Emplaced mobilities: Lisbon as a translocality in the migration journeys of Punjabi Sikhs to Europe

ABSTRACT

The arrival in Portugal of recent migrants from the Indian subcontinent is normally a secondary movement from within Europe tied to the search for a regular pathway into legal integration in the EU. However, as favourable migration policy is not paired with easy economic integration onward migration is common. We argue that such complex migration strategies cannot be amply explored through an origin–destination model; instead we suggest that a translocal perspective provides a framework to examine connections and experiences of emplacement in places of passage/reception like Lisbon. Through a qualitative study of the migration journeys and emplaced practices of Punjabi migrants in Lisbon, our findings highlight relationality between multiple scales, elucidating how agency and structure interact at micro and macro levels in shaping migration experiences and outcomes. We show how the materiality of local community structures ensures the navigation of daily life in the city and provides pathways toward legality contributing to wider mobility regimes. Moreover, we illustrate how onward migration represents an individual strategy to realise different aspects of integration in other EU destinations challenging nation-state-bound understandings of citizenship/settlement and integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Punjab–Europe migration
• onward migration
• translocality
• Lisbon
• Sikhs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Jennifer McGarrigle http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9952-3431

Notes

1. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to delve into the corpus of theory on diaspora, we read the concept as fluid and processual rather than bounded in its cultural, economic, political and social manifestations (Mavroudi 2007).

2. However, the reality appears to be increasingly complex as recent follow-up contacts with interviewees and media reports suggest that de facto obstacles related with long waiting times for acquiring residency permits have started to change feedback about opportunities in Portugal.

3. Law no. 2/2006, April 17, regulated by Decree Law no. 237-A/2006, December 14.

4. Mapril (2011, 291) mentions €6000 to acquire Schengen visas in informal markets in Bangladesh, with reference to the period 2003–2008. This case is from 2009.

5. This figure provides an overview of the spatiality of Indian nationals in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Punjabis or Sikhs are not identifiable in official statistics by origin or religion in Portugal. This map does not include the longer settled population from India or East African Indians who have already naturalized.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation For Science and Technology (FCT) [grant number PTCD/CS-GEO/113680/2009] and the EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013): [grant number 316796].