Postcolonial Migrants and Identity Politics: Europe, Russia, Japan and the United States in Comparison 9780857453280

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Postcolonial Migrants and Identity Politics

International Studies in Social History General Editor: Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam Volume 1

Trade Unions, Immigration and Immigrants in Europe 1960–1993 Edited by Rinus Penninx and Judith Roosblad Volume 2

Class and Other Identities Edited by Lex Heerma van Voss and Marcel van der Linden Volume 3

Rebellious Families Edited by Jan Kok Volume 4

Experiencing Wages Edited by Peter Scholliers and Leonard Schwarz Volume 5

The Imaginary Revolution Michael Seidman Volume 6

Revolution and Counterrevolution Kevin Murphy Volume 7

Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire Donald Quataert Volume 8

Anarchism, Revolution and Reaction Angel Smith Volume 9

Sugarlandia Revisited Edited by Ulbe Bosma, Juan Giusti-Cordero and G. Roger Knight

Volume 10

Alternative Exchanges Edited by Laurence Fontaine Volume 11

The Working Class in Modern Spain Edited by José Piqueras and Vicent Sanz-Rozalén Volume 12

Learning on the Shop Floor Edited by Bert De Munck, Steven L. Kaplan and Hugo Soly Volume 13

Unruly Masses Wolfgang Maderthaner and Lutz Musner Volume 14

Central European Crossroads Pieter C. van Duin Volume 15

Supervision and Authority in Industry Western European Experiences, 1830–1939 Edited by Patricia Van den Eeckhout Volume 16

Forging Political Identity Silk and Metal Workers in Lyon, France, 1900–1939 Keith Mann Volume 17

Gendered Money Pernilla Jonsson and Silke Neunsinger Volume 18

Postcolonial Migrants and Identity Politics Edited by Ulbe Bosma, Jan Lucassen and Gert Oostindie

Postcolonial Migrants and Identity Politics Europe, Russia, Japan and the United States in Comparison

Edited by Ulbe Bosma, Jan Lucassen and Gert Oostindie

Berghahn Books N e w Yo r k • Ox f o r d

Published in 2012 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2012 Ulbe Bosma, Jan Lucassen and Gert Oostindie

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Postcolonial migrants and identity politics / edited by Ulbe Bosma, Jan Lucassen, and Gert Oostindie. p. cm. -- (International studies in social history ; v. 18) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-85745-327-3 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-85745-328-0 (ebook) 1. Emigration and immigration--History--20th century--Case studies. 2. Emigration and immigration--Political aspects--Case studies. 3. Postcolonialism--Case studies. 4. Immigrants--Case studies. 5. Group identity--Case studies. I. Bosma, Ulbe, 1962- II. Lucassen, Jan. III. Oostindie, Gert. JV6032.P67 2012 325--dc23 2011040767 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper. ISBN 978-0-85745-327-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-85745-328-0 (ebook)

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

vii

List of Abbreviations

ix

Introduction. Postcolonial Migrations and Identity Politics: Towards a Comparative Perspective Ulbe Bosma, Jan Lucassen and Gert Oostindie

1

1 Postcolonial Immigrants in France and their Descendants: 23 The Meanings of France’s ‘Postcolonial Moment’ James Cohen 2 Postcolonial Migrants in Britain: From Unwelcome Guests to Partial and Segmented Assimilation Shinder S. Thandi

61

3 Postcolonial Migrants in the Netherlands: Identity Politics versus the Fragmentation of Community Gert Oostindie

95

4 Postcolonial Portugal: Between Scylla and Charybdis M. Margarida Marques

127

5 Return of the Natives? Children of Empire in Post-imperial Japan Nicole Leah Cohen

155

6 Postcolonial Immigration and Identity Formation in Europe since 1945: The Russian Variant Allison Blakely

181

7 The Puerto Rican Diaspora to the United States: A Postcolonial Migration? Jorge Duany

193

vi

Contents

Bibliography 227 Notes on Contributors

251

Index 255

List of Figures and Tables Figures 3.1 Net immigration from the former Dutch colonies, 1937–2005 7.1 Puerto Ricans in the United States and Population of Puerto Rico, 1899–2007 (in thousands)

