Ariadne’s thread: Cape Verdean women in transnational webs

This article is about Cape Verdean women who make a living through engaging in regular transnational petty trade. They buy consumer goods in West African countries, in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe, in Brazil and in the USA, to sell back in Cape Verde, either in open‐air markets or in their own shops. Women perform most of this kind of trade and they operate on the border between the formal and informal economies. Drawing on interview material, the article shows how their self‐presentation as autonomous self‐reliant economic agents relates to gender and family roles and to a strategic balance between personal freedom and embeddedness in multi‐territorialized networks.