Navigating Between Inclusion and Exclusion: Young Cape Verdean Migrants in Portugal

This paper analyses the transnational context within which Cape Verdean secondary school students have come to study in vocational colleges in northern Portugal on courses such as accounting, oenology, aquatic rescue, computer science, ancillary health technologies, tourism and socio-cultural animation. The paper examines how the policies of local councils in Cape Verde and of vocational colleges in Portugal have influenced the students’ mobility options focusing, in particular, on the practical effects of the unpredictability that characterises the implementation of Portuguese immigration laws at the local level. Through an apparent loop-hole in Portuguese law, Cape Verdean students have been able to receive technical education in Portugal under the same conditions as local students who qualify for subsidies. Unlike Portuguese students, however, many Cape Verdeans have no other financial support beyond the subsidies. Apart from the material difficulties they experience, their expectations of finding work in Portugal at the end of the course - in some cases to finance further education - are thwarted not only by the current economic crisis but also by their ambiguous legal status which does not automatically guarantee them the right to stay and work in Portugal and has an overall systemic effect of pushing them into illegality. The paper examines the strategies the students adopt to work around illegality and how flows in affective circuits of care are constrained and blocked by the shifting policy environment in Portugal.