100 203

Tables I.1 Postcolonial immigrants and their proportion of the population of the receiving country for the first generation, related to the date of their arrival I.2 Comparing the ranking of countries in terms of post-imperial migration with susceptibility to multiculturalism I.3 Comparing the ranking of countries in terms of non-postcolonial (‘other’) immigration in general with their susceptibility to multiculturalism 3.1 Postcolonial and other major non-Western migrant communities in the Netherlands, 1960–2008 3.2 Unemployment, postcolonial and other major non-Western migrant communities in the Netherlands, 1981–2006 4.1 ‘Retornados’ according to the birthplace stated in the 1981 population census 4.2 Residents in Portugal coming from Portuguese-speaking countries, or having such an ancestry – by legal-administrative status, citizenship, place of birth and ethnic group, 2008 5.1 Repatriation of Japanese as of 1 May 1950 7.1 Population originating in the former or current U.S. Overseas Territories and now living in the Continental United States, 2007 7.2 Geographic distribution of the population of Puerto Rican origin in the United States, by state, 1960–2007 7.3 Selected socioeconomic characteristics of Puerto Ricans and other major ethnic and racial groups in the United States, 2007

5 20 21 101 109 129 133 158 196 204 212

Abbreviations

BYP CAC CCARFM CCII CEASD CEPAC CES CFCM CIS CPLP CRAN CRE CRIF CUNY DfES FCSH-UNL FLN FN FSU GCSE HALDE

Batoto Yetu Portugal (Batoto Yetu is a Swahili term meaning ‘our children’) Civic Assistance Committee Coordinating Council for Aid to Refugees and Forced Migrants Consultative Council for Immigration Issues Commission for Equality and Against Social Discrimination Centro Pe. Alves Correia (Lisbon) Centro de Estudos Sociais Conseil Français de Culte Musulman/ French Council of the Muslim Faith Commonwealth of Independent States Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa/ Community of the Portuguese-speaking Countries Conseil Représentatif des Associations Noires de France/ National Council of Representative Black Associations of France Commission for Racial Equality Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France/ Council of Jewish Organizations of France City University of New York Department for Education and Skills (U.K.) Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas – Universidade Nova de Lisboa Front de Libération Nationale (Algeria) Front National (France) Former Soviet Union General Certificate of Secondary Education Haute Autorité de Lutte contre les Discriminations et pour l’Égalité/High Authority for the Struggle against Discriminations and for Equality

Abbreviations

HCIEM IBGE ICS IED IILP INED INSEE IRR KITLV LDP LNEC MIR MVD NACLA NGO NPP PALOP PDP PRERA PRRA SOVA SPAE SPG UCCLA UNDP WRR

x

High Commissioner for Immigration and Ethnic Minorities Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa/ Institute of Social Sciences (Lisbon) Instituto de Estudos para o Desenvolvimento (Lisboa)/ Institute of Development Studies (Lisbon) Instituto Internacional da Lingua Portuguesa/ International Institute for the Portuguese Language Institut National Etudes Démographiques Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques Institute of Race Relations (London) Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Leiden)/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (Lisboa)/ National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (Lisbon) Mouvement des Indigènes de la République Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del/Ministry of Internal Affairs (Russia) North American Congress on Latin America Non-governmental Organization New Progressive Party (Puerto Rico) Países Africanos de Lingua Oficial Portuguesa/ African Countries of Portuguese Official Language Popular Democratic Party (Puerto Rico) Puerto Rican Emergency Relief Administration Puerto Rican Reconstruction Administration (Centre for Sociological Research on Nationalism and Racism; Moscow) Section on Public Administration Education (of the American Society for Public Administration) Special Patrol Group (of Metropolitan Police, London) Union of the Capital Cities of the Portuguese-speaking African-American and Asian countries United Nations Development Programme Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (Den Haag)/Scientific Council for Government Policy

Introduction Postcolonial Migrations and Identity Politics: Towards a Comparative Perspective Ulbe Bosma, Jan Lucassen and Gert Oostindie

