Migration

The early Portuguese colonists soon realized that the topography and climate of the Cape Verde Islands rendered them unsuitable for profitable plantation agriculture. Moreover, careless agricultural practices by the colonial landowners caused significant deterioration to an already fragile ecological base, while the lack of stimulation for local entrepreneurship precluded fishing from becoming an important source of food or means of subsistence.

In such conditions, migration became a survival strategy for many Cape Verdeans. By 1869, when the abolition of slavery was completed, there had developed a large stratum of landless sharecroppers made up of former slaves and their descendants. At about the same time, the labour needs of new business enterprises abroad created opportunities for migration, notably to other Portuguese island colonies and to the United States. Poor Cape Verdeans of both sexes were also recruited, most successfully in times of famine, for work in conditions resembling those of slavery on the cacao and coffee plantations in the Portuguese colonies in the Gulf of Guinea.

Migration to the United States had its beginnings sometime before the mid-nineteenth century, when American whalers stopped at the islands for victualling and repairs and to pick up the occasional crewman. After the American Civil War, Cape Verdean men and women took up work in mills and farms in New England; some of the men worked in maritime occupations. The elite tended to emigrate to Portugal and Latin America as well as to Portugal’s colonies in Africa, where they served as educators, missionaries, and businessmen. In the 1960s Cape Verdeans began responding to the labour demands of European nations, including Portugal (whose own labourers were migrating to France), France, and the Netherlands in particular. Since the islands gained independence in 1975, migration has continued, with certain modifications reflecting changes in global migratory patterns. Modern migrants often leave the islands with tourist visas for European countries, the United States, and, in a few cases, Canada. They number many young women as well as young men, often with post-secondary education or training in a skilled occupation. Today, the number of Cape Verdean immigrants and their descendants living abroad is estimated to be about 600,000, that is, one-third more than live in the island homeland. For well over a century, remittances from Cape Verdean immigrants, totalling $25–$30 million a year, have been of marked economic importance for the islands.