RG CIRCULATION AND PLACE-MAKING – CPL SEMINARS

Atlantic Circulations and Anchorages: Migratory and Identity Pathways between the Azores, Cape Verde and New England (19th and 20th Centuries)

With Carmo Daun e Lorena (CRIA – NOVA FCSH)

For more than a century, North American whaling ships called at the archipelagos of the Azores and Cape Verde, recruiting thousands of islanders who thus embarked on long voyages of labour at sea, unwittingly inaugurating new migratory and identity routes with significant repercussions on land.

For the Yankee sailors, these new crew members were the “Portuguese”. This external classification, which goes beyond a merely national designation and conveys other meanings – constructed at the intersection of class and race, or labour migration and ethnicity – was appropriated and re-signified by the subjects themselves. The case of the “Portuguese” whalers is particularly revealing of processes of formation of ambivalent, contingent and historically situated social identities. Whaling not only paved the way for subsequent waves of emigration, but also enabled returns to the islands, fostered social stratification and mobility, and facilitated both circulations and rootedness. By analysing the participation of Azoreans and Cape Verdeans in North American whaling, these interstitial dynamics become evident – dynamics that disrupt fixed categories and formulae and require socially grounded analyses with historical depth.

Organised by: Elizabeth Challinor (CRIA – NOVA FCSH) and Vera Lazzaretti (CRIA – Iscte)