On the eve of the Second World War, the governments of Western Europe were as ill-prepared for the war to come as they were for its devastating consequences to their colonial empires. Even less did they anticipate the large-scale migrations that would accompany decolonization. This book addresses postcolonial migrations, not just to Europe but also beyond. The assumption of the contributions is that it is useful to differentiate the category of ‘postcolonial migrants’ from other types of migrants, because of their pre-migration legal status, their familiarity with metropolitan language and culture, and possibly also because of kinship relations with the metropolitan population. The obvious next question then becomes whether these pre-migration characteristics, and possibly identity politics based on the individual pre-migration history, facilitated their integration in the metropolis – and, conversely, how their long-standing relationships with the metropolis impinged upon the way metropolitan governments and populations at large perceived these ‘repatriating’ immigrants. In this introduction, we explore some of the broader themes which are addressed in greater depth in the following chapters on specific countries. We first present an overview of postcolonial migrations, making the case for a broader perspective beyond the obvious European examples. Next, we discuss in more detail the paradoxical linkages between decolonization and postcolonial migration. This in turn leads to another look at the very concept of the ‘postcolonial migrant’. In the next two sections we summarize the various trajectories of postcolonial migrations to Europe and beyond. The closing section offers some hypotheses and preliminary answers to the questions raised. Notes for this chapter begin on page 22.

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Postcolonial Migrations: An Overview In the wake of the dissolution of the European empires following the Second World War, large flows of migrants reached the former metropolitan countries. These movements were momentous and dramatic, but also limited in time (mainly the first decades after the war) and place (Europe and its former colonies). These migrations are well documented, to the point that they have obscured a wider, indeed global, phenomenon. Colonial powers were not exclusively European, neither were massive migrations after the collapse of empires unique to the period after 1945. In Europe, the end of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, the devastation of the German Reich after 1945 and the implosion of the Soviet Union (the successor to the Tsarist Empire) caused massive movements of populations. Postcolonial migrations were not limited to European colonial powers, as shown by the post-1945 repatriation of Japanese from Manchuria and Korea. In a totally different political context, the massive displacement of people as a result of the partition of the former British Raj into India and Pakistan in 1947 is also a postcolonial migratory movement. To complicate matters, if these postcolonial movements of people were indeed prompted by political change, the line between postcolonial migration and labour or ‘welfare’ immigration is not easy to draw. Even long after decolonization had been concluded, and in spite of restrictive policies, the United Kingdom and France in particular continued to attract large numbers of migrants from their former colonies. From yet another perspective, in some exceptional, mainly Caribbean, cases decolonization was not accomplished by a transfer of sovereignty but rather by some model of further integration with the metropolis. This is the case with the French overseas departments, the Netherlands Antilles and a few remaining British overseas territories, but equally with the former American colonies of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In all of these cases, the continuation of constitutional bonds would prove a stimulus for migration to the metropolis. Again, it is difficult to differentiate between ‘postcolonial’ and labour migration in these instances. In the American case, the picture becomes even more blurred should we conceive as somehow ‘postcolonial’ the massive migration from the informal former empire – from Cuba through the rest of Latin America to the Philippines. In short, European postcolonial immigration is part of a larger history; the large influx of postcolonial immigrants was not unique to Europe and there is no clear-cut definition of the postcolonial migrant. In the pioneering study Europe’s Invisible Migrants, the editor Andrea L. Smith calculated that between 1945 and 1990, Western and Southern Europe received some five to seven million immigrants from (former) overseas territories.1

Introduction. Postcolonial Migrations and Identity Politics

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Yet as Nicole Cohen writes in this book, the number of post-imperial Japanese immigrants ‘coming home’ after 1945 amounted to a staggering 6.5 million as well. In his discussion of Puerto Rican migration to the United States, Jorge Duany makes the point that the present number of migrants from this Caribbean-associated territory is now some four million, but that this number easily doubles if we include migrants from the communities originating in the former protectorate of Cuba and the pre-war colony of the Philippines. By the mid-1990s, the break-up of the Soviet Union had resulted in some nine million refugees in its former constituent states.2 As Allison Blakely demonstrates in this book, the migratory consequences of this imperial collapse have continued apace ever since. These migrations had immediate demographic consequences for the receiving countries. The dissolution of the Soviet Union led to massive migration movements, and the Japanese population had increased by 7.5 per cent in the wake of its retreat from Asia. Less dramatic but still important in terms of demography were the emigrations to France, Great Britain and the Netherlands, with population increases of between 3 and 4 per cent, whereas the figures for Western Germany and Portugal would be respectively 8.1 and 7.5 per cent (see table I.1). At present, first or second generation postcolonial migrants make up 7 to 8 per cent of the total British and French populations. With 10 per cent, the European proportion is highest in Portugal, whereas the figure is relatively low in the Netherlands, at just over 6 per cent. The overwhelming majority of migrants from the non-industrial South originated from the former colonies. The major exception to this rule is the Netherlands, where there was remarkably little overlap between postcolonial immigration streams and labour recruitment. With the notable exception of the United States and to a lesser degree France, none of these societies had seriously considered themselves to be countries of immigration. After the Second World War the Western European colonizing states, Japan and Russia, changed almost overnight from highly expansionist nations to societies confined within their own borders attracting large groups of immigrants. This applies equally to Germany, whose role as a European colonizing state is often forgotten. Of course the German state was forced to cede its overseas possessions after its defeat in the First World War, but this transition did not result in significant postcolonial migration to Germany. The shrinking of its territory (Ausgrenzung) and the eventual defeat of the Nazi regime, however, brought about a massive ‘repatriation’ of Germans and Volksdeutsche – descendants of Germans who, often centuries ago, had settled in the Balkans and Russia. In a long, drawn-out process starting in the late eighteenth century,

