Belongings and Interactions: Negotiating Portuguese-Speaking Identities in Boston

This article reflects on an ongoing research project on the current movement for affirmative action on behalf of Portuguese speakers in metropolitan Boston, through a crosscutting perspective combining ethnography and social history within a socioanthropological analysis. The focus is on the interactive relationships among different Portuguese-speaking immigrants and their descendants in the context of the nonprofit Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers (MAPS). What makes the “Portuguese-speaking” case so interesting is its encompassing of a very disparate set of populations and identities, including their contrasting migratory history and pathways of incorporation, as well as their different mother tongues (Portuguese and Kriolu—the Cape Verdian mother tongue).