixa.3 Private archive, baptismal certificate of Amélia Lopes da Cruz, 1925. Raised by her maternal family in Makaia, Amélia was not acknowledged by her Portuguese father as his daughter, as noted in the records.4 Archives africaines (AA), Gouvernement général (GG) 907 ME AIMO, Dossier 49886, Extraits acte de reconnaissance et de naissance Enfants Heinen: „une mulatresse non reconnue originaire de Kabinda“; Private archive, acte de mariage, 6 August 1955, Thsela: „fille majeure de père inconnu“. The reasons for this are unclear, but it is significant that she bore her father’s nationality and his Portuguese surname.5 Private archive, baptismal certificate of Amélia Lopes da Cruz, 1925: „Esta certidão é válida para provar a sua nacionalidade portuguesa.“ However, giving her a Portuguese name reflects Portugal’s colonial policies and its treatment of the mestiços, aiming to bind them culturally to Portugal while attempting to abandon or erase their Africanness (Alencastro 2012). One perspective on Amélia’s early life is that her mother and family resisted colonial assimilation and a separation from their child, especially given that there were indications that her father intended to take the children to Portugal.

According to the account shared by Amélia and her sister Anna Maria, and passed down by her firstborn, Raymond Heinen, Antonio’s unmarried sister in Portugal insisted that he bring the two children with him to Portugal.6 Interview with Raymond Heinen on 25 March 2024. However, N’Kezu Graixa hid the children, and Antonio travelled to Portugal alone.

The extent to which Amélia’s story shaped her early life and her experiences as a child is uncertain. Nonetheless, her life unfolded in a peripheral region of the Portuguese colony in the 1920s, where the colonial state still lacked the same level of control as in coastal and urban areas. This raises questions about the tensions, interplays, and entanglements among various factors and actors, particularly from a marginalized perspective. The border delineations at the Berlin Conference (1884–1885) and in the Treaty of Simulambuco (1885) did not necessarily hinder the mobility of locals, as a micro-historical perspective can reveal when analyzing the colonial setting in a trans-imperial scope. The story of Amélia after she met the man who would become her husband, Etienne Heinen, unfolds in the borderlands of Cabinda and the Bas-Congo, at the intersection of the Belgian and Portuguese empires.

### Bas-Congo

In 1926, Etienne Heinen, aged twenty-six, arrived in the Belgian Congo from Bissen, a small town in Luxembourg. He initially worked in Tshikapa, located in the province of Kasai, before spending nearly three decades in the territory of Mayumbé until his career came to an end in 1955. He served as a mechanic for the Société de Colonisation Agricole au Mayumbe (SCAM), which managed some of the most significant plantations in the Bas-Congo, and for a short time he worked for the Société internationale forestière et minière du Congo (Forminière).7 Private archive, attestation of Etienne Heinen, service for the SCAM, 13 December 1955.

The 1938 census revealed that there were 1,987 individuals of “European race” in the Bas-Congo district—Etienne was one of eleven Luxembourgers recorded—with the largest group comprising Belgians (1,338), followed by the Portuguese (402).8 “Population de race européenne résidant dans la Colonie au 1er janvier 1938“, in: Supplément au Bulletin Administratif du Congo Belge (10.4.1938), No. 7. The Portuguese played a crucial role as traders and merchants in the Belgian Congo, illustrating the interconnectedness and trans-imperial characteristics of colonial power. In Tshela, the capital of the territory of Mayumbé, many Portuguese merchants were present. This town was the point of arrival for the train from Boma, which had served as the capital of the Belgian Congo until 1929. One notable figure in the city was Fonseca, who owned a hotel and conducted prosperous business there, importing products from Europe and South Africa. However, after the outbreak of the Second World War, a significant influx of Belgian goods entered the region and Portuguese products were less commonly found in the city.

By focusing on the men on the spot (the actors who were there at the time), we can illustrate the rich tapestry of interactions that provided Etienne with insights into the cultures and dynamics of the region. He interacted daily with a diverse range of people in his professional life, including Belgians, Portuguese, and other Europeans, as well as locals from various regions of the Congo Basin and from Portuguese colonies like Cape Verde.9 Interview with Raymond Heinen on 9 December 2024. He was especially well connected with the drivers he trained for the SCAM, who held privileged positions due to their work. Nevertheless, the economic status, profession, and, consequently, the social standing of individuals were linked to racist ideology. Wallerstein referred to the interplay between race and class as “the ethnicization of the world workforce” (Wallerstein 1983, 77).

Amélia’s uncle Joseph, her mother’s brother, worked—at least temporarily—in Tshela, where Etienne resided for a considerable time. This familial connection might have facilitated the meeting between Etienne and Amélia in around 1938.10 Interview with Raymond Heinen on 25 March 2024. In any case, their children’s birth certificates mention that they had lived together since 1938.11 AA, GG, 907 ME AIMO, 49886, Extraits acte de reconnaissance et de naissance Enfants Heinen. In most cases, sexual relations between European men and African women during that time were marked by violence and power dynamics, primarily serving the men’s sexual gratification (Hunt 2016, 41–47; Lauro 2005, 34–42). However, there were instances, like Amélia’s, where the relationship with a white man offered a form of refuge and security. Such cases can also be understood as examples of female strategy and agency, where women actively navigated to obtain some measure of safety or stability (Hunt 2016, 41–47).

On 2 April 1939, Amélia and Etienne’s first child, Raymond, was born in Muba (Lândana) in the province of Cabinda.12 AA, GG, 907 ME AIMO, 49886, Extraits acte de reconnaissance et de naissance Enfants Heinen. It is reasonable to deduce that Amélia returned to her family for the birth or was simply residing there at the time. Following a complicated birth, both she and her newborn spent their initial weeks with her family in Cabinda.13 Interview with Raymond Heinen on 25 March 2024. Their second child, Christine, was born on 29 September 1942 in Kizu (north of Tshela), at the Scheut Mission.14 AA, GG, 907 ME AIMO, 49886, Extrait d’acte de naissance, 25 August 1949. Here, the birth certificate issued in Tshela notes Amélia’s residence in Muba, Cabinda.

The story of the Heinen-Lopes da Cruz family is characterized by its trans-colonial and cross-border nature. Moreover, examining the family reveals what life was like on the margins of the colony. For example, the couple communicated in Kiyombe, a language spoken in Cabinda and Bas-Congo.15 Interview with Raymond Heinen on 25 March 2024. Etienne hired a local teacher, Gérard Kuku, to educate his eldest child.16 AA, GG, 907 ME AIMO, 49886, Letter from the Administrator of the Territory to the President of the “Admission des mulâtres dans Écoles pour Blancs” in Léopoldville, 26 October 1949. From 1947 to 1948, Raymond attended a school in Lândana (Cabinda), where classes were taught to a mixed group of white, Black, and mestiço children.17 AA, GG, 907 ME AIMO, 49886, Letter from the Administrator of the Territory to the President of the “Admission des mulâtres dans Écoles pour Blancs” in Léopoldville, 26 October 1949. His teacher there was Antonio Buiti, a former Angolan seminarian and one of the first Angolan intellectuals, mastering Old Greek, Latin, French, and Portuguese.18 Interview with Raymond Heinen on 9 December 2024. The following year, Raymond attended a school for Black children in Matadi.19 AA, GG, 907 ME AIMO, 49886, Letter from the Administrator of the Territory to the President of the “Admission des mulâtres dans Écoles pour Blancs” in Léopoldville, 26 October 1949. A report from that period states that the boy did not speak “either Kikongo or French well enough, which made it difficult for him to engage effectively in the classroom.”20 AA, GG, 907 ME AIMO, 49886, Letter from the Director of the school, 20 January 1950. Despite this challenge, he demonstrated considerable talent and received good grades as a result.

In 1949, Etienne intended to send his two children, aged ten and six, to boarding schools for European children in Kalina, Léopoldville (present-day Kinshasa). However, as his children were categorized as “quarterons,” their admission was more complicated and had to go through the Commission pour l’admission des Mulâtres dans les Ecoles pour Enfants Européens (Commission for the Admission of Mulattoes into Schools for European Children). There was an emphasis on proving that the children had received a “European education.” Despite these challenges, Etienne insisted that his children had always lived with him, which was used as evidence to argue that they were being raised in a “European manner.”21 AA, GG, 907 ME AIMO, 49886, Attestation, 26 August 1949. In this context, Amélia is portrayed as an inconspicuous woman without a profession.22 AA, GG, 907 ME AIMO, 49886, Letter from the Administrator of the Territory to the President of the “Admission des mulâtres dans Écoles pour Blancs” in Léopoldville, 3 October 1949. Furthermore, the colonial administration questioned whether Etienne had previously married in Luxembourg or Belgium, which was not the case.

The need to assert a “European identity” became especially pronounced in interactions with the colonial state (Hunt 2016, 100). In contrast, during the family’s time in Tshela and Lampa, where they resided, the boundaries of identity might have been more fluid, allowing the family some degree of freedom from the pressure exerted by the rigid societal expectations associated with being European. Raymond’s and Christiane’s experiences in Léopoldville, during their early school years, were marked by exclusion. This was more pronounced for Christiane, while Raymond, according to his own statements, was able to prove himself through his football skills.23 Interview with Raymond Heinen on 9 December 2024.

The documents related to the boarding school application in Léopoldville—Collège Albert I and Lycée du Sacré Coeur (today Collège Boboto and Lycée Bosangani)—also reveal that Etienne was planning to move to Europe with his two children after the next term. This may explain why he officially acknowledged his children at that time, which granted them Luxembourgish citizenship. It is unclear from the sources whether Amélia was included in these plans; what is certain is that Etienne and Amélia were not yet married. However, in 1951, during the Easter holidays, Etienne travelled to Europe with his two children to visit his sister, Thérèse, who lived alone in Gasperich, Luxembourg. Amélia was not part of the trip; instead, she crossed the border to Muba with their third child, born on 20 June 1950 in Kizu, to stay with her mother N’Kezu. On 8 June 1953, their fourth child was born.

Amélia’s life in the Bas-Congo was characterized by the reality that so-called “interracial” households were subject to different conditions. From the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, interracial relationships and marriages were relatively normalized due to the prevailing circumstances (Lauro 2005, Ray 2015). However, this changed dramatically after the 1940s, when interracial sexuality began to be seen as immoral and harmful to the prestige of the colonial state and the ideology of white supremacy (Lauro 2020, 286). The authorities closely monitored the so-called “ménagères”, yet these relationships were often short-lived, informal, and reliant on the white man. While not prohibited by law in the Belgian Congo, such relationships were discouraged and rarely resulted in official marriages (Lauro 2020, 286–287). However, Amélia and Etienne married on 20 July 1955, just before they left Africa.24 Private archive, acte de mariage, 6 August 1955.

### Luxembourg

In September 1955, the Heinen-Lopes da Cruz family, consisting of six members, migrated to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, after Etienne finished his career at the SCAM. Amélia Heinen became one of the very few African women to be brought to Luxembourg by her partner during the colonial period. While long-lasting interracial relationships were uncommon, it was rare for the children—so-called “métis” and “quarterons”—to be officially recognized. It was even more unusual for the African mothers of these children to be included in their European partners’ plans for life outside Africa.

Upon their arrival in Luxembourg, the family resided with Etienne’s sister Thérèse in Gasperich for the first eight months. The two older siblings, Raymond and Christiane, stayed at a boarding school in Belgium. Etienne had maintained consistent communication with his sister during his time in Africa, except during the Second World War, when contact between Luxembourgers in the Congo was disrupted. Thérèse, who had lost her partner during the First World War, remained unmarried and provided shelter to the family when they moved to the Grand-Duchy.25 Interview with Raymond Heinen on 9 December 2024.

Despite the privileges Luxembourgers enjoyed in Belgium’s colonial projects, the Heinen family faced substantial challenges in accessing financial services, such as pensions and family allowances. Etienne had been employed by the SCAM and the Forminière, but the absence of agreements between these companies and the Grand Duchy had left him in a precarious financial situation.26 Private archive, Letter from the Fonds de Pension du Personnel of the Frominière to Etienne Heinen, 3 February 1956. He was informed that residency in Belgium was necessary to fulfil financial requirements, prompting the family to plan a move. In May 1956, they relocated to a site near Arlon in the Belgian province of Luxembourg, just across the border from the Grand Duchy.

Amélia had to make significant personal sacrifices during this transition. She had left her mother in Angola, her sister in the Congo, and her friends behind. The family’s adjustment to their new surroundings was compounded by tragedy: on December 18, 1957, Etienne passed away unexpectedly. This loss thrust Amélia into a challenging position, requiring her to secure her pension and financial support while caring for her children. These difficulties unfolded in an unfamiliar country, amplifying the complexities of the family’s situation. To address their financial concerns, the family sought assistance from the colonial association LUXOM, which advocated for Luxembourgish colonial veterans and their families. Records of “Mrs. Etienne Heinen” in the LUXOM archives revealed the family’s efforts to clarify their entitlements.27 Archives nationales de Luxembourg (ANLUX), FD-237–238, Fonds pension. By the mid-1960s, the family began to stabilize, and Amélia received her widow’s pension and additional support.

### Conclusion

Amélia’s life was marked by her movements within border regions, reflecting the fluidity and complexity of colonial identities and experiences. The family’s final relocation to Belgium was a strategic decision to access essential financial resources, highlighting the economic pressures that shaped their lives. In 1975, Amélia acquired Belgian citizenship and renounced her Portuguese citizenship. This decision underscores the complex interplay of familial ties, economic necessity, and colonial legacy in shaping individual lives.

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was able to pursue most of its colonial ambitions in Belgium’s overseas territories. Luxembourg, including its citizens, government, economy, and church, benefited from privileged access to the colonial periphery through Belgium. This allowed Luxembourg to reap the economic and strategic benefits of colonialism without directly managing the complexities and challenges associated with colonial governance. The Luxembourgish state did not have to address the colonial issues and problems that arose, such as the concerns of former officials and employees—especially after Congo’s independence. In addition, the matter of children with a Luxembourgish parent who were not acknowledged by their fathers was largely ignored.

However, Amélia’s journey exemplifies the challenges and strategies of individuals and families in the colonial context. Her ability to adapt and secure a future for her children amid the shifting political and social landscapes of the time is a testament to her resilience and agency. The family’s experiences offer a poignant lens through which broader historical narratives can be understood, shedding light on the often-overlooked stories of those who lived on the margins.

### References

1. Alencastro, Luiz Felipe de. “Mulattos in Brazil and Angola: A Comparative Approach, from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century.” In Racism and Ethnic Relations in the Portuguese-Speaking World, edited by Francisco Bethencourt, and Adrian Pearce, 71–96. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
2. Bender, Gerald J. Angola under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
3. Coates, Timothy J. Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932: Redefining the Empire with Forced Labor and New Imperialism. Boston: Brill, 2013.
4. Cooper, Frederick. Von der Sklaverei in die Prekarität? Afrikanische Arbeitsgeschichte im globalen Kontext. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.
5. Dewière, Rémi. “The Slave and the Scholar: Representing Africa in the World from Early Modern Tripoli to Borno (N. Nigeria).” Journal of Early Modern History 27, no. 1–2 (2023): 32–58. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-bja10061
6. Hunt, Nancy Rose. A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
7. Lauro, Amandine. Coloniaux, ménagères et prostituées au Congo Belge, 1885–1930. Loverval: Editions Labor, 2005.
8. Lauro, Amandine. “Femmes, sexualité, métissage: les sujets ‘tabous’ de la colonisation?” In Le Congo colonial. Une histoire en questions, edited by Idesbald Goddeeris, Amandine Lauro, and Guy Vanthemsche, 279–90. Waterloo: Renaissance du Livre, 2020.
9. Marcocci, Giuseppe. “Portuguese Mercenary Networks in Seventeenth-Century India: An Experiment in Global Microhistory and its Archive”. Journal of Early Modern History 27, no. 1–2 (2023): 59–82. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-bja10058
10. Ogborn, Miles. Global Lives: Britain and the World, 1550-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
11. Otele, Olivette. African Europeans: An Untold History. London: Hurst & Company, 2020.
12. Ray, Carina E. Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2015.
13. Wallerstein, Immanuel. Historical Capitalism. London: Verso, 1983.