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the Turkish Empire experienced similar immigration waves as a consequence of its retreat from the Balkans. It took quite some time before scholars started thinking of these postcolonial migrations, and the related immigration and integration experiences, as a distinct category of migration. The past decades have seen an avalanche of studies on virtually all dimensions of migration, focusing on the migrants themselves, on integration and identification, on political opportunity structures and identity politics, on transnationalism and so on.3 Of course, much of this work has focused on postcolonial migrations, particularly to Europe. However, we believe that to date, a systematic comparison of postcolonial migrations worldwide has been lacking. We are aware that our usage of the concept ‘postcolonial’ may elicit questions and opposition. The field of what has become known as ‘postcolonial studies’ is dominated by discourses on the relationships of power in many fields (economic, political, discursive) between formerly colonized peoples and metropolitan power. In this paradigm, the term ‘postcolonial migrants’ would be reserved for subaltern migrants from the (former) colonies, rather than for returning settlers and colonial elites. As will become evident from the rest of our introduction and indeed from all following chapters, the present usage of ‘postcolonial’ is broader both in its application to a wider set of migrants and in our rejection of the theoretical underpinnings of this one particular interpretation of colonial and postcolonial history. The essays in this book aim to provide historical body and substance to debates on (postcolonial) immigration in the core group of European countries – Great Britain, France, Portugal and the Netherlands – in a comparative framework. These contributions address in a systematic way for individual countries the themes of migration, citizenship, metropolitan opportunity structures and postcolonial migrants’ identity politics. As such, they provide state of the art overviews on each of these national experiences. Taken together, these studies provide a rare comparative perspective on areas of the post-war world with entirely different immigration regimes. We feel the comparison of these individual cases, including the emergence and reception of postcolonial identity politics, will help us address the crucial wider question of how societies deal with contemporary social inequality and ethnic and religious differences, and with the place of their own colonial history in their understanding of the nation and national identity.

Introduction. Postcolonial Migrations and Identity Politics

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Table I.1.  Postcolonial immigrants and their proportion of the population of the receiving country for the first generation, related to the date of their arrival Country*

Postcolonial immigrants (millions)

Population (millions) Postcolonial immigrants’ proportion

Turkey (1930) West-Germany (1980) Japan (1950) Portugal (1980) Russia (2000) The Netherlands (1980) France (1970) U.K. (1970) United States (2000) Belgium (2000) Italy (2000) Spain (2000)

? 5 6.250 0.650 6 0.550 2 2 4.350 0.125 0.550 0.180

 14  62  83  10 143  14  51  56 298  10  58  43

>10 8.1 7.5 6.5 4.2 3.9 3.9 3.6 1.4 1.2 0.9 0.4

Figures derived from Smith, Invisible Migrants, p. 32, with the following additions: Spain excluding recent flows from Latin America; Germany and Turkey see further on in the Introduction; Russia based on Perevedentsev, ‘Migratsiia naseleniia’, http:// www.gks.ru/bgd/regl/B08_12/Main.htm,4 and estimates Gijs Kessler, IISH; Japan, see Nicole Cohen, this book; U.S.A., see Jorge Duany, this book (excluding migrants from Cuba and the Philippines, which would bring the total to 8.4 million). *Reference years pertain to the period in which the great majority of first-generation postcolonial migrants had settled. Absolute figures given for the number of postcolonial migrants are rough estimates; the same therefore applies to the suggested proportional share.

