Keywords

11.1 Introduction

A growing literature has developed which studies migration as a non-linear process, beyond the bipolar model of origin–destination. These works have shown how migrants’ trajectories are often more complex than a one-way movement, involving several dislocations in a lifetime, triggered by personal vicissitudes as well as large-scale processes. Focusing on specific diasporic populations, scholars have proposed a number of designations for these multiple mobilities, including: ‘twice-migration’ (Bhachu 1985), ‘serial migration’ (Ossman, 2004), ‘transit migration’ (Collyer & de Haas, 2012), ‘stepwise migration’ (Schapendonk, 2010; Paul, 2011) and ‘onward migration’ (Toma & Castagnone, 2015; Ahrens et al., 2016; Montagna et al., 2021). Following the initiative of Ahrens and King in their opening chapter to this book, Anju Mary Paul and Brenda Yeoh have recently proposed to gather these terms under a new umbrella term – ‘multinational migrations’ – to cover the different movements of international migrants across more than one country (Anju & Yeoh, 2020). In the present chapter, I contribute to this scholarship by presenting an anthropological account of the transnational lives of Portuguese-Guinean migrants in Peterborough (UK). These are Bissau-Guinean citizens who lived in Portugal and then moved onwards to the UK, benefiting from the acquisition of Portuguese citizenship. To describe their experiences I use the notion of onward migration, a term that does not convey the idea of an established trajectory but leaves open the possibility that migrants may change their plans in reaction to their first migration experience (Ahrens et al., 2016). By focusing on this case, I discuss how transnational connections, practices and belongings between more than one country contribute to the emergence of specific forms of subjectivity, marked by ‘multiple identifications’ (Ossman, 2004) in terms of nationality, language, leisure and food. In so doing, I dialogue with authors who have studied onward migration to the UK as a response to the 2008 financial crisis and its social consequences in Southern Europe (Mas Giralt, 2016; Della Puppa, 2018; McGarrigle & Ascensão, 2018; Ramos, 2018; Mapril, 2019; McIlwaine & Bunge, 2019; King & Della Puppa, 2021). More generally, the case of Portuguese-Guineans resonates with that of other onward migrants who moved from Southern to Northern Europe as a ‘survival strategy’ in times of crisis (Della Puppa, 2018).

In the first part of the chapter, I trace the changing pathways of the Bissau-Guinean diaspora since the 1980s to the present, showing how Guinean migration shifted from a post-colonial pattern, focused on the ex-metropolis, to a multi-polar situation, marked by dispersal across Europe (Nafafé, 2016). The second section is dedicated to my interlocutors’ decision to move onwards, in reaction to the financial and social crisis that hit Portugal in the aftermath of the 2008 economic downturn. The third part describes the transnational lives of my interlocutors, analysing the activities and relations that situate them in a transnational social field, including multiple places in Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, the UK and other countries across the world. The last section shows how these practices and connections result in distinct forms of subjectivity, marked by specific challenges and skills. The challenges concern the creation of coherence among contrasting norms, practices and gendered roles associated with different locations. Tastes and skills include confidence about displacement, cultural competence to manage difference and the ability to elaborate comparisons between different social contexts. I analyse the ways in which my subjects manage these multiple identifications and perform them according to different situations. Then, I argue that Portuguese-Guineans, together with other Portuguese-speaking migrants, contribute to producing a lusotopic sense of community, which appropriates and transforms the urban space in which they live. I expand on the concept of lusotopy later in the chapter.

The chapter builds on ethnographic fieldwork I conduced in Peterborough, during three visits between 2016 and 2018, as part of a research project exploring the recent changes in migration patterns from Portugal to the UK. During this period, I carried out participant observation in leisure, recruitment and workspaces frequented by both Guinean- and Portuguese-born citizens. This experience enabled me to observe labour relations among migrants from different backgrounds. The bulk of my data consists in 12 life-story interviews with Portuguese-Guinean onward migrants who settled in Peterborough and its surroundings after a first stage of migration in Greater Lisbon (Portugal). I also conducted 11 in-depth interviews with Portuguese-born migrants living in Peterborough. While spending time with some of my interviewees at parties, going shopping, running errands and other social occasions, I was able to engage in several informal conversations with other Portuguese-Guinean and Portuguese-born citizens. Among my Portuguese-Guinean interviewees there were three women and nine men, aged between 36 and 57 years, some of whom had children of school age. They arrived in Portugal between 1983 and 2008 and resettled in the UK between 2008 and 2016. All were holders of dual nationality. The interviews took place at their homes or in cafés and were conducted in Portuguese and translated by me. Interviewees’ names are fictitious, in order to protect their privacy.

My positionality as a female, white Italian in this diasporic context has certainly influenced the ethnographic encounter. Although many of my interviewees were men, my fieldwork gatekeeper was a woman. She introduced me to many of my interlocutors and directed my attention to certain issues rather than others. For instance, my analysis of gender relations in this context owes much to our dialogue. As always, ethnography is a co-production (Pina Cabral, 2013). Furthermore, the fact that I speak Portuguese fluently and have lived for several years in Lisbon helped me to find many points of contact with my interviewees, positioning myself in the vast and shifting world of lusotopy.

11.2 The Changing Roads of the Guinean Diaspora

Guinea-Bissau is a small Western African country, with a population of 1.5 million inhabitants marked by pronounced ethnic plurality, including more than 20 ethnic groups living in the hinterland, as well as urbanised people of mixed ancestry concentrated in the Bissau region. The country gained independence in 1973–1974, after a long and bloody war against Portuguese colonial rule. Since then, Guinea-Bissau has witnessed three coups d’état and a civil war (1998–1999). More generally, post-colonial times have been marked by political unrest, institutional collapse, constant economic decline and growing emigration. International outflows have intensified in recent decades, especially after the civil war, which produced waves of refugees and worsened the political and economic situation of the country. In addition to the old routes to Senegal and the Gambia, contemporary movements extend to Europe and beyond (Abranches, 2013, 2014; Nafafé, 2016).

