Abstract

BORDONARO, Lorenzo. Etnográfica [online]. 2009, vol.13, n.1, pp.125-144. ISSN 0873-6561.

In this article I portray the marginality, exclusion and social immobility of young people living in the small port of Bubaque in the Bijagó Islands. Reluctant to be involved in the village economy, but excluded from the port’s market economy, aware of the weakness of the national economy, migration to Europe appears to them to be the only viable means of social promotion. Income and education are not the sole motivations of their aspirations to mobility, however. The young men’s fantasies of migration to Europe are based on a developmentalist narrative framework that creates a cartography of centres and peripheries. Physical mobility towards the north is therefore also envisaged as a chance to obtain - or at least to claim - citizenship in ‘modernity’.

Keywords : youth; Guinea-Bissau; Bijagó Islands; involuntary immobility; migration; marginality.

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