## Diversity, conviviality, and entangled traditions. The case of Cape Verdean funerary practices in Luxembourg

### Introduction

The mobility of religions is historically and contemporarily of great importance in the lusophone world, just as it is in other spaces created by colonial and postcolonial relationships. The present volume begins, chronologically speaking, with a contribution on the work of a seventeenth century Catholic missionary from Luxembourg in Amazonia; it ends with an article on contemporary religious relationships that might be described as re-migrations or re-importations of Catholic religious beliefs and practices from Cape Verde to Europe, namely to Luxembourg. One could speak of a closing circle or, alternatively, of reciprocity: the gift of the past is now, with some delay, being returned.

With this understanding, the phenomena discussed in this article are linked to the broader field of “independent Christianities” in Europe, new churches that see their mission as being to bring back the gospel to those who originally spread it and have since gone astray.1 Cf. Haar (2008); on the “théologie messianique de la mission ‘en retour’”, see also Mary (2008, 10). This unexpected element of immigration from Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Haar 2008, 37) has only gradually been recognized in migration studies, leading to a growing interest in religious transnationalism.2 For a brief overview on the emergence of this new field of migration studies, see Bava & Capone (2010). In France and other Western European countries, research on migration and religion was initially largely focused on Islam. For some years now, scholars have also shown interest in Christian churches from the South, notably from Africa—an interest that, in part, has been inspired by the growing visibility of these churches in public urban spaces.3 See, for example, the special issue edited by Stefania Capone and Monika Salzbrunn (2018) on what might be described as audible religious landscapes, that is, on the spreading of musical styles that accompany mobile religious practices.

Studies on religious transnationalism in Luxembourg have been lacking. However, the country is an interesting case for the study of these migration-related phenomena, not least in view of its pronounced and long-standing religious homogeneity, which, as will be shown, had a considerable impact on migration policies. The spreading and growing importance of “African International Churches”4 A term coined by Gerrie ter Haar (2008, 39). in recent decades, as well as that of churches founded in Brazil and prospering mainly in the lusophone world, also make Luxembourg an interesting research field.5 On the importance of Brazilian religious practices in the making of transnational “lusospheres”, see Oosterbaan, Kamp & Bahia (2020). The rapid growth of Brazilian neo-Pentecostal churches, such as the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, in Europe and elsewhere has attracted much scholarly attention.6 See, for example, Rocha & Vasquez (2013). Another religious movement worth mentioning is the Racionalismo Cristão, a “spiritualist philosophy” founded in Brazil at the beginning of the twentieth century, which has been very prosperous on the Cape Verdean islands since its inception (Vasconcelos 2007; Plaideau 2009) and has also been present in Luxembourg for some time.

Religion is thus one of the domains in which relationships between different lusophone regions are continuously renewed and maintained and can gain importance in the process of individual and collective identity construction at new places of residence. The present article does not go into the complex mobilities of independent churches or religious movements but concentrates on differences that occur within the Catholic community—or, to put it more cautiously, that are not related to the adherence to another community of faith. In describing Cape Verdean funeral ceremonies, I propose investigating the return of elements of folk Catholicism, that is, of spiritual beliefs and social practices that are not really foreign in the Luxembourg context but are nonetheless strange and potentially disturbing. Studying transnational Christian folk religions is important not only with respect to historical processes of exchange and mutual transformation, especially when related to the emergence of Creole cultures,7 See, in this context, Pierre-Joseph Laurent on the process of creolization in Cape Verde (2022). but also with respect to current popular religious reinventions and forms of re-enchantment. The case of Cape Verdean funeral ceremonies in Luxembourg is illuminating with regard to the possibility of reinvigorating or reappropriating traditional modes of spirituality in the processes of the re-enchantment of modern urban spaces and relationships.

### Methods and conceptual considerations

My description is based on the results of ten narrative interviews with people who were from the Cape Verdean islands or had a family background there, most of which were held within the framework of a comparative project on cemeteries in Luxembourg and the Greater Region SaarLorLux.8 The research project “Material Culture and Spaces of Remembrance: A Study of Cemeteries in Luxembourg in the Context of the Greater Region” was conducted at the University of Luxembourg, Institute for History and financially supported by the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg; see https://transmortality.uni.lu/Project-RIP. While the project primarily dealt with the spatial and material dimensions of mourning and commemoration, my individual research gradually deviated from this focus and turned toward the much broader and at the same time narrower field of Cape Verdean practices and beliefs related to death and dealing with the dead, which resulted in a sustained interest in the social aspects of mourning practices and the question of the social visibility of certain forms of aesthetic expression.

The research also included interviews with different “experts” in the field of funeral services, including three priests who were engaged in the Mission Catholique Portugaise in Luxembourg, representatives of the pastoral service of the archdiocese and the cemetery service of the city of Luxembourg, stonemasons, and the owner of a funeral parlor. A further activity consisted of visiting Luxembourgish cemeteries. During these inspections, I was in part accompanied by a long-established Cape Verdean migrant who was familiar with the deceased members of the Cape Verdean community and their families and remembered the circumstances of their deaths and their funerals. My empirical research was interrupted by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, which made further interviews and actual participant observation (consisting of attending funeral ceremonies) impossible. This means that the study is unfinished and that the following article should, above all, be understood as indicating hitherto-neglected old and new connections in transnational lusospheres.9 In their work on the global trajectories of Brazilian religious forms, Oosterbaan, Kamp and Bahia propose the term “lusopheres” to capture the dynamic intersection of practices that produce both openness and experiences of community (Oosterbaan, Kamp & Bahia 2020, 3).

My paper also aims to provide a critical appreciation of the narrow field of research on Cape Verdean migrations to Luxembourg. Studies in this area are altogether sparse, and the few we do have focus largely on questions of participation in the domains of work, education, and housing and, with the exception of Tavares’ ethno-linguistic work (Tavares 2018),10 See also the contribution by Tavares in this volume. are based on quantitative data.11 See, for example, CEFIS (2011), CEFIS (2017), and Alieva & Valentova (2015). Several master’s theses completed in recent years in the fields of anthropology and history have also addressed the topics of participation and belonging: Anthony (2017); Correia Da Veiga (2017); Kieffer (1998); Lang (2011). Less attention has been paid to religion or, more generally, to spiritual beliefs and related practices and, ultimately, to the issue of cultural difference. The study of Cape Verdean funerary practices is well suited for introducing the problem of the perception and appreciation of difference in Luxembourg society. The issue of cultural difference, which occupied the social sciences intensively in the 1970s and 1980s, when the concept of ethnicity was widely discussed, has recently re-emerged as an important subject of research. This is reflected in new conceptual approaches that attempt to grasp the increasing complexity of cultural and social diversification processes—think of the much-debated concept of superdiversity (Vertovec 2023). At the same time, there is also a growing interest in the concrete forms of everyday encounters in complex formations of difference or, to mention some of the notions that accompany this new orientation, in conviviality, everyday multiculture, and prosaic negotiations of cultural difference (Gilroy 2006; Amin 2002).

These new concepts have essentially emerged against the backdrop of demographic and social developments in urban centers of the former colonial metropoles, for example, London. Interest in conviviality implies a questioning of such concepts as integration and social cohesion, which have been central to social sciences research on migration for decades. This is expressed particularly clearly by Paul Gilroy in his criticism of British liberal multicultural policies. In order to escape the dichotomous categorizations that stem from colonial conditions and are perpetuated by this multiculturalism, one must, according to Gilroy, turn to the everyday culture created by immigrants and their descendants, the “unruly convivial mode of interaction in which differences have to be negotiated in real time.” (Gilroy 2006, 39). The notion of conviviality has of late provoked some lively debate (Novicka & Vertovec 2014, Wise & Noble 2016; Boesen et al. 2023). Some authors see it as one of the latest turns in the humanities and social sciences; others deplore that it aggregates conceptual inconsistencies (Lapina 2016). The idea of conviviality remains imprecise, among other things, with regard to the distinction between descriptive-analytical and normative dimensions. However, this lack of conceptual rigor does not prevent the notion from inspiring a fruitful way of looking at our social reality; one that seeks to understand the actual practices of living together, the basic social processes that are both brought about by and constitutive for living with difference.

Cape Verdean immigration to Luxembourg, and the Luxembourg case in general, can make an interesting contribution to these new approaches, as it allows the study of diversity and everyday multiculturalism in a country without a direct colonial past and without large cities. With roughly 640,000 inhabitants, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is very small, and it has strong rudiments of rural socio-spatial structures while at the same time being superdiverse. The latter is not only true for Luxembourg-city, where 70 % of the slightly more than 130,000 inhabitants are non-Luxembourg nationals from a total of more than 160 countries; former industrial towns in the country’s south, and even small rural towns, are also marked by a high degree of national diversity.

Research on this rural cosmopolitanism is in line with recent developments in both migration and rural studies, which are beginning to show interest in the different forms and effects of mobility and migration in villages and small towns.12 For a discussion on the notion of “rural cosmopolitanism,” see Woods (2018). This turn to rural localities can imply specific methodological and conceptual challenges. Studies on difference and conviviality are typically based on the results of empirical research in public urban spaces—a municipal park, a high street, or an individual grocery store.13 See, for example, Lapina (2016) and Valluvan (2016). While Luxembourg-city and some of the country’s industrial towns also have particularly diverse neighborhoods and ensuing infrastructures and spaces of encounter, public space is generally less characterized by urban structures and habits. The question of the place of research therefore poses itself differently. My research is dedicated not to a specific space but to certain cultural practices, namely ways of mourning and remembrance. These have an emblematic place in the public realm—the cemetery—but they are not limited to it. Due to the diversification of individual and collective forms of mourning, the spatial dimension of mourning practices is increasingly coming into view. Instead of focusing on distinct ceremonial spaces, a growing number of scholars in the field of funerary studies turn to the multiplicity of places and practices associated with death and the dead, and to the symbolic and performative transformation of everyday spaces and landscapes into elements of these “deathscapes.”14 On the notion of “deathscape,” see Maddrell & Sidaway (2010). Before turning to Cape Verdean ceremonial practices as elements of modern deathscapes and addressing the conviviality of mourning in these indeterminate spaces, I will give a brief account of Cape Verdean migration to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

### Cape Verdean migration to Luxembourg

After a long period of “classical” labor migration to Luxembourg that started in the second half of the ninetheenth century when the steel industry began to flourish in the country’s south, a second phase of immigration linked to the growing construction and service industries began in the 1960s. The most significant group of immigrants during this second period was Portuguese, meaning that today, about 16% of the country’s population holds Portuguese citizenship.15 Inhabitants who possess a dual citizenship—Portuguese and Luxembourgish—are not counted as Portuguese citizens in the official statistics. The first Cape Verdeans came to Luxembourg as part of this Portuguese labor force. Before 1975, the year when the national independence of the Cape Verdean islands was achieved, the inhabitants of the archipelago possessed Portuguese citizenship. Among the numerous Portuguese migrants who arrived in the Grand Duchy following the labor agreement between Luxembourg and Portugal signed in 1972 were therefore people originating from Cape Verde. The arrival of these unexpected “African Europeans” provoked negative and, in part, openly racist reactions and political efforts at limiting access to the country to white Portuguese. These measures comprised instructions released by the Ministry of Justice in 1974 to employers’ associations regarding the undesirability of recruiting Black people (Bauer et al. 1974; Laplanche & Vanderkam 1991; Kollwelter 2005).

Many Cape Verdean residents of Luxembourg are Portuguese citizens. Official demographic data therefore provide little information about the actual number of Cape Verdeans in the country. Although the figures are imprecise, we can state that the entire group is relatively small, probably numbering slightly more than 10,000 people.16 In 2011, 2,472 people holding Cape Verdean citizenship resided in Luxembourg; the group of inhabitants with Cape Verdean origin—including people who had at least one parent with Cape Verdean citizenship—amounted to 8,358 people (CEFIS 2017, 19). However, the numerical size of the group does not reflect its social and cultural significance. Cape Verdeans were the first and, for a long time, the only non-European immigrant community in Luxembourg. This also means that they were the first to challenge the notion of Luxembourg as an immigration society based on cultural homogeneity—a homogeneity that is grounded in a common Western European culture and, importantly, in a common adherence to Roman Catholicism.

The high degree of cultural and especially religious proximity between native Luxembourgers and immigrants, which resulted from an immigration policy that restricted access to the country to migrants from predominantly Catholic Western European countries, was seen as one of the reasons for the country’s “immigration success story”, that is, the fact that the high proportion of foreign residents in Luxembourg did not result in anti-immigration attitudes and xenophobia.17 Cf. Parsons & Smeeding (2004); for a general assessment of the impact of this culturalist immigration policy, see Fetzer (2011). This exclusivist policy was compromised when, in the 1970s, the growing group of immigrants of Portuguese nationality also comprised people from Africa, especially the Cape Verdes. A further step toward diversification was taken in the 1990s when Luxembourg accepted refugees from former Yugoslavia, including people of Muslim faith. Since then, the Muslim minority has grown with the arrival of refugees from Near Eastern and Middle Eastern countries and the arrival of French immigrants of North African origin.18 The proportion of the country’s inhabitants of Muslim faith is estimated at 3.2%; cf. Pirenne (2017). The number of migrants from other non-European countries, including sub-Saharan African countries, has similarly increased. Meanwhile, the alleged success story has also been strongly called into question. Public debates now focus explicitly on the economic and social situation of the country’s non-white population and present a rather bleak picture. In the “Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey, Being Black in the EU” (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights 2018), Luxembourg ranked among the countries with the highest rates of experiencing racially motivated discrimination and violence. Nowhere were the rates concerning people from Africa higher than they were in Luxembourg.19 See also Tavares & Vieira (2023).

Given the prominent position that Cape Verdean migrants occupy in Luxembourg’s migration history, it seems surprising that until recently these people have remained more or less invisible. Not only were they largely overlooked in social sciences research, as already mentioned, but they were also absent from the political scene and from the country’s public life in general. We are confronted here with what has been described elsewhere as a postcolonial paradox; namely, the fact that visible minorities become invisible both by being treated as nonexistent and by opting for (partial) invisibility themselves.20 This has been stated for French immigrant society by Boubeker (2010); see also Ndiaye (2008). Cape Verdean socio-cultural life and its popular expressions, such as music, dance, and cuisine, are highly secluded in Luxembourg. The situation is somewhat different in the domain of religion. Cape Verdean (and Portuguese) believers take an active part in the ecclesial life of a number of Catholic parishes, and Cape Verdean graves are gradually becoming a constituent part of the country’s funerary landscape.

This partial visibility hints at the specificity of the Cape Verdean case; the immigrants in question fulfilled the requirement of cultural homogeneity that underlaid Luxembourg’s immigration policy: they were Europeans in as much as they were Portuguese citizens and, like other Portuguese, Roman Catholic. The characterization of Cape Verdeans as non-European immigrants is thus an undue simplification. They called into question the clear categorical distinctions between European and African, familiar and foreign, self and other. It was, so to speak, the task and merit of the Cape Verdean migrants to acquaint Luxembourg society with processes of cultural intermingling and creolization. Although the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg had been engaged in multiple ways in the processes of global exchange and exploitation, including involvement in Belgian colonial enterprises in Congo and elsewhere,21 Cf. Moes (2012); see also Moes in the present volume. the cultural effects of these relationships had remained virtually unknown in the country itself.