Until the early 2000s, the main hub of the Bissau-Guinean diaspora in Europe was Portugal, where Guinean residents accounted for the sixth-largest foreign group according to the 2011 census. The social and cultural make-up of the Guinean population living in Portugal includes an urban, educated and creolised social layer and a segment marked by greater ethnic diversity and lower educational levels. Despite their different backgrounds, these sub-groups occupy the same low-skilled sectors of the labour market: the building industry for men and catering and domestic service for women. Moreover, they are residentially concentrated in the marginal areas of Greater Lisbon (Machado, 2002). Based on the existence of enduring links with the place of origin and the absorption of ethnic divisions into a wider national identity, scholars have portrayed Guinean migrants in Portugal as a diasporic community (Quintino, 2004; Saraiva, 2008; Abranches, 2013).

Over the last two decades of the twentieth century, this group was predominantly composed of young males, some of them undocumented. Since then, most migrants have realised family reunification with their relatives who had been left in Guinea-Bissau and many were able to afford Portuguese citizenship.Footnote 1 Furthermore, large-scale shifts in the global economy contributed to a change to their plans for the future. The effects of the 2008 global recession were extremely strong in Portugal, where the implementation of austerity measures to tackle the public sovereign debt resulted in a profound economic and social crisis (Lima, 2016). The outcomes were rising rates of unemployment, a growing cost of living, the dismantling of welfare, social and economic precariousness, a general feeling of uncertainty about the future and a dramatic rise in emigration (Marques & Góis, 2017; Pereira & Azevedo, 2019). While many Portuguese-born citizens left their country for old and new destinations, international migrants either returned to their homeland or moved onwards (McGarrigle & Ascensão, 2018). Bissau-Guinean migrants were particularly hit by the crisis, due to the huge decline of the construction sector. While many were made redundant, others saw their employment situation rapidly worsen. As the persistence of political and economic instability hindered their return to Guinea-Bissau, most of them opted to move to other European countries – such as Spain, France, Germany and the UK – as Portuguese citizens. The dispersal across Europe of the Bissau-Guinean diasporic community did not prevent migrants from remaining connected with both Guinea-Bissau and Portugal through transnational practices, spiritual bonds, links with relatives back home and a common sense of attachment to the country of origin. Their onward movement marked a new phase of migration from Guinea-Bissau, shifting from a post-colonial pattern to a multi-polar situation. While the previous moves were driven by long-standing links with the ex-metropolis, a cultural and linguistic affinity and a legal facility, the present trend is led by socio-economic dynamics and labour-market cleavages within the EU (Nafafé, 2016).

Within this framework, many Bissau-Guinean migrants joined the massive wave of people who moved from Portugal to the UK in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.Footnote 2 Portuguese emigration to the UK began to experience considerable growth at the turn of the millennium, becoming the main destination for Portuguese emigration since 2011 (Observatório da Emigração, 2019). The post-2008 wave consisted of layers as diverse as young and qualified workers in search of career advancement, working-class migrants employed in the low-skilled sectors of the labour market and onward migrants who were born outside Portugal and moved to the UK on a Portuguese passport. Some authors have described this heterogeneous population as a ‘Portuguese-speaking diaspora’ (Beswick & Dinneen, 2010) or a ‘Lusophone multinational group’ (Almeida & Corkill, 2010), brought together by language use as a sociocultural practice, common employment patterns and transnational links to Portugal. In this chapter, I attempt to give a more nuanced view of this social configuration by focusing on the transnational lives of Portuguese-Guinean migrants based in Peterborough.

11.3 The Decision to Move Onwards

My interlocutors were middle-aged men and women who were born in Bissau, migrated to Great Lisbon between the early 1980s and the early 2000s and resettled in the UK with their families after 2008. They moved to Portugal on international scholarships,Footnote 3 through family reunification or on health visas and found employment in construction, cleaning and care services. Most were happy with their livelihood, as they were able to support their families in Portugal while sending remittances to their relatives back home. Nevertheless, some were thinking of moving on in search of job opportunities that were more suited to their qualifications. Meanwhile, the crisis broke out in Portugal. Hence, whether they became unemployed or were afraid of losing their jobs, they started to make plans for a new migration, activating their connections with relatives and friends who were living abroad. The reasons for choosing the UK were multiple: some believed that learning English would improve their chances of professional mobility when back in Portugal or Guinea-Bissau, while others wanted to invest in their children’s education. Everyone had heard from their acquaintances that the UK was a ‘land of opportunities’, with a flourishing labour market and a strong welfare system that especially supported single mothers. Peterborough was a particularly attractive destination due to the presence there of a large Portuguese-speaking community, the low cost of housing and the high labour demand. So, once they had acquired Portuguese citizenship, they immediately started to organise their relocation. This frequently involved a brief period in which a family member was received by a relative or friend, to enable an exploration of the labour and housing opportunities in the place of destination, while the rest of the family joined him or her later. In some cases, single or divorced men travelled alone. By way of example, I quote the accounts of Neto and Nelito respectively about their decision to move to the UK:

My wife did 12 years of service in the same company [a sandwich shop]. Even after she graduated she never worked in her area of study [...]. Moreover, with the economic situation worsening in Portugal, we felt that if she never succeeded before, now […] she would hardly be able to handle it. […] Although I was already working well and had a good job, she would never have one. And this was one of the reasons why we moved here [to Peterborough].

