THE COLOUR OF LABOUR: THE RACIALIZED LIVES OF MIGRANTS

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Portuguese in the cane: the racialization of labour in Hawaiian plantations

Publication . Bastos, Cristiana

The identification of the Portuguese as intrepid sailors crossing oceans and bridging the world, as praised in Camões’ epic poem Os Lusiadas (The Lusiads), has been central to a historical narrative that merges sea travel, trade, conquest, knowledge, empire and nation. Yet sailing, I shall argue in this article, was also about a variety of endeavours other than opening the way to empire. Sailing could also be embarking as a stowaway, travelling immense distances on improbable fishing boats, joining the crews of passing whalers, being kidnapped ashore, enslaved, enduring the galleys or being sent off to faraway plantations as labour. More often than not, sailing overseas was a way to escape poverty, abuse, oppression, misery and distress. And that – sailing away from their homes, looking for a better life, running from destitution – was what many Portuguese men and women did over extended periods of time. Their routes hardly corresponded to an imperial strategy for Portugal. They often contradicted it.

2018Book part

Open access

Intersections of Empire, Post-Empire, and Diaspora: De-Imperializing Lusophone Studies

Publication . Bastos, Cristiana

The present article opens with a generic plea for the de-imperialization of Lusophone studies. A de-imperial turn should allow researchers to explore more thoroughly the experiences of diaspora and exile that an empire-centered history and its spin-offs have obfuscated; it should also help to de-essentialize depictions of Portuguese heritage and culture shaped by these narratives. Such a turn promises to address the multiple identifications, internal diversities, and racialized inequalities produced by the making and unmaking of empire. My contribution consists of a few ethnographic-historic case studies collected at the intersections of empire, post-empire, and diaspora. These include nineteenthcentury diasporic movements that brought Portuguese subjects to competing empires; past and present celebrations of heritage in diasporic contexts; culture wars around representations; and current directions in post-imperial celebrations and reparations.

2020Journal article

Open access

Ways of making a human otherwise: After-ethnography with migrant labourers in Italian agro-industrial enclaves

Publication . Peano, Irene

The paper addresses the ways in which the management of migration and of migrant labour, with particular reference to italian agro-industrial enclaves, has relied upon forms of de-humanisation, whose targets (mainly West African migrants) identify as forms of animalisation. Manhunts and lynchings are the crudest forms of such violent exclusions, which however also manifest in more subtle and generalised patterns, characteristic of the humanitarian regime of migration management itself. Against what, drawing on Derrida and Vaughan Williams, I term «zoopolitical» violence, I consider the emergence — in the slums of agro-industrial enclaves where West African workers live — of relations between humans and animals that flag the possibility of a human or animal being treated in an equivalent way. Such reflections are the result of a protracted engagement in these settings, founded on a form of participant observation which aims not at neutral description and analysis, in the ethnographic mould, but at actively supporting and elaborating alternative futures. To do so, the notions of anthropos and ethnos which have informed anthropological scholarship since its inception also need to be radically rethought, precisely through engagement with other ways of making and being human.

2020Book part

Open access

Supply chain affettive tra agro-industria e migrazioni, contenimento e rifugio

Publication . Peano, Irene

27 gennaio 2018. Poco prima che mi accingessi alla stesura di questo contributo, alle prime ore dell’alba è giunta la notizia della morte di una giovane donna nigeriana nella tendopoli, divenuta ormai da anni una baraccopoli, sita nella Seconda Zona Industriale di San Ferdinando (Reggio Calabria). La ragazza è stata trovata carbonizzata in un incendio tra i tanti di una tragica serie, che piagano da sempre questo insediamento – come tutti quelli che possono a buon titolo definirsi (ancorché parzialmente, come vedremo) i campi di lavoro dei distretti agro-industriali italiani. Altre due donne, anche loro nigeriane, e diversi uomini sono rimasti ustionati. Le autorità si sono affrettate ad escludere l’origine dolosa dell’incendio, mentre alcuni degli abitanti della baraccopoli sono convinti che si sia trattato di un gesto di vendetta legato ad una lite. Sono diversi i precedenti di aggressione, a volte anche fatale, subita dalle donne che popolano questi spazi.

2019Book part

Open access

Febre a bordo: migrantes, epidemias, quarentenas

Publication . Bastos, Cristiana

Neste artigo faço uma retrospetiva dos estudos sobre epidemias a que me dediquei enquanto antropóloga, dando destaque a um fenómeno que interseta os interesses da antropologia da biossegurança e da história das plantações de açúcar e migrações laborais: os surtos epidémicos a bordo dos barcos de migrantes em finais do século XIX. Baseada num relato de mais de 50 mortes infantis por sarampo numa viagem de emigrantes da Madeira para o Hawaii em 1884, e constatando que existiu uma sequência de pelo menos três mortandades equivalentes no espaço de dois anos, discuto questões mais amplas de saúde, desigualdade, tráfico, corpo, género, família, não sem dar atenção à materialidade da vida dos navios que se foram reconfigurando no transporte de força do trabalho escravizada, vinculada e contratada.

2020Journal article

Open access