Latin American migration to Portugal and Spain is usually facilitated by the historical and cultural ties that bind Latin American and Iberian countries. Nevertheless, these bonds might also function as a means of reinforcing power asymmetries and social hierarchies. Based on Decolonial Thinking and on theories of Social Psychology, this study is aimed at analyzing the dual role of these ties, both as factors of approximation and as instruments of domination and violence. Therefore, we conducted individual interviews with 23 Latin Americans (from Brazil, Chile and Mexico), aged between 18 and 49 years old, who migrated to Portugal or Spain. Data were analyzed through Thematic Analysis. The results allowed us to discuss: the use of language as an instrument of domination; the existence of negative stereotypes regarding Latin America(ns) and the process of essentialization of the “Other”; and how Latin Americans are sometimes seen as a preferred type of migrant and at other times as being eternal foreigners. We hope this study serves as an incentive for future reflections on how the different forms of coloniality might still shape present-day intergroup relations among countries with a shared colonial past.

This article gives an ethnographic account of national identity in the day‐to‐day lives of villagers who face one another across the Portuguese‐Spanish frontier along the Guadiana River on the Iberian Peninsula. The article shows that despite European integration, the symbolic boundaries of culture and identity in these nation states persist.

This paper studies the linguistic landscape of two distant border-crossing areas, located in the municipalities of Verín (Spain)-Chaves (Portugal) and Vilar Formoso (Portugal)-Fuentes de Oñoro (Spain). The research is based on a corpus of 306 texts promoted by public bodies and private entities or individuals. It examines the presence and weight of the languages in which they are written, as well as the linguistic accuracy of the collected texts, interference phenomena and mixed statements that combine both languages. The results obtained demonstrate the complexity of the linguistic landscape on the borderland, a place with intense interpersonal contact and, at the same time, an area where national identity is often vindicated. In this sense, convergence whereby linguistic systems of neighbouring languages become similar due to the borrowing of material from the neighbour's language or, on the contrary, non-convergence, i.e. the lack of such converging and thus the tendency to not use the neighbour's language in the texts placed into the public space, can serve as an indicator of language loyalty and, as such, of the strength of the national identity.

This article tackles the discourses of national identification produced by the inhabitants of a village close to the border between Portugal and Spain on the Guadiana river, in order to shed light on the persistence of the Castilians/Spaniards as the main collective partner, the “significant other” in the construction and reproduction, through difference, of Portuguese identity. Based on ethnographic materials collected approximately in the last two decades, it shows that, in the context under study, the representation of the personality of the Portuguese people emerges out of a structure of contrasts in relation to the representation of the Spaniards’ personality. Similarly, the contrast to the Castilians/Spaniards is the main leitmotif from which the Portuguese identity has been built over time.

Borders exist in almost every sphere of life. Initially, borders were established in connection with kingdoms, regions, towns, villages and cities. With nation-building, they became important as a line separating two national states with diff erent " national characteristics, " narratives and myths. The term " border " has a negative connotation for being a separating line, a warning signal not to cross a line between the allowed and the forbidden. The awareness of both mental and factual borders in manifold spheres of our life has made them a topic of consideration in almost all scholarly disciplines—history, geography, political science and many others. This book primarily incorporates an interdisciplinary and comparative approach. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists and political science scholars from a diverse range of European universities analyze historical as well as contemporary perceptions and perspectives concerning border regions—inside the EU, between EU and non-EU European countries, and between European and non-European countries.

Within the borders of Europe, the raia (literally: line) between Spain and Portugal is quite singular. This, among other reasons, is due to its long history as a limit between two States and to its permanent absence in the main processes of modernization and development. Despite this, and for the border regions, the entrance of Portugal and Spain into the European Community did allow the establishment of the essential conditions for the formation of a new model of relations and development. The expectations generated in the border regions relating to this new model -symbolized in particular by the INTERREG initiative, in overcoming the chronic problems of socio-economic articulation and development will not materialise as expected if convergence processes at regional level are taken into account. Despite the positive interventions, these regions continue to lag far behind more dynamic areas with a higher living standard on the Iberian Peninsula, such that the asymmetries and inequal...

The project Frontera hispano-portuguesa: documentación lingüística y bibliográfica (FRONTESPO) was born in 2015 with the aim of exploring the linguistic situation of the border between Portugal and Spain, since, in spite of its extraordinary appeal, there was no overall description of it, and most studies were outdated. One of the tools created in the framework of this project was a speech corpus, the result of interviews with 287 informants from different age groups carried out in 64 towns on both sides of the border. In addition to linguistic data, the corpus provides information on border culture and experiences; some examples will be offered in this paper.

The border is an area of transition in time, but it becomes a relevant space of identities. Thus, the borders as spaces of confrontation and dialogue are both areas of consolidation and differences, whose multiplication generates its own identity and autonomy. As such, the Portuguese-Spanish border cooperation has proved to be of particular importance to the rigidity of blurring boundaries, to integrate territories to refocus peripheries. In this sense, were overcome mere local neighborhood relations and contacts were established increasingly close links between the two peoples and two states of the Iberian Peninsula. The consecration of territorial cooperation as one of the objectives of the nodal European cohesion policy was expressed in the regulations governing the Structural Funds - the REG (EC) 1083/2006 of 11 July (general provisions) and REG (EC) 1080/2006, 5 July (provisions on ERDF). The support there shaped devotes three strands of cooperation. Namely: Cross Border Corporation; transnational cooperation, interregional cooperation. And now is time to express another thought and emphasis on the aim of this work - analyse (albeit brief) theme Portugal - Europe: Spaces border, cross-border cooperation and to better clarify the issue above-mentioned study the Cooperation Programme Portugal-Spain border 2007-2013. Keywords: Border; Community Regional Policy; Cross-border cooperation; Interregional cooperation: Portugal; Spain

This paper tries to achieve and increase a depth in the analysis the concept of border culture. That historic and ethnologic research was already initiated by the teacher in different field and theoretical works carried out with Javier San Vicente and Ester Álvarez. The work was implemented in two borderlands of the Iberian Peninsula: Roncal Valley (Navarre) and Riverbanks of Douro. Through these pages the dissertation will focus attention on the point of the concept of boundary and its anthropological reality. By this way, will be analyzed social and ethno historic concepts of border culture, frontier and peripherals territories. Similarly, it will set out a comparative perspective of the identity and the phenomenology of border landscape as growth factors.