I had my boss, I always worked with him, he built houses to sell. Suddenly the crisis came, construction stopped, and there, without work, I decided to move here. […] I stayed three to four years there, I lived on unemployment benefits. The money I received was not enough – 170 euros per month […] I had the rent, water and electricity to pay and my children to sustain. In addition, I had my brothers in Portugal still studying. [...] First I went to London, where a friend received me. I stayed there for two weeks, then another friend invited me to work here [in Peterborough]. I moved in 2012 […]. I never had the idea of emigrating, because I know that Europe is almost the same. There is work here as there is there. Same situation. In my case it was my friend [who convinced me to emigrate]. I wanted to go to France but my friend said to me: ‘Come here, to see if you can get anything’. He even paid for the ticket.

On the one hand, these narratives show how migration plans are based on complex calculations of pros and cons, involving mixed motivations and ongoing assessments of the changing situation in sending and receiving countries. On the other hand, they highlight the crucial role of the Portuguese crisis in the final decision of my interlocutors to relocate to the UK. In this sense, they are in line with recent works that studied onward migration from Southern Europe to the UK as a consequence of the post-2008 crisis (Mas Giralt, 2016; Della Puppa, 2018; McGarrigle & Ascensão, 2018; Ramos, 2018; Mapril, 2019; McIlwaine & Bunge, 2019; King & Della Puppa, 2021). Indeed, the economic crisis hit the southern countries of the euro-zone particularly hard, with disruptive effects on migrants’ livelihoods (Lafleur & Stanek, 2017). Like migrants from Spain and Italy resettling in the UK, my interviewees describe their choice as a response to the economic downturn which badly affected migrant families and changed their expectations of the future, in a context of growing social inequalities. Indeed, the crisis also had a strong impact in the UK, in terms of austerity measures, low growth, wage decline and deteriorating working conditions. However, the country managed to maintain high levels of employment over the following decade, attracting waves of workers from Southern, Central and Eastern Europe (Rogaly, 2020). Like other onward migrants, my participants experienced this new relocation in a different phase of life to when they left their homeland: now, they were no longer young and single but parents with school-age children (Della Puppa, 2018). The parallel extends to the field of legal status: as other South–North onward migrants, my subjects used their new status as EU citizens as a form of ‘citizenship to go’ (Della Puppa & Sredanovic, 2016), which enhanced their ‘motility’ (Kaufmann et al., 2004) and allowed them to enjoy free movement across the EU (refer to Della Puppa and Sredanovic, Chap. 9 in this volume). Their experiences reveal that while, at the macro level, Portugal appears today as a ‘turntable’ (Marques & Góis, 2012, 215) and a transit country, things are more nuanced where migrants’ strategies are concerned. While many third-country nationals may see Portugal as a gateway to Northern Europe, my subjects were prepared to stay there permanently from the moment of their first move. For many, onward migration was not initially an option. Other participants were unsure about their final destination. Eventually, they chose Peterborough based on information from compatriots who were residing there, ready to receive them and confident that they would find a job within days. Therefore, their second move was a way to deal with greater socio-economic changes. Their ongoing link with Portugal is evident not only in their transnational connections with relatives back there but also in their sense of attachment to what many of my subjects call their ‘second homeland’.

A final remark concerns the attitude of my interlocutors to the future. Recent literature has explored the role of Brexit as potential trigger of mobility for EU citizens in the UK (e.g. Lulle et al., 2019; McCarthy, 2020; Sredanovic, 2020). Most of my subjects were worried about the possible negative effects of Brexit, including economic depression, an increase in the cost of living and a tightening of migration policies. However, at the time of my fieldwork none were making short-term plans for return or onward migration. The common view was that ‘for those who work and pay taxes there will be no problems, even after Brexit’. They were, therefore, waiting to see further developments, while keeping an eye on the situation in Portugal, in their countries of origin or elsewhere and being ready to leave the UK if a job opportunity came up abroad.

11.4 Transnational Lives, Diasporic Spaces

Peterborough is a medium-sized city in Cambridgeshire (East Anglia), with around 200,000 residents. Since it was declared a ‘new town’ in the 1960s, its population has rapidly risen due to the arrival of national and international migrants attracted by a labour demand in industry and services and, more recently, in logistics and food production, processing and packing. The first international newcomers were Italian workers, who arrived in the 1950s to work in brick production. In the late-twentieth century, the main migrant group came from Commonwealth countries, particularly Pakistan and India. The current wave started in 2004 – at the time of EU enlargement – and is mainly formed of European workers. In recent decades, temporary employment agencies have blossomed in the area, in order to both recruit and supervise this army of migrant labour. The infrastructure of private labour-providers, good road and rail links and relatively cheap land available for the installation of warehouses – all these factors attracted many distribution corporations to Peterborough and its hinterland, creating an enclave for the food industry and logistics. The result is ‘a sub-regional labour market, with an urban hub at its core where workers are housed’ and a countryside where labour takes place (Rogaly, 2020, 25). This spatial configuration is connected with what Ben Rogaly has recently called a ‘local labour regime’ (Rogaly, 2020, 83), marked by the association of temporary, non-unionised and low-paid jobs with international migrant workers.

According to the last census (2011), with 1530 individuals, Portugal was the third country of origin – after Poland and Lithuania – of EU citizens living in Peterborough. In addition, the census counted a higher number (2118) of Portuguese speakers. As I will show, these figures do not reflect the fluid situation of Portuguese-Guinean households, marked by multilingualism and manifold places of birth. Nonetheless, they reveal the diversification of the migrant population hailing from Portugal, which includes both Portuguese-born and post-colonial citizens. In particular, Peterborough is home to one of the largest Portuguese-Guinean communities in the UK, although specific statistics are lacking.Footnote 4 Yet, citizens who were born in other former colonies are also present, including people from East Timor, Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde and Mozambique. Besides the Portuguese passport, one of the crucial glues that holds together this grouping is language. In fact, although KriolFootnote 5 and other idioms are spoken at home and between fellow countrymen and women, Portuguese constitutes a vehicular language in places of work, leisure and worship. Most Portuguese-speaking workers are concentrated in just a few factories and warehouses located in the surroundings or refer to the same recruitment agencies, where they can count on Portuguese-speaking clerks. In addition, they meet in the Portuguese cafés, restaurants and grocery stores that blossom in the city centre and display symbols of ‘Portuguesehood’, including the national flag, images of regional specialities and Portuguese place names, such as ‘O Sado’, ‘Café Algarve’ and ‘Vilamoura’.

