Narratives of refusal towards imagined communities: postcolonial orders of (im)possibilities and (im)mobilities in l*usophone terrains

This chapter examines long-standing hegemonies and
inequalities, perpetuating different *orders of (im)possibilities *in the
context of South-North mobility, by contrasting institutional discourses
and everyday encounters. From sociolinguistic, ethnographic and
postcolonial perspectives, it critically revisits *lusofonia* as a
collective (discursive) practice reified in the Community of Portuguese
Language Countries (*CPLP*), and the related *Centro Comum de Vistos* [Common
Visa Centre] created in Cape Verde in 2009, as neo-colonial projects with
their promises of facilitations, and equitable and reciprocal mobility
possibilities for “lusophone” subjects. The chapter discusses how language
and history are mobilized in the *CPLP*’s eventfulness as a communicative
practice that fosters mobility utopias while resonating a revival of
colonial structures and nostalgias within “lusophone” mobility regimes and
interactions. It brings to the fore mismatches of institutional “portraits”
with narratives of (im)mobility and refusal, from fieldwork conducted in
three Cape Verdean islands – Santo Antão, São Vicente and Santiago– and in
Luxembourg. The chapter grounds our understanding of the impact and
outcomes of this geopolitical project of *lusofonia *in Cape Verdeans’
actual condition of (im)mobility as well as in imaginations of futures that
do not necessarily transform but rather perpetuate inequalities across
racial, citizenship and other lines.