### Cape Verdean funerary culture

The visibility of Cape Verdean migrants in local religious contexts seems to result from similarity, a similarity that manifests in, among other things, common ceremonial forms, that is, in Catholic liturgy and ritual, as well as in certain aesthetico-material expressions, as shown by Cape Verdean graves in Luxembourgish cemeteries. The graves comply in essential respects with the usual local standards of grave design, which means that they have massive gravestones and slabs built from dark granite or marble—elements that are rarely found in cemeteries on the Cape Verdean islands. However, while the graves are similar, they also show differences. These do not reside in their enduring material form, but rather in the way they are maintained and looked after, that is, in the ongoing interaction with them. When wandering around the cemeteries of Bonnevoie in Luxembourg-city or Lallenge in Esch-sur-Alzette, one easily recognizes that for many Cape Verdean families, in contrast to most Luxembourgish families, the grave, and thus the public realm of the cemetery, is a social space where kinship relations are entertained. The bond with the dead is expressed and enacted in the adornment of the grave. For all their similarities, the graves thus point to differences in the relationship to the dead and hence to different attitudes toward public expressions of both religion and kinship.22 Cape Verdean graves on Luxembourgish cemeteries are described in more detail in Boesen (2019).

While research on Cape Verdean migrants in general, including comparative works on migration to different European and North American countries, is relatively rich (Batalha 2004; Batalha & Carling 2008; Góis 2008), we find almost no studies on their funerary culture. One exception is an article by Pierre-Joseph Laurent and Charlotte Plaideau on “esprits voyageurs,” which gives some insight into the importance of ritual communication with the spirits of the dead among Cape Verdean migrants (Laurent & Plaideau 2010). In a “société à distance” like Cape Verde, where the number of citizens living abroad is higher than the number of domestic residents, the spirits of the deceased are principal agents of social integration. According to Laurent and Plaideau, they establish relations at a distance in families torn apart by migration.23 Laurent & Plaideau (2010, 42); on mourning and post-death rituals of elderly Cape Verdean migrants in Lisbon, see Bäckström (2020); on attitudes toward repatriation and cremation, see Ramos (2018) and CEFIS (2016). As far as research on the Cape Verdean islands is concerned, the findings are strikingly inconsistent. The funerary culture on the island of Santiago has been intensively researched (Da Veiga Correia 2009; Mendes 2003 and 2018; Sareiva 1998) and is the subject of popular representations (Vera-Cruz 2017). In contrast, we know very little about the other islands. The internal diversity of the Cape Verdean islands, especially the distinction between leeward islands (Ilhas de Sotavento), including Santiago, and windward islands (Ilhas de Barlovento), which corresponds, among other things, to linguistic differences, cannot be discussed in the present article. My description concentrates on beliefs and practices that can be described as typical of the funerary culture of Santiago, the island from which about 50% of Luxembourg’s Cape Verdeans and most of my interview partners originate or to which they are connected through family ties. While they presented their attitudes and practices as “Cape Verdean,” some of the interviewees alluded to the internal dichotomy by describing the relative lack of expressions of grief among the inhabitants of a northern island, claiming that the latter could be mistaken for Europeans because, like them, they do not cry when burying their dead. As we see here, internal differences tend to be associated with emic notions of varying degrees of “Africanness”; the inhabitants of the southern islands, and Santiago in particular, are considered more African than those of the northern islands (Marcus 2019; Rodrigues 2002). However, just as remarkable as the non-Europeanness that is expressed here seems to be the strong identification with Catholic folk religious traditions. Interviewees not only compared the ceremonies of Cape Verdeans from other islands with European ways of mourning, but also often associated them with other Christian denominations, for example, Pentecostal or Baptist churches.24 On the other hand, the “traditional” catholic forms of public mourning are strongly criticised by certain Christian churches and religious movements whose influence on the Cape Verdean islands is relatively recent; see Saraiva (1998, 138).

These brief remarks should make it clear that the notion of a homogenous Cape Verdean funerary culture would be misleading. At the same time, they were meant to point out that factual commonalities—in the present case between Cape Verdean and Luxembourgish Catholic practices and beliefs—can go hand in hand with fundamental differences and dichotomous categorizations. Against this background, I explore Cape Verdean ways of relating to the dead in Luxembourg and ask how entangled traditions contribute to their social (in)visibility and a conviviality of mourning.

### The conviviality of mourning

As already described, the graves of Cape Verdean families largely conform with local standards. Conformity was also signaled by interviewees who emphasized that they appreciated the neatness and orderliness of Luxembourgish cemeteries. At the same time, however, they were often very explicit in describing the differences that exist despite the many similarities. They characterized Luxembourgish graves as cold, impersonal, and even neglected, and explained that Luxembourgers do not visit their graves, do not decorate them with flowers, and do not keep the gravestones clean. Compared with Cape Verdean (and Portuguese) graves and their typical floral abundance, those of Luxembourgish families do indeed give the impression of neglect. The contrast is particularly striking in urban cemeteries, where the vast majority of Luxembourgish graves are decorated with a flower arrangement only for major holidays, such as All Souls’ Day and Christmas. These differences in grave care seem to indicate that the family grave and thus the cemetery do not serve as places of mourning and remembrance in a similar way in both cases. The same is also evident in the burial ceremonial.

The standard Luxembourgish funeral consists of obsequies in the local morgue, held in the presence of the family and a small circle of relatives and friends, often followed by a mass in a nearby church. The inhumation takes place directly after the obsequies, and in many cases this is done by the cemetery workers in the absence of the bereaved and the funeral party (Kmec & Westendorp 2023). Cape Verdean funerals depart from this procedure in several respects, notably in regard to the importance of the presence of the corpse and the interaction with it, including accompanying it up to the act of burial. The tomb, at the moment of the burial, is the most important ceremonial place for collective expressions of grief and sorrow. Cape Verdeans experience the burial of their dead accompanied by relatives, friends, and acquaintances—often hundreds of people who arrive from near and far to express their sympathy for the bereaved and support them in the ritual event. This brings us to another distinguishing feature mentioned by interviewees: the individualization of mourning. It was noted that, different from Cape Verdeans, Luxembourgers do not show their grief and thus do not allow others to share it with them. They separate the relation to the dead from other social relations and exchanges.25 I have dealt with the problem of the individualisation of grief at greater length elsewhere (Boesen 2023).

By insisting on taking leave of their deceased at the open grave, Cape Verdeans engage in a negotiation about proper funeral ceremonies. Their collective mourning at the cemetery, including prayers, ritual laments, and often musical performances, can easily last for several hours. This means that it significantly affects the standard ceremonial sequence in both its secular and its religious aspects, that is, the services provided by the cemetery workers and by the priest. It goes without saying that these interferences with conventional procedures are conflictual and require concessions. One such concession to Cape Verdean customs made by several priests has been to change the ritual order by holding the religious service in the church before the actual entombing, whereas the service usually concludes the entire ceremony. Certain elements of the collective ritual are, however, difficult to negotiate, among other things because the negotiation partner is no longer an institution or office, such as the cemetery administration, which is committed to a certain degree of religious and cultural tolerance, but a diffuse multitude of cemetery visitors and passers-by.

An essential part of Cape Verdean ceremonial mourning is the ritualized lamentation called choro.26 From Portuguese chorar (“to cry”), chorar alguém (“to beweep someone”). For a detailed analysis of different modes of choro on the island of Santiago, see Da Veiga Correia (2009). It comprises highly stylized crying and laments directed at the deceased as well as at the funeral party, recalling the qualities of the deceased and moments in their life, and it is accompanied by bodily expressions including gesticulations and vehement movements.27 Cf. Saraiva’s description of the emotional intensity of the laments on the islands of Santiago and Fogo, which might culminate in individual fainting at the moment of sepulture (Saraiva 1998, 141); see also Mendes (2018). Some of the interviewees described choro as a kind of spectacle that might even involve quasi-professional performers, people who are renowned for their skills. In Luxembourgish cemeteries these lamentations are held in a much-reduced form because, according to interviewees, the poignancy of the true form as practiced in Cape Verde and especially on the island of Santiago would irritate other people to an unacceptable degree. Here, negotiation brings about (partial) concealment. The intensity of the expressions of grief must be reduced, since aesthetic approval or even mere indifference toward them cannot be expected. With this attenuation, however, the intensity and nature of the relationships expressed in the manifestations of grief are also concealed. In the present context, I will not delve into the religious beliefs that underlie the described forms of mourning, that is, the question of whether the ritual laments, just as the floral adornment of the grave, are to be understood as gifts in an ongoing exchange with the dead, which turn the dead into benevolent ancestors and are thus reciprocated. While it would be interesting to investigate the compatibility of ancestor cults and certain forms of spirit possession in Cape Verde (and elsewhere) with the Catholic idea of purgatory and the practices connected with it,28 See, in this context, Pons on what he describes as a specificity of lusophone societies, namely the remarkable religious pluralism that “took root in the soil of a strongly dominant, indeed non-conciliatory, Catholic matrix” (translation by the author) (Pons 2021, 2). Also revealing are historical developments and differentiations within Christianity; cf., for example, Mary Douglas on the “abolition of purgatory” in Tudor England and its social and political effects (Douglas 2004, 186). my present focus is on whether Cape Verdean ways of relating to the dead are visible or rather invisible in Luxembourg’s multicultural society and what this (in)visibility tells us about difference and conviviality. To put it differently, I am more concerned with the social than with the spiritual dimension of mourning.

As we have seen, for many Cape Verdean Luxembourgers, burying the dead is still essentially a collective duty, and the cemetery is therefore a space of communal agency. Yet collective funeral celebration is not limited to the moment of interment at the grave but stretches over a period of eight days, during which the family receives guests at their home, where rosary prayers are held every night. The private home of the deceased person thereby turns into a public sacred realm, a transformation that is emphasized by the mounting of a mat (esteira) where female mourners gather and that marks the liminal space between this world and the beyond.29 For detailed descriptions of this period, see Saraiva (1998, 123–134); see also Mendes (2018, 121–125). Even in the months that follow, the family will receive visitors who arrive from abroad and make up for not having been able to attend the funeral. Interview partners stressed that from the moment a person’s death has been announced, the door of their house is open to everyone. Not only relatives and close friends, but all those who are somehow related to the deceased or one of their family members feel obliged to come to the house, express their condolences, take part in the prayers and—especially with regard to female visitors—make their contribution to the ritual laments. The funeral and the ceremonial mourning in general are moments of heightened sociality that culminate in a big meal. After the burial, the funeral party, which may involve several hundred people, gathers in a public space, usually a municipal hall, to eat and drink together. The meal consists of traditional dishes that are, in part, prepared from gifts of food. Condolence visitors feel obliged to contribute by bringing a bag containing certain products, just as they are obliged to share food with the bereaved.

In all this, Cape Verdean mourning rituals resemble former Luxemburgish customs, which were greatly influenced by traditional rural culture. Here, too, death used to transform the private domestic space into a public space where family, friends, and neighbors gathered for rosary prayers and collective wakes that included the element of convivium, that is, the sharing of coffee and spirits. For many Luxembourgers, especially the older generations, exposure to Cape Verdean ways of mourning and dealing with the dead implies an encounter with the ritual forms and social practices of folk Catholicism that were common in Luxembourg until the second half of the 20th century—with rudiments of this still subsisting in certain rural areas where participation in funeral ceremonies, especially accompanying the remains to the grave, is still widely considered a duty and a contribution to a collective effort.30 For brief descriptions of the traditional ritual, see Fontaine (1883, 149–152); Hess (1929, 197–200).

What we do not find in Luxembourgish customs is the ritual lament or “tuneful weeping” (Robson 2007), which plays such an important role in Cape Verdean mourning ceremonies, especially in those practiced on the island of Santiago. Forms of public mourning comparable to choro are not unknown in Europe but are primarily found in Eastern European countries and in Greece (Seremetakis 1991; Danforth 1982; Holst-Warhaft 1992). It is therefore perhaps not surprising that this element of funeral practices provokes irritation and disapproval in Luxembourg. Complaints from neighbors are frequent, and female interviewees pointed out the dilemma in which they find themselves because they want to be considerate of their neighbors’ sensitivities but are unable to refrain from crying. The women described a struggle between almost physical expressive urges and civic considerations; they had to mediate between emotional and aesthetic fulfillment on the one hand and respect for the susceptibility of their fellow citizens, with their lack of appreciation and understanding, on the other. However, conflicts are also caused by those parts of Cape Verdean customs that are not as foreign to their Luxembourgish fellow citizens. The huge number of visitors, and their flow for days on end, can be perceived as a nuisance. Interviewees also mentioned that the large communal meal that concludes the funeral is not always received favorably and that they may encounter difficulties in obtaining a suitable locality.

The Cape Verdean ritual, even in its reduced Luxembourgish form, violates fundamental principles of the (urban) spatial order in which mourning and the remembrance of the dead are confined to the narrow framework of the family and to certain functionally defined public places, such as the morgue, church, or cemetery. At the same time, however, Cape Verdean ritual is reminiscent of common Catholic traditions. Here, difference does not mean confrontation with entirely foreign beliefs and religious practices. Cape Verdean funerary culture is essentially made up of Catholic customs that were—and, in some parts, still are—widespread in Luxembourg. The difference resides in the social significance of mourning. The perception and impact of this difference may be influenced by the fact that it can be attributed to relatively recent developments. In Luxembourg, the rationalization of the relationship to the dead and its separation from other social relationships essentially took place in the decades after the Second World War. Moreover, unlike in Protestantism, this rationalization of mourning is not justified and legitimized by religious dogma—which would exclude communication with the deceased and hold that the relationship with them can only be of the nature of memory—but rather the result of state institutional and administrative reforms. At the same time, the process is remarkably advanced, as is shown, for example, by the fact that the grave and the actual burial are usually no longer part of the funeral ritual.

It seems unlikely that a returning or renewal of Christian beliefs and practices, which, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, certain new churches see as their task today, will succeed in the present case—leaving aside the question of whether such aspirations exist at all among Cape Verdean migrants. There are, however, indications that a need for other forms of mourning exists. This is shown, for example, by recent research on notions of continuing bonds, which gives some insight into the religious dimension and therapeutic effect of various forms of and mediums for communicating with the dead, be they grave-visiting rituals, home memorials, virtual cemeteries, or spiritualism (Kjærsgaard 2018; Wojtkowiak & Venbrux 2010; Gamba 2007; Despret 2019). Another indication is the emergence of new forms of collective and public mourning, ranging from “public crying” on the streets of Western European cities in the event of violent deaths (Weigel 2015) to eventized rituals—or, as Hubert Knoblauch formulates, “rituals of collective solitariness” (Knoblauch 2000)—that create an ephemeral community whose purpose is precisely to enable an individual ritual experience that does not require attachment to a religious or other community.31 For an example of these new forms, see the “multidisciplinary community-arts project” initiated by the Dutch artist Ida van der Lee called “Allerzielen Alom—The Art of Commemoration”. Accessed January 19, 2024 https://allerzielenalom.nl/en/

Local traditions and efforts to preserve them can be a starting point for the revitalization of religious and spiritual beliefs. An example, which also comes from the lusophone world, is the encomendação das almas (“commending of the souls”), a custom that involves the communal singing of prayers for the dead. In certain parts of rural Portugal, where the custom originated and is again enjoying growing popularity, local initiatives are seeking to have the custom recognized as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (Antunes 2020). Comparison with these phenomena suggests that the idea of protecting choro is not that far-fetched. The popularization of Cape Verdean laments could be favored by their artistic-aesthetic dimension. They contain the moment of elaboration, a striving for perfection and, accordingly, also an agonistic element. Ceremonial weeping is compared to creating a song, and the differences in talent and performance are subject to evaluation.32 On the lamenter as an artist, see also Holst-Warhaft (1992, 5).