At the time of their arrival, all my subjects were employed on ‘zero-hour’ contracts by local temporary agencies, working in food-packaging centres and warehouses around Peterborough and holding low-skilled positions. After a year or so, most were able to get permanent jobs and direct contracts with owner companies, while a minority remained on the temporary labour market. Among those who obtained stable employment, three took on more-skilled functions in the field of quality control. In their case, higher education levels and the acquisition of fluency in English were central in their career advancement. Regardless of their job position, all my subjects had better salaries than those they received in Lisbon but complained about the cost of living, which was arguably higher than in Portugal. Thanks to their higher income, they were able to send remittances to their relatives who had been left in Portugal and Guinea-Bissau.

Interestingly, my subjects’ mobility had increased since they had settled in Peterborough. For instance, when they had to deal with Guinean bureaucracy – for births, deaths and the renewal of documents – they used to go to Lisbon, as there is no Guinean consular office in the UK. Likewise, they preferred to handle Portuguese paperwork in Lisbon instead of having recourse to the Portuguese embassy in London. As they explained to me, it was cheaper to reach nearby Stansted Airport by train and get a low-cost flight to Lisbon than travel to London and take the underground to the Portuguese consulate in the city centre. In some cases, their greater spending power allowed them to travel to Guinea-Bissau; when they were living in Portugal this was too expensive in relation to their salary, as Fanta explained in her interview:

In 2010 we [her nuclear family] all went to Guinea-Bissau, we went there to visit the family, we stayed there for a month and it was very good. It was the first time in 10 years, after coming here. Then we went in 2013 and we are planning to go next year. When we were in Portugal we couldn’t; now with a higher salary, benefits, etc. [it’s easier].

Although trips to Bissau were less frequent, travels to Lisbon were common among my subjects, as they were affordable for all budgets. While they went to Lisbon, they took the opportunity to handle paperwork, visit relatives who lived there and buy objects and food that they could not find in Peterborough. Actually, whereas several grocers were selling Portuguese food and drinks in Peterborough, it was cheaper to stock up in Lisbon. There, my interlocutors could also rely on a large market of Guinean products, which is constantly supplied by an informal small-scale transnational trade taking place between the airports of Lisbon and Bissau, exchanging goods via passengers’ luggage (Abranches, 2013). Likewise, when back in Peterborough, Portuguese and Guinean products were redistributed among relatives and friends.

Finally, many of my subjects engaged in ‘politics of homeland’ (Vertovec, 2009), participating in various ways in a diasporic Guinean political space. First, some of them collaborated in the ongoing construction of a formalised relationship with the Guinean state. In particular, they were involved in the 2018–2019 electoral process, which included, for the first time, a voter registration among the Bissau-Guinean diaspora in the UK. In 2013, an alteration to the Guinean electoral law extended the voting right to the diaspora. Accordingly, two Deputies were appointed in the 2014 elections, one for Africa and one for Europe, where the voter registration was limited to Portugal, Spain and France (EU EOM, 2014; Nafafé, 2016). In 2018, the electoral process was extended to the UK, due to the growing number of Bissau-Guinean migrants residing there. Some of my interlocutors participated in the election campaign and in the organisation of the voter registration. In their view, this was a way to quantify the Bissau-Guinean presence in the UK and put pressure on the Guinean government to establish a consular office in London. However, according to them, the election process was ‘a failure’ – due to a lack of organisation, few citizens managed to reach the contact points and to be registered. Second, most of my subjects contributed to the national political debate via social media. Indeed, social networking has recently played a crucial role in maintaining strong ties between Guinea-Bissau and its diaspora around the world, by bringing news about the home country and fostering political debate (Nafafé, 2016). My subjects kept connected via a growing number of internet blogs created in Guinea-Bissau and the diaspora, such as Ditadura do Consenso (http://ditaduraeconsenso.blogspot.com), Didinho (http://www.didinho.org), Doka Internacional (http://dokainternacionaldenunciante.blogspot.co) and Intelectuais Balantas na Diáspora (http://tchogue.blogspot.com).Footnote 6 Through these blogs, Bissau-Guinean migrants keep themselves informed about elections and everyday news in their country of origin, discuss topics of national interest and engage in the debate on the relationship between homeland and diaspora. In addition, my interviewees participated in several transnational and local-based Facebook groups, such as Voz Da Diáspora Guineense (https://www.facebook.com/vozdadiasporaguineense/) and Luso Guineenses no Reino Unido (https://www.facebook.com/groups/LusoGuineensesUk/). Besides allowing political participation, internet channels simplified the organisation of solidarity initiatives directed at the country of origin. For instance, the church group to which Antónia belonged in her youth is now dispersed across many countries but is kept connected via Skype and WhatsApp, both of which are used to organise donations to development projects, the shipping of clothes and toys and visits to Guinea-Bissau. Therefore, far from being limited to dualistic links between ‘home’ and ‘host’ countries, social media support transnational networks connecting the multiple hubs of the Guinean diaspora.

In sum, my subjects engaged in a set of actions and social relations that simultaneously link them to their previous homes, their current place of residence and other locations of the Bissau-Guinean diaspora. Their transnational ‘ways of being’ reveal how Portuguese-Guineans living in Peterborough are embedded in multi-sited ‘transnational social fields’, through which ideas, practices and resources are unevenly combined and transformed (Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2004). Concurrently, their participation in activities and institutions located in three different nation states generates specific categories of identity. In the next section, I illustrate how my interlocutors acknowledge and play with such multiple categories of identity, creating plural and flexible ‘ways of belonging’ (Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2004).

