Resumo Este artigo discute o papel da alimentação e da circulação de bens alimentares nas migrações contemporâneas. Partindo de um trabalho de campo etnográfico realizado no Rio de Janeiro, em 2014, com famílias de jovens emigrantes portugueses recentemente chegadas ao país, o artigo discute as suas perceções e valores dominantes sobre as práticas alimentares locais, bem como suas rotinas de seleção, aquisição, preparação e consumo de alimentos, para examinar as estratégias de pertença e posicionamento do grupo no Brasil. O artigo explora igualmente a centralidade da alimentação na evocação da origem e a sua relevância dentre as múltiplas coisas que circulam no oceano Atlântico, seguindo o mesmo percurso que as famílias percorreram.

Abstract This article discusses the role of food and food circulation in contemporary migration. Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Rio de Janeiro in 2014 with young Portuguese immigrant families who have entered the country recently, the article focuses on their dominant perceptions and values concerning local food practices, as well as their routines on food selection, acquisition, preparation, and consumption to examine and discuss the group’s strategies of belonging and positioning in Brazil. Moreover, this discussion also explores the centrality of food in the evocation of origin and its relevance among the things that circulate across the Atlantic Ocean, following the same route the families travelled.

ResumoO texto tem por base uma etnografia realizada com três gerações de três famílias que integraram as elites coloniais portuguesas: a primeira geração partiu de Portugal, nos anos 1950/60, para viver em Moçambique e daí partiu, depois de 1974, para o Brasil, onde já nasceram os membros da terceira geração. Pretende contribuir para uma concepção da noção de diáspora sustentada na observação das práticas e das representações de pessoas concretas em situações de deslocação espacial também elas concretas. Para tal faz um entrosamento entre a discussão académica que tem envolvido a noção nas últimas décadas e a ideia de diáspora agenciada pelos membros das famílias estudadas (“diáspora colonial”). Termina afirmando que os conteúdos que lhe são atribuídos estão relacionados com as condições objetivas e subjetivas dos percursos experimentados por quem os convoca. No final, o texto aborda o papel que os objetos deslocados assumem na construção da ideia de diáspora.

AbstractThis article is based on an ethnography carried out with three generations of three families which belonged to the Portuguese colonial elite. The first generation left Portugal and settled in Mozambique in the fifties and sixties, and lived there until 1974. After the revolution, the families migrated to Brazil, where the third generation was born. The article aims to contribute to the depiction of the concept of diaspora by observing the practices and representations of these particular families, in specific mobility contexts. The article promotes to integrate the recent academic discussion on the concept of diaspora with the lived experience and of the families and the appropriations they do of to the concept (‘colonial diaspora’). The article concludes that the contents associated to the concept are highly marked by the subjective and objective experiences of those who experience them. At the end, the paper addresses the role of displaced objects in the making of an idea of diaspora.

This article aims to discuss the potentials of an integrated approach to two significant fields of practice: materiality and migration. Based on the results of a preliminary approach to the Portuguese migrant community in Toronto and three previous ethnographies with Portuguese and Indi-Portuguese migrants conducted in Lisbon, Maputo and four Brazilian cities, it intends in particular to explore the various ways in which the home and home-making as a social and cultural process can work as a significant field to explore that relation. It will be argued that domestic materiality constitutes a particularly productive field to look at the relationships between macro-contexts and micro-practices, social formations and cultural institutions that affect and shape the life experiences of those who migrate. In order to discuss its participation in the evaluations, reconfigurations and processes of rebuilding / reconstructions that necessarily take part in all migratory movements, the work of domestic consumption will be addressed as an expression of those processes but also as a constitutive activity, i. e., the (re)production of identity and belonging.