The question remains as to how the fact of entangled traditions, the migration and re-migration of religious customs, influences processes of revival and popularization. The progressive rationalization and division of labor in our modern society might play a role here. Public mourning has always been associated with a high degree of functional differentiation; in most societies it was and is predominantly a task for women.33 On gender and lament, see Holst-Warhaft (1992, 20–27); see also Haland (2008). A deviation from this functional differentiation can be found, for example, in Albania, where mourning the dead is (or was) primarily the responsibility of men; see Kondi (2017). Will it, like other female duties, increasingly be left to immigrants, as envisaged by Bov Bjerg in his recently published book “Der Vorweiner” (“the pre-lamenter”) (Berg 2023)? Bjerg’s story is set at the end of our century, when the members of a resteuropäische (“rest of Europe”) upper class—Europe being almost completely flooded—hire and cultivate personal Vorweiner; migrants, preferably from the countries around the Gulf of Guinea, who by their artistry in weeping manage to move the funeral guests when the ashes of those they weep over are ceremonially scattered.

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## Lusophone migration into Luxembourg: (post)colonial entanglements

### Introduction

This paper sets out a history of lusophone migration to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It seeks to explore to what extent this lusophone migration pattern overlaps with colonialism, institutionally and from the perspectives of everyday interactions between lusophone migrants, at the intersection of struggles related to citizenship, race, and language. It builds on data collected between December 2021 and June 2023 within the scope of the Disentangling Postcolonial Encounters in Globalization (DisPOSEG)1 https://disposeg.wordpress.com/ project. DisPOSEG was a three-year ethnographic-sociolinguistic project funded by the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg (FNR) at the University of Luxembourg. The project investigated lusophone postcolonial work and social interactions in Luxembourg. Because it was an ethnographic study, most of the data consists of narrative interviews, field notes, observations, and spontaneous conversations with research participants during intensive fieldwork at four sites in four employment sectors: service and retail, cleaning, construction, and lifelong learning. In those sites, most of the workers, clients, and learners were migrants from Portuguese-speaking countries (Portugal and its former colonies).

The paper fosters a critical understanding of this migration pattern in a country that is positioned in the “colonial margins” (Purtschert & Fischer-Tiné 2015) and views itself as a “colonial outsider,” claiming an outsider status or exceptionalism in what concerns colonial involvements (Purtschert, Falk & Lüthi 2016). Nonetheless, it is important to note that even though they were not seen as colonial centers, all colonial outsiders and their cities gained economic and political advantages from their connections and collaborations with the more prominent European colonial powers. In the case of Luxembourg, this was evident from military and missionary activities, trade, and efforts to establish colonial associations and careers (Moes 2012 and in this volume; Bosma & Kolnberger 2017; Tavares & Vieira 2023).

Before historicizing lusophone presences in the Grand Duchy, we need to go back to the transformation of Luxembourg’s position in the global system of mobility. Before the mid-twentieth century, Luxembourg was characterized mainly as a country of emigration. During the nineteenth century and up to World War I, many Luxembourgish emigrants set their sights on the American continent, heading in particular to the United States, Brazil, and Argentina to escape poverty and war. In addition, many in the agricultural sector moved to neighboring France due to poor living conditions locally (Wey 2003; Kollwelter 2007; Scuto 2010; Perrin 2020). Perrin (2020, 322) highlights that “more than 72,000 Luxembourgers are estimated to have left the country from 1841 to 1891 (out of a total population of 212,800 in 1891).”2 See also Murdock (2016). Later, in the first half of the twentieth century, the Luxembourgers who migrated to the American continent, especially to Brazil, included engineers who were involved in the development of the steel industry (Hadžalić 2019). In return, that migration from Luxembourg to Brazil helped to form the most recent “route” of migration from Brazil to Luxembourg (as shown below), which today is mainly considered to be a migrant-receiving country and, with migrants making up almost half of the population, has one of the highest proportions of migrants in the world (Statec 2020).

Indeed, Luxembourg started to become a country of immigration at the end of nineteenth century, when migrants initially arrived from Germany, France, and Belgium, soon followed by those from Italy, to work in the expanding steel industry after iron mineral deposits were discovered in the country’s south (Kollwelter 2007, 2). Portuguese people constitute the largest group of the more recent migrant population in Luxembourg, which also includes migrants from other European countries and other continents. Official Statec data (from 2020) indicates that about 16% of the resident population in the Grand Duchy has a Portuguese passport. Indeed, this small state at the heart of Europe has the highest proportion of migrants with a Portuguese nationality of all European countries. However, these so-called Portuguese/lusophone migrants come not only from Portugal but also from several other Portuguese-speaking countries. This creates an interesting luso-Afro-Brazilian colonial matrix of (re)encounters between individuals who are historically linked by Portuguese colonialism.

Yet, despite a considerable body of research on different aspects of migrants’ presence in Luxembourg (such as education and entrepreneurship), there is still a dearth of studies aimed at elucidating the reality of the so-called lusophone migrant group(s). There has been little in-depth examination of relationships between groups or individuals from Portugal, as a former colonizing country, and from its former colonies of Africa, Brazil, and Asia. This is especially true in terms of the relationships developed in a “third space” (Bhabha 1994), that is, a place where ex-colonizer and ex-colonized subjects meet, sometimes with both groups finding themselves in the subaltern position of migrant. In this case, Luxembourg is a third and new space for them, where they are all in the position of migrants. To some extent, this third space is constituted by colonialism inasmuch as that the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1960s shows that colonialism was one of the origins of Portuguese-speaking migration to Luxembourg (see below).

In the following section, I explore the link between colonialism, migration, and lusofonia and discuss the terms lusofonia and lusophone. Then, in Section 3, I give a more detailed background and present some important historical moments of lusophone migration to the Grand Duchy by mapping, in time and space, the enduring tensions, entanglements, and shiftings among race/ethnicity, citizenship, and language. I conclude by discussing to what extent lusophone migration to Luxembourg has been mediated by these entanglements, tensions, and shiftings from Portuguese colonial times to the current era of globalization.

### Colonialism, lusofonia, and migration entanglements

To get a grasp of the extent to which interactions and encounters in “third space” (Bhabha 1994) migration contexts can produce effects of inclusion or exclusion or perpetuate postcolonial hierarchies, this paper takes a look at “entanglement” (Nuttall 2009; Kerfoot & Hyltenstam 2017). As Nuttall (2009, 2) posits, the notion of entanglement indicates “a set of relationships that is complicated, ensnaring, in a tangle, but which also implies a human foldedness. […] It works with difference and sameness but also with their limits, their predicaments, their moments of complication.” By examining the entanglements between colonialism, mobility/migration, and “imagined communities” (Anderson 1983) that are rooted in colonial languages, we can shed light on how the past is present in what concerns rearrangements at macro state levels and between their individuals in this era of globalization marked by political turbulence and incisive “imperial nostalgia” (Faraco 2011; Cahen 2012; Stoler 2016).

Thus, it would be an oversimplification to discuss “imagined communities” such as a lusofonia, la hispanofonia, la francophonie, or the commonwealth without acknowledging colonialism, because colonialism is fundamental to these transnational imagined communities (Vigouroux 2013; Del Valle 2011; Severo 2016). These types of “x-phonies” (i.e., language-based communities and related international associations) (Tavares 2025b) reflect the persistence of linguistic ideologies tied to nationalism and imperialism. They are discursive spaces where various economic, political, and social arrangements are negotiated (Del Valle 2011, 388). They represent reconfigurations based on the shared use of European (colonial) languages —Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English—among (former) colonized and colonizer nations and peoples. These reconfigurations extend beyond mere linguistic boundaries and the confines of former colonial administrations and structures (Maldonado-Torres 2007). They also signify new conceptualizations of political, economic, cultural, and social organization since the end of formal colonization, from former colonial and colonized countries to their “diasporas” in the postcolonial period.

To some extent, these x-phonies constitute a space for the reproduction of old hierarchies in interactions between former colonizing and formerly colonized countries. This is reflected in the interactions between their subjects: in their countries of origin, and beyond when they are both migrants, as in the case of “lusophones” in Luxembourg, for example. They are reminiscent of “coloniality” (Mignolo 2005), which “refers to longstanding patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations” (Moldonado-Torres 2007, 243). These x-phonies often reflect colonial modes of interaction and ways of seeing or perceiving the other as superior or inferior. Several researchers consider these language-based communities to be neo-colonial projects because, at least to some extent, they are by-products of colonialism and continue to reproduce colonial power relations in the postcolonial period (Vigouroux 2013; Heller & McElhiny 2017). Concurring with these scholars, I stress here that the “semantic fuzziness” of lusofonia or lusophone “appears to have been skillfully exploited by those engaged in [its] endeavour—be they individual, states, or nations—to advance their own agendas” (Vigouroux 2013, 382).

The meaning of lusofonia or lusophone is not always agreed on, either in the academic world or in everyday life. Depending on the situation or context, it triggers different interpretations and mixed feelings when uttered. In general, the word lusophone is used in institutions to refer to Portuguese-speaking countries (where Portuguese is the official language) and their inhabitants. However, at the same time, many people who are considered to be lusophones or grouped into this broad category do not speak Portuguese and do not consider themselves to be lusophones. Certain questions can be raised from here: for example, can we say that lusofonia is mainly a construction of authoritative institutions or stakeholders and their imaginations that draws on the idea of “imagined communities,” as Anderson (1983) puts it?

From the point of view of some people who are considered to be Portuguese speakers or lusophones in Luxembourg, lusofonia or lusophone is, to quote a participant in the DisPOSEG project, “just a word for me! A word to characterize us, nothing more.” They relate the word lusofonia to festive events, because it is hard to see its relevance in their everyday life. In the context of their day-to-day difficulties, lusofonia is largely abstract. Thus, can we deduce from this that there is a certain denial of lusofonia among the population? Has lusophone culture been somewhat romanticized? At the same time, others understand that this imagined group of Portuguese speakers can be instrumentalized for administrative purposes and for getting by (for example, for networking in the context of migration). This is especially true in the sense of the value of Portuguese, which nowadays functions as an icebreaker for entering the labor market in industry sectors such as construction, cleaning, and retail, where a significant number of lusophone migrants make a living (Tavares 2025). However, it is paramount to stress that the prefix luso is problematic, because it denotes Portuguese possessions and origins, especially to colonial subjects who think critically and have more awareness and experience of the persistence of historical impacts in the present. The same goes for the suffix -phone, because not all Portuguese speakers use Portuguese in their daily life, consider it to be a big part of their identity or identify strongly with it (Lança 2008). Furthermore, one should not forget that within the assumed “community of lusophones,” there are unequal citizenships. On the one hand, there are those who hold a citizenship that gives them a worldwide “ease of movement” (Carling 2002), namely, European lusophones. On the other hand, there are those with more limited mobility, that is, non-European lusophones (Tavares 2025a).

In this paper, to frame the research, I use the adjectives lusophone or Portuguese-speaking as an “artificial model” (Abadia et al. 2018) to refer to migrants in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg who come from countries where Portuguese is the official language—Portugal and its former colonies.

### Lusophone migration to Luxembourg: its ethno-racial, citizenship, and language entanglements

Several researchers posit that lusophone migratory flow to Luxembourg began with Portuguese people trying to improve their lives by escaping the dictatorial regime of Salazar—the Estado Novo. This regime lasted from 1933 to 1974, including the period of the wars of independence of the Portuguese colonies in Africa from 1961 to 1974 (Laplanche & Vanderkam 1991; Hinger 2014). Lusophone migration is estimated to have gained ground toward the end of the 1960s. The Portuguese came to Luxembourg in the 1960s and early 1970s under labor agreements signed by Luxembourg and the (then fascist) Portuguese government to fill the vacancies left by Italian migrants who had returned to Italy or re-migrated to other European countries where they could get better salaries (Laplanche & Vanderkam 1991; Scuto 2010). Those labor agreements between the Luxembourg government and Portugal allowed the reunification of migrants with their families from the 1960s onward.

It is interesting to clarify the diversity and heterogeneity of this group of individuals originating from not only Portugal but also the former Portuguese colonies in Africa and Brazil. By applying multiple temporal lenses (albeit that some practices are more permanent/transversal than others in time and space, and sometimes overlap), we can distinguish different “routes” and temporalities related to complex (re)migration strategies and motives, from colonial Portugal and (post)colonial lusophone countries to Luxembourg. Note that here I refer to “routes” in both time and space and in terms of pursuing not only geographic mobility to Luxembourg but also social/work mobility after that.

However, before delving into the different temporalities of lusophone migration/mobility to Luxembourg as a whole, it is essential to give an overview of the different paths to accessing Luxembourgish citizenship nowadays. If one looks at the official website of the government of Luxembourg (Guichet.lu3 https://guichet.public.lu/en/citoyens/citoyennete/nationalite-luxembourgeoise/acquisition​-recouvrement/option.html ), one reads that there are at least ten specific cases for acquiring Luxembourgish “citizenship by option.” These cases encompass three main pathways to, and principles of, Luxembourgish citizenship: (1) jus sanguinis (by descent), (2) jus solis (by birth in a territory), and (3) jus domicile (by right of residence in a territory) (cf. Bauder 2012; Vink & Bauböck 2013; Rhoads 2023). These pathways are typical across countries and continents. In Luxembourg and elsewhere, they have been loosely forefronted or combined with language competence and demands according to the political, economic, and nations-branding conveniences of time and polities, as will be shown later in this section.​

#### The “early routes” of lusophone migration to Luxembourg

Migration from Portuguese-speaking countries to Luxembourg mainly originated from or through Portugal. Most of the lusophone migrants to the Grand Duchy hail from Portugal, followed by Cape Verde, Brazil, and, to a lesser extent, other African Portuguese-speaking countries: Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Sao Tomé and Principe, and Mozambique (Tavares 2020). There is a historical consensus that the lusophone presence in Luxembourg began with the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1960s; and it is worth noting that at that time, Cape Verdeans were also Portuguese (Laplanche & Vanderkam 1991; Matos, 2013; Jacobs, Manço & Mertz 2017). As several historians and migration scholars have posited, the Luxembourgish authorities had perceived the Portuguese to be a suitable labor force for filling the vacancies left by the Italians (Scuto 2010; Schiltz 2013). This Luxembourgish evaluation was largely based on and mediated through ideas at the intersection between religion and ethnicity. The fact that the Portuguese were religiously close to Luxembourgers, as most of them were Catholic, was assumed to be favorable for their integration into Luxembourgish society (ibid.). However, the focus of this paper is more on how lusophone movement to Luxembourg has been associated with (or accompanied by) entanglements of race/ethnicity and citizenship, and how language becomes entwined with these composites. With more exploration, this may allow us to understand the complexities of the past in the present in relation to lusophone presences and interactions in Luxembourg.

In reality, not everyone who has a Portuguese nationality is of Portuguese origin. In other words, Portuguese citizens are not necessarily white Portuguese. Historically (and in contrast with people from the other former Portuguese colonies in Africa), Cape Verdeans possessed Portuguese citizenship granted by the Portuguese colonial regime; this was largely on the basis of their lighter skin color than that of individuals from Guinea-Bissau, Angola, or Mozambique, who were attributed the status of Indigenas 4 The Indigenas were “defined as individuals of the Black race or descendants thereof who, by their enlightenment and customs, cannot be distinguished from the bulk of that race. No other elements of identification were taken into account … Indigenas could, however, be reclassified as Assimilados [assimilated people] and gain the right to Portuguese citizenship.” (Matos 2013, 50–51). For that, they had to fully relinquish “the usages and customs of the Black race; … be able to speak, read and write the Portuguese language; adopt monogamy; and … exercise a profession, craft or office compatible with European civilization, or to have income obtained by licit means which is sufficient to produce food, sustenance, housing, and clothing for him and his family” (Osório & Rodrigues 1940, 552-553, as cited in Matos 2013, 51). and thus were considered to be of an inferior race (Matos 2013). Citizenship based on racial distinction gave Cape Verdeans an advantage in terms of mobility to not only the metropole (Portugal) but also other European countries, including Luxembourg.