11.5 Transnational Subjectivities, Lusotopic Locality

In this final section, I try to answer Pnina Werbner’s question about ‘what a transnational subjectivity might be like’ (1999, 17). Following Sherry Ortner, I understand subjectivity as ‘the ensemble of modes of perception, affect, thought, desire, fear, and so forth that animate acting subjects’, as well as ‘the cultural and social formations that shape, organize, and provoke those modes of affect, thought and so on’ (2006, 31). As Henrietta Moore has observed, theories of the subject owe much to Foucault’s dual conception of the subject/self: on the one hand, we are always subject to someone else through forms of subjection; on the other, we can recognise ourselves as a subject through a creative process of subjectivation (Foucault, 1985; Moore, 2007). In other words, both power and agency are entailed in the social production of subjects. In a similar vein, scholars have described transnational subjectivities as shaped by a dialectical process of disciplining and self-identification, involving regulation by nation states as well as individuals’ attempts to circumvent them and take control of their lives (Nonini & Ong, 1997). More specifically, Susan Ossman (2004, 2013) has analysed the lives of ‘serial migrants’ – that is, people who have lived in at least three countries for a significant period of time – to explore how this specific way of moving produces new kinds of subject. In examining the experience of Portuguese-Guinean onward migrants, I try to intersect the existing scholarship on transnational subjectivity with Ossman’s insights into serial migration. On the one hand, I pay attention to the ways in which my interlocutors are struggling to create self-continuity across different places and lifetimes. On the other, I argue that their ‘multiple identifications’ (Ossman, 2004) are rooted in specific configurations of class, nationality, language, race and culture, which have shaped their subjectivities in the course of their journey.

Central to migrants’ experience is what has been called a ‘transnational habitus’ (Vertovec, 2009) – a set of conscious and non-conscious dispositions, values and perceptions that guide the action of migrants with reference to different social and cultural settings. As Ossman (2004, 113) has pointed out, this process becomes more complex in the case of serial migrants: while migrants’ lives are informed by a duality of ‘home’ and ‘host’ country, the introduction of a ‘third space’ reconfigures this dual orientation. The result is the emergence of new challenges, tastes and skills. Challenges are about creating continuity and coherence between the different norms, meanings and practices that people have acquired in their movement across multiple locations. Tastes and skills include a confidence that the processes involved in displacement will go smoothly, a cultural competence to manage differences between systems of meaning and a tendency to compare different contexts through forms of ‘social reflexivity’ (Ossman, 2013, 153).

11.5.1 Lost in Genderscapes

Gender is one crucial sphere in which contrasting orientations can compete, generating conflicts between individuals. Insofar as subjects are shaped by specific – and frequently unequal – gender relationships, associated with culturally constructed values and notions, the exposure to other gender patterns can lead individuals to take up different subject positions, modifying power relations within families and affecting gender identities and senses of self (Moore, 2007; Vertovec, 2009). The shift to a new genderscape had a strong impact on gender relations among my subjects. Whereas my female interlocutors tended to experience more freedom and economic independence in the new setting, many men complained of a loss of status. Conflicts resulting from changes in power balance between partners apparently led many couples and families to split up in the new country of residence.

The story of Antónia and Mamadu is a paradigmatic case. Antónia was born in Bissau and moved to Portugal on a study visa. She completed high school in Portugal, then found employment with a cleaning company. Mamadu arrived in Portugal with his father when he was a child and started early to work in construction. They met in Lisbon and married in Guinea-Bissau in a traditional ceremony. After a year their first child was born, followed by the second, 2 years later. Then Mamadu moved to France, working with a Portuguese building company and going to Portugal in the holidays. However, the job was precarious and he often experienced payment in arrears. Meanwhile, the economic situation worsened in Portugal. The expenses were accumulating and Antónia’s salary was not enough to support the household. So she decided to move to Peterborough, where she had acquaintances. She went initially with her children and her husband joined them after a few months. After working 1 year with a temp agency, Antónia found permanent employment with a cleaning company. At the same time, she applied for council housing. She took care of the paperwork and was registered as the head of a single-parent family. Since then, she has dealt with state bureaucracy and family benefits. When he arrived, Mamadu was also recruited by a temp agency but he felt unable to adapt to the poor working conditions and exhausting work schedules. Furthermore, their relationship began to deteriorate, even as far as physical abuse. Mamadu was unhappy and blamed Antónia for having brought him there against his will. As he was convinced that his wife was hiding the money from state aid, he stopped contributing to family expenses. When I met him in 2016, Mamadu was living on his own. Antónia told me that she was satisfied with her life in the UK. When I asked her about the future, she said that she was more inclined to return to Guinea-Bissau than to Portugal. Yet, if there were problems caused by Brexit, she would go back to Portugal, because living conditions in Guinea-Bissau were still too bad and were unlikely to recover in the short term. For now, she was going to stay in the UK until her children finished their studies and became independent. By contrast, Mamadu admitted that, if he got a job in Portugal, he would return there immediately. ‘The immigrant’s life in the UK is too stressful’, he said, ‘You wake up at five in the morning and you’re only back home at night […]. It’s sad, we arrived [in Europe] many years ago and we’re still in search of the future’. Concerning Brexit, he confessed that, if British people wanted to send migrants away, he would not mind – at least he would have ‘an excuse to leave’. His plan for the future was to set up a taxi business in Bissau.

Antónia’s and Mamadu’s comments below on how gender relations changed with the new stage of migration reflect their contrasting perspectives on this topic as well as the clash of contradictory laws and value systems in Guinea-Bissau, Portugal and the UK. The first quote is from Antónia, the second from Mamadu.

