“Managing African Portugal is a well-developed ethnographic account of migrant experiences in Portugal. Kesha Fikes’ political economic perspective brings to light the performative interactions involved in the fashioning and refashioning of citizens and migrants alike. . . . Fikes nuanced discussion of gender, race, transnational migration, and citizenship helps demonstrate the value of ethnography.” — Brandon D. Lundy and Jessica Lopes, African Studies Quarterly
“[ A] brilliantly written book. . . . This is an important book that finally puts Portugal on the map of an English readership interested in questions of modernity, race, citizenship and nationalism.” — Bernd Reiter, Ethnic and Racial Studies
“Fikes convincingly links new regulation enforcement to the emergence of novel notions and practices of citizenship. Her focus on citizenship governmentality enables a fruitful articulation between a macro-perspective (on state legislation and economic reform) and the micro-level approach to individual motives and practices cherished by anthropologists. Managing African Portugal is an interesting. . . exploration of the social consequences of modern European integration on ‘race’ ideologies and relations.” — Ana Mourão, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Association
“Fikes’ book is a thoughtful assessment of how colonial legacies impact contemporary social relations in an EU context and is a poignant critique of how government-sponsored ‘multiculturalist’ programs can increase the marginality of the people they purport to help.” — Samuel Weeks, Etnografica
“In Keisha Fikes’s engaging ethnography, Managing African Portugal, she offers a detailed account of how European Union accession hasmeant the production of the social, political, and economic distinction between migrants and citizens. . . . Through Fikes’s ethnography, the reader sees how the Europeanized demands to distinguish the citizen from the migrant not only make possible a new vision of the Portuguese citizen as ‘white’ and middle class but also forces the ‘African migrant’ away from economic independence and out of public space.” — Damani J. Partridge, American Ethnologist
“This is a unique study that transcends traditional ethnography. . . . Managing African Portugal is a must-read for anyone interested in the study of postcolonial relations within Europe and the livelihoods of African migrants who are systematically excluded from citizenship.” — Isabel P. B. Fêo Rodrigues, American Anthropologist
“Managing African Portugal is a moving ethnography of the fraught but persistent lives of Cape Verdean peixeiras (fishmongers) caught between the cultural logics of citizenship, remittances, and migrant labor. But it is also a searing account of how state-organized anti-racist campaigns, meant to free citizens like the peixeiras from racial violence, can be one of the means of locking them into new forms of class violence.” — Elizabeth A. Povinelli, author of The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality
“Managing African Portugal is a timely and invaluable contribution to the study of African migrants in Europe. Kesha D. Fikes offers a thoughtful examination of how colonialism’s legacies inform the social politics of a European nation-state now significantly embedded within the contours of the European Union. In so doing, she illuminates interpretations of race as historically constituted effects of different political regimes and policies.” — Paulla A. Ebron, author of Performing Africa