Objective: Over the years, blatant expressions of discrimination have been replaced by more subtle ones. As such, the concept of microaggressions was introduced to describe everyday subtle insults, slights, and indignities, which perpetuate negative and derogatory messages to socially disadvantaged groups via normalized and often ambiguous behaviors. Microaggressions have been found to be detrimental for the mental health of individuals across different underprivileged groups such as ethnic minorities, people of immigrant descent, and women, yet, scholars have hardly ever focused on the experiences of foreign-born immigrants, and immigrant women have been especially overlooked. Moreover, existing research on microaggressions is often limited to the U.S.-American context. To address these gaps, the present study adopted an intracategorical intersectional approach to understand how foreign-born immigrant women experience microaggressions in Portugal. Methods: Ten focus groups were conducted with a total of 52 adult immigrant women who were born in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) and were living in Portugal for more than three months (Mage = 34.2, SD = 10.2). Data were analyzed using a deductive-inductive thematic analysis approach. Results: Participants’ experiences of microaggressions were grouped into ten major themes. Eight of these themes coincided or partially overlapped with themes previously developed in the literature, suggesting that some experiences are common to different groups across different social and cultural contexts. Nonetheless, we found two new themes that reflect how subtle anti-immigrant prejudice is intertwined with Portugal’s colonial history, linguistic prejudice and culture-specific sexist beliefs. Conclusions: The present study is the first to investigate microaggressions towards foreign-born women in Portugal and contributes to the literature by proposing new themes that may inform future research examining the manifestation of subtle discrimination in an acculturation context. Further studies are warranted to understand if these themes apply to other countries with a similar colonial history.

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Microaggressions,Immigrant women,Intersectionality