Here in England, there is a lot of separation [among migrant couples]. Because of stress, because of money... Men keep most of their money, saying that women have more power. They say that women are protected [by law], they feel bad about it, and they want to retaliate, while we women don’t let them. They think we are receiving a lot of money from the state, […] they get… jealous, angry, and then they don’t want to do their duty. Even when they work they say: ‘Ah, you are receiving the children’s allowance, where is the allowance money?’. Many women are living without a husband because of that […]. Especially Guinean men, they say that women control the paperwork, they don’t feel good about it [...]. In Portugal we were fine with our husbands, husband and wife were fine, although we had no money. We understood each other […]. Yet, there are also women who abuse their position. […] They call the cops right away and the cops take the husbands out. Here, you just call the cops and the husband has to leave […]. My husband and I have been at odds with each other for a long time […], but I would not call the police against the father of my children. I wouldn’t. We were not [getting on] well but we stayed here together for months. No problem, he was in his corner, I was in mine, even when he got his room and left, fine.

You know, here, especially Guinean women ... It’s not just Antónia, it happens a lot here. When they get here, they get confused. Because she is working, you are working, there is no respect anymore, it cannot be. I, at least, I feel... do you understand Spanish? I feel like a maricon […]. A man, at home, he has to […] dictate, to be respected. This is essential, nothing more [...]. Imagine, you always go out with your friends, today, tomorrow... you forget that you are married. […]. You come back home, you’re going to make a meal at ten o’clock. What time am I expected to eat? I go to work at dawn. […] I told her many times, she didn’t respect... and yet, I didn’t forget that I’m in England. You know why? Women are ruling here, it’s true! […] Do you know how it happens here, with women’s law? You know, the Queen ordered it. Women will be never mistreated and so they forget that there are also women who abuse. For example, a couple makes a mess, they beat each other, when they call the police, you go directly to the police station […]. A hug is enough to screw up a man, they don’t even ask! Is that justice? […]. In Portugal, if there is a problem between wife and husband, [the cops] get there to make peace. They don’t want to know, they don’t want to judge anyone. They say: ‘The neighbours are complaining about noise, we don’t want to come back here again’, then they leave.

11.5.2 New Tastes and Skills

Despite the difficulties resulting from the clash of contrasting frames of reference, onward migration provided my subjects with new skills. First, they acquired ‘a sense of how to move with grace’ (Ossman, 2013, 94). In Portuguese, the act of emigrating is commonly referred to as saltar (to jump). This expression has its origins in Portuguese emigration to France in the 1960s and 1970s, when restrictive policies enforced by the authoritarian Portuguese regime forced people to emigrate illegally, risking their lives to cross the border in the mountainous north of the Iberian peninsula. At that time, emigrating was a true ‘leap in the dark’, as Christian De Chalonge impressively recounted in his film ‘The Jump’ (1968).Footnote 7 Although nowadays emigration is a much less risky undertaking, the expression evokes the burden of anxiety that every migration entails: crossing a border, learning a new language and a new way of life and searching for work and accommodation. All this might appear as a troubling leap into the unknown for those who move for the first time. However, as Ossman has observed, ‘the experience of a first migration is important in gaining the confidence to move a second time’ (2013, 94). As my interlocutor Fernando puts it: ‘Since we had already run risk, there would be no risk that we’ve not already run and that cannot serve as an experience for this new phase of migration that we chose to start’. Like other Portuguese-Guineans I knew in the UK, Fernando moved to Portugal as an international student. He completed his degree in sociology but could not find any employment in his field of study, so worked in a factory until he acquired Portuguese citizenship and fled to the UK, where his spouse and children were already established. After 5 years, he is now fluent in English and works as a quality controller in a packing house belonging to a large retail chain. He told me that improving his English was a challenge for him and his wife but that, little by little, they were evolving, although they were still ‘in the struggle’ to adjust to a different culture. By contrast, their children adapted faster to the new environment. Among Portuguese-Guineans, the switch between languages is a hallmark of intergenerational interactions. When I visited my interlocutors in their homes, it was common to hear them addressing their offspring in Portuguese. The older children, who were generally born in Lisbon, replied in Portuguese, while the younger ones, who were being socialised in Britain, answered in English. By contrast, Kriol is the preferential language between the adults, who were mostly born in Bissau. The following quote from Fernando reflects the mix of languages and eating habits that cut across generations in Portuguese-Guinean households:

At home we speak Kriol, Portuguese with the children and English, because at this moment my wife speaks Portuguese with our daughter, but she tends to respond in English. When we came to England she was four years old, but now English is prevalent. She makes that mix, she starts to change the order of words in the sentence. Nonetheless, we try to speak the three languages: Kriol between my wife and I, Portuguese and English with the children. Food continues to be Guinean and Portuguese specialities. This is because, unfortunately, we have not yet managed to adapt to English cuisine which, for me, does not have the flavour [laugh] that Portuguese and Guinean food does. It’s based on rice (Guinean) and potatoes (Portuguese) food.

It is interesting to note that the time spent in Portugal left a profound mark on their eating habits and tastes. Most of my interlocutors ate African food at home but went to Portuguese restaurants when they ‘miss[ed] Portuguese food’, as they used to say. While many specialist stores were selling Portuguese products in Peterborough, my subjects preferred to stock up on foodstuffs during their trips to Lisbon, where they could also count on a flourishing market of Guinean goods. Olive oil and bacalhau (salted codfish) were particularly sought after. As Sobral and Rodrigues (2013: 619) have pointed out, ‘Salt cod has a unique status in Portuguese cuisine, as it is both a very common food, and a symbol of the Portuguese national identity’. Significantly, my interlocutors seemed to have embodied the taste for this type of food, as is evident in Fernando’s words:

Many times on our trips to Portugal […] we bring bacalhau and take it to share with friends. We try to never miss. Here they have it, but it’s different […]. They call it cod, it’s a normal fish for them, [but] we like that salt cod, Portuguese style, which has a different flavour.

