| Total population | |
|---|---|
| Various estimates: 3,000 to 10,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Lazio ·  Campania · Emilia-Romagna | |
| Languages | |
| Italian · Portuguese · Cape Verdean Creole [1] | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism |
The presence of Cape Verdeans in Italy dates back to the 1960s. [2]
There are various conflicting data about the size of the Cape Verdean population. The 2001 Italian census found 3,263 residents of Italy born in Cape Verde, 628 of whom held Italian citizenship. [3] In contrast, the Caboverde Informatics Project of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth estimated that by 1995 their population already had reached 10,000. [4] Another study asserted that Italy had 4,004 Cape Verdean legal residents in 2002. [5] The Cape Verdean embassy in Italy listed 9,978 of their nationals in Italy as of 2007. [6]
Prior to independence in 1975, Cape Verdean immigrants were registered as Portuguese immigrants from the overseas province of Portuguese Cape Verde. Italy's first Cape Verdean migrants arrived in 1957. [7] Early migration was almost exclusively female. The migrants consisted of young women recruited for live-in domestic work in Italy by Capuchin friars living in São Nicolau, Cape Verde. Roughly 3,500 had come to Italy in this manner by the end of 1972. [2] The migrants settled primarily in Rome and Naples, with much smaller concentrations in Palermo and Milan. [5]
Domestic work remains an important source of employment for Cape Verdean women, though most have shifted to hourly work and living away from their workplace. [8] Two factors have limited the shift away from domestic work into other lines of employment such as heavy industry: only a limited number of Cape Verdean men have migrated to Italy, and the Cape Verdeans are concentrated in the less-industrialised southern parts of Italy. They face increasing employment competition from Eastern European migrants. [9] There is a weak trend towards entrepreneurship and self-employment. [10]
Migrants generally had a low level of education upon their arrival. [11] Illiteracy was common. [12] However, many migrants took advantage of the education offered by the Portuguese School in Rome, which was officially recognised by the Portuguese Ministry of Education, and then afterwards entered into Italian universities. [7]
In general, Cape Verdeans have not faced as severe a level of discrimination as other migrant groups like Moroccans. [8] Officials generally view them as well-integrated and unproblematic. Their early presence in Italy was characterised by social and political invisibility, but by the 1980s and 1990s, as Italians began to understand that their country had become an importer rather than an exporter of migrant labour as it had traditionally been, more public attention was focused on the Cape Verdean presence. [11]
One study found that roughly half of Cape Verdeans were married to Italians. [9] It is common for children to be sent back to Cape Verde for their early education and then return to Italy when they are older. [12]
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Cape Verde, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Cape Verde is known internationally for morna, a form of folk music usually sung in the Cape Verdean Creole, accompanied by clarinet, violin, guitar and cavaquinho. Funaná, Coladeira, Batuque and Cabo love are other musical forms.
Yolanda Morazzo Lopes da Silva was a [Cape Verdean-language]] writer as well as a poet.
Cape Verdean Americans are an ethnic group of Americans whose ancestors were Cape Verdean. In 2010, the American Community Survey stated that there were 95,003 Americans living in the US with Cape Verdean ancestors.
Portuguese is spoken in a number of African countries and is the official language in six African states: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe and Equatorial Guinea. There are Portuguese-speaking communities in most countries of Southern Africa, a mixture of Portuguese settlers and Angolans and Mozambicans who left their countries during the civil wars. A rough estimate has it that there are about 14 million people who use Portuguese as their sole mother tongue across Africa, but depending on the criteria applied, the number might be considerably higher, since many Africans speak Portuguese as a second language, in countries like Angola and Mozambique, where Portuguese is an official language, but also in countries like South Africa and Senegal, thanks to migrants coming from Portuguese speaking countries. Some statistics claim that there are over 30 million Portuguese speakers in the continent. Like French and English, Portuguese has become a post-colonial language in Africa and one of the working languages of the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Portuguese co-exists in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Principe with Portuguese-based creoles, and in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau with autochthonous African languages.
The Culture of Cape Verde is rich, with a range of customs and practices common in the islands.
Adriano Gonçalves, known by his stage name Bana and called the "King of Morna", was a Cape Verdean singer and performer of the morna style, the plaintive, melodic lament which is a staple musical style of the country.
Cape Verdeans in Canada are Canadian residents whose ancestry originated in Cape Verde.
Cape Verdean Argentines are Argentine residents whose ancestry originated in Cape Verde. According to the 1980 census, there were about 8,000; but today's population was estimated by some sources to be around 2,000 in 2007. Other sources estimate that in 2006 there were 12,000-15,000 descendants of immigrants from Cape Verde living in Argentina, of whom about 300 are native to the African continent.
Cape Verdeans in France are residents of France who are from Cape Verde or have Cape Verdean ancestry.
Cape Verdeans in the Netherlands consist of migrants from Cape Verde to the Netherlands and their descendants. As of 2010, figures from Statistics Netherlands showed 20,961 people of Cape Verdean origin in the Netherlands.
There were estimated to be 25,000 Cape Verdeans in Senegal as of 1995.
The Cabo Verdean diaspora refers to both historical and present emigration from Cape Verde. Today, more Cabo Verdeans live abroad than in Cape Verde itself. The country with the largest number of Cape Verdeans living abroad is the United States.
Primary school education in Cape Verde is mandatory between the ages of 6–14 and free for children ages 6–12. In 1997, the gross primary enrollment rate was 148.8%. Primary school attendance rates were unavailable for Cape Verde as of 2001. While enrollment rates indicate a level of commitment to education, they do not always reflect children’s participation in school. Textbooks have been made available to 90% of school children, and 90% of teachers have attended in-service teacher training. Its literacy rate as of 2010 ranges from 75–80%, the highest in West Africa south of the Sahara.
Cape Verde or Cabo Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an archipelago and island country in the central Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about 4,033 square kilometres (1,557 sq mi). These islands lie between 600 to 850 kilometres west of Cap-Vert situated at the westernmost point of continental Africa. The Cape Verde islands form part of the Macaronesia ecoregion, along with the Azores, the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Savage Isles.
Angolans in Portugal form the country's second-largest group of African migrants, after Cape Verdeans. In 2006, official statistics showed 28,854 legal Angolan residents in Portugal. However, this number is likely an underestimate of the true size of the community, as it does not count people of Angolan origin who hold Portuguese citizenship.
Orlanda Amarílis Lopes Rodrigues Fernandes Ferreira, known as Orlanda Amarílis was a Cape Verdean writer. She is considered to be a noteworthy writer of fiction whose main literary themes include perspectives on women’s writing, with depictions of various aspects of the lives of Cape Verdean women as well as depictions of the Cape Verdean diaspora. She has been described as "indisputably one of Cape Verde’s most talented writers".
Jørgen Carling is a Norwegian researcher specializing on international migration. He holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Oslo and is Research Professor of Migration and Transnationalism Studies. Carling has worked at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) since 2002, where he has been Research Director since 2012.
Cape Verdeans, also called Cabo Verdeans, are the citizens of Cape Verde, an island nation consisting of an archipelago in the central Atlantic Ocean. Cape Verde is a sociedade mestiça, which means that it is home to mixed-race people, whose ethnogenesis is in Cape Verde, which has no indigenous population.
Chinese people in Cape Verde are a community of entrepreneurial migrants who settled on the archipelago beginning in the 1990s to start retail shops. Their presence as immigrants is notable in a country that is known for sending emigrants abroad.
