Postcolonial People
The Return from Africa and the Remaking of Portugal

Explores how European nations were remade by the end of empire, through the history of 'returning' settlers from Portuguese Africa.

Christoph Kalter (Author)

9781108837699, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 May 2022

340 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.3 cm, 0.7 kg

'This is an original and pathbreaking work, empirically solid and analytically sophisticated. It corrects several unsubstantiated historiographical and public claims, offering a compelling assessment of the massive immigration from the former Portuguese colonies in Africa as a consequence of the interrelated dynamics of democratization, after the Revolução dos Cravos of 1974, and formal decolonization. Moreover, it contributes to a richer study of European trajectories of decolonization and their multifaceted and enduring effects.' Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, University of Coimbra

Having built much of their wealth, power, and identities on imperial expansion, how did the Portuguese and, by extension, Europeans deal with the end of empire? Postcolonial People explores the processes and consequences of decolonization through the histories of over half a million Portuguese settlers who 'returned' following the 1974 Carnation Revolution from Angola, Mozambique, and other parts of Portugal's crumbling empire to their country of origin and citizenship, itself undergoing significant upheaval. Looking comprehensively at the returnees' history and memory for the first time, this book contributes to debates about colonial racism and its afterlives. It studies migration, 'refugeeness,' and integration to expose an apparent paradox: The end of empire and the return migrations it triggered belong to a global history of the twentieth century and are shaped by transnational dynamics. However, they have done nothing to dethrone the primacy of the nation-state. If anything, they have reinforced it.

Introduction: Decolonization, migration, and the post-imperial nation
1. Returnees or refugees? Defining the retornados
1.1 Charting the retornados: Who came?
1.2 Portuguese decolonization and the 'exodus' from the colonies
1.3 Who can remain Portuguese? Citizenship and race in the legal definition of retornados
1.4 Representing the returnees: On stigma, scapegoating, and refugeeness
1.5 Helping the refugees: Emergency relief beyond the nation-state
1.6 (Almost) No refugees under international law: The UNHCR in Portugal
1.7 From actors' categories to analytical categories: A forced migration?
2. Hotels for the homeless: Integrating the retornados
2.1 A small miracle? The success story of integration
2.2 Housing the returnees: The state as an integrator
2.3 Unusual guests: Retornados in hotels and pensions
2.4 Of camps and prisons: The centers of collective accommodation and the limits of integration
2.5 No straightforward story: The retornados' integration revisited
3. Making claims and taking action: Retornados as political actors
3.1 Dangerous migrants? Collective action, government response, apolitical politics
3.2 Fragmented forces, limited leverage: The retornado associations
3.3 'Children of the Lusitanian fatherland': Non-white retornado activists
3.4 'Incredibly real and shocking': The Far-Right Weekly, 'Jornal O Retornado'
3.5 On representation: Retornados in parliament and the parties of the political right
3.6 Retornado politics – and its rapid disappearance
4. The return of the return: Memory and the retornados' reemergence
4.1 A world after empire: Portugal and the current memory moment
4.2 Authenticity, traumatic loss, successful integration: The retornados today
4.3 Historicizing memory: Historical thinking and truth
Conclusion: The presence and the future of the past.

Subject Areas: Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]