Paper short abstract:

“Elsewhere” is integral to the practicalities and imaginings of life in Cape Verde. The paper explores the moral expectations in the cultivation of strategic and affective belongings of (im)imobility, suggesting that what we need is inter-sited ethnography.

Paper long abstract:

Ever since the settlement of the uninhabited archipelago in the fifteenth century, "elsewhere" has been an integral part of the practicalities and imaginings of everyday life in Cape Verde shaped by translocal and transnational relations. The "desire of elsewhere" is not, in this respect, a modern phenomenon equated with the expectations of modernity, but rather a structural characteristic of daily life which places moral expectations upon individuals to succeed. The terms of this success have been altered by the relatively recent increase of opportunities for education in both Cape Verde and abroad which have not only raised expectations for a better modern life, but in the case of vocational training in Portugal, discussed in this paper, have also inflated the mobility of young students from more impoverished rural areas of Cape Verde, susceptible to global imaginaries of well-being and happiness. Through an examination of the students' aspirations and trajectories and of the aspirations of some of their families in Cape Verde, the paper explores the entanglements between mobility and immobility, inclusion and exclusion and discusses the moral expectations created in the cultivation of strategic and affective belongings. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the Cape Verdean case suggests that going beyond methodological nationalism requires more than "multi-sited ethnography". Taking inspiration in the metaphor of matryoshka dolls, investigating how "elsewhere" is part of the "here" suggests that what we need is inter-sited ethnography