The macro- and micro-inequalities produced by social structures of power and oppression often take the form of discrimination. Discrimination can be blatant (e.g., yelling, offenses, threats) or subtle (e.g., invalidations, snubs, avoidant behavior). Recent evidence suggests that, although seemingly innocuous, subtle discrimination can be as harmful for individuals as its blatant counterpart. In this context, psychologists have proposed the concept of microaggressions as a broad framework that allows to examine the manifestation of verbal, nonverbal, and environmental everyday subtle discrimination from the targets’ perspective. Microaggressions have been widely studied in the U.S.-American context, particularly among ethnic minority groups. However, the experiences of foreign-born immigrants, and especially immigrant women, as well as the European context, have been overlooked. To address this gap, the present study adopted an intersectional perspective to conduct ten focus groups with a total of 52 immigrant women living in Portugal. Participants were born in Portugal’s former colonized countries, such as Brazil, Angola, Cape-Verde and Guinea Bissau. A deductive-inductive thematic analysis approach revealed that, while immigrant women’s experiences of microaggressions are in part similar to other minority groups and cultural contexts (e.g., being treated as second-class citizens), they are also uniquely shaped by the intersection of immigrant status, gender and colonialism (e.g., the “good colonizer” myth). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine immigrant women’s experiences of microaggressions in the European context. Future studies should examine whether results are applicable to this population in other European countries with a colonial history.

We would like to thank Filipa Madeira (ICS-UL) for her important contribution to the theoretical framework on colonialism and Luso-tropicalism presented in this work.

Microaggressions,Colonialism,Immigrant women,Portugal,Luso-tropicalism