The project analyses the role of football within various "Lusophone spaces" outside of Portugal through a systematic study examining the re-construction of Portuguese culture and senses of national (and former local) belonging as well as respective processes of community building among the six Lusophone Diasporic settings under consideration, London, Hanover, Southeastern New England, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Maputo.

Leading researchers of these locales will examine the hypothesis that football, which is a major cultural and social phenomenon in Portuguese society, represents an especially strong element in migrant culture and everyday life and is a crucial point of reference to the country and/or city of origin. Identification with the Portuguese national team and expatriate fans of Superliga/domestic clubs, and the consumption of mediated football, works to create transnational and transgenerational links among Portuguese migrants.

The central research issues relate to self-perceptions of belonging, cultural practices around and uses of football among young luso-descendants, the eventual impact of social mobility and educational level, the reception of Portuguese media among migrant communities, and the place of football celebrities in the Diasporic settings.

Conversations with high ranking officials in the Portuguese Foreign Ministry lead us to one project focus: how intergeneration relations around football mediate and emphasize how modern Portugal is imagined. There is a tendency among older generation migrants to imagine "Portugal" as a static place that exists exactly as it did when they left. It is this "Portugal" that they pass on to their children; however, football provides these Luso-descendants with a link to contemporary Portuguese cultural and economic institutions.

The project will examine these issues using both qualitative and quantitative social research methodologies.

Research location criteria: Portuguese migrants and their offspring ("luso-descendants") are spread across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania, and Asia. In choosing the research locations for this interdisciplinary and comparative study, the expertise of the researchers was matched with our desire to focus upon communities of prominent relative socio-economic importance of the communities Chosen were three European locales (27.08% of the Portuguese migrant population), including France, London Stockwell and Hanover, Germany. With 25.31% of the Portuguese migrant population in the US, the sizeable Azorean community of New England will be examined. Brazil´s (700 000/ 15.38%) substantial population finds 170 000 in Rio de Janeiro and in Africa, Mozambique (with 13 299 from the "continente"). Brazil and Mozambique provide a contrast to the others as countries of departure for migration to Portugal, creating a unique power relation between the locales.

Why Football, Why now?

While national sport celebrities have always been important to migrants contemporary globalisation makes them ever more prominent due to their role in linking migrants to the homeland and as a result of the commercialisation of sports, such that international broadcasting rights and increased media attention bring increased financial windfall across multiple sectors.

Portuguese institutions such as the Permanent Secretary of Portuguese Communities and the Instituto Camões struggle with certain issues, namely the loss of interest of young luso-descendants in participating in Portuguese emigrant/local associations, the decrease in Portuguese language skills among young luso-descendants, and low migrant voter turnout (only 5% of those eligible vote).

Many elements that had traditionally shaped the construction of Portugueseness in Diasporic settings (electoral behaviour, folklore, Fado, Catholicism, interest in the "património", etc) have lost importance among young luso-descendants, football however, not only remains prominent, its role in this area is ever increasing.

It is important and intellectually fecund to examine how the prominence of "Portuguese football" (a term which in the Portuguese public sphere interestingly has emerged as an equivalent to "Portuguese economy" or "Portuguese theatre/cinema/etc") not only serves the national(ist) discourses that help to emancipate migrants from their local marginal position, but also functions in the transnational sphere and among generations to link globally dispersed Portuguese migrants and their offspring as they exist in and frame "modern Portugal."