Postcolonialité et l’énigme portugaise: La diversité des migrations lusophones au Luxembourg

Article for general public (2023)

Black Luxembourg

in Kelly, Natasha A.; Vassel, Olive (Eds.) Mapping Black Europe: Monuments, Markers, Memories (2023)

This chapter addresses migrants’ associations and narratives, and landscape traces of blackness in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It fosters a critical understanding of black representations, their ... [more ▼]

This chapter addresses migrants’ associations and narratives, and landscape traces of blackness in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It fosters a critical understanding of black representations, their absences, and presences in the country. In this context, Black Lives Matter’s (BLM’) impact has manifested itself on various levels of society, from rallies gathering together large numbers of people to artistic contestation tactics and the appropriation of public spaces, the mapping of buildings with colonial links, the defacement of monuments, and the renaming of streets, to mention just a few. All this happened in the context of uncovering Luxembourg’s colonial past, which is directly connected to Belgian colonization (Moes 2012). Although the early BLM movement had already pushed bottom-up and top-down discussions on racism, no political measures had been put in place until its impact in 2020. The events of that summer were a sort of “wake-up call” and a sudden turning point, with Black people raising their voices against unequal conditions in modern postcolonial societies in Europe, including in Luxembourg. Additionally, newly created associations of People of African Descent (PAD), such as the feminist and antiracist associations Finkapé and Lëtz Rise Up, have taken the lead and intensified their antiracist activities, shifting the conversation on race and racism from folklore to activism. As a result, the silencing of the colonial past has been broken. At the European level, an earlier study entitled “Being Black in Europe” (BBE), carried out by the Fundamental Rights Agency and published in 2018, had placed Luxembourg at the top of the list of European countries where perceptions of racism are very high. The BLM movements and the BBE study have also fostered a wave of debates at conferences, including one that focused on “Being Black in Luxembourg” and prompted studies on racism, a subject that previously had not been on the country’s public radar. [less ▲]

Bernardino

in Figures of Interpretation (2021)

Multilingualism in Luxembourg:(Dis)empowering Cape Verdean migrants at work and beyond

in International Journal of the Sociology of Language (2020), 2020(264), 95-114

This paper explores the entanglement of language with issues such as discrimination and the reproduction of social hierarchies. It unpacks this interplay to show how the use and abuse of language serve as ... [more ▼]

This paper explores the entanglement of language with issues such as discrimination and the reproduction of social hierarchies. It unpacks this interplay to show how the use and abuse of language serve as the main mechanism of inclusion, exclusion and limitation of migrants in the labour market, contributing to certain migrant groups and their descendants remaining in the bottom stratum of society. It investigates how language use can both empower and disqualify migrants, creating ethnic pools of work. This paper draws on interviews with a successful middle-aged Cape Verdean man, Pedrinhu, to illustrate this language impact. He came to Luxembourg at a young age and his sports skills helped him to be fast-tracked to acquire Luxembourgish citizenship. He talks about his migration trajectories, his sociolinguistic life and his job interactions with Cape Verdean workers at a private employment enterprise where he now holds a high position. He seeks “to empower” Cape Verdean migrants, challenging some of the institutionalised linguistic demands of the state employment agency he collaborates with; at the same time, he is aware of the reproduction of inequality and the ethnic stratification of his enterprise. The paper concludes by highlighting the ambivalences of multilingualism and empowerment interventions in accessing resources, such as work, in the condensed migration contexts of Luxembourg. [less ▲]

Cape Verdean Migration Trajectories into Luxembourg: A Multisited Sociolinguistic Investigation

Doctoral thesis (2018)

This thesis investigates Cape Verdean migration trajectories into Luxembourg from a multisited sociolinguistic point of view. Approaching migration as both emigration and immigration, the thesis examines ... [more ▼]

This thesis investigates Cape Verdean migration trajectories into Luxembourg from a multisited sociolinguistic point of view. Approaching migration as both emigration and immigration, the thesis examines sociolinguistic aspects of both aspiring and accomplished Cape Verdean migrants to Luxembourg. Based on a narrative and the material ethnography, the thesis seeks to understand migration and its inequalities from the colonial past to the current episode of globalisation. As a starting point, the thesis historicises Cape Verdean migration to Luxembourg as initially entangled in colonisation and labour policies. It has shown that, Cape Verdean movements to Luxembourg derived indirectly from Portuguese colonisation and unexpectedly meddled in Luxembourg foreign labour policies during the 1960s and 70s. This thesis explores this entanglement and unexpectedness of migration from the perspective of individual migrants. It explores what happened in between those points of departure and arrival by means of a multisited ethnographic linguistic landscape approach (MELLA). This approach consists of a material and narrative ethnography that studied traces of migrant presences and absences in public and private spaces on both ends of the trajectory. It was found that the linguistic landscape of Cape Verde contained numerous references to Luxembourg (e.g. Avenida Luxemburgo in Santo Antão) and vice versa (e.g. Epicerie Créole in Bonnevoie) and that some participants in the study, like myself, routinely went back and forth, sustaining relationships and engagements in both countries. However, findings also showed how unequal and exclusive South-North mobilities have become. It is obvious that as life in general is, South-North migration is a struggle, with language being a crucial dimension of this struggle. The thesis shows how migration is a struggle from the start in the country of origin with prospective migrants making considerable efforts and investments to travel North, often in vain, and continues to be a struggle for those who succeed to arrive North. Language duties are always demanded and migrants are constructed from a linguistic deficit perspective rather than addressing the systemic and structural conditions that contribute to unequal struggles among migrant groups and between the locals and migrants, intersecting with gender, class and race. This study provides an account of how multilingualism itself is also a struggle for Cape Verdeans, as Luxembourg’s trilingualism is often used as a gatekeeping device and as a proxy for race in a ‘colour-blind’ racism. It is my hope that this first book-length study of Cape Verdean migration to Luxembourg has opened a new empirical field of research, and will be followed by many more studies to come. [less ▲]

