Nu bem djobi vida li: mobilities, belongings and tensions of anti-blackness in the lives of continental African women living in the Cape Verdean capital
Mobilities; Cape Verde; Women; Antiblackness; West Africa
From an intersectional andethnographic perspective, this paper aims to understand theprocesses of mobility, constructions of belonging and the impact of anti-blackness on theeveryday lives of women from the West African continent living in the Cape Verdean capital.By choosing the conflicts built on the racial grammar in a black African country, I try to shedlight on the flows that these women weave, the differences they experience in relation to menof the same origin, their family (re)configurations, and how they develop new networks ofprotection and sociability-which are crucial for their survival-as well as how they make itpossible to maintain the old ones in the midst of the mobilities they weave, beyond the tropes.In order to understand this phenomenon, I base my research on three axes: the processes ofarrival and the daily and legal challenges they face in order to stay in the country; the productionof affection during their stay, reflecting on family, associativism, and conjugal relations; andfinally, I highlightthe national discourses of welcome, bringing up the production of the colorline and new grammars of difference as channels for segregating these women. In this way, byfocusing on those who are "on the margins" of Cape Verdean society, this thesis aims toobservethe persistence and updating of the colonial armor in its structuring