Book Reviews Managing African Portugal: The Citizen-Migrant Distinc- this instance, the reader sees the extent to which becoming tion. Keisha Fikes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, European also means becoming middle class. This becom- 2009. 224 pp. ing requires social and economic distance from the African migrant. It also requires massive European investment and policing. DAMANI J. PARTRIDGE The policing that Fikes describes, however, comes not University of Michigan in the form of explicit border control (those marked as racially Portuguese also move from the former colony to In Keisha Fikes’s engaging ethnography, Managing African the metropole) but, rather, in the regulation and criminal- Portugal, she offers a detailed account of how European ization of the African fish mongers, peixarias, women who Union accession has meant the production of the social, po- must wake up in the middle of the night to buy fresh fish litical, and economic distinction between migrants and cit- from Portuguese wholesalers, and then sell the fish from izens. In particular, this distinction is characterized by the temporary stands to middle-class, wealthy, and poor Por- loss of the myth of social intimacy inherent in “Lusotropi- tuguese and African buyers near train stations, bus stations, calism,” an ideal that flowed in the colonial era from Brazil and sea ports in urban Portugal. With the implementation to Portugal and also included the former African colonies; of European norms, however, this practice (originally car- at least in part, it envisioned the Portuguese miscegenation ried out primarily by Portuguese men and women) comes as proof of antiracism. In a postcolonial social and politi- to be seen as unhygienic, illegal, and African. As European cal economy in which “miscegenation [has now been] in- social and economic investment in standardized and regu- terrupted,” Fikes shows how contemporary Lusophone life lated processing facilities and major grocery stores become is characterized by new forms of racialization, in which the the norm, police begin to regulate the symbolic stench of “African” in Portugal becomes a migrant as opposed to a cit- the unregulated urban fish scenes. African women who izen, and the space for mixing disappears. also had part-time second jobs as urban domestics, jani- Fikes investigates this process through the lives of Cape tors, or kitchen help must calculate running from the po- Verdian fish mongers who reside in Lisbon. Cape Verdians, lice as part of their regular business practice. They sustain she reveals, are not the ideal typical Africans in Portuguese racialized verbal injury from the police, street sweepers, and colonial history. Unlike other African colonials, they were Portuguese drug addicts who compete both for social le- not only socially and racially ambiguous (reflecting one ver- gitimacy and urban space, the same spaces in which the sion of the Lusotropical fantasy), but they were also legally peixarias hide their fish to make quick escapes from uni- considered to be Portuguese citizens. Fikes’s account is formed authority possible. largely a story of becoming unambiguously Other. In part, Fikes explains, the second jobs the peixarias With the move toward European modernity, also hold as domestics, janitors, or kitchen help become require- marked by the postcolonial move to the Portuguese ments for legal Portuguese residency. Portuguese employ- metropole, the Portuguese citizenship of Cape Verdians ul- ers must guarantee at least a year’s worth of employment timately fades. The citizen–migrant distinction, then, be- in order for those now increasingly viewed as “migrants” comes a process of mutual constitution. The new Por- to get legal permission to stay in the country. With the tuguese citizen needs the African domestic to become a moves toward democracy, modernity, and European acces- “white” European, just as the emerging status of European- sion, those from the former colonies who don’t sustain resi- ness produces the now unambiguously African subject as dency in Portugal ultimately forfeit their formal Portuguese the tolerated migrant. citizenship (from one generation to the next) if they cannot By focusing on the scene of the informal fish markets prove racialized Portuguese heritage. Thus, residency per- from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, Fikes shows the de- mits become part of the social, legal, and economic regu- velopment of this process as part of the concrete articula- lation of the migrant–citizen distinction. In the process of tions of racism and citizenship in everyday European life. In the move toward European modernity, Portugal becomes AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 201–233, ISSN 0094-0496, online ISSN 1548-1425. C 2012 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2011.01358.x American Ethnologist Volume 39 Number 1 February 2012 a