Decolonization and Postcolonial Immigration The different decolonization processes produced two, opposing outcomes with crucial implications for migration dynamics. The classical, most frequent and indeed intuitively logical outcome was the transfer of sovereignty, as in the cases of India/Pakistan, Indonesia, Algeria, Angola, and so on. Such constitutional changes were sometimes accomplished after serious armed struggles, sometimes after protracted negotiations, and often following a combination of both. In many cases the prospect of independence caused mass migrations to the metropolis from those segments of society whose fate was directly tied to the colonial structure: European settlers, Eurasian and Eurafrican middle classes, colonial soldiers and the

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like. In some other cases, especially in the Caribbean, independence was relatively easily negotiated with an encouraging metropolis that was no longer interested in the retention of its former empire. Unexpectedly, the transfer of sovereignty in these instances was preceded and/or accompanied by mass migration involving cross-sections of the former colonial populations, as citizens – much against the high hopes of the nationalists – voted with their feet against the new constitutional status. In none of these cases were the metropolitan governments and societies particularly enthusiastic about the mass immigrations. In all of these, the migrants exercised the still prevalent, or at least enforceable, rights of citizenship they would lose after the transfer of sovereignty. The alternative outcome of the post-war decolonization process was some sort of neo-colonial arrangement, in most cases endorsing a degree of autonomy for the former colony, in some others full integration, but ultimately continuing a direct postcolonial constitutional relationship. This applied invariably to small entities, the ‘confetti of empires’ scattered around the globe but concentrated in the Caribbean. In this sub-region of the Americas, three European powers as well as the United States are still constitutionally present, partly or even mainly because the local populations have refused to accept independence. In all cases this mutual acceptance of a neo-colonial relationship implied affirming or bequeathing full citizenship rights to the inhabitants of the non-sovereign territories, and in most cases – until recently the U.K. was a glaring exception – these citizenship rights included the right of abode in the metropolis. In most instances, this right stimulated mass settlement in the metropolis and an atypical pattern of persistent circular migration. Returning to the entire category of postcolonial migrants, we should make some crucial qualifications to the notion of full metropolitan citizenship rights. Included in this is distinguishing between citizenship rights and the right of repatriation. In most postcolonial metropolitan states, the latter is enshrined in the concept of ‘repatriates’ or ‘returnees’, repatrianten (Dutch), retornados (Portuguese), repatrianty (Russian) or hikiagesha (literally ‘salvaged’, Japanese). Most metropolitan countries were initially hesitant to endow such rights to postcolonial immigrants. Some withdrew these rights at some point with the objective of discouraging or curtailing immigration from the decolonizing territories, as did the United Kingdom in the early 1960s and Portugal just before the independence of its African colonies. In both cases a metropolitan ancestry was imposed as a condition for repatriation. In those cases where the transfer of sovereignty was accompanied by mass migration, there was legislation aimed at defining future arrivals from these former territories as migrants tout court, without specific entitlement to citizenship. Only where post-

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war decolonization took the form of a constitutional incorporation into a new postcolonial political structure did postcolonial citizenship include the right of abode in the metropolis. Citizenship rights rooted in the colonial period, pre-migration socialization, command of the metropolitan language, educational, cultural and sometimes religious affinity – in short, what Gert Oostindie in his contribution concerning the Netherlands summarizes as ‘the postcolonial bonus’ – were usually of great help in the integration of postcolonial immigrants. In their early phases of settlement they were often assisted by metropolitan governments facilitating their access to housing, the labour market and welfare provision. This assistance, of course, was not meted out with the same intensity everywhere, with the emerging Western European welfare states providing the most extensive support, particularly after the 1960s. Neither was state support evenly distributed to citizens of former metropolitan nations. In general, postcolonial immigrants closest to the colonial rulers benefited most, whereas those perceived as ethnically distinct and non-European had more problems acquiring full citizenship rights and were more likely to encounter discrimination. In most countries, in spite of a postcolonial bonus, substantial numbers ended up in disadvantaged parts of cities and were overrepresented in the top rankings of all the wrong lists, whether for unemployment, housing or deviancy. The record for intergenerational social upward mobility seems mixed, but just as for other immigrants there are firm indications, not of overall improvement but certainly of incremental success over the generations. Timing mattered a lot. Postcolonial immigrants arriving in Europe after three decades of unprecedented economic growth might have benefited from unhindered entrance and other full citizenship rights, but nevertheless found themselves competing with other ‘guest labourers’ in a postindustrial labour market. The children of the French Antilleans recruited in the 1960s for the expanding French labour market found that their competitive advantages crumbled a few decades later. In contrast to their traditional preferential status, these négropolitains were subsequently often seen as belonging to a diffuse category of black French, including the large numbers of later, often illegal, sub-Saharan African immigrants. In all, as with the Caribbean youth in Britain or the Netherlands, or with Puerto Ricans in the United States, pre-migration social and cultural capital is but one factor determining the chances for successful social integration of these immigrants, the host society’s acceptance of them, and immigrant identification with society at large. The sharp rise in unemployment figures in Europe in the 1980s has washed away the ‘bonus’ of being a postcolonial immigrant.