However, due to the inclusion of some Cape Verdeans in the initial waves of Portuguese migration to the Grand Duchy, the Luxembourg government sought to amend the labor agreement between Portugal and Luxembourg in the context of a legal clarification of issues around social security. Through these negotiations, the government aimed to prevent Cape Verdeans from migrating to Luxembourg. A revised agreement stipulated that non-ethnic Portuguese were not desired (cf. Laplanche & Vanderkam 1991; Kollwelter 2007; Scuto 2010; Schiltz 2013).5 cf. Dossier parlementaire No. 1659, Projet de loi portant sur l’approbation de l’Avenant à la Convention entre le Luxembourg et le Portugal sur la sécurité sociale, signée le 12 février 1965, fait à Luxembourg, 5 juin 1972. This marked an official racialization of lusophone migration to Luxembourg. As Schiltz (2013, 103–4) puts it:

Luxembourg was doing everything it could to hinder this immigration, which, in the eyes of the political leaders, was in danger of disrupting the social order … [but], following repeated requests from the Portuguese government, Luxembourg finally included Cape Verde in the new Social Security Convention of 1972 [translation by the author].

To add nuance to this, it worth noting that to achieve the objective of barring Cape Verdeans, members of the Luxembourgish government proposed political support for the dictatorial colonial Portuguese government, which was under international pressure and criticism from the United Nations to end its colonization of African territories. On the insistence of the Luxembourgish government, the Portuguese government agreed “to intervene with the competent authorities so that no measures aimed at stimulating the emigration of workers from Cape Verde and their families to the Grand Duchy are taken” (Schiltz 2013, 104). That insistence shows that the question of race and ethnicity was key to the Luxembourgish migration policy. However, despite “no measures” (ibid.) being taken to encourage them, Cape Verdeans continued to migrate through the family reunification route or by crossing borders in secret.

To illustrate, Maria José, a retired Cape Verdean woman who, at the age of sixteen, came to Luxembourg in 1973 to join her father, shared that the amended labor agreement and negotiations made her journey from Portugal to Luxembourg more challenging. Her father sent her a carta de chamada [“calling letter”], which was the first required document that a migrant would send to a family member in Cape Verde so that they could migrate to Luxembourg under the reunification policies. She highlighted:

> Excerpt 16 All the interview excerpts have been translated from Portuguese or French into English by the author.

> I went to [Luxembourg’s] embassy at that time for the visa, … as we came from Cape Verde, at the embassy they didn’t want to give me the visa because I wasn’t Portuguese from Portugal ... we’re here but we’ve had the same difficulties, the same difficulties at that time, we were Portuguese and at the same time there was already this discrimination because we weren’t from the continent, we were islanders who came from overseas and that marked me! There are lots of things in my life that I’ve forgotten, but I haven’t forgotten that moment ... I didn’t take it too badly but it stuck, with time and reflection I realized that it wasn’t right ... even though I thought I was grown up, I was just a child.

Excerpt 1 illustrates how the official (re)arrangement and negotiations between the (then fascist and colonial) Portuguese government and Luxembourg, on a racial impetus, challenged the racialized Portuguese citizenship of Cape Verdeans during what I refer to here as the “early routes,” when they arrived in Portugal to pursue their migration to Luxembourg. It shows the tension between race/ethnicity and citizenship in the management of Cape Verdean migration to Luxembourg. Although in different guises, to some extent this tension persists in both the subsequent “routes”, i.e., the “middle routes” and the “late routes.”

#### The “middle routes” of lusophone migration to Luxembourg

As mentioned previously, it is important to stress here that a significant number of Portuguese people came to Luxembourg and other European countries to escape being sent to Africa to fight in the wars of independence (Laplanche & Vanderkam 1991; Pereira 2012, 2013). Yet, among Portuguese migrants in Luxembourg, there are people who did experience these wars, which took place in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau, when they lived in those African colonies (mainly Angola and Mozambique). After war broke out, and as social hostility toward Portuguese colonists increased and the colonies gained independence, these colonists and their descendants who were born there were pushed to return to Portugal. They lost their homes, possessions, livelihoods, and, in some cases, members of their extended family (Smith 2003; Eldridge, Kalter & Taylor 2023).

On their return, these former colonists, known as retornados, also experienced a certain amount of hostility from Portuguese society (ibid.). They were somehow perceived as “internal strangers” (Lubkemann 2003). The case of the retornados illuminates the nexus and tensions between notions of race, descent, and ethnicity on the one hand, and language and citizenship on the other. One reason that society did not welcome them back was that many saw them as having been corrupted by the ‘decivilizing customs’ of the Africans (Saada 2005; Eldridge, Kalter & Taylor 2023; also cf. Åkesson et al. 2022). As Eldridge, Kalter & Taylor (2023, 20–21) put it, the retornados “were associated not only politically with a colonial world fallen into disgrace through decolonization, but also culturally. Their clothes were perceived to be too colorful and revealing, they were associated with prostitution and the spread of marijuana, in short, with social transgression and an African permissiveness.”

Consequently, poverty, unemployment, and their tenuous position in the Portuguese society impelled the retornados to re-emigrate to Luxembourg or to other European countries like France, Switzerland, and so on (Smith 2003; Lubkemann 2003; Eldridge, Kalter & Taylor, 2023). This adds to the complexity of postcolonial lusophone mobility by taking into account the historical diversity that exists within the lusophone group and which, in some ways, has been neglected by existing research. Meanwhile, the significant presence of Cape Verdeans, Bissau-Guineans, and Brazilians in Luxembourg is also a result of their “re-emigration strategy” once they had obtained citizenship of Portugal or other European countries (Pereira 2012).

#### The “late routes” of lusophone migration to Luxembourg

The economic crisis of 2008 propelled a wave of emigration from Portugal to other European countries, including Luxembourg (Pereira 2012, 2013). This wave also included the above-mentioned African lusophones and Brazilians holding Portuguese citizenship (for instance, gained after legally living in Portugal for at least six years). Furthermore, it must be stressed that in part, the Brazilian presence in Luxembourg is also intertwined with the historical migration of Luxembourgers to Brazil during the nineteenth century and the first half of twentieth century, which then prompted a more recent mobility of Brazilians to Luxembourg (Sommarribas, Petry & Nienaber 2019) based on notions of ancestry and ethnicity. That is, very recently there was a phenomenon of mobility to Luxembourg among Brazilians of Luxembourgish descent, which started with the amendment of the Citizenship Law of 8 March 2017. This amendment allowed these Brazilians to acquire Luxembourgish citizenship through a ‘reclamation process,’ which involved providing proof of being “direct maternal or paternal descendants of an ancestor who held the Luxembourgish nationality on 1 January 1900” (ibid., 4). Around 20,000 Brazilians have acquired Luxembourgish citizenship in this way.7 Contacto, 01.08.2022; https://www.contacto.lu/luxemburgo/veterin-ria-do-brasil-espera-h-oito-meses-autorizac-o-para-trabalhar-no-luxemburgo/503967.html Some of them are descendants of Luxembourger engineers who participated in the creation (in 1921) and development of Companhia Siderúrgica Belgo Mineira (CSBM) in Brazil, a subsidiary of the Luxembourg steelmaker Aciéries reuniones de Burbach-Eich-Dudelange (ARBED). Most of them settled in the state of Minas Gerais (Brazil), where they helped to develop the pioneering Luxembourg steel industry.8 Hadžalić 2019; see also Dominique Santana’s 2021 documentary A Colônia Luxemburguesa, https://colonia.lu/prologue, and Santana in this volume.

It is important to underline that the majority of these ‘new Luxembourgers’ of Brazilian origin do not reside in Luxembourg, have never been there (Sommarribas, Petry & Nienaber 2019), and do not necessarily know any of the three officially recognized languages. But both groups—those who moved to Luxembourg and those who did not—had access to Luxembourg citizenship through ius sanguinis, i.e., a citizenship that dispenses with the notion of linguistic community. Consequently, those who did move to Luxembourg have added a layer of complexity to the Portuguese-speaking community, providing insight into the general question of how citizenship is unequally founded in shifting entanglements of race, ancestry, and ethnicity on the one hand, and language and the length or category of residence permit on the other.

Although those Brazilian Luxembourgers who relocated to Luxembourg did not have to pass the Luxembourgish language test or face the same regularization challenges encountered by other non-European (Portuguese-speaking) migrants, they share other struggles related to the Luxembourg labor market, namely, those related to limited language competence and gaining recognition of qualifications (Contacto, 01.08.2022). Hence, again one sees considerable tensions and dilemmas between these migrants’ accelerated Luxembourgish citizenship (anchored in their ancestry/ethnicity) and their limited competence in the officially recognized languages (Luxembourgish, French, and German), the “languages of authority” (Bourdieu 1991).

At an individual level, these tensions can be illustrated through the case of Rodney, a Brazilian architect of Luxembourgish descent who relocated from Brazil to Luxembourg seven years ago and has been working in the cleaning industry. He discovered his Luxembourg heritage accidentally when a friend who was living in the Netherlands visited him in Brazil and read a book entitled “Geonologia da Famíla Bley”.9 Waldemiro Bley Júnior, Genealogia da família Bley (Curitiba: Self-published, 1987); on the Bley family, see also Krieger in this volume. The book was a gift that Rodney’s parents had given him when he was a child, but he had never been curious enough to read the book. The friend noticed the word Luxemburgo and said to Rodney, “you are a descendant of Luxembourgers.”

Rodney’s narrative shows tension between his Luxembourgish citizenship and his limitations in what Bourdieu calls the “languages of authority.” In the context of Luxembourg, one can assume that these languages of authority are the officially recognized ones: French, German, and Luxembourgish. Rodney pointed out:

> Excerpt 2

> Migrants always have this problem. Imagine me, I’m a descendant and I don’t speak [the languages]. That’s a problem at the airport and everything. I show my passport and they start talking to me in Luxembourgish ... I had a [Portuguese] boss who always joked with me. She used to say to everyone: “Look, this one here is the only Luxembourger I know who doesn’t speak Luxembourgish.” I don’t have that to facilitate things. I have my difficulties because I don’t speak the language. But I don’t have any problems either. I’m comfortable here. It’s easy with citizenship, but the language challenges remain ... For example, it doesn’t make it any easier for me to get a job, because there’s no point in being a Luxembourgish citizen if I’m going to get a good job. If I don’t speak a language or if I don’t have the necessary skills for the job, I won’t get it, I’d say more languages! … It’s that situation, every time I needed to go somewhere and do something, I anchored myself in English. And I knew that English wasn’t well received. So French, no way. So I had no other option. When I arrived at ADEM [Agence pour le développement de l’emplois], the young man on reception was Portuguese. I said, “Oh, it’s good that you’re Portuguese, because I need to register here.” He said, “Look, when you get to the counter, you won’t be able to speak to me in Portuguese.” I had to speak to him in English and he spoke Portuguese! Then he sent me to an agent, she started talking to me in French, and I said, “look, either you talk to me in English or we’ll talk in Portuguese.” She told me in Portuguese, I don’t know why, and she said, “Look, I can’t speak to you in Portuguese.”... People who are unemployed and go to ADEM are usually people who don’t speak the country’s official languages, because those who speak the country’s official languages have a much better chance of getting a job and don’t need to go there.

Excerpt 2 reveals the delicate relationship between Luxembourgish citizenship and the official multilingual regime of Luxembourg. On the one hand, having citizenship helps Rodney feel more comfortable as a migrant: “I don’t have any problems either. I’m comfortable here.” However, on the other hand, his inability to speak Luxembourgish makes him feel embarrassed in certain circumstances and during administrative encounters, when Luxembourgish citizenship is expected or assumed to match Luxembourgish “speakerhood” (Márquez Reiter & Martín Rojo 2019). As Rodney pointed out: “I’m a descendant and I don’t speak. That’s a problem at the airport and everything. I show my passport and they start talking to me in Luxembourgish.” His lack of this speakerhood, to some extent, has prevented him from getting a better job in the Luxembourg labor market, prolonging his condition of being sub-employed. His narrative shows that the (in)sufficiency of holding Luxembourgish citizenship is mediated by the load/ability of speaking Luxembourgish as one of the languages of authority, which are central to individuals’ access to better jobs and their feelings of belonging in Luxembourg. Excerpt 2 also reveals Rodney’s reflective capacity; he questions a certain level of paradox and the mismatch between several job seekers’ language repertoire and the authoritative language regime of the national employment agency, ADEM, where Portuguese-speaking employees refuse (or are obliged to refuse) to speak Portuguese with the applicants and jobseekers.

Beyond his Luxembourgish citizenship-language tensions, Rodney shares that there is another dimension/layer of his struggles in Luxembourg. As a citizen originally from a former Portuguese colony, he has had to deal with several dimensions of “coloniality” (Mignolo 2005) in his workplace and social interactions in Luxembourg. That is, his social, workplace and language tension due to the persistence in his interaction with Portuguese work colleagues of what Stoler (2013) calls “imperial debris.” Rodney highlighted:

> Excerpt 3

> From the first time I spoke to the Portuguese ..., everyone says, “you don't know how to speak Portuguese. You speak the wrong Portuguese, which isn’t that Portuguese,” that's what they call me. ...but here we live in the same country. His theory is always correct, you have to do it, that's how it has to be done. I work with them. Sometimes some come in ... I don’t even say anything. I say, no, you’re right. So as not to make the conversation any more difficult ... Because it’s unbearable. And for us too, this issue of prejudice is very strong in them, in the Portuguese, because we see that they don’t respect, … So I don’t go into these ways because its what I said to him: it’s not worth it, it doesn't change our lives. Yes, you have to set limits too. But it’s a very complex relationship.

Excerpt 3 also indexes some components of coloniality regarding Portuguese perceiving Rodney as inferior, especially what Veronelli (2015) calls “coloniality of language” which is part of “coloniality of being” (Mignolo 2005) manifested through language. Interestingly, Rodney is a white Brazilian Luxembourger, but the fact of being of Brazilian origin serves as an incentive for white European Portuguese work colleagues to assume the position of lecturership and superiority over him at their workplace and linguistic interactions even if they occupy the same work position. In this case one can see the manifestation of coloniality rather through ethnicity, place of birth and colonial history than the question of race itself.

Ulus (2015, 890) points out “colonial dynamics and attendant power relations are daily reproduced and subverted at work.” For the context of lusophone migrants’ interactions at work, one may assert that their historical divisions still impact their workplace interactions in lusophone diasporas, such as in Luxembourg, outside the dichotomous geographies of former colonizer and former colonized countries, as Rodney’s case illustrates. Instead of “speaking back,” (Curington 2020) Rodney used a more passive tactic at work to subvert coloniality and the “emotionally charged postcolonial relations, which are often reproduced and experienced unconsciously … there effects are longstanding and survive political and historical changes” (Ulus 2015, 890–891).

However, all of the abovementioned circumstances/routes and the postcolonial, language and citizenship tensions of lusophone migration to the Grand Duchy, including this late-move of Brazilians of Luxembourgish descent, have contributed to strengthening lusophone networks and creating an interesting luso-Afro-Brazilian (re)encounter. It has made the use of Portuguese quite prominent in certain sectors of work, predominantly in the construction and cleaning industries, and service and retail, in which most of these migrants work (Jacobs, Manço & Mertz 2017; Marques 2019; Decamps & Monthéard 2020). Taking the abovementioned circumstances of migration and lusophone presences in Luxembourg into consideration, I suggest that there exists a “lusophone market” in the Grand Duchy and that its ongoing establishment is happening in parallel with and is constrained by the country’s “legitimate linguistic market” (Bourdieu 1991), in which German, French, and Luxembourgish are the officially recognized languages, and English has a high value, even dominating in the financial sector for example (Kingsley 2009). Lusophone migrants’ access to certain resources (e.g., more qualified jobs, education, etc.) has been constrained by specific linguistic and identity ideologies operating throughout this legitimate linguistic market. Consequently, to a certain extent, this constrain has forced them to eke out a “lusophone niche market” as a pathway to survival as migrants (Tavares 2025a).

