In the past 20 years,

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Based on research about Bangladeshi migration in Portugal, carried out between 2003 and 2008, the main objective of this article is to explore ethnographically the ambiguity of the migratory imagination. This ambiguity is expressed in two figures – the patron (the patrão in Portuguese) and the madman (the pagol manusch in Bengali). The first is the exemplary migrant, economically successful and morally responsible while the second is an extreme case of failure and a source of a difficult knowledge. Both are constant reminders of the possible (and opposite) fates of all those that are now arriving in Portugal, therefore producing a strong normative ideal about success and failure.

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