Community Formation among Recent Immigrant Groups in Porto, Portugal By James Beard A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Stanley Brandes, Chair Professor Laura Nader Professor Alex Saragoza Summer 2017 Abstract Community Formation among Recent Immigrant Groups in Porto, Portugal by James Beard Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Berkeley Professor Stanley Brandes, Chair The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in migration to Europe, primarily by refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Central Asia, but with significant flows of refugees and other migrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa as well. Portugal is not among the primary European destinations for refugees or immigrants; possibly, in part, because there are fewer migrants in Portugal, it is an E.U. country where new arrivals are still met with a degree of enthusiasm. Hard right, anti-immigrant parties—on the rise in other parts of the E.U.— have not gained much traction in Portugal. This work looks at the relative invisibility of immigrants in Porto, the country’s second largest city, which may make those immigrants a less visible target for intolerance and political opportunism, but may also impede a larger, more self- determinant role for immigrants and their communities in greater Portuguese society. A major contributing factor to immigrant invisibility is the absence (outside of Lisbon and southern Portugal) of neighborhoods where African immigrants are concentrated. In Porto, communities do not form around geography; instead, communities form around institutions. The role of religious institutions in community formation is examined—institutions such as Protestant and Catholic churches, Catholic seminarian education, and one of Porto’s two mosques. Some of these institutions are attended mostly by non-Africans, but nevertheless appeal to sub-Saharan African immigrants on an aesthetic and/or affective level. Others are attended mostly or exclusively by immigrants. The roles of charismatic and well connected individuals in facilitating further connections between immigrants and their communities is also examined, as are aging shopping centers—the centros comerciais—which offer a secular space where Africans might gather together, socialize, and share information in the course of patronizing African groceries, cafés and hair salons. Porto’s African immigrants have created or nurtured communities through common goals, interests, and beliefs. In the absence of geographic concentration, they have managed to find ways to share information, support one another, and celebrate their shared experiences. 1 Dedicated to Ada and Oscar. In so many ways, I write this for you. i Acknowledgements: I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to the faculty at Berkeley, especially to my dissertation committee: Professor Laura Nader, Professor Alex Saragoza, and the wonderful Professor Stanley Brandes, without whom I would never have reached this point. Thank you as well to my colleagues at Berkeley, who were the most supportive group of graduate students one could ever hope to work with. And thank you to my family, who supported this endeavor in so many ways. My parents and step-parents, my aunts, my grandmother, my patient children, and to M., who started down this path as my partner and will always be my beloved co-parent. ii Community Formation among Recent Immigrant Groups in Porto, Portugal Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................... iv Observing the Invisible: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and the Unseen Immigrants of Porto ......... 1 New Protestants in Porto ............................................................................................................... 14 Salat Days: African Muslims in Porto ............................................................................................. 51 Africanto and the Espiritanos: African Catholicism in the Country of Fatima ............................... 63 Secular Institutions, Charismatic Individuals, and the Serendipity of the Entrepreneurial Spirit ........ 91 Final Thoughts .............................................................................................................................. 115 iii Introduction For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20 King James Version) For various reasons, this dissertation has taken me a long time to compose. At the time I conducted my fieldwork—a summer visit to Porto in 2006, followed by an extended stay of close to a year from 2007-8—there were murmurings of unease in Europe regarding immigration. There had been the European connection of the 9/11 plotters, and then, in subsequent years, a succession of attacks—the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, the bombings of trains in London and Madrid—that implicated Muslims, some who were immigrants and some citizens, leaving immigrants in general on the defensive as nationalists politicians and parties gained strength and sympathy in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, and elsewhere in Europe (Long 2017:6–9). This was a political moment when the French center-Right government of Jacques Chirac passed the law “concerning…the wearing of symbols or garb which show religious affiliation in…schools,” (quoted in Verdugo and Milne 2016:18) which effectively banned Muslim headscarves from French schools. It was also reported that rising conservatism in Europe in the aughts was a consequence of a continental existential crisis, which has followed the loss of national sovereignty—renascent nationalism, attributed to the decline of the nation as a concept of practical relevance (e.g. Mols and Jetten 2014). That was the situation at the time of my fieldwork. In the years that have since passed, the relationship between Europeans and immigrants has become increasingly complicated. As I write, in 2015, Europe is experiencing a refugee crisis that has accelerated at a dramatic pace in recent months, as refugees and migrants from Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, and elsewhere struggle to cross the Mediterranean and find safety in Germany or other countries of the European Union. In the first eight months of 2015, more than 500,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe, with another 2,800 estimated to have been lost at sea. By year’s end, it is probable that the number of arrivals in Europe will be twice as many in 2015 as in 2014, which itself had exceeded any previous records1. In fact, the movement of people in Europe will be the largest since the Second World War and its immediate aftermath, and the first of this scale to involve non-Europeans (Chan 2015). The situation escalates rapidly, destabilizing an already fragile European Union and bringing the nativists out as well as the compassionate. Divisions are exposed: predominantly Catholic Eastern European countries reject Muslim refugees despite the full-throated 1 I did not record my source for these figures when I wrote in September of 2015. By the end of that year, however, the U.N. High Commision on refugees reported that “some 1,000,573 people had reached Europe across the Mediterranean, mainly to Greece and Italy, in 2015. Of these, 3,735 were missing, believed drowned…. In addition to the sea crossings, recent figures also estimated that a further 34,000 have crossed from Turkey into Bulgaria and Greece by land.” (Clayton and Holland 2015) iv encouragement of Pope Francis for all Catholics to welcome and give succor to migrants and refugees (Pullella 2015). Center-right political parties are becoming more extreme in response to challenges by nativist groups, while parties on the left have been reacting primarily to austerity measures imposed during the European economic crisis and moving farther leftward. Europe’s economic crisis has meanwhile been further exacerbated by the refugee crisis, and between the right’s dissatisfaction with bailouts, the left’s frustrations with austerity, and both sides’ anxieties in the face of the current influx of refugees and cultural changes they might bring—at once too conservative for secular Europeans and too Muslim for Christian Europeans (Lucassen 2005:2– 4)—the European Union itself is at risk. As I write this, I can’t predict how the situation will develop in coming years. Unfortunately, I cannot envision an improvement anytime soon. It would take the near simultaneous collapse of both the Assad regime and ISIS, along with newfound stability in Afghanistan, to staunch the two largest flows of migrants, and even if this happened, refugees would still flow, fleeing repression in Eritrea, multiple conflicts in Sudan and in South Sudan, and violence by Boko Haram and other Islamist groups in Africa. Violence and intimidation by the like of Boko Haram can further provoke disproportionate and indiscriminate counterviolence by state actors trying to reassert control. And there are other conflicts which we hear less about of late, but which could reignite with alarming ease: Mali, the Central African Republic, Libya, the Democratic Republic of Congo… In short, I fear that a refugee crisis that was almost invisible to most American media three months ago will only escalate in the coming months and years. In the face of