Title  Established and new arrivals: complexities of Portuguese emigration in London
Author  Alexandra Isabel Rosa Ferro
Advisor  José Mapril
Year  2017
Institution Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities   
Degree  Masters
Area  Migrations. Inter-ethinicities and transnationalism
Keywords  Emigration, city, urban regeneration, London 
URI  https://run.unl.pt/handle/10362/20667

Abstract 

While problematizing the city from the migration perspective and particularly the Portuguese migration to London, this dissertation aims to contribute to the knowledge of the ongoing Portuguese migration to the United Kingdom, especially to London. Simultaneously it grasps the Portuguese people's relation with their surrounding space, its inhabitants and their perceptions of the Portuguese emigrant “community”. From the data collected through interviews and field work we were able to identify the existence of two groups among Portuguese emigrants: established and newcomers. This dichotomy will serve as the basis for our analysis. These dissimilarities stand out particularly in relation to: i) perceptions of the city; ii) forms of interaction (with other Portuguese people, with other migrants and with natives); iii) discourses on identity. Based on this analysis we will develop three main arguments throughout this paper. Firstly, we will defend the impossibility of portraying Portuguese emigrants in London as members of a homogeneous “community”. Secondly, we will argue that this fragmentation is reflected upon the space itself creating differences in the residential patterns of established emigrants and newcomers, as well as the spaces they occupy. Lastly, we will emphasise the current complexity of Portuguese migration in its depiction of the different conception of “community” translated into how each person embraces its own “Portugueseness”.