Abstract

TIESLER, Nina Clara. Diasbola: football and Portuguese emigration. Etnográfica [online]. 2012, vol.16, n.1, pp.77-96. ISSN 0873-6561.

This paper serves as an introduction to the dossier “Football and Portuguese emigration” at providing comparative insights into the findings of the international research project Diasbola which analysed the role of football among Portuguese emigrants and luso-descendents in eight diasporic settings. The aim was to qualify football in comparison to other cultural elements which are used by migrants to connect to their country of origin, and in the invention and performance of Portugueseness and community-building processes. We had started with the hypothesis that football, which is a major cultural and social phenomenon in Portuguese society, represents an especially strong element in the emigrant’s culture of everyday life and is a crucial point of reference to their origins. Deriving from ethnographic material, results clearly confirm this hypothesis, but counter its somewhat encapsulating connotation: while football in its social formation and its possible functions is shaped by each particular diasporic context, it also provides dynamics which shape such contexts and conditions.

Keywords : Portuguese emigration; football; leisure; portugueseness; antropology of sport.

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