Towards a Cartography of Portugueseness: Challenging the Hegemonic Center
- Towards a Cartography of Portugueseness:Challenging the Hegemonic Center
Edite Noivo is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She is the author of Inside Ethnic Families: Three Generations of Portuguese Canadians (McGill-Queens' UP, 1997); and co-author, with M. McAndrew, of Racisme au Québec: éléments d'un diagnostic (Gouvernement du Québec, 1996). She has published several journal articles and book chapters, such as "Diasporic Identities at Century's End," The Portuguese in Canada, ed. C. Teixeira and V. P. da Rosa (U Toronto P, 2000); and "Neither 'Ethnic Heroes' nor 'Racial Villains': Inter-Minority Group Racism," Racism and Social Inequality in Canada, ed. Vic Sazwewich (Thompson Education P, 1998).
Notes
1. Social scientists have been discussing ethnicity, almost ad nauseam, for decades and this debate does not concern us here. For purposes of this study, ethnic scripts refer generally to the expectations that are assumed in and towards a host society, when acting as the member of a minority group, whereas diasporic scripts involve an orientation towards homelands or others from those homelands.
2. I have claimed elsewhere that we need a fresh term, since "minorities" (in use since the 1945 work by Louis Wirth) is a saturated notion, drained of all meaning (Noivo "Diasporic").
3. Though diasporic experiences are always gendered and mediated by class and age, I do not discuss those differences here. For an analysis of the role women play in maintaining diasporic connections with the homeland, see Avtar Brah.
4. Historically, the secularization and assimilation of many Jews neither dissolved nor threatened their collective sense of diaspora. The Portuguese diaspora, like the Jewish, Italian, and others, is certainly fragmented along geography. I do not deconstruct Portugueseness into Continental, Azorean, and Madeiran identities, in this article. My data was collected almost exclusively from mainland Portuguese. Informal observations lead me to believe that Azorean-Canadians and Madeiran-Australians have different relationships with their places of origin.
5. This contrasts with other groups, such as Cuban-Americans, as discussed by Tölölyan (17-1 8).
6. Whereas the Australian Census (1996) shows that fewer than 25,000 persons identify as Portuguese, in Canada there are nearly 250,000, as indicated in the Census of Canada (1991). In Australia, an estimated half live in Sydney and the surrounding steel-industrial cities of Wollongong and Port Kembla, with smaller concentrations in Melbourne (4,000), Perth (3,600), and Brisbane (1,200). In Canada, more than half live in Toronto and surrounding cities, with smaller populations in Montreal (32,000), Vancouver (10,000), and Winnipeg (8,000). Portugal's Day is officially designated, "The Day of Portugal, of Camoes and the Portuguese Communities." In Canada, an estimated 50,000 Portuguese gather in Toronto's downtown Bellwood Park. In Australia, Sydney's Fraser Park sees a crowd of 10,000 people.
7. On the misuse of Pessoa's "a minha pátria é a lingua portuguesa" see Lourenço, who insists that what Pessoa meant was that, outside the language from which he drew his poetic universe, he had no páatria, in the patriotic sense of the term. Lourenço plausibly reminds us that "our language is today a plurality of pátrias, as it's the official language of several nation-states, including Brazil and Angola (Lourenço 125-33).
8. On Portuguese state policies on migration, and their role in defining the geographical regions where Canadian employers were to physically recruit workers in the presence of Portuguese state officials, see Noivo (Noivo "Migration," Inside).
9. Over the years, I have heard the exact same complaints regarding how Portugal treats its expatriate communities, in Germany, Venezuela, South Africa, Canada (well documented in the Portuguese-Canadian press), and Australia (where the Portuguese claim to be totally forgotten and excluded from the touring-route of Portuguese state officials). On these disputes in France, see Hily and Poinard.
10. The thousands of Portuguese-speaking adults born in Paris, Boston, or Toronto and visiting Portugal for the first time are being called "emigrantes." Likewise, the African-born who arrived in Portugal for the first time...