### Concluding reflections: a presence rooted at the entanglements of citizenship, language and race

This paper demonstrates how luso-Afro-Brazilian presences in Luxembourg were and are mediated, both institutionally and individually, at the entanglements, tensions and shiftings between ideologies of race/ethnicity, citizenship and language, from formal Portuguese colonialism to contemporary Portuguese-speaking (re)migration to Luxembourg, including the late mobility of Brazilian Luxembourgers. For instance, from the institutional perspective, the paper shows how the idea of race and ethnicity was overtly used to determine what kind of lusophone migrants were desirable according to the Luxembourgish migration policies, without language requirements, at the early stage of lusophone migration to Luxembourg. The question of race was very incisive, to the point that Cape Verdean migration to Luxembourg was instrumentalized and racialized as part of rearrangements between the then fascist colonial Portuguese government and Luxembourg, with the latter even politically supporting the former despite the strong criticism from the UN on the former’s maintenance of its colonies in Africa. The justification of that official attempt to bar Cape Verdeans from Luxembourg suggested that black lusophone migrants would bear characteristics that were negative for good integration and social order in Luxembourg (Schiltz 2013).

In the context of colonial Portugal and its African colonies, the differentiation was not solely between the Portuguese colonizers and the African colonized. Individuals in African Portuguese colonies had varied racializing citizenship statuses. Cape Verdean elites often served as administrators and were perceived as proxy colonizers for the Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique (Meintel 1984). The privileged status of Cape Verdeans was based on the racial hierarchy of the colonial empire, which categorized them as “mixed race” (mestiço) due to their mixed African and European origin, resulting in lighter skin than that of individuals from other Portuguese colonies in mainland Africa. Consequently, Cape Verdeans were considered Citizens, while Angolans, Mozambicans, and Bissau-Guineans were deemed Indigenas, who were thought of as less intelligent and less civilized (Mattos 2013). The lighter skin color of Cape Verdeans, along with the selective formal education the elites received and their ability to speak Portuguese, were factors that favored their racialized Portuguese citizenship and facilitated their mobility to Portugal under colonial rule. However, when (re)migrating to Luxembourg, their racialized Portuguese citizenship became a hindrance to Cape Verdeans. The same skin color then hampered their migration. This illustrates the complex interplay of race/ethnicity ideologies, language, and citizenship and lusophone mobility. Furthermore, as described above, the incisiveness of race ideologies manifested in the case of retornados. That produced exclusion and social discrimination against white Portuguese (and their descendants) in Portugal, due to the assumption that these retornados had been corrupted culturally by African customs (Eldridge, Kalter & Taylor, 2023).

More recently, when the law of 8 March 2017 was amended on the basis of ancestry, the rule of jus sanguinis (which is closely related to ideologies of race and ethnicity) outweighed the importance of linguistic competence and the other citizenship pathways, such as the jus domicilis (duration of residence) and the jus solis (place of birth) to a certain extent. This shows how unequal access to citizenship is conveniently mediated by nation-states according to their political and economic needs in time and space. It is important to note that despite the relative ease of gaining official inclusion from the nation-state through jus sanguinis citizenship, the tension between language and race/ancestry persists at the individual level. This is especially true when one holds this citizenship but lacks one of the languages of authority (in this case, Luxembourgish) which is declared “the national language” (Hawkey & Horner 2022). Thus, access to (accelerated) citizenship does not necessarily result in social mobility, as Rodney’s case shows. Neither does it trigger feelings of fully belonging in the individuals themselves or influence the extent to which they are perceived as Luxembourgers by others. Place of birth, language competences, and ancestry form complex and, in part, fragile elements of Luxembourgish citizenship. Therefore, there is a need to disentangle what it means to be a Luxembourger, especially the questions of how, when, why, and to what extent having competence in the language of Luxembourgish fosters and defines (or does not define) belonging to the Grand Duchy on both individual and state levels.

This paper has demonstrated that from the beginning, the question of race has been present in lusophone mobility to Luxembourg—either overtly or covertly, and for the purpose of exclusion or inclusion. Let us remember the racialized Portuguese citizenship of Cape Verdeans that led to the revision of the labor agreement between the fascist Portuguese government and Luxembourg, and the mobility/acquisition of Luxembourgish citizenship that was attained by Brazilians under the jus sanguinis logic. For a long time, the logic of inclusion and belonging has unequally excluded and included people from the boundaries of nation-states. This has created enduring inequalities and injustices, given that nation-states privilege their citizens and nationals over human beings or humanity.

The paper has also demonstrated that, both at the state level and the individual level, the way in which individuals from formerly colonized countries and the former colonizing country perceive themselves in the so-called era of globalization is still influenced by colonial outlooks and differentiations. This commonly occurs in administrative, social, professional, and linguistic interactions and encounters. Furthermore, the colonial differentiations have produced complex interactional effects between diversified Portuguese speakers from Africa, Portugal, and Brazil. To a certain extent, these differentiations are still present in their encounters in Portuguese-speaking countries and beyond in diasporic contexts, including in the countries of migration that they all share, such as Luxembourg, as Rodney’s and Maria José’s cases illustrate.

In conclusion, I would like to stress that the data collected within the framework of the DisPOSEG project has provided insights into how historical divisions and complicities are still influencing interactions between Portuguese speakers. In terms of hierarchies at work, there is a tendency to reproduce colonial models in their third space migration context of Luxembourg, as seen in Rodney’s case. Our results reveal the existence of what Maldonado-Torres (2007) calls “coloniality of being” in the relationships between different Portuguese speakers in social and work contexts. That is to say, their interactions are often marked by friction and tension resulting from the internalization of superiority and inferiority that arises in colonialist racial relations. Considering the diversity and complexity of the migration processes in question, understanding the history and the colonial past will help us to develop an understanding of Portuguese-speaking interactions and of the specificities, trajectories, and important sociolinguistic challenges of lusophone migrants in Luxembourg.

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## Quitéria and other lives across the ocean: Mazagan immigration in the colonial Amazon, Grão Pará (1769–1778)1 This research was funded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), with the participation of Scientific Initiation scholarship holders Allan William Lebrego and Maycon Cristian Leal de Araújo.

### Introduction

Quitéria Maria do Rosário was walking the streets of the city of Belém, in the captaincy of Grão-Pará, in 1778. She was a woman whose life crossed the Atlantic and was associated with the trajectory of so many other immigrants who were forced to leave North Africa and anchor in 18th-century Amazon. She made a living from trade, which she did with the help of her two enslaved servants, and headed a household that was dedicated to “dealing in foodstuffs.” She was a married woman and a “freed black” although she did not live with her husband. She was a character who helped to colour with various shades of meaning what the Portuguese Crown referred to as “people who were in Mazagão Square until it was evacuated.”2 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, February 5, 1779, cx. 82, doc. 6.720. Quitéria broke with such a broad designation and demanded recognition of the distinction and demanded recognition of the multiple possibilities of existing within a group of immigrants who had left Morocco.

Beyond Quitéria’s trajectory, the tactics3 The concept of “tactics” refers to short-range strategies, including ways of supporting a family. “In particular, we need to study how ‘tactical’ choices create the conditions that either block or enhance the realization of strategies for the long term. Another field of interest is the way in which combinations of tactics are chosen and changed” (Kok 2002, 481). adopted in the face of the Amazonian landscape scenario, and the experiences4 Although experience is lived collectively and is responsible for part of the formation of social classes, it is not a “pure, unmediated” reality (Middleton 2016, 180). It is important to consider the individualities and multiple social markers involved in the construction of meanings for collective experiences. of an immigrant in the lands of Grão-Pará, we are interested in analyzing the group and the multiple strategies5 We do not enter the debate about the awareness (or lack thereof) of the actions of these immigrants, but we do consider the behaviors adopted and the results achieved by the “Mazaganistas” after they arrived in Grão-Pará. We start from the assumption that the concept of strategy is “to be understood as an hypothesis regarding the nature of human action” (Kok 2002, 466). For this, we value the different social markers and the role of the family. used by those who joined her on this journey. Quitéria had originally arrived in the Amazon from the Portuguese fortress of Mazagão. She and more than two thousand other people were forced to leave their homes and take up residence on another continent: an entire city emigrated on the same day, first to Lisbon and months later, from Lisbon to Belém. In this spatially long and temporally short process of immigration, lives were rebuilt. Between the collective migratory experience and individual survival strategies, Quitéria became part of the colonial Amazonian universe, in a world that was different from her old home and which required efforts to adapt—a process that was associated with ceasing to be “Mazagão people.”

### Where Quitéria came from

Before setting foot in Grão-Pará, Quitéria lived on the edge of the Atlantic, near the present-day Moroccan city of El Jadida. She lived as enslaved person in a walled citadel characterized by the Portuguese efforts to dominate the African coast since 1514, when the fortress of Mazagão was built. The construction of the fortress was linked to the need to set up trading posts to supply the Lusitanian ships that were trying to get around the continent on their way to India. These trading posts formed a network of mutual support in the Dukkala region, both in the military sphere and in the supply of food. At the center of this network, Mazagão was the longest-lasting fortress, only being evacuated in 1769. Protected for years by the military engineering employed in its construction, it had sea-facing fronts in order to allow independent supplies if it were surrounded by land, it was rectangular in shape with walls eleven meters wide and fourteen meters high, and it once housed a town with 700 houses and approximately 2,600 inhabitants (Vidal 2008, 16–22).

Mazagão was initially inhabited by a population of Lusitanian origin, including islanders from the Azores, and it was marked by disputes between Muslims and Catholics as well as by intense cultural exchanges. In addition to the constant martial tensions, the isolation of the fortress created similarities between those who lived within its walls and those who lived outside them. This aspect was recorded by one of the governors of Mazagão, José Vasques Álvares da Cunha, who stated in May 1760 that “those inside the Square [of the fortress] as well as those outside, which can only be distinguished by the fact that some have beards and the others don’t.”6 Coimbra University Archive (AUC), CCC, doc. 25. Over the centuries, the “Mazaganists”7 We will work with the definition of “Mazaganist” as someone who lived in the fortress of Mazagão but was not necessarily born there. reinvented their identities and cultural practices, and, although they served the king of Portugal, they had needs and daily lives that often placed them far from Lisbon.

Until 1769, it was unlikely that Quitéria and the other two thousand inhabitants of Mazagão would ever have imagined that their lives were going to be embedded in the forests and rivers of the Amazon. The relationship between the fortress of Mazagão and colonial Amazonia was strengthened when the population of the Lusitanian “square,”8 At a basic level, the population was divided between those who lived in the fortress (the residents) and those who were doing military or administrative service (the “fronteiros”), who did not stay for more than four years. In this population group, we found a significant presence of Azorean immigrants (mainly from the island of São Miguel), convicts from the kingdom, foreign commercial representatives, and Arabs among the floating population (Vidal 2008, 30–34). which had existed on the African coast for more than 250 years, was evacuated on the orders of the late Portuguese king Dom José I. The order came after a siege, which was begun in December 1768 by Sultan Mulah Mohamed and lasted until March of the following year. What happened next was impressive: the displacement by sea of an entire city: 469 families and 225 lone individuals who, together, amounted to 2,093 immigrants. “[…] an urban society separating itself from its stone shell [...] A city without walls, provisionally distributed in 14 floating neighborhoods, sets sail for Lisbon” (Vidal 2008, 51). In the midst of this population was Quitéria, listed by the fortress administrators as “family number #258,” in the household of her former owner and his wife9 AHU, codex 1.784..

Having set foot in Lisbon, Quitéria barely had time to adapt to the capital of the Empire. She and the other Mazaganists arrived in March 1769 and stayed in Lisbon until September of the same year, when they left for a new destination. In fact, this fate had been considered by the Crown even before the abandonment of Mazagão, on March 16, 1769, when secretary of state for the navy and overseas territories Francisco Xavier de Mendonça Furtado sent a letter to the governor of Grão-Pará containing the following order: “With these families [of Mazagans] the King Our Lord orders that a new settlement be established on the northern coast of the Amazon to join hands with Macapá and Vila Vistosa.”10 AHU, codex 595.

The Mazaganists crossed the Atlantic to reach the port of Belém in Grão-Pará in a compulsory immigration, which they themselves described as “violently transported to the aforementioned state of Pará.”11 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, October 8th, 1778, cx. 80, doc. 6.639. Since the right not to leave Lisbon was conditional on the express authorization of the king, it is possible to find a list of thirty-six names of Mazaganists who did not travel to the Amazon but stayed in Portugal.12 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, September 15th, 1770, cx. 66, doc. 5.673. These include cases such as that of Francisco Xavier da Silva Palma, who had been banished to Mazagão for six years; that of Luís Manoel de Macedo, who was waiting for his children to recover from an illness in the city of Lisbon so that he could later live in Portugal with his sister in Vila Viçosa; that of Teresa Maria de Jesus, who, because her husband had died, was allowed to live with her father, a servant of the Count of Cunha; and that of José de Moares, a surgeon, who stayed to look after sick immigrants13 Ibid. . The restrictions on allowing the Mazaganists to remain in Lisbon highlight not only the Portuguese Crown’s plan to transfer the fortress in its entirety (or nearly so) but also the resistance in part of this population toward emigrating to the Amazon: a place described by some of the immigrants with “loathing.”14 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, October 8th, 1778, cx. 80, doc. 6.639.

The final destination of these immigrants was not chosen without reason: it was linked to the Portuguese efforts to strengthen and colonize the frontiers of Portuguese America. In the case of the northern frontier, there was tension due to the proximity to French Guiana. In this sense, as mentioned by Mendonça Furtado, the settlement of these immigrants would not be in the city of Belém, but in a village created and named especially for this purpose: Vila de Nova Mazagão. The governor of the state of Grão-Pará and Maranhão at the time, João Pereira Caldas, remembered the usefulness of the presence of the Mazagans for “the defense and security of the Macapá Barrier against the French neighbors.”15 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, February 5th, 1779, cx. 82, doc. 6.720. His speech followed macro-political tensions that had been orbiting the northern edges of Lusitanian America since the 17th century: the French invasion of Maranhão in 1612; the Treaty of Utrecht, signed in 1713 “to prevent any occasion of discord that might arise between the vassals of the Crown of France and those of the Crown of Portugal [...] over the lands of the Cabo Norte16 “The coastal lands above the northern bank of the Amazon River were identified as “The Lands of Cabo do Norte” due to a cape that actually existed on the coast and which was baptized as such in the 17th century, with the name later being extended to the entire region (Araújo 1998, 145).” (Guedes 1989, 210); the epidemic of 1748–1750, which ravaged the captaincy of Grão-Pará and caused its governor to worry about foreign forces that “might take advantage of the weakness of our troops to encourage some project that might disturb our conservation”17 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, April 26th, 1749, cx. 31, doc. 2.910.; and even in the years 1751–1754, when the Crown financed an influx of Azorean immigrants who were to be settled on the northern borders, mainly in Macapá. The defense of Cabo Norte was planned by the Portuguese administrators on the basis of forming a belt of villages (Macapá, Vistosa da Madre Deus, and Nova Mazagão) and partly built on the displacement of individuals who crossed the Atlantic. It was a region where “culture and settlement” were to be encouraged as a territorial defense strategy (Costa 2018), and it was made up of people with very different origins: Azorean immigrants, various indigenous peoples, enslaved people from Senegambia and Angola, as well as the Mazaganists. Although of a macro nature, linked to the disputes between European countries over possessions in America, the efforts to colonize Cabo Norte directly interfered in the lives of those who were forced to immigrate to the Amazon. The life of Quitéria, an enslaved woman, was directly affected by the concerns of the King of Portugal and the pressures imposed by the French Crown.