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In some cases, the argument of colonial linkages, and hence community rights and governmental responsibilities, helped to secure access from former colonies even if the immediate linkage had long been severed. In this regard, Margarida Marques details how this type of communitarian pressure to secure greater leniency in immigration policies benefited tens of thousands of Africans and Brazilians in Portugal. Even though the rights of abode for non-repatriates were formally curtailed after the collapse of the Luso-African Empire, many were still accepted. Likewise, almost two centuries after the independence of Brazil, it still proved relatively easy for Brazilians to settle in Portugal – their command of the Portuguese language being a crucial postcolonial asset. The belated Spanish experience of postcolonial immigration is another case in point. Most of the Spanish Empire had already collapsed by the early nineteenth century. Around 1900, Spain also lost Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and was left with nothing but a few scattered settlements in Africa. While the later remnants of a long colonial history left Spain with a delicate postcolonial relationship with the Western Sahara, this linkage was of little importance in comparison to the strong bonds still existing with the Spanish-speaking Americas. Over the centuries, millions of Spaniards had migrated there, mostly for economic reasons but at times, as after the civil war of 1936–1939, also through political motivation. Conversely, political refugees escaped from Spanish American dictatorships from the 1960s through to the early 1980s, followed by substantial labour migration from all over the continent. As an outcome of bilateral agreements rooted in the rhetoric of a common hispanidad, it is much easier for Spanish American nationals to obtain Spanish citizenship than it is for immigrants from other non-EU countries. Indeed, in 2008, of the 2.3 million residents of Spain who were born in Latin America, 1.8 million did not hold Spanish citizenship.5 In other words, while decolonization was a thing of the remote past and while these immigrants therefore do not qualify as postcolonial migrants in the strict sense, their presence in Europe is a direct consequence of colonial history – producing millions of Spanish-speaking, Catholic potential migrants who were clearly preferred in Spain over other migrants from the South. In most cases, postcolonial migrations have been characterized by a near-exclusive orientation on the former metropolis. A partial exception here involves postcolonial migrants from the former British Empire. Migration from the British West Indies in particular has been markedly bifurcated, leading simultaneously to the United Kingdom and the United States, both before, during and in the immediate aftermath of decolonization. For the majority of cases however, this criterion of orientation on the former metropolis is relevant.

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In Western Europe, there is one more characteristic of postcolonial migration which merits attention. In France, there is a large measure of overlap between Muslim and postcolonial immigration, the major exception among the postcolonial migrants being a minority from the Caribbean, Indochina and the Jewish from Algeria, and the major exception among the Muslim immigrants being the Turks. In the United Kingdom, there is only a partial overlapping, as the majority of South Asian immigrants are Muslim but a substantial minority of South Asians are either Hindu or Sikh, and black Britons are predominantly Christian. In the Netherlands and Portugal there is little overlap between the two categories. One may consider that this has assumed relevance as a political factor, as the crisis of Western European multiculturalism has become increasingly linked to misgivings about Islam.

Colonial Subjects to Postcolonial Migrants: (Dis)continuities ‘Postcolonial’ is used in this book in a broader sense than simply a temporal one (as in the description ‘after the end of the colonial empires’). It alludes to the ways the colonial past has left material and non-material legacies, ranging from metropolitan demographics and culture to ongoing ideological and possibly psychological impacts. The issue of colonial-topostcolonial continuities has been widely discussed in the academic sphere, but has increasingly attracted wider attention, for example in the recent fierce French political debates on the nature and impact of colonialism. In France, as in Portugal and Russia for that matter, there is a direct historical connection between decolonization and the breakdown of the metropolitan political system. Portugal rid itself of the Salazar regime and its former colonies in one stroke, and its new Socialist government made anti-colonialism a serious issue during its first ten years from 1974. It later on gave an amnesty to irregular immigrants from its former colonies, and more recently formulated a multicultural approach as a key issue in its governmental programme. In contrast to Portugal, France became less democratic as its Fifth Republic, born from the turmoil of the Algerian war, followed the path of an increase in presidential powers at the expense of the parliament. The violence of the struggle for decolonization reached Paris on 17 October 1961, when an FLN (the Algerian National Liberation Front) demonstration was brutally oppressed and some hundred, mainly Algerian, demonstrators were killed.6 However, most other de-

