On Black Womanhood and Migration in Lisbon

A field note on what Black women inherit, navigate, and build beyond social media fantasy

Christine Job - Casa Mísia, Lisbon

I’ve just returned from an artist residency in Lisbon courtesy of the Kees Eijrond Foundation, where I had the immense pleasure to interview Black Lusophone women on their relationship to migration, their identities within Blackness/Africanness in Lisbon, and their thoughts on the Black American migrant women who increasingly arrive in Lisbon.

But as a Black American and Trinidadian woman, from Atlanta, who has lived nearly 9 years in Spain, why this focus and why now?

I suppose it all began with me tugging at a thread, years ago.

The thread? Can migration be a pathway to wellness?

Not wellness as branding. Not wellness as a smoothie, a candle, a crystal—though I enjoy all three. I mean wellness as something embodied: the ability to live inside your body with less fear, with more dignity, with more choice. A topic that I have explored and that has evolved through exploration on my award-winning podcast, Flourish in the Foreign, which captures the voices and stories of Black women across the diaspora who have left their home in search of…something else.

Over the years, I’ve watched the growing fervor around Portugal as a destination for American migration, and increasingly, Black American migration. Specifically, Black American women's migration.

What was it about this place that had it featured on listicle after blog, after vlog, sometimes raving about it in strains of utopia? I kept hearing the same motivations repeated: the weather, the healthcare, the cost of living… and again and again, the presence of Black people. Because I’m nosy and a bit of a skeptic—anti-Blackness and misogynoir are global—this piqued my interest.

In the social media version of this story, Portugal is sometimes described in almost fantastical language. Like a paradise, like a racial utopia, like a place where you can finally be “free.”

So I found myself wondering:

What do Black people in Portugal think of this story?

Would they describe Portugal in the same terms?

Has migration to Portugal brought relief to Afro-Portuguese, Afro-descendant, and African migrants? How about Liberation?

What does it mean when the visibility of Blackness becomes a major factor in your decision to move?

As these questions marinated in my mind, my interest in Black mobility and what that meant for Black American women deepened. So much so that by the time I was awarded this residency in summer 2025, I was already toying with pursuing this curiosity into academia.

I instinctively felt that to explore migration as a form of liberation for Black American women in Lisbon and Portugal, I needed to know more about the history of Blackness and Africans in Portugal. To understand and ground myself within the multitude of identities and experiences, and how contemporary Portuguese society considers Blackness as Black American women enter.

In early summer 2025, I proposed what I thought would be a simple comparative audio narrative of Black Lusophone migrant women and Black American migrant women. By the time I arrived in Lisbon right after Christmas 2025, I’d developed a research proposal and applied to several doctoral programs on this topic. Needless to say, the project (or perhaps my thinking about the project) had evolved.

But as I hit the cobblestone (and hilly!) ground and met with incredibly patient and knowledgeable scholars, activists, and simply fascinating people, I soon realized this curiosity has led to something much bigger.

So this residency became preliminary fieldwork: the first seedlings of community contact and relationship-building, while emphasizing something I consider non-negotiable.

If I’m going to ask questions about Black American arrival in Lisbon, I cannot only engage with what I think I understand in the present. I have to understand the context. The history of Black presence there, the structures that shape everyday life, and the realities Black communities have been navigating long before Portugal became a social media fantasy.

The Grounding I Needed

I’m deeply grateful to the team at the Museu de Lisboa—specifically David Felismino, Ana Paula Antunes, and Ana Margarida Campos—for an incredibly generous tour and long, grounding discussion. The tape I recorded there was powerful. You won’t hear it in the preview below, but it will live later in the larger body of work.

That museum grounding matters because Lisbon’s relationship to Blackness is not new.

Let’s start here: Lisbon was a major node in the transatlantic slave trade. Portugal prohibited the importation of enslaved people into the mainland in 1761, but slavery and its afterlives continued through the empire. Abolition came later through a 19th-century legal process, followed by new forms of coercion that don’t disappear just because the law changes.

Then there is the turning point of 25 April 1974, the Carnation Revolution, and the rapid decolonization that followed, reshaping migration flows and the modern contours of Afro-descendant life in Portugal.

This is the backdrop. The infrastructure. The thing that makes it impossible for me to treat Portugal as a blank canvas for anybody’s reinvention fantasy, mine included.

What You’ll Hear in the Preview Audio

I’m sharing a preview audio excerpt, which I presented at the Kees Eijrond Foundation on Thursday, January 15th, 2026. It introduces the heart of the inquiry and sets the tone for what this work is becoming.

In the clip, you’ll hear the voices and stories of three women: Amina Bawa, Magda Burity, and Mónica Soares. Each of these women has a distinct relationship to Portugal, and each shares her own reflections on mobility, migration, and what it means to be “Black” in this place, at this time.

Their perspectives don’t “complete” the story, but they open it correctly. They give us a foundation rooted in lived experience, not fantasy.

My Position, Plainly

Before you listen, I want to name my position clearly: I’m a Black American and Trinidadian woman, raised in Atlanta, living in Spain.

An interloper in this setting, producing in English.

I’m a self-funded researcher, audio documentarian, amateur archivist, ethnographer, business and narrative strategist, and a lawyer in a past life.

But I’m deeply interested in and committed to researching and documenting Black women’s mobility and migration across the diaspora.

So this is not a verdict on Portugal. It’s not the final say.

It’s a curious inquiry into systems, stories, and lived experience.

With that being stated, I’m deeply grateful for the outpouring of support I’ve received with this project.

Thanks to everyone who connected me to friends and contacts while I was in Lisbon. Big thanks to everyone who responded to or reposted my callout for interviewees; that was an immense help. Thank you to the Kees Eijrond Foundation for the opportunity.

Anyway, thank you for reading. On to the audio…

Thank you for listening. I invite your thoughts. As this is a self-funded project, completion and publishing are up in the air, but I hope to complete and release it by Q2. We’ll see.

And if you’re in Lisbon/Portugal, or you know someone who is—especially Black women with roots in Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé e Príncipe—I would love to interview you (remotely). Eventually, I’ll be looking to speak to Black American migrant women, Black British migrant women, and other Black migrant women in Lisbon/Portugal.

Be Well,

Christine