2024 2024: Tagus Press publishes Migration, Mill Work, and Portuguese Communities in New England

The publishing arm of the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture announces the publication of Migration, Mill Work, and Portuguese Communities in New England, edited by Cristiana Bastos, Bela Feldman-Bianco, and Miguel Moniz

Tagus Press, the publishing arm of the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, announces the publication of Migration, Mill Work, and Portuguese Communities in New England, edited by Cristiana Bastos, Bela Feldman-Bianco, and Miguel Moniz. 

A century after the publication of the controversial Two Portuguese Communities in New England, this latest work brings together analytical research essays, personal testimonies, poems, fiction, photos, and drawings on Portuguese and Portuguese-Americans in their predicaments, struggles, encounters, and achievements experienced under the pressures of upwards mobility, racialized tensions, politics of assimilation or multiculturalism, and labor and ethnic revival movements.

“Migration and Mill Work. . .weaves together diverse aspects of Portuguese migration, labor movements, racialization, and the lives of individuals who shaped, resisted, and thrived in industrial New England. Through a blend of academic essays, personal testimonies, creative writing, and photographs, the authors offer a historical exploration of the Portuguese experience, challenging stereotypes and providing a deep understanding of the multifaceted intersections of ethnic/racial identity, labor, and society in New England,” said Dulce Maria Soares-Scott, Professor and Chair, Department of Social Work Criminal Justice, Anderson University.

“Compared to other immigrant populations that have settled in the US during the third and now fourth waves of immigration, those with origins in Portugal and its various overseas territories are less well known. This book, which wisely focuses on the political economy of work in the textile industry, as well as on issues of race, class, and gender, helps to enhance our knowledge of the Portuguese experience,” said Caroline B. Brettell, University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emerita, Southern Methodist University.

“The editors of this timely and essential volume of essays focusing on the multilayered and indelible ways in which the textile mill economy shaped the lives of Portuguese immigrants in New England provocatively assert that by leafing through its illuminating pages, readers will not only gain a better knowledge of the past but the inspiration to act upon the future. . .the nuanced and complex understanding of “who we are” that the book conveys also bears compellingly on our present, a moment in which the unprecedented pace and extent of migration poses immense logistical, economic, environmental, social, political and cultural challenges to migrating individuals as well as “sending” and “receiving” societies, countries and biomes,” said Luís Madureira, Professor and Chair, African Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Volume Editors Cristiana Bastos, Bela Feldman-Bianco, and Miguel Moniz are three anthropologists with converging interests of the Portuguese of New England.

Migration, Mill Work, and Portuguese Communities in New England is part of the Colour of Labour project, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Advanced Grant No. 695573).

Migration, Mill Work, and Portuguese Communities in New England is volume 30 of the Portuguese in the Americas Series, edited by Francisco Cota Fagundes (UMass Amherst).