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colonizing nations managed to proceed with the process without letting it interfere as dramatically with domestic politics. From a (post)colonial migrant’s point of view, there may have been continuity between the experience of colonial traditions of labour recruitment and segregation and the concomitant socio-racial, apartheid-like structures ‘back home’, and the European policies regarding entrance and settlement of ‘non-Western’ immigrants and new practices of (re)defining (postcolonial) citizenship. In the metropolis, postcolonial immigrants often experienced a chilly reception and racial discrimination, just as the lesser numbers of colonial migrants had witnessed in the pre-war decades. The continuities were tangible and painful – yet did not stop new migrants from coming in. It would be unwise therefore to underestimate the factor of metropolitan racism as one dimension of the continuity from the colonial to the postcolonial period. ‘Race’, of course, did not have the same significance in all colonial and postcolonial settings. Neither did racism. In the postwar period, overt racism did not disappear, but became unacceptable in official parlance, at least in the Western world. But other antagonisms surfaced. Since the 1990s, debates on immigration throughout Western Europe have tended to focus on the problems of Islam and the alleged refusal of Muslim immigrants to assimilate into metropolitan culture. As Shinder Thandi notes in his chapter on the United Kingdom, religion surpassed race as the mobilizing factor, which seems to follow the logic of oppositional identity politics on the part of the receiving society and the immigrants – on both sides, we may add. We might well ask what difference religion and race make in this respect, just as we should wonder about the colonial roots of contemporary stereotyping. It is not a foregone conclusion that (post)colonial boundaries have become less relevant. Both the persistence of old antagonisms and the emergence of relatively new ones remind us of pessimistic claims that contemporary migrations are far more problematic than the pre-war migrations to Europe and the United States. This position defines contemporary immigration as basically problematic, suggesting that not only racial, cultural and in particular religious differences, but also transnationalism, the demands of a post-industrial labour market and the concomitant educational demands all work together to increase social inequality. As most non-Western immigrants will suffer from this, they will find their integration thwarted; the result will be exclusion, partly self-sought, or the segmented assimilation of new immigrants at best. This pessimistic perspective is often taken to apply to most postcolonial immigrants as well. The contributions to this book strongly suggest, however, that the integration problems of most postcolonial immigrants were class based, or for

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some of them related to the illegal status of their residence in Europe. The later cohorts of postcolonial immigrants resemble in many respects the labour migrants of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and their diachronic convergence towards the absorption and assimilation or integration of immigrants in all periods. Successful integration as measured by socioeconomic, educational and even political parameters, first and foremost needs time – roughly three generations. This more optimistic analysis also departs from a more flexible definition of the end result. ‘Full integration’ does not imply complete assimilation or acculturation to the receiving society’s cultural conventions, and may well include continuing political as well as cultural transnationalism.7 Even if we accept the position of diachronic convergence, however, the collective pre-migration profiles of postcolonial migrants do matter to the integration process. There are a few hard and many more soft criteria and resultants, but there are three important ones which set postcolonial migrants apart from other non-elite migrants from the Global South. The first is the prior possession of, or relative ease of access to, full metropolitan citizenship rights. The second criterion is cultural and linguistic affinity; and the third one is the way in which migrant biographies are linked to diasporic experiences and the specific character of transnational bonds with their countries of origin. In this respect a distinction needs to be made between subaltern and dominant groups within the colonies, the latter being the classical ‘colonials’, who were invariably metropolitan citizens. Exposure to metropolitan cultural influence differed considerably between and within the former colonies. Not all colonial regimes valued the transfer of metropolitan culture and language to the same degree. Even within one colonial empire there could be remarkable contrasts that would leave strong postcolonial legacies. For example in the former Dutch Caribbean, Suriname did eventually adopt Dutch over the local Creole Sranantongo as the national language, whereas in Curaçao the Creole Papiamentu retained its dominance over Dutch until today, seriously disadvantaging Antillean immigrants in the Netherlands. Throughout all colonial empires, exposure to and adoption of metropolitan culture and language were more prevalent in the higher echelons of society. In turn, the social hierarchy correlated almost by definition with levels of economic development and urbanization, and also with ‘race’, ethnicity and colour. Exposure to metropolitan culture was thus unevenly distributed, but overall we may conclude that all postcolonial migrants had gone through a degree of pre-migration socialization which gave them a competitive edge over other, non-elite immigrants. This does not imply total cultural affinity. It should not be taken for granted that this exposure would result in enthusiastic adoption of all aspects of metropolitan culture. Nor, of

