Since the end of the 19th century, Portuguese immigration, composed mainly of populations from the Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira, was concentrated in some of the largest industrial cities in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, such as New Bedford, Fall River, MA, and Providence, RI. (Pap, The Portuguese Americans, 1981). However, these immigrants also settled to a lesser extent in two smaller cities close to Boston: Cambridge and Somerville (Ito-Adler, The Portuguese in Cambridge & Somerville, 1980). Here, the most expressive Portuguese visibility is concentrated in a small area crossing the border between these two cities. Despite the transformations of deindustrialization and gentrification that took place there since the last three decades, Portuguese ancestry still depicts the sociocultural landscape of this area which hosts a small, yet visible, Azorean-American community.
Azorean-American ethnicity remains largely undocumented and understudied in Cambridge and Somerville. Yet, signs and symbols of a uniquely Azorean presence persevere in this territory of rapid change, defined by gentrification threatening this community’s existence. These markings range from associations, religious organizations, churches, processions, celebrations, flags, car stickers, supermarket products, photo albums, intimate family recipes, meals, and forms of Azorean-American speech, among others. Our research aims to deepen knowledge about this process of urban transformation along three interrelated dimensions:
a)    Sociolinguistics: an analysis of the linguistic landscape of the Portuguese language in this territory within the specific Azorean contexts of language and prestige, in more public or more intimate family contexts (the home, festivities, school, work, etc.), in part through an auto-ethnography of a Portuguese language instructor.
b)    Transnationalism: identification of the current connections between the neighborhood and abroad, focused on the biographic and familiar narratives across generations, between Cambridge/Somerville and Azorean islands, through historical and ethnographical research, both in US and Azores archives.
c)    The urban transition process, from a working-class neighborhood to a global and gentrified hub: an analysis of the ethnic resilience of a community, through an ethnographic approach to public, semi-public, and private spaces of daily life.
The methodological approach is multidisciplinary and collaborative, combining ethnography, sociolinguistics, and historical research, mainly in neighborhoods in Cambridge and Somerville where Azorean-American ethnicity has had influence. Due to a consolidated network of interlocutors (Giuseppe Formato having grown up and lived in this area and Graça Índias Cordeiro having stayed and worked for brief periods since 2009) both individual and institutional, the ethnographic fieldwork is based on observation of public/private activities within churches, clubs, and associations, schools, houses, street, as well as interviews with residents and visitors connected with Portuguese and Azorean ancestry. This ethnographic approach is complemented by archival research on family networks across time and space. A book collaboratively written with some of those interlocutors in the field is expected to be the output of this project.   

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