On January 11, 1770, less than a year after the evacuation of the fortress, ten ships bringing the Mazaganists anchored in Grão-Pará, and Quitéria would set foot on Amazonian soil for the first time. The estimate is that 1,642 individuals arrived, divided into 388 families (Martins 2010). These individuals came from the same place—the fortress of Mazagão in Morocco—but they brought different “baggage”: differences in age, gender, freedom status, occupation, military rank, family size, marital status, and title of nobility. These elements would later be directly linked to the possibilities of building strategies and tactics for social integration and survival; they were elements that gave other colors to the idea of a “Mazagão People.” A new world opened up before the eyes of these displaced people, with a natural environment so different than the one they knew, in what they described as a “transportation to a climate so far away.”18 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, October 8th, 1778, cx. 80, doc. 6.639.

In the land that received them—Grão-Pará—the impact was also significant, especially when we consider the number of immigrants disembarking. This was a lot of people arriving in a single day; even the immigration of Azoreans, during its three years (1751, 1752, and 1754), with funding from the Crown, did not reach such a figure, with 945 islanders disembarked at the port of Belém (Vieira Junior 2017). Still in terms of contextualizing the significance of this number of Mazagan immigrants, we should point out that when the population of the entire captaincy was counted in 1773, divided into 74 villages/parishes/localities, only six of them had a population greater than the 1,642 Mazaganists who arrived. Despite the immigrants’ complaints and the difficulties of adapting to the new land, in three years the population of Mazagan origin living in the captaincy had increased by 18% compared with the number of people who had landed in 1770. This growth is explained by the reconstitution of families, the children born after the arrival, and the increase in the ownership of enslaved people—the latter received as payment of debts owed by the Crown to officials or soldiers who served in the fortress19 AHU, captaincy of Pará, February 14th, 1774, cx. 72, doc. 6.100.. The increase in this population and the construction of new families broadened the perspective on “the Mazagão people”: new nuances emerged, including those married to locals, and children born in Grão-Pará.

Quitéria went from being a captive to being an owner, and she did so by acquiring enslaved people and setting up her own home in Belém. This change in social status was made possible by the rapid accumulation of capital — probably the result of her work as a food vendor, which allowed her to buy not only two captives but also her own freedom. On the chessboard that reveals the daily life of Grão-Pará, Quitéria made moves to cope with the new land, sometimes taking advantage of the opportunities created and sometimes fighting against the baggage she had brought with her from Mazagão; namely, her condition as a slave, a black woman, a single woman, and a woman over thirty—at the time, something considered very close to old age.

But let us go back to the arrival and try to understand it from the viewpoint of the local rulers. If the number of immigrants arriving was significant, imagine that this arrival took place in a single day and involved a population with no experience of the region. Immediately, demands were made for supplies and shelter for the immigrants, which required administrative measures. The governor of the state of Grão-Pará and Maranhão, who welcomed the immigrants, had already been informed by Lisbon that the Mazaganists would be coming and tried to prepare himself, at least minimally; for example, he paid for five sumacas (small, two-masted boats) loaded with dried meat to come from Paraíba and Bahia20 AHU, captaincy of Pará, January 18th, 1770, cx. 66, doc. 5.680.. The governor-general of the captaincy went so far as to say that “the people from Mazagão that His Majesty was pleased to send to this state [of Grão-Pará and Maranhão] have made this city [of Belém] very populous [emphasis added], so that it cannot be envied by the [cities] of our Kingdom”21 AHU, captaincy of Pará, January 12th, 1770, cx. 65, doc. 5.579.. He went on to report, in a hyperbolic and laudatory tone, that in addition to dried meat, the Mazaganists were supplied with flour and fish, as well as a duly equipped hospital to care for their sick, and “that the same Mazaganists are delighted with the good life they lead and the abundance they experience”22 Ibid..

From another perspective—that of the newcomers—the sense of support was quite different. The feeling of being “pleasantly pleased” was not shared by the immigrants themselves. Some did not see their arrival in the new land in such a generous light. For example, Domingos Pinto asked to return to the kingdom of Portugal, claiming that his wife had acquired “a serious illness that is incurable in this climate”23 AHU, captaincy of Pará, November 15th, 1777, cx. 78, doc. 6.484.. The idea that Grão-Pará had contaminated “airs”24 In the 18th century, it was a common belief that environmental phenomena interfered with people’s health. This was the basis of “aerism.” In other words, the concept of contamination through “miasmas” was gaining ground. Until the mid-19th century, theories of contagion seemed absurd and succumbed to the Hippocratic conception that disease was the result of an imbalance in the body’s “humors” (Czeresnia 1997). was repeated in the petition of Isidoro José da Fonseca Cabral Mesquita, a sixty-five-year-old sergeant-major who made a request to return to the kingdom because he felt “compelled to change airs in order to restore his health.”25 AHU, captaincy of Pará, April 5th, 1791, cx. 100, doc. 7.966. These excerpts make it clear that the transfer to Grão-Pará was not as generous an action as some of the local authorities wanted it to appear, nor as the Crown wanted to believe. The document sent to the Queen in 1778 by the so-called representatives of the immigrants (judges, councilors, and the magistrate of the district of Mazagão) made their perceptions of the transfer clear: “It was announced that they were destined for settling in Pará, and they immediately felt repugnant to being transported to such a distant climate, since they recognized that this was not the reward they deserved for their services.”26 AHU, captaincy of Pará, October 8th, 1778, cx. 80, doc. 6.639. That relocation was seen as a journey reserved for “those who, in order to escape the punishment deserved for their atrocious crimes [...] and not a people who are always faithful, always constant and only exercised in the throes of war”27 Ibid.. And even though the local governor had made an effort to supply the Mazagans with dried meat and fish, his efforts were seen by the immigrants’ representatives as ineffective, because “these foodstuffs are ordinarily useless for sustenance, they double the illnesses they suffer, rather than preserving their health”28 Ibid..

Quitéria, on the other hand, was not so bothered, because the new home brought the possibility of freedom, marriage, and material enrichment. The process of relocation gradually acquired different meanings among those involved, meanings that fragmented the group initially known as the “Mazagão people.”

### Hell for some, opportunity for others

The group of immigrants who arrived in Belém in a compulsory migration from Mazagão was not homogeneous. ranging from enslaved people to qualified members of the Order of Christ, men to women, from single to married and widowed, in addition to many other differences (age, occupation, family size, etc.). Thus, as mentioned above, the immigrants had to deal with and struggle with the baggage they brought with them, which meant developing different tactics that were often associated with the composition of the household and family. The reconfiguration of the Mazagan families in the new land is clear, for example, in the case of Quitéria herself, who embarked in Mazagão in a household group made up of herself and her owners but once in the Amazon became free, took up residence, got married, and acquired two enslaved people, all in the short span of nine years (1769–1778).

The couple who owned Quitéria in Mazagão were Luís Loureiro Rego and his wife, Jacinta Valente. Their household structure and family configuration also changed between 1769 and 1778: They had two daughters, and Luís’ mother, Dona Isabel Cereja, moved in with her son. Still in the fortress of Mazagão, Dona Isabel headed her own household and shared it only with a twelve-year-old slave29 AHU, Codex 1.784.. In Belém, at the advanced age of sixty-four, she moved in with her son and her daughter-in-law, thus increasing her ownership of slaves to two individuals, “a mulatto and a black woman”30 AHU, Codex 1.790.. The household Quitéria knew in Morocco underwent changes in Grão-Pará. It was divided into two: one composed of Quitéria and her two enslaved servants; and the other composed of her two masters, Dona Isabel, the couple’s two new daughters (born in Grão-Pará), and four more enslaved people — in the second part of the household was an increase from three to nine people.

In the original composition of Quitéria’s household, there was not only a reconfiguration of the domestic unit, especially in the group of people who lived in the house, but also a reconfiguration of the social position of the people who lived there. As white people from the Kingdom of Portugal, her former masters were treated as “good people,”31 As Roberta Stumph reminds us about Minas Gerais in the 18th century, “dignity was also measured by behavior and those who followed the lifestyle of the nobility were also recognized as such” (Stumph 2009, 117). even though they lived in “great poverty and [...] there is no way to make a living”—in the society of the Old Regime, economic distinction is different from social distinction (Sampaio 2010). In addition, if the number of women associated with the household of Luís and Jacinta (Quitéria’s former owners) was increased, they joined the exclusive category of “Donas” [Mrs.] (Silva 2002), a kind of treatment that Jacinta did not receive in Mazagão. In fact, for these immigrants, despite their original social status, the move to Grão-Pará was a point of “transition” in the course of their lives32 This means considering the same individual at different times in their life—in our case, in different phases related to the migratory process: embarkation, destination, settlement, and return. At the same time, throughout the “life course,” these phases are considered in relation to the corresponding phases of the immigrant’s life, which Jan Kok calls their “position.” This “position” can be marital status, paternity, occupation, residence, age, etc. After arrival, these individuals change “position,” and this change is called an “event” or a “transition” (Kok 2007)., but these transitions did not happen in the same way, and the social markers and tactics adopted were fundamental in shaping them. The same immigration experience unfolded into different representations and possibilities.

In Belém, Quitéria had married another slave, whose master was Antônio Loureiro. It is reasonable to infer that Antônio Loureiro was a relative of Luís Loureiro, indicating that the marriage market for Quitéria was limited to her master’s initial social network; as far as marriage was concerned, Quitéria was still a Mazaganist. The marriage could have had a broadening effect on Quitéria’s condition: she was no longer a slave but an owner, who was leaving someone else’s home to set up her own, and she was no longer a single woman but a married woman—elements which, when added together, meant an upward social shift (Silva 2002).

This was the trajectory of Quitéria’s and of Luís and Jacinta’s households in the city of Belém in 1778. However, Belém was not the final home envisioned by the Lusitanian administrators for the Mazagan immigrants. Even before they arrived in Lisbon, the planned destination of the population evacuated from the fortress of Mazagão was the north of the captaincy of Grão-Pará (Vidal 2008, 138). Perhaps this was because they were perceived by the Crown as “frontier people”33 The frontier is seen here not only as defining geographical and political landmarks but also as “epistemological”; in other words, to the difference in perceptions of the world and tensions between empires and colonies (Mignolo & Tlostanova 2009). who were more capable of settling and ensuring colonization under pressure from foreign kingdoms “exercised in the throes of war.” A new village that was built in Cabo Norte in 1770, Vila Nova de Mazagão, was conceived as the final home for the immigrants (Costa 2018). In this sense, we can understand why Quitéria’s husband lived in Nova Mazagão while his wife waited in Belém for a possible order to move from the governor of Grão-Pará.

The Mazagans had their residential destinations compulsorily decided and financed, although they resisted and asked for the right not to go to Nova Mazagão. This was the case for João Maneta, an elderly man who was eighty years old and blind, who asked Queen Maria I not to transfer him, his daughters, and his sons-in-law from Belém to Nova Mazagão “so that in the same [city of Belém] they could be perpetual residents whose grace others have achieved”34 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, October 13th, 1783, cx. 90. doc. 7.349. . Or, to give another example, Gaspar Amorim Amora, who, after marrying for the second time in Belém, went to live with his new wife (also a Mazaganist) on a farm where he tilled the land and traded in canoes35 AHU, codex 1.790. . Others simply fled, like José Rodrigues, who went to Mato Grosso to make rammed earth and had still not returned by 1778; Inácio José da Penha de França “fled a long time ago to Minas”; and Lázaro Valente de Loureiro, who went to Bahia, leaving “his wife and children in considerable abandonment” in Belém36 Ibid.. In practice, we can observe a capillarity on the part of the Mazaganists, finding them in several towns and rivers in Grão-Pará: Macapá, Joanes, Vigia, Souzel, Pinhel, Benfica, Cametá, Azevedo, São Caetano de Odivelas, Rio Abeté, Rio Turauá, Rio da Boavista, and Igarapé do Jamboassú.37 Ibid.

The internal migration of the immigrants was directly associated with the social markers of these individuals. For example, we can find Mazaganists who disembarked in Belém bearing the noble distinction of knight of the Order of Christ, the main Portuguese military order (Olival 2001), who were soon appointed village directors38 The director was responsible for the administration of the indigenous people in the villages. Through a series of responsibilities, his fundamental duty was to bring “civilization” to the indigenous people, including spreading the use of the Portuguese language (Coelho 2006). ; examples include Francisco Fernandes de Macedo, director in the village of Porto de Mós, and Salvador Rodrigues do Couto, director in the village of Ponte de Pedra. We highlight Dona Antônia Valente here, who married Paulo Fernandes Belo, deputy captain, knight of the Order of Christ, and director of the town of Soure, in Belém. What stands out is the fact that Paulo Fernandes was born in the fortress of Mazagão and arrived before the great influx of Mazagans, in other words, before 1770. However, other Mazaganists, even if they were not qualified by the Order of Christ, could still be appointed director: Domingos Cardoso was appointed director of the village of Souzel; Antônio Gonçalves Lêdo was made director of the village of Benfica; and João Pedro became director of Lugar de Outeiro.39 AHU, codex 1.790.

We should not jump to the conclusion that the distinction of nobility made by some Mazaganists served the same purpose. For example, there were differences among the immigrants who had qualified for the Order of Christ: in 1778, the knight Inácio Freire da Fonseca owned a wood factory, twenty-two slaves, and a house on Rua da Praia de Santo Antônio in Belém; in the same year, the knight André Cardoso de Miranda lived on a farm in the Igarapé do Caraparú and was experiencing “considerable poverty, because until now the work of his fields has not corresponded to things that are useful for him to be able to live off with fortune”; and the knight Lourenço de Pina also “live[d] in poverty” in the Igarapé do Caraparú. Although the qualification of the Order of Christ interfered with occupying positions and accumulating wealth40 The military orders were part of what Fernanda Olival would call the “economy of mercy,” which made part of Old Regime society dependent on royal favors in exchange for providing services to the king. At the same time, these mercies meant the possibility of social advancement for their beneficiaries (Olival 2001)., it was no guarantee of such as it was linked to other elements, such as marriage and setting up a kinship network, slave ownership, property management, and place of residence.

Returning to the task of settling immigrants in Cabo Norte, the transfer of almost two thousand people from Africa to Grão-Pará, with a stopover in Lisbon, was quick and took less than a year. However, due to individual decisions and the natural and structural difficulties, the journey of these immigrants from Belém to Nova Mazagão took a long time. In December 1778, a list was sent to the queen with the names of 494 Mazagans who were still living in the city; in other words, 30% of the population that had disembarked in 1770. This list was divided into three “classes”: the first class was made up of those who had not been told to leave Belém for Nova Mazagão; the second class included those who had received the “tools and rations they were entitled to” but had not been transported to Nova Mazagão; lastly, the third class included those who were on the road “that leads to Vila de Ourém”41 AHU, codex 1.790. (a village founded by Azoreans). In this list, Quitéria’s name appeared in the tenth family, ranked as “first class.”42 Ibid.

