Over the years, blatant expressions of discrimination have been replaced by more subtle ones. As such, the concept of microaggressions was introduced to describe subtle and everyday slights, indignities, and insults experienced by minority groups. Much research about microaggressions has focused on the experiences of women and other minority groups, such as racial and ethnic minorities, which usually comprise second and further-generation immigrants, while studies on first-generation immigrants are scarce. Furthermore, despite the increasing number of studies on intersectional microaggressions, the experiences of first-generation immigrant women have been generally overlooked. To address this gap, ten focus groups were conducted with a total of 51 adult immigrant women who were born in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries and were living in Portugal for more than three months. Starting from a list of incidents of racial and gender microaggressions, participants were asked to share their own experiences. Qualitative thematic analysis showed that most of the reported microaggressions fitted themes previously developed in the literature, such as assumptions of inferiority, second-class citizenship, exoticization, and sexual objectification. Nonetheless, we found new themes that reflect how subtle anti-immigrant prejudice is intertwined with Portugal’s colonial history, such as language discrimination and expressions of lusotropicalism. The present study is the first to investigate the experiences of microaggressions of first-generation immigrant women in Portugal, but also adds new themes to the literature. Further studies are warranted to understand if these themes apply to other countries with a similar colonial history, such as Spain, the UK, and France.

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Microaggressions,Immigrant Women,Intersectionality,Qualitative,Portugal

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