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This paper serves as an introduction to the dossier "Football and Portuguese emigration" at providing comparative insights into the findings of the international research project Diasbola which analysed the role of football among Portuguese emigrants and luso-descendents in eight diasporic settings. The aim was to qualify football in comparison to other cultural elements which are used by migrants to connect to their country of origin, and in the invention and performance of Portugueseness and community-building processes. We had started with the hypothesis that football, which is a major cultural and social phenomenon in Portuguese society, represents an especially strong element in the emigrant's culture of everyday life and is a crucial point of reference to their origins. Deriving from ethnographic material, results clearly confirm this hypothesis, but counter its somewhat encapsulating connotation: while football in its social formation and its possible functions is shaped by each particular diasporic context, it also provides dynamics which shape such contexts and conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the ways in which Portuguese migrants connect to their country of origin. How do they re-construct or re-invent elements of their (narrated) "culture of origin" in Hamburg and in other parts of Northern Germany? Based on ethnographic material and a quantitative survey, the findings suggest that alongside the decrease in language skills and participation in Portuguese associations, many elements which had shaped migrant constructions of Portuguese culture in diasporic settings, are losing importance while football identification, consumption and leisure activity seemingly remain important or are even increasing. Football provides a privileged space for performances of Portuguese belonging and (popular) culture while at the same time being a platform for intercultural encounters. The latter also holds true for Portuguese gastronomic establishments, which give space to the development of culinary and linguistically syncretism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]