Migrations, social mobility and cultural identity: facts and hypotheses about the Portuguese case

Abstract

The author presents here the development of some hypotheses about the different aspects of the issue concerning the cultural identity of emigrant workers according to the processus of social mobility underlying in the migratory movements in Portugal. This work is centered mainly in the situation resulting from the Portuguese emigration towards Europe in the last twenty years. After showing some characteristic aspects of the migratory behaviour in Portugal, the author describes the Portuguese emigrant worker's relations as to his birth-place and the society in which he is inserted, what offers the circunstances suitable for the emergence of a probable crisis of cultural identity. The author suggests some hypotheses about the sources of possible difficulties either of structural origin or of conjunctural origin in the emigrant's relations as to their original society and culture. As to the relationship of the Portuguese imigrant in Europe with the societies that receive him, one remarks the ambiguity of, on one side, his trying to re-creat, under different forms, his original socio-cultural context - what reinforces the connections between the imigrant and his homeland - and, on the other side, to gather the prerequisites suitable for a more acceptable staying in those countries he settles himself - what favours an indefinite extension of his staying in those societies in which he is living, with all the consequences, namely for the second generation. Finally the communication underlines the relationship between the emigrants behaviour and the processus of the rising social mobility that, according to the author, is underlying; it refers the perspectives of coming back and reintegrationfor the Portuguese emigrants.