Strange Foreigners We Are!: Identity Transits in Portuguese Immigration

Portugal, a country for centuries in a Diaspora fed upon by massive waves of emigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, has become a destination for Cape Verdean, Moldovan, Brazilian, Ukrainian, Chinese, and Russian immigration over the last 15 years. From an analysis of Portuguese and Brazilian contemporary fiction works in the fields of novels, cinema, video, I attempt to study how identities in transit are developed and built through processes of cultural hybridism and of ‘ghettoization’ experiences, leading both the Portuguese and the others, the immigrants, to become some ‘others’—we are all strange foreigners in the sudden world of global migrations.