My subjects’ preference for Portuguese rather than English restaurants and cafés deserves a separate discussion, as it goes beyond the sphere of food and drink, to include the scope of economy, socialisation, leisure, culture and temporality. The Portuguese café is a microcosm of all this. Indeed, it is a kind of total social fact. It is not by chance that those cafés, restaurants and grocery stores that offer regional products in many places where the Portuguese diaspora is living are commonly referred as comércio da saudade (nostalgia trading). Scholars have already stressed the importance of commercial activities with overtly Portuguese names in providing services to Portuguese migrants and highlighting their presence in the ‘Little Portugals’ across the world (for the British case, see Beswick & Pozo-Gutiérrez, 2010). These sites also become key meeting places between Portuguese-born and Portuguese-Guinean migrants in Peterborough, especially during the football matches of Portuguese teams. As I will show later, the display of ‘Portugueseness’ symbols in these places – including a broad range of images, names, objects and practices – plays a crucial role in the construction of a Portuguese-Guinean identity within a larger Portuguese-speaking environment. This is evident in Neto’s considerations about the relevance of the ‘coffee culture’ in the lives of Portuguese-Guinean onward migrants:

The standard of living I had in Portugal, I missed it very much when I left. The affectivity that we have, a simple habit that can even be banal, coffee. Coffee culture, going to a café, sitting, having a drink, reading a book, reading a newspaper, even bringing things from school, studying, I don’t know, I missed it so much. […] It was one of the things I never expected it would influence me, but it did. For me it was an absence I felt [in Luton], because there are no cafés there […]. The traditional English café is totally different from Portuguese, so this also affected me a lot. When I came to Peterborough, I realised that there was this… there are more Portuguese, we can sit down, talk about something, talk about politics and those things, for me it made all the difference. [...] I am talking about migrants’ quality [of life]. You come here, have a job, get a house and have more or less an environment, some situations like Portugal, the community, the cafés, the services, these things, all this makes Peterborough a town with essential living conditions.

Besides developing their confidence, flexibility and adaptability to a new environment, the experience of a second migration bestowed, on my interlocutors, keen powers of observation. As happens with other onward migrants, the introduction of a third space produced a critical distancing that offered my subjects a new perspective on their prior homelands. This ‘social reflexivity’ (Ossman, 2013, 153) enabled them to make systematic comparisons between different social contexts. Reflections about racism are a case in point. In my interlocutors’ view, racism exists everywhere but it takes different forms in Portugal and the UK, as Edgar and Nelito point out in their respective interview extracts below:

It’s very complicated for an African to grow professionally in Portugal. It’s different here [in the UK], I think it’s different. You have many foreigners in important positions here [...]. How many Africans did you see there [in Portugal], for instance in the government, in state departments, […] taking on important charges? But it’s not that people are not competent – the opportunity is lacking. [...] I don’t know if it’s racism, I think it’s more protection for nationals. [...] As long as every Portuguese who is there does not have a good job in their area, they will not let in the outsiders... In England it’s different. First and foremost, the Englishman does not want to do this, so they give these opportunities to foreigners, to do what is theirs.

[In the UK], racism is about money. There’s so little money. It can be racism as well, if we think that the majority of the working population in England are immigrants. [Migrants] have a lower cost. Because it’s not English people who are receiving [the minimum wage], it’s us immigrants. So this is racism.

These observations confirm the findings of scholars who studied the expressions of racism in Portugal. Indeed, racist beliefs and forms of racism in daily interactions are commonplace in Portugal, although they tend to be obliterated from public opinion (Vala et al., 1999). Yet, racism is, above all, a structural phenomenon, as the legacy of colonial relations translates into a system of discrimination against African migrants and afro-descendants in the fields of justice, law, labour, housing and education (Gorjão Henriques, 2018; Alves, 2019; Raposo et al., 2019). Concurrently, the critical gaze of my subjects extends to British society, where structural racism is palpable in the system of labour division – in which the heaviest, most precarious and least-paid jobs are mostly carried out by migrant workers. Their view echoes Ben Rogaly’s analysis of workers’ racialisation in Peterborough’s local labour regime. Building on the notion of ‘racial capitalism’ (Robinson, 1983; Lowe, 2015; Bhattacharyya, 2018), Rogaly (2020) has shown how the incorporation of international migrants into the local labour market is functional to profit production, as capitalist employers use culturally and socially constructed differences such as race, gender and nationality to exploit, divide and control workers.

11.5.3 Lusotopic Communities

In the fields, food factories, packing companies and warehouses around Peterborough, where trade-union membership has followed the national trend of decline, the migrant workforce appears divided by national and linguistic cleavages rather than united by class consciousness. In the workplaces where most of my interlocutors were employed, the competition for better positions erected boundaries between national groups. Such rivalry is exacerbated by the zero-hour system, through which temp agencies manage the fluctuations in labour demand. Significantly, labour-providers employ migrant clerks to recruit and manage their fellow countrymen and countrywomen. Allegedly, this is a way to facilitate communication with a non-English-speaking population but it becomes a cause of friction among workers in moments of low production. In particular, my interlocutors used to blame Eastern Europeans – often merged under the label of ‘Poles’ and seen as their direct competitors on the labour market – for favouring their friends and compatriots in recruitment. ‘The Poles’, said Nelito, ‘control everything […]. The manager is up there, he doesn’t see how people are doing. They are the bosses. Of course, they will push for their race’. In the words of Jonathan Friedman (2002, 34), this super-diverse ecosystem appears as ‘a world divided into “ethnically” differentiated classes’.

Within this framework, the Portuguese language turns out to be the glue that holds together the multi-ethnic group coming from Portugal, creating cohesion and distinction from other groupings. So, as Carlos stressed in his interview, Portuguese-speaking people formed bonds of brotherhood through self-help practices:

Here we are friends, we are brothers! […]. It doesn’t matter if you are white or black, we are the same. Because we are all foreigners, aren’t we? So, drawing the conclusion, we have to support each other […]. I think that Portuguese immigrants already know what immigration life is, and so they try to show more solidarity with others […]. Imagine, for example, you have a colleague who lost his job. Even if you are Portuguese, and if you have the opportunity at the place where you work, you will try to give this person a reference, to get the job [...]. In the case of […] death, people always try to be supportive, to help the family, no matter if you are Guinean or Portuguese, everyone helps.

