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Author:   Christoph Kalter (Universitetet i Agder, Norway)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
ISBN:  

9781108931595

ISBN 10:   1108931596
Pages:   379
Publication Date:   26 October 2023
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

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.

Reviews

'Christoph Kalter's deeply researched analysis of those who 'returned' to Portugal from Africa upon decolonization asks critical questions about race, racism, and postcolonial national belonging and interrogates persistent lusotropical colonial myths. In our era of resurgent imperial memories and controversies, Postcolonial People's lucid insights make it timely and invaluable reading.' Elizabeth Buettner, University of Amsterdam 'Decolonization not only changed the map of the world, but also had deep repercussions on European societies. Surely the definitive study of the half-million retornados coming to Portugal at empire's end in 1975, Postcolonial People makes a fascinating contribution to the history of migration, of public memory, and of postcolonial Europe.' Sebastian Conrad, Free University of Berlin 'Postcolonial People provides a pathbreaking account of Europe's last major decolonization, focusing on the retornados who migrated to the Portuguese metropole. Kalter's study mines the productive space created by gaps between protagonists' understandings of their experiences and legal categories such as refugee and citizen. In lively and accessible prose, Kalter demonstrates how transnational processes of migration from Portugal's former colonies and international humanitarian responses paradoxically worked to entrench notions of the nation, even as they transformed the very meanings and borders of that national community. Wide-ranging, meticulously researched, comparatively informed, and conceptually sharp, Postcolonial People breaks new ground in its analysis of how the simultaneous end of empire and authoritarian rule in Portugal reconfigured what it meant to be Portuguese in legal and socio-cultural terms.' Pamela Ballinger, University of Michigan '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

Author Information

Christoph Kalter is Professor of History at the University of Agder, where he specializes in the modern history of Western Europe in its global contexts. He is the author of The Discovery of the Third World: Decolonization and the Rise of the New Left in France, c. 1950-1976 (Cambridge University Press, 2016), first published as Die Entdeckung der Dritten Welt. Dekolonisierung und neue radikale Linke in Frankreich (Campus 2011). The book was awarded the Walter-Markov-Prize (2011) and the prize Geisteswissenschaften International (2012).

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