During the wait to move to Cabo Norte, new couples formed—as was the case with Inês Maria. At the time of the evacuation of the fortress in Morocco, she was ten years old. Nine years later, in Belém, inserted into the local marriage market, and taking advantage of her age and her initial status as a single woman, she became the central figure in her original family and started to support her widowed mother and brother, something that was made possible only because she married Captain João Gonçalves Calheiros, the owner of seventy enslaved people and whose business included rice farming, sugar mills and commerce. 43 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, June 22nd, 1785, cx. 94, doc. 7.509; AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, February 12th, 1778, cx. 79, doc. 6.637. Her husband lived in the city of Belém, where Inês Maria also continued to live. Isabel Torres, also a Mazaganist, was the widow of the judge of orphans in the village of Cametá and, in the same village, married for the second time and remained there. Dona Catarina Valente married the director of the village of São Caetano de Odivelas, in Morocco. Catarina was married44 AHU, codex 1.784. and, probably during the relocation period, became a widow. The Mazaganist Mariana Manoel was a widow in Mazagão, and in the Amazon she married Manoel Pires, a pardo [“brown-skinned”] Portuguese. As the final example, so as not to tire the reader, we cite Mrs. Violante Lopes, who left Mazagão at the age of sixteen and married Maurício José, director of the village of Óbidos, in Belém45 AHU, codex 1.790.. Quitéria also married, but, unlike the other situations mentioned above, she did not follow her husband; in contrast, her husband went to Nova Mazagão and she remained in Belém. Could the families formed by women who came from Mazagão and married people from Belém be classified as “Mazaganists”? Or did these women and their dependents gradually join the ranks of the city’s former residents?

It is clear that the immigrants interacted with the population of Belém and other locations while they waited for the final transfer, thus remaking their lives, expanding their families, building new livelihoods for their households, and resisting the Crown’s initial directives. Just as a qualification of the Order of Christ could form an element of social insertion for some Mazaganists, marriage was a means widely used by single and widowed Mazaganist women. In other situations, however, even women from the Mazaganist community who married in Belém still struggled to make ends meet: this was the case for Francisca Maria, who married a soldier who later died—struggling to survive, she became the owner of “two cachaça [“brandy”] taverns”; and for Mrs. Antônia Maria, who married her stepfather’s brother in Belém (her mother was widowed and had married for the second time in Belém) and was living “in total helplessness, as [her husband] has no agency due to his total incapacity.”46 Ibid.

Just as the conditions were varied, so were the interconnections between the markers of “differences” (nobility, marital status, gender, generation, origin) (Brah 2006). The life opportunities of the migrants did not follow rules, although we can find points of convergence. One of these elements was their attempt not to put down roots in their destination village, Nova Mazagão.

### Settling and adaptations

Though shoulder-to-shoulder in the process of moving from Morocco, after arriving in the New World these immigrants sought different paths and possibilities; Quitéria, for example, continued to live in Belém, while other Mazagans settled in different villages and on different rivers. However, most of them went to Vila Nova Mazagão in compliance with the orders imposed by the Crown. In 1773 there were 1,325 Mazagans in Belém and 543 in the new village; four years later there was a reversal, with 494 immigrants in Belém and 1,763 in Vila Nova de Mazagão.47 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, February 14th, 1774, cx. 72, doc. 6.100. The increase in the population of Nova Mazagão was reinforced by the king’s imposition of the displacement of these immigrants, a cause for complaint by Mazagan representatives: “the great loss of freedom they experience when they leave their home [in Nova Mazagão].” Indeed, the death of King Dom José I in 1777 meant that many of the residents who had already settled in Nova Mazagão were able to leave, bypassing the initial order to settle there:

“[...] until the time that news reached us [in Belém] that Our Lord had called the Most Honorable King Dom José the First to Heaven; for since then the same people [of Nova Mazagão] have been in such a state of worry and restlessness, hoping that their requests would be granted and that His Majesty of this State would order them to re-export this continent.”48 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, February 5th, 1779, cx. 82, doc. 6.720.

There was a clear dispute between the immigrants relocated to the new village and the colonial authorities. This dispute was characterized by the material conditions of settlement, the tactics and strategies adopted in the face of the Amazonian landscape, and the continued “dilution” of the immigrants into a more general and less specific population in terms of origin, a slow transformation from “Mazaganist” into “inhabitant of the captaincy.” The attempt to settle these “people” in Nova Mazagão was in line with the Crown’s view of perceiving them as a unit, a “people” that had merely changed location.

The obligation to settle was linked to the fact that the destination was avoided by many. On the other hand, even the governor of the state, João Pereira Caldas, demanded from Lisbon the right of free movement for the Mazaganists: “if it seemed convenient to His Majesty, it could be facilitated for these people the freedom to settle wherever they wanted within the Captaincy.”49 Ibid. This expression of concern was aimed at “avoiding greater expenses” for the state in supporting immigrants in the early years of Vila de Nova Mazagão and in the construction of the village itself—an activity that, in 1772, had employed more than two hundred people, including carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, and sawyers.50 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, January 5th, 1773, cx. 69, doc. 5.933. The building costs were constantly mentioned, especially as they were paid for by local resources. Pereira Caldas himself had estimated that the construction of each house would cost $2,000 to the state treasury.51 In 1772, for reference, an arroba [15kg] of cocoa, the state’s main export product in the 18th century, cost $1,500. Cf. AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, August 31st, 1778, cx. 80, doc. 6.627. An enslaved man, in the same year, was sold for $80,000, Cf. Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Companhia Geral de Comércio do Grão-Pará e Maranhão, Livro 50, loading dated June 22nd, 1772. Francisco de Souza Estrela and Joaquim Antônio, respectively the master carpenter and the mason responsible for the construction work in the village of Nova Mazagão, made it clear that the wooden houses covered in straw would have a very short lifespan: “while some properties are being completed, the weather has ruined others, as the many thunderstorms experienced in the winter and the harsh winds and the continuous rains have caused them to be demolished.”52 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, February 5th, 1779, cx. 82, doc. 6.720. These tensions over the fate of the Mazaganists show that, although the Crown had envisioned the settlement of the immigrants, the implementation of this idea was the responsibility of the treasury of the government of Grão-Pará and Maranhão, which could mean local resistance to Lisbon’s project.

But Pereira Caldas had not been listened to and the obligation for the Mazagans to settle in the town continued, despite a great many other complaints. In addition to the residency requirement, the Mazagans who settled in Nova Mazagão complained about the quality of the soil, which they said was insufficient to support its dwellers. In a letter sent directly to the queen, representatives of the Mazaganists complained that the land had already been “populated by the national Indians of the country, and by the same helpless people.”53 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, October 8th, 1778, cx. 80, doc. 6.639. Residents constantly complained about the “fruitlessness of the land on which they are situated.” In a document sent to the district clerk, the Mazaganists again stated that “any work would be useless due to the weakness and situation of the land, and that is why the people live in an oppressive and deplorable state [...] the village is in a state of helplessness or death from hunger.”54 Ibid. The village surgeons, still trying to convince people of the difficulty of surviving in the region, stated that they acquired many diseases because they were “continuously working in very rough and swampy lands.”55 Ibid. To the precarious state of the soil, we must add the lack of experience in farming and, even more so, in planting on the banks of the Amazon River and its floodplains.

As Pereira Caldas pointed out: “these people, even if alive, are very suitable for the exercise of the Arms in which they were raised, and are not suitable for farming; and for this reason they were raised for a different purpose.”56 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, February 5th, 1779, cx. 82, doc. 6.720. The governor was making it clear that the Mazaganists’ present was compromised by their past, by the tradition they had been forged in, which was war. In 1769, before the transfer and still living in the fortress, we found 615 individuals declaring their occupations, with the vast majority categorized in military functions, but it was not possible to find any farmers—though we point out that there was some timid planting in the vicinity of the fortress.57 “Outside the walls, there was a small agricultural area, surrounded by ditches, trenches and revegetation that protected the crops, served as an obstacle to the Moorish cavalry and as protection for the infantry of the square, who collected our cavalry there when the enemy force forced them to do so” (Curado 2002, 3). However, in 1778, in Vila Nova de Mazagão, this picture saw a major alteration: of the 175 heads of households who declared their occupation, 129 were categorized as farmers, some of whom combined two occupations, such as carpenter and farmer, surgeon and farmer, bleeder and farmer, tailor and farmer, or gunsmith and farmer. One example of a household dedicated to farming is that of Antônio Loureiro, the owner of Quitéria’s husband, who produced one hundred alqueires [roughly 2,420 hectares] of rice in 1778. Rice farming in the Amazon River delta was encouraged by the Portuguese Crown (Ravena 1998).

On the basis of this initial data, two conclusions can be drawn: despite the complaints made by the residents of Nova Mazagão and by Governor Pereira Caldas, the village’s main activity was agriculture. This is related to the second conclusion: by cross-referencing information on the departure and settlement of these Mazaganists, a change in the immigrants’ occupational profile can be observed through the conversion of military personnel into farmers. This was more than a formal classification and included changes in the horizon of daily activities, which were no longer linked to repairing walls or trading with Islamized peoples but to dealing with rice fields and learning from the indigenous people about the rainy seasons and the flooding of the Amazon River. There was a change in day-to-day demands and the need to adapt of a population educated in war.

Another point complained about by the newcomers to Nova Mazagão was the small number of enslaved people, which also marks a turning point in the composition of the Mazagan population. Even in the fortress of Mazagão, among enslaved people such as Quitéria, it was not very common to find women; there were only twenty-nine of them and twenty male slaves. Data that serves as a parameter to consider the weight of slavery participation in Mazagão’s economy, show that the exploitation of captive labor was neither common nor the main means of support for these families. While living in Mazagão, Quitéria is unlikely to have imagined that one day she would be an owner of slaves.

Years later, for the immigrants in Nova Mazagão, slavery became an essential condition for survival. Slavery was not limited to captives from Africa, but included a significant number of indigenous people, as the Governor of Macapá, Lobo de Almada, pointed out: “people from the descent of Monte Alegre [...] distributing to each of them [Mazaganists] two Indians and one for others [average].”58 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, April 25th, 1782, cx. 88, doc. 7.193. Governor Pereira Caldas, who we are already familiar with, also emphasized the presence of indigenous labor distributed among the residents of the new town: “the laborious and heavy tasks that farming in this country requires and undoubtedly cannot be achieved by another very inferior quality of settlers without providing them with the means of the precise workers that, apart from the indigenous people, must be the slaves [enslaved Africans].” It is not hard to imagine Vila Nova de Mazagão being the scene of constant interactions between indigenous populations, enslaved Africans, and Mazagans, which meant not only a new productive organization but also the exchange of knowledge, values, and perspectives on work. For those who came from the fortress of Mazagão, the other was no longer the Muslim but the indigenous, the enslaved Africans, and the old inhabitants of the captaincy—identity also changes when confronted with a “new other.”

In the new world, the Mazaganists were part of a slave society. In 1778, the residents’ representatives claimed to have seventy-one underage slaves, “who only serve to increase poverty in the daily expenditure of livelihoods,” and stated that they owed seventy-four captives to the General Company of Commerce of Grão-Pará and Maranhão, a debt that was difficult to repay, as many had died59 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, October 8th,1778, cx. 80, doc. 6.639.. They stated that there were still 257 enslaved people left, including Quitéria’s husband, and that their purchase price had been excessive—they had been received as payment for debts owed by the “Almoxarifado da Extinta Praça de Mazagão” [Warehouse of the former Mazagão Square]. In the same year, the population of Vila Nova Mazagão totaled 1,591 people spread over 310 households, with 395 enslaved people constituting 22% of the total population—almost a quarter of the population made up of captives60 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, June 22nd, 1785, cx. 94, doc. 7.509..

In addition to the exponential increase in this population when compared to the forty-nine captives who left the fortress, the meaning that slave labor took on for the Mazaganists is striking. There are indications that the livelihoods of the Mazagans were represented by the immigrants themselves as being linked to the ownership of slaves. Diogo Serrão de Abreu, for example, asked to leave Nova Mazagão with his family, giving reasons including the fact that he lived “very poorly because he did not have any slaves.”61 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, October 8th,1778, cx. 80, doc. 6.639. Maria Alves Macedo also claimed something similar, saying that she could go up to “forty-eight hours without eating” because she had “no slaves and not even a man with her, since she was a young maiden.”62 Ibid. Even among those Mazaganists who still lived in Belém, such as Quitéria, the ownership of captives was seen as an important economic component, as it forced those who were enslaved to “earn a living” for their masters. For example, José Veloso, a forty-year-old man who had been an artilleryman in Mazagão and went on to become a shoemaker in Belém, lived off the labor of two slaves. Luiz Valente Cordeiro, who had been a soldier in the fortress, and his family made a living in Belém from sewing and from the work of two underage slaves.63 AHU, codex1.790. Other examples could be cited, but suffice it to say that among the 114 families of Mazaganists in Belém in 1778, 187 slaves were owned. There was certainly a survival strategy among the Mazaganists in taking advantage of the supply of enslaved people via the Companhia Geral de Comércio [General Company of Commerce], which cemented them within a society where captive labor was the rule—Quitéria herself adhered to this sense of social place and material survival.

If the village of Nova Mazagão represented the final destination of the Mazagans, this fate was not accepted passively by the immigrants; many lived or wanted to live elsewhere. At the same time, the natural environment was an obstacle to this settlement. The new reality of these immigrants was associated with the ownership of slaves, a trend they immediately adopted. In a new natural environment and a new world of work, these immigrants reinvented themselves, gradually ceasing to be the “Mazagão people.”

### Closing remarks

Stuart Hall, when discussing Caribbean cultural identity in terms of its diasporic movement, helps us to think about the Mazaganists after their compulsory displacement to the Amazon. He does so mainly by highlighting how part of national identity is constituted in the relationship with the other, in contact with difference and in the reinforcement of origin as an identifying category, and at the same time cannot be summarized in a binarism between inside and outside (Hall 2016). It would be foolhardy to attribute a “national identity” to the Mazaganists in the middle of the 18th century. However, in a short period of time (1769–1778), we saw tensions between claiming a place of origin and the different survival tactics adopted by this group of immigrants.

On the one hand, the Mazaganists claimed a series of rights associated with the origin of a group that was isolated in Africa, fighting in the name of the Portuguese king and the Catholic God, “an ever-faithful People” to the Empire and to the Church. Not without reason is the reference to the “obedience and loyalty of the ancient progenitors of that People” to King João IV, who in 1640 had freed the Portuguese throne from the Spanish domination – a period known as the Restoration.64 AHU, captaincy of Grão-Pará, October 8th, 1778, cx. 80, doc. 6.639. The idea of “progenitors” also appears in the documentation more than once, for example, when the magistrate of the Mazagans recalled “those people who violently/ after seeing the blood of their progenitors spilled in the square of Mazagão when they surrendered it after hard and valiantly fighting the enemy/ were transported to this state [of Grão-Pará and Maranhão).”65 Ibid. In a direct line, the word “progenitors” is related to “ancestors”; the Mazaganists were claiming the memory of common ancestors who had fought on behalf of Portugal. The argument was subtle but had a degree of efficiency, because within an Old Regime society, providing services to the king had to be paid for with royal favors (Olival 2001). Mazaganist representatives claimed an identity forged in a history of battle and loyalty to the kingdom and therefore liable to be rewarded, while at the same time claiming through a tradition that linked the past, present, and future of the Mazaganists in an unbroken line (Hall 2003, 29).

But in this case, the outside world was not the stage for the construction of the “Mazaganist” identity, even though (we remember once again) they claimed a shared origin in providing services to the king and fighting the enemy of the Catholic faith. In the Amazon, these immigrants sought different paths. Some became local administrators, others became traders, enslavers, and farmers. In practice, they reinvented themselves, following the capillarity of the rivers and the opportunities they came across. They reinvented their lives and, with each day that passed, stopped being “Mazaganists” and stopped being soldiers. There was resistance to the Crown for treating them as a unit, as a “Mazagão people,” and this struggle materialized in the effort not to settle in their destination village: a village designed to continue the life of the abandoned fortress. Not wanting to stay in Vila Nova Mazagão meant wanting not to be seen as a “Mazaganist,” but to be seen in their multiple possibilities of existence. Thus, Quitéria’s life across the ocean no longer fits in Nova Mazagão and no longer fits with being a slave. Quitéria, and many others like her, left part of themselves behind on the ocean and rebuilt themselves in the Amazon.

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