South-North trajectories and language repertoires

in Kerfoot, Caroline; Hyltenstam, Kenneth (Eds.) Entangled Discourses: South-North Orders of Visibility (2017)

This chapter explores language in global South-North migration from the perspective of aspiring migrants in Lusophone West Africa within the context of increasingly restrictive European immigration ... [more ▼]

This chapter explores language in global South-North migration from the perspective of aspiring migrants in Lusophone West Africa within the context of increasingly restrictive European immigration regimes and their consequence of involuntary immobility in the South. While sociolinguistic scholarship has successfully engaged with globalization, mobility, and movement of people, it has insufficiently engaged with that which and those who don’t travel well. We argue that a sociolinguistics of globalization needs to develop multi-sited methods and tools for investigating and understanding these absent presences – the invisibly excluded – and propose that repertoires and trajectories are useful tools in such undertaking. The paper attempts a theoretical review of these concepts and illustrates their analytical potential with three cases from ongoing fieldwork in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau as part of a larger ethnographic project at the University of Luxembourg that explores the language lives, learning histories, (unfinished) travels, further mobile aspirations and changing social status of young West Africans on the move. The paper concludes by arguing that South-North mobilities are shaped by as well as shaping multilingual repertoires, and are entangled in complex desires and strategies of mobility. [less ▲]

Trajectories and repertoires as conceptual tools for a sociolinguistics of globalization

E-print/Working paper (2014)

This is the third in a series of research briefs in the STAR project. STAR stands for “Sociolinguistic trajectories and repertoires: Luso-Luxo-African identifications, interactions and imaginations”, and ... [more ▼]

This is the third in a series of research briefs in the STAR project. STAR stands for “Sociolinguistic trajectories and repertoires: Luso-Luxo-African identifications, interactions and imaginations”, and is a three-year CORE research project funded by FNR, Luxembourg. This multi-sited project contributes to the field of sociolinguistics of globalization by investigating language and migration between the global South (Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau) and North (Luxembourg) from the perspective of both accomplished and aspiring migrants. In this third research brief we outline the key conceptual concepts guiding the project, sociolinguistic trajectories and repertoires. [less ▲]

The Verbal System of the Cape Verdean Creole of Tarrafal, Santiago: A Semantic Analysis of the Tense, Mood and Aspect Markers

Book published by Lincom Europa (2012)

This book deals with the verbal markers of tense, mood and aspect (TMA) in Cape Verdean Creole (CVC), focussing on the influence of context and time adverbials in determining the markers’ meaning. It is ... [more ▼]

This book deals with the verbal markers of tense, mood and aspect (TMA) in Cape Verdean Creole (CVC), focussing on the influence of context and time adverbials in determining the markers’ meaning. It is based on a corpus recorded in Fazenda, a small fishing community in the Tarrafal district of Santiago Island (cf. Appendix). CVC verbal markers have often been described in the literature but the present work shows that context, adverbials of time and intonation must also be considered to determine the verbal marker’s semantics. Chapter One outlines the role of Santiago Island in the genesis of CVC and presents the structure and methodology of this thesis. Chapter Two offers a review of the literature on TMA markers in CVC. These previous studies are discussed in chronological order and some new insights are offered. Chapter Three presents an analysis of the meaning of CVC verbs when they are unmarked, showing that stativity is crucially relevant and that many verbs can be stative in one context and non-stative in others. Thus, CVC verbs fall into three groups according to whether their unmarked form indicates present, past or both. Chapter Four presents the range of the functions of the marker ta with particular focus on its role in indicating habitual aspect. Chapter Five examines the following CVC progressive markers: (i) the markers sta ta and sta na focussing on the importance of the particles ta and na; (ii) the inland markers sata and ata; and (iii) the occurrence of ta in certain contexts with perception verbs indicating progressivity. Chapter Six offers a semantic and syntactic analysis of –ba (a suffixed anterior marker), dja (which can also be an adverb) and the least described verbal marker, al. Chapter Seven presents an exhaustive inventory of combination patterns involving all the markers referred to above, showing that there are strict rules concerning the markers’ position within verb phrase. Finally, Chapter Eight presents the main accomplishments of this thesis and suggests further research needed to help us better understand the CVC verb system, one of the most complex aspects of the language. [less ▲]