Abstract
This 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.
Keywords
colonial diasporas; colonial elites; objects; Portuguese diaspora