These relations of solidarity do not erase the differences between Portuguese-born and Portuguese-Guinean migrants but focus on their commonalities in an attempt to create a larger aggregate, as a form of protection in a competitive environment. Apparently, a common identity is being constructed in workplaces and strengthened in Portuguese cafés, where an enlarged ‘Portuguesehood’ is nurtured and negotiated through language, food and football cheer. Indeed, the post-colonial relationship between Portuguese-born and Portuguese-Guinean subjects – or ‘white Portuguese’ and ‘black Portuguese’, as my interlocutors used to say – appears reconfigured in the diasporic setting, where both groups have comparable social positions, needs, rights and legal status. Of course, the ‘production of locality’ (Appadurai, 1996) in such a ‘super-diverse’ context (Vertovec, 2007) is by no means an easy task. Actually, my interlocutors often complained about the excess of envy and selfishness among migrants coming from Portugal. For instance, previous attempts to establish Portuguese and Guinean self-help associations failed, due to fights and differences between members. So far, the most successful initiative has been a Portuguese festival, which has taken place in Peterborough every summer since 2014 to commemorate Portuguese Day. In the words of its founder, Paulo Batista, the idea was to ‘bring together the Portuguese community’, in order ‘to create conviviality’ and ‘have a little bit of Portuguese traditions to show outside’. However, he admitted, the festival ‘hasn’t changed anything on a daily basis’. In this case, the Portuguese-speaking community appears less an actual reality than a symbolic construction and a political project (Cohen, 1985; Baumann, 1996; Mapril, 2014), which is used to enhance unity and cohesion among migrants who share a link to Portugal, either by birth or through naturalisation.

Notwithstanding the centrality of the Portuguese language in this context, it is necessary to clarify the notion of Lusophony. Many scholars have disclosed the ambivalences in this concept, which is not only a linguistic common ground for people living around the Atlantic Ocean but also the historical legacy of Portuguese colonial rule (Sarró & Blanes, 2009; see also Almeida, 2002). First, whilst Portuguese was adopted as the official language in many African countries, including Guinea-Bissau, it is actually only spoken by a narrow minority of people there. Second, Lusophony has been criticised as ‘a neo-imperialist ideology’ (Cahen & Dos Santos, 2018, 199) that considers language as a ‘Portuguese gift’ (Almeida, 2002, 198) while concealing the inherent violence of Portuguese dominion. In order to avoid the pitfalls of this notion, several scholars have adopted the word ‘lusotopy’; suggesting a condensation of space and time, this term refers to ‘contemporary spaces stemming from Portuguese history and colonization [...] on the four continents and in numerous diasporas’ (Cahen & Dos Santos, 2018, 192). As João Pina Cabral (2014, 13) has observed, despite the association of the Portuguese culture and language with memories of colonialism, ‘it is often the very historicity of the reified lusotopy that gives rise to a localised sense of community’ in specific sites. I argue that Peterborough is one such place. By establishing bonds of solidarity in the workplace and participating in the performance of an enlarged national identity in Portuguese cafés, restaurants and shops, Portuguese-Guineans are creating a lusotopic environment.

11.6 Conclusion

Moving beyond the duality of ‘home’ and ‘host’ country, an emerging literature has shown how migrant trajectories can be more complex and fragmented than a one-way movement from an origin to a destination, encompassing as it does multiple countries and localities over time. This outlook presupposes a diachronic perspective, entailing a special attention to time as a key element in the analysis of human mobility (King & Della Puppa, 2021). The focus on time has led several authors to include longitudinal data in their studies, adopting a wide timeframe and following the stepwise journeys of their interlocutors (Toma & Castagnone, 2015; Della Puppa, 2018; Ramos, 2018). Students of onward migration have paid special attention to time-related issues, such as the role of life-course junctures in secondary migrations (Ramos, 2018) and the impact of different local labour regimes on the temporalities of migrants’ daily lives (King & Della Puppa, 2021). Furthermore, these works contribute to a broader understanding of transnationalism, showing how migrants can maintain connections across more than two countries (Ahrens et al., 2016). Finally, they enrich the analysis of transnational subjectivities, bringing to light the effects of particular ways of moving on migrants’ sense of self (Ossman, 2013).

In dialogue with this growing literature, in this chapter I have explored how onward migration produces specific kinds of transnational subjectivity, by examining the personal experiences of some Portuguese-Guinean migrants who moved onwards from Portugal to the UK. Particularly, I showed how their movement provides them with multiple identifications in terms of nationality, language, race, leisure and food, creating new challenges as well as new tastes and skills. My interlocutors’ experiences of self-constitution can be understood within ‘a non-unitary theory of the subject’ (Moore, 2007, 41), insofar as they took up different, often mutually contradictory, subject positions at various times, referring to multiple social and cultural contexts in an open-ended process of subjectification. Rather than conceiving their individual and collective identities as fixed, they performed their identifications according to given circumstances and different interlocutors. They played with the ‘lightweight sense of identity’ of lusotopy (Cahen & Dos Santos, 2018, 193) in a contextual way, as a means to produce locality (Appadurai, 1996) in a diasporic and post-colonial space. On the one hand, my interlocutors expressed their enduring attachment to Portugal with sentences like ‘Portugal is ours’ or ‘Portugal is our second home’. On the other, they stressed a stronger love for their place of origin, regardless of their legal status as Portuguese citizens. After all, as Mamadu put it, ‘I’m not a cynic, I don’t say I’m Portuguese just because it suits me. This is not about documents, it’s about my heart. And I know my heart is African’.