Paper short abstract:

Since 2002 migrations from Portugal to its former colony have increased significantly. This paper aims to analyze the practices of sociability and the aspirations of various figures of “migrants” (labor migrants, expatriates, descendants of “Retornados”, binationals) in the Angolan society.

Paper long abstract:

Since the end of the civil war in Angola, in 2002, but even more in the wake of the economic crisis that hit the south of Europe, migrations from Portugal to its former colony have increased significantly. These fluxes take place in the context of an inversion of power relations between former colonizer and former colony. Indeed, Angola's soaring investments in Portugal since 2006-07 has led to a greater dependence of Portugal on Angola and to the acceptance of a kind of neocolonialism by the Portuguese elites (Soares de Oliveira 2015). Who precisely are those Portuguese who decide to go to work in Angola, and what are their motivations? On which aspirations and imaginaries are their mobility based? Which economic, social, cultural resources, as well as the factors related to identity and memory, are being mobilized in these trajectories? What meanings do they bestow on the places and spaces they travel to and across, as well as on their own experience of mobility? This paper aims to analyze the practices of sociability, the representations of social and racial hierarchies, and the political aspirations of various figures of "migrants" (labor migrants, expatriates, descendants of "Retornados", binationals) in the Angolan society. The study is based on ethnographic research made in Lisbon and Luanda with twenty persons and their families in 2011 and 2012.