Welcome to Diasbola – the first website reporting on football and migration in a Portuguese context.

The name Diasbola is a synthesis of the two main fields of our research: the Portuguese Diaspora and football, commonly known in Portugal as “a bola”. The project, which will run between November 2007 and October 2010, has various objectives. Firstly, the project investigates the role of football in the daily lives of Portuguese migrants in comparison to other cultural elements linking them to their country of origin. Secondly, Diasbola seeks to operate as an information platform, independent of governmental, institutional or economic interests. Meeting these objectives involves re-thinking established theoretically concepts for emigrants’ new social realities, experiences and narratives: “home “, “father/motherland” and “Portugueseness”.

The self-perception of many Portuguese born or living abroad is often reduced to a few simple characteristics. Besides cultural representations such as folkloristic “ranchos” (typical rural Portuguese dance formations) and culinary delights like the ever popular codfish, “Caldo Verde” (borecole soup), Port wine, coffee and beer, there is one more characteristic with an even a greater impact in Portuguese communities: Portuguese football.

Regardless of the location of any given Portuguese community - Andorra, Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Mozambique, Switzerland or the US – Portuguese clubs and national team football is enthusiastically followed by Portuguese compatriots. Football seems to provide a strong link and information platform to contemporary Portugal: to people and places left behind. Whereas civic participation amongst Portuguese emigrants is marginal at best (somewhere between 5% and 8%) and the introduction of Portuguese language courses increasingly reduced (which means that the linguistic knowledge of luso-descendents may consequently degrade), interest in national or international football competitions continues to be omnipresent. We could easily postulate that Portuguese football is even more important than cultural and linguistic patrimony, or to use a more provocative expression: “Football is the new home for the Portuguese migrant!”

It is in this sense that Diasbola wishes to enter the debate: as a research team, hosted at ICS and funded by FCT, we kindly invite emigrants regardless of whether they are fans of the Portuguese football team and/or clubs to take part in this research via our online survey (see link). This survey is 100% anonymous and the data will be edited only in reference to this project.

All respondents who would like to take part in this research and contribute new ideas, opinions, suggestions, questions and complaints are warmly welcomed to contact us. .