Mobile communications and belongings: cape verdeans in Portugal

Abstract

The use of the mobile phone to contact research subjects granted me privileged access to a body of poetic and humorous texts. This article examines Cape Verdeans' use of pass-forward text messages to express allegiances to different collective identities that provide information and inspiration for Cape Verdeans living in Portugal. They are used to foment and express solidarity between Cape Verdeans, Africans, Christians and Women. An analysis of their contents elucidates two aspects of belonging. Firstly, the personal and intimate which tends to the Self, in its yearnings for a better future and for intimate relationship, sought through religious communion and romance. Secondly, the political and discursive which foments community, imagined not only through nation, Pan-Africanism and gender, but also beyond any such boundaries towards an all-inclusive dimension of belonging, rooted in relations of solidarity.