In this discussion will analyse Portugal’s new position in international migratory movements. It used to be an exclusively labour exporter country and is now becoming a destination spot for international migratory fluxes. Our country has been marked by different migration waves, corresponding to time periods and differentiated immigrant groups, from PALOP (African Portuguese Speaking Countries) and Brazil, but since 2000, we knew a new wave immigrants, coming from of Eastern Europe (particularly, from Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and Russia). This “new wave” makes the socio-professional composition of immigrants more complex and diverse and the traditional and common sense image of “being an immigrant” had changed. We will try to centre our discussion in the social intervention and formal support that these “Eastern immigrants” (namely, Russians and Ukrainians) can find in immigrant associations and NGO’s in the context of Portuguese society. How voluntary organizations, immigrants associations and other NGO’s social represented these “new immigrants”? In the institutional discourses is very clearly the tendency for the essencialization of the difference. The socio-institutional actors don’t value much the features or physiological and physically visible aspects, but mainly practices and cultural values, that is, the “difference” is essentially cultural. These institutions have an active contribution to build up the stereotype of “being an Eastern immigrant” in Portugal.

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Moldaves,Représentations,Roumains,Russes,Ukrainiens