2022/04/28 by Christoph Kalter · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Diaspora, migration, transnational identity #Migration and Labor Dynamics #Migration, Refugees, and Integration
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0960777321000837
openalex publication_date 2022/04/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Building on original research and dialoguing with scholarly works on Portugal, France and the United Kingdom, this article argues that decolonisation and migrations from the (former) colonies triggered and moulded a new, post-imperial nation-building in Western Europe. Analysing the highly significant but hitherto much-neglected case of Portugal in its broader Western European context, this claim is substantiated by surveying how these migrations affected citizenship and notions of the national community, the welfare state and public memories. Comparative and relational in its approach, the article links the histories of white ‘returnees’ from Portugal's African colonies after the 1974 Carnation Revolution to those of non-white ‘immigrants’, arguing that we must situate in the same analytical field all those who migrated from (formerly) colonised territories to the metropole during the drawn-out end of empire.