Female migration in the Cape Verde islands: From islandness to transnationalism

Abstract

Following island studies scholars’ suggestion to think “with the archipelago” in order to denaturalize and de-territorialize the object of study and grant more attention to decolonization processes and mobilities, this paper uses a gender perspective and multi-sited ethnographic research to explore changes in Cape Verdean identity perception related to islandness and migration issues. The tension between ‘openness’ and ‘closure’ is significant in the case of Cape Verde, where the relationship between the island and islanders represents a condition of being in the world. The sea opens to the outside, but it also closes off and imprisons islanders within the borders of the island. Before the 1970s, when most Cape Verdean migrants were men, inside/outside boundaries were played out as gender boundaries along the male/female opposition: external/internal, Terra Longe (the outside world)/Terra Mamaizinha (the motherland), danger/security. On the isle of Santo Antão, however, this has been changing with the gradual feminization of emigration to Europe. This shift has revolutionized the previous sense of home, giving rise to a new form of transnational female family that connects places of immigration and places of origin while also reorienting Cape Verdean female belonging from insular to transnational.