Returning to El-dorado: Portuguese Migration and Resettlement in Postcolonial Africa

Abstract

For a long time, migration from Africa towards Europe has been a constant phenomenon and part of its colonial and postcolonial conditions. Conversely, the accelerated economic crisis and austerity measures in Europe signaled a reversal of roles between the former colonial powers as destination havens for African migrants and former colonies as European dream and land of opportunities. Portugal was the first European power to establish a colony in Africa when it captured Ceuta in 1415; it became one of the last to disengage in 1975 and the first to embark on reverse migration from 2002 which echo an unending return to El-dorado. This paper argues for the relevance and importance of Appadurai's (1996) concept of ethnoscape-the global flow of people or the global flow of talent to the study of Portuguese reverse migration and resettlement in postcolonial Africa. It locates the manifestations of the postcolonial Portuguese migration to Angola and Mozambique in a particular historical context. The colonial system had developed an entrenched and entwined relationship "luso-tropicalism" between Portugal and her former colonies such that migration is acted out. Several features of imperialism have re-emerged, especially the export of "surplus population" and capital through which the former colonial power maintain influence on postcolonial Africa. How is the new migration manifesting in political, economic, visa regimes and foreign policies of the African host countries? What are the emerging power relations between decolonised societies receiving migrants from their old imperial centre?