ABSTRACT
Drawing on immigrant men in Portugal, this chapter aims at disentangling the ways in which masculinities are constructed through and by differences pertaining to specific diasporic communities, hailing from contrasting colonial and postcolonial histories. Our analysis implies mapping the plural strategies for defining oneself as a man while viewing these practices as linked to the history of Portuguese colonialism. Such a perspective means that we bring modernity and postcolonialism into the equation inasmuch as gender and power, while underpinned by various transnationalizations, cannot be viewed as ahistorical. Rather, the legacy of colonialist subjection is paramount for understanding the ways men from different countries (Brazil, Mozambique and Cape Verde) discover their marginalization in the Portuguese context. If the subordinate condition of immigrant men is often reinforced by racialized/ethnic otherness, the ways men reconstruct masculinity varies along lines of origin and the specific experience of colonial oppression. Transnational encounters must be understood as resulting from history, which implies reading the global and the transnational as connected to colonial pasts, as well as postcolonial and neo-imperialist dynamics, often converging in one location. In other words, the ways in which different men cope with racialized discrimination are different for historical reasons.