country of immigration as opposed to a place people pri- the United States where identities and racial identifications marily leave. are, as it were, given with birth, in Brazil one is not born In the end, Fikes shows how the criminalization of black or ´ındio but becomes so. Of course, the popular and peixarias spaces via discourses of hygiene and European erudite comparison of the racial and ethnic situation in the becoming lead the African women from economic flexi- United States and Brazil is an academic field of its own and, bility and the possibilities of greater wealth, to full-time, in many ways, there is much to be said to the uniqueness of low-wage domesticated labor. Here, the citizen–migrant Brazil as well as on the possibility to generalize discourses, distinction is concretized as “white” (now middle-class) categories, and predicament of the U.S. ethnic–racial con- Portuguese women take on managerial roles (sometimes as dition to other locations. This book, although not explicitly owners of homes with African domestic “help”) but also as a comparative study, explores in detail how this process of bank employees who instruct the African cleaning staff or becoming a racial-ethnic subject occurs, and in doing so supervisors of janitorial (largely African) crews. elicits how in Brazil people, at some point of their life and Through Fikes’s ethnography, the reader sees how the under certain political conditions chose, as it were, to come Europeanized demands to distinguish the citizen from the out as negro (black) or ´ındio, in locations where, up to a migrant not only make possible a new vision of the Por- generation ago, other collective identities associated with tuguese citizen as “white” and middle class but also forces class or the rural conditions would have been mobilized. the “African migrant” away from economic independence Why is this happening? Has it to do with the new condi- and out of public space. She must now exist in the back- tions created by Brazilian modernization? Or, more in de- ground, effectively with a much lower earning potential. tail, with new facilitating conditions offered by the changing Her presence, though, helps to define the terms of what the legal context? Or a bit of both? French’s book is a painstak- new ideals of Europeanized Portuguese citizenship are not. ingly detailed account of the making of new ethnicities and If she is a waged laborer, the Portuguese citizen is middle of what in Brazil has been called “neocommunities” in rural class. If her residency status is tenuous, the Portuguese cit- Brazil, where both ´ındio-ness and negritude are contested izen’s is secure. If her ability to make political demands is icons undergoing a process of re-signification—from onus uncertain, the Portuguese citizen’s is a foregone conclusion. to bonus, from liability to asset. While Fikes argues these distinctions serve as ideals and not Throughout the book one reads of a universe in mo- always as realities, the ideals have material consequences. tion: agents, conditions, laws, and the self seem to have Fikes concludes her study with the words of a former become more, as it were, ethnic prone. In the same place African peixarias turned domestic: where one generation ago most community activists would have underplayed race or ethnicity, emphasizing commu- Remember those times, when I used to carry all that nity belonging of class solidarity, one now hears a differ- weight of fish!? GOD HELP ME!!!!!!!!!! We fought those ent language. Has, however, the context changed as much policemen every day!? And we stood up to people who as the language of the law and the laymen around it? This put us down. What a lifetime ago .... That was REAL work, those were different days, Portugal is a different is, perhaps, the main question the book bears. French sug- place today. ... I guess we’re stuck with it ... poor, im- gests that, in many ways, the ethnoracial condition, deep migrant, it’s just that kind of fight, you know? You keep down, has changed less than the fashion it is now repre- going ... what else does one do? [p. 164] sented in writing, the law, legislation, and the jargon of social movement. Agents do change, however, do change Fikes’s next study might begin to answer these questions. dramatically. The book shows the rise and decline of the What does one do? Is the African or “Other” noncitizen ulti- influence of the Catholic Church on these social move- mately destined for a life without any future fight? As an- ments. Priests, especially those related to the Liberation thropologists, do we have any role beyond revealing this Theology movement, were great “ethnicizers,” making peo- resignation and the process that led up to it? ple become aware of ethnoracial injustice and promoting community formation also on the basis of ethnicity and Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil’s the struggle against racial hierarchies.