Abstract: Revivalist folklore performance has figured prominently in the intensification of relations between transmigrants and the Portuguese state throughout the last twenty years. Both private and public institutions in Portugal strategize emigrant preservation of national customs as an essential tool for increasing Portugal's geopolitical visibility and fortifying ties with Portuguese emigrants. This essay argues that the existence of folklore groups ensures a constant traffic—of goods and services, performers and publics—between Portugal and emigrant communities in diaspora. Revivalist folklore is both a vehicle for the economic and emotional linking of emigrants to Portugal, and a tool for achieving what is termed “selective acculturation” within the United States. Luso-American folklore groups enact a curious paradox; they dedicate themselves to the preservation of distinctly Portuguese traditions and moral values abroad while simultaneously employing folklore performance as a strategy for assimilation in the form of civic participation within a US context. In constant dialogue between sending and receiving contexts, emigrant folklore performers both live and enact a transnationalism characterized by intense cultural, lingual and demographic plurality.

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