Migrant communities in a dipolar situation

Abstract

Beyond the great economic and social causes responsible for the motion of Portuguese emigrants at the international level, there are, inside the country, different contexts that favour the formation of different emigrant currents and condition at regional and local level, the way in which those currents develop, organize and keep themselves. In this article, the analysis focuses local situations precisely, and takes migrant people for men who bear and change an original culture. It examines three cases successively: that of Mira de Aire, a small town with a certain industrial development and a large and old colony of emigrants in the United States; that of Vila Cova-a-Coelheira, a little developed village, with a strict agricultural calling and an important community emigrated in Brazil; and that of Queiriga, a peasant village that, in the past, had a remarkable prosperity due to the exploitation of the wolfram and mines and now presents, without any trend for decreasing, a strong emigration towards France. Taking the examination of these cases for a startingpoint, one studies the phenomena of settling abroad (intentional choice of the place of residence and of work, ways of life, forms of association, the different forms of social and cultural linking that emigrants establish and keep with the Portuguese small town, village or place from where emigrated, the subcommunities socially structured, in the destination countries, according to the cultural models of origin, the communities in a bipolar situation that, in this way, are formed and endured.