Maria Beatriz Rocha-Trindade, Centro de Estudos das Migrações e das Relações Interculturais/ CEMRI, Universidade Aberta/ UAb, Lisboa, PT
Within the framework of the wide global world we live in, where information and communication easiness allow you to meet and mingle with the existing diversity, the intentional search to aggregate those who feel bound by a sense of belonging has become evident.
National Governments have been seeking to preserve that feeling of belonging through specific programs intended to catalyze both individual and collective interests of those who live within or outside the country.
To this end, "tools" of civic and secular nature are used as well as religious ones, not forgetting those who are able to provide moments of leisure in the desired social re-composition.
To evoke the national day, to share devotions or festivities incorporating a cultural legacy which is to conserve are all part of the policies pursued to that end. To implement them requires creativity and to give them continuity requires supporting their maintenance.
The locations and the calendars of these events should thus be respected, in order to adapt the content of the policies projects to their deployment.
In reality, the multiculturalism evident in migratory spaces does not invalidate individual characteristics that establish the link between the micro societies living in foreign soil and their origin.