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course, should one expect a positive appreciation of the colonial period and its legacies. The metropolitan sojourn has often ended up producing precisely the opposite. Postcolonial identity politics centred not only on issues such as full civil rights, but equally on recognition of the questionable morals of colonialism and its (presumed) contemporary legacies. First of all, there are the traumas of colonialism, slavery, indenture and race discrimination that burden the relations between postcolonial migrants and receiving societies. Moreover, in most cases there was the experience of a ‘chilly reception’ by metropolitan societies. Neither cultural affinity, shared citizenship nor, in the next generation, birth in the metropolitan country guaranteed a warm welcome after decolonization. The marginal position of the harkis in France – the local soldiers who fought alongside the French in the Algerian War – is a case in point. In other cases the returnees were somehow made responsible for national humiliation and defeat, as Nicole Cohen argues in the case of the six million Japanese hikiagesha (salvaged) who were repatriated from Korea, Manchuria and other Japanese colonial possessions after 1945. The reception given to Portuguese retornados and repatriated Dutch was less hostile, but was nonetheless often experienced as cold by the repatriates. It did not help that in the postcolonial metropolis, the burden of discredited colonialism was happily transferred to its repatriated local accomplices, now depicted as opportunistic exploiters coming to rely on their fatherland. The history of postcolonial migration also suggests some sort of nexus between the colonial experience and the post-war adoption of multicultural policies. Over time most governments in Europe and the Americas did acknowledge the importance of participation of citizens from different national and cultural backgrounds to engage with one another about, in the favourable expression of Craig Calhoun, ‘the social arrangements which hold them together’.8 No doubt, the increasing receptivity towards diversity as part of a fundamental human rights discourse has been pivotal in creating space for the articulation of differences in Europe, as it has in the United States and Canada. But it seems that the adoption of models of multiculturalism by the Canadian and British governments – and perhaps also in the Netherlands and Australia – was also grounded in colonial experiences of managing diversity.9 Of course this openness to some sort of multiculturalism, however moderate, did not arise spontaneously, but rather in response to the identity politics of postcolonial migrants. Either way, the connections between colonialism, postcolonial migration and the rise of multiculturalism in these countries seems evident. Postcolonial migrants have continued to engage in diasporic and transnational linkages, maintaining close contacts with and sending money to families or communities in their country of origin. At the same time,

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there has been a constant exchange of non-material goods – cultural, religious and political ideas. The question is whether this sets postcolonial migrants apart from other migrants. The concept of diaspora in postcolonial migrations has become topical since Hugh Tinker’s The Banyan Tree, and later on in the works of Steven Vertovec, Robin Cohen and others.10 Transnationalism is nothing new, even though transnational networks have become increasingly dense as a result of modern means of transport and communication. There is some debate as to whether the concept applies in an imperial context, in which case transnationalism may be seen as an early constitutive force in building postcolonial identities. Perhaps the concept of diaspora has been stretched to its limits or beyond, but certainly for postcolonial migrants the concept of dispersion and the paradox of temporal, physical and mental distance, and at the same time cultural affinity, does apply – as in concepts such as the Black Atlantic, or in affinities with ‘Hindustan’ or more down-to-earth in the Bollywood craze. We may wonder in particular whether postcolonial migration has produced a specific kind of political transnationalism. Again, the evidence is inconclusive. There have been many instances of postcolonial immigrants in the metropolis struggling for political change in their country of origin, as with Algerians in France, Moluccans in the Netherlands and Latin American political exiles. The arguments deployed were invariably based upon the assertion that metropolitan government could not simply turn away from the legacies of empire. On the other hand, there is little indication that the governments of the countries of origin, former colonies, have been systematically involved in postcolonial migrants’ associations. This seems to contrast with the practices of the Turkish and Moroccan governments, as well as with Arab governments and agencies supporting the cause of Islam in Europe. We may tentatively state that the political transnationalism of the former colonies is less pronounced than that of the sending nations of labour migrