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AbstractThis paper discusses the tension between the criminal justice system and the welfare state as expressed through practices focused on populations who are perceived as being 'at risk' and constituting 'a danger' to society, therefore challenging the national governance of social precariousness and public (in)security. The analysis of a paradigmatic institution of Portuguese Fascism has brought to light how the contradictions between the long‐term subjectivation of vagrancy processes and the uses of anti‐vagrancy policies promoted by the dictatorial state to arrest and punish a significant part of his citizens may justify the moral dilemmas underlying the current Portuguese State's response to homelessness and urban marginality.

UID/ANT/04038/2013 ; This article discusses the impact of parental religious transmission upon the religious and citizen identities and performances of their offspring, using an ethnographic study on the parenting practices of Sunni and Ismaili migrant families conducted in Portugal, United Kingdom and Angola. The analysis highlights the role of parental religious upbringing in the strengthening of children's faith and practice but also towards ensuring certain kinds of citizenship that foster pride of affiliation to a given group identity, while simultaneously promoting intergroup identifications and bridging attachments to fellow citizens. In addition, the comparison between migratory contexts shows how parental religious caregiving may help their children reconcile or resist alternative aspects of religiosity and citizenship in different nation-states. These findings represent a stark contrast with official political discourse, which tends to view immigrant religious parenting as simply based on intergenerational continuity. ; authorsversion ; published

UID/ANT/04038/2013 ; This article offers a comparative analysis of two ethnographic case studies on double bind interactions within the mother–child relationship. In-depth interviews with, as well as participant observation among Cape Verdean and Indo-Mozambican migrant families settled in Portugal provide insight into the way in which mothering double bind interactions influence the dynamics of change and resistance involved in the gendered identities of their adult sons and daughters. In the analysis, we draw upon Bateson's dynamical theory about communication, as well as on theories of Psychological Anthropology that reiterate an intersecting dialectic of levels at which ambivalence exists and structures human experience. We argue that confusing or conflicting messages in the mother–child communication are an integral part of a differentiation process (schismogenesis) structured by socio-cultural contradictions that are yet amplified in a context of migration. ; authorsversion ; published

UID/ANT/04038/2013 ; This article discusses the potential role of parenting double bind interactions on the shifts in the balance and forms of coexistence between autonomy and relatedness across generations, using three case-studies conducted among Punjab (Sikh), Indo-Mozambican (Muslim) and Cape Verdean (Christian) migrant families settled in Portugal. Although the double bind construct has been applied mostly on psychological dysfunctional families, the comparative analysis shows that double binds within the mother–child relationship should be reconceptualised as potentially adaptive and creative responses to changing multilayered demands rather than as an inability to resolve a conflicting impasse. By adjusting, through caregiving, culture-specific developmental goals and practices to unequal balances between autonomy and relatedness in their current migration context, the mothers we worked with represent a stark contrast with official political discourse which tends to view migrant mothering as simply based on intergenerational continuity. ; publishersversion ; published

AbstractGrounded in written historical records and oral sources, this exploratory article addresses the Portuguese policy that targeted Indian nationals settled in Mozambique in the aftermath of the liberation/occupation of Portuguese India in December 1961. It equally tackles the views, concerns, and responses developed by Indian nationals to cope with their confinement in internment camps, frozen assets, seizures and liquidation, and deportation. The analysis evinces the inbuilt ambivalence in the way Portuguese colonial authorities constructed the internment of Indian nationals as humanitarian and protective measures, while displaying their dispossession and repatriation as harsh retaliatory political measures, at odds with the purported political and legal principles of colonial governance based on Portuguese Luso-tropical exceptionalism. The differentiated impact of such political measures, far from being univocal and uncompromising, is discussed as marred by innumerable contradictions resulting from the Portuguese economic vulnerability and dependence on Indian subaltern elites in Mozambique. Furthermore, the article presents a particular analytical sensitivity to the ambivalence surrounding the modes in which men and women of Indian origin related to Portuguese colonial power and responded to its governance.

AbstractThe way in which the history of colonialism might link up with the formation of postcolonial migrant identities remains insufficiently examined. Through a comparison between transnational business practices of Khoja Ismaili Muslim settled in the British and Portuguese colonial territories of East Africa and in contemporary Angola, the present paper aims to discuss the impact of colonial experiences in the configuration of postcolonial business cultures. Articulating several guiding empirical questions, we will attempt to show that the continuing centrality of the nation-states in which Ismaili transnational economic activities are embedded, the notion of a disadvantageous network closure, concomitant with the importance of face-to-face contacts, the mutual trust and understanding sustained through personal relations, and the tendency for national loyalty to prevail over religious belonging (whenever any potential conflict between the two exists) constitute crucial dimensions of an accumulated colonial knowledge which is significant in the analysis of the Ismaili competitive advantage in postcolonial Africa. This argument will be developed on the basis of a multi-sited ethnographic research. The U.K. and Portugal emerged as a strategic passage for our encounters with East African Ismailis from former British and Portuguese colonial territories. The current Angolan context, absent from the available literature, was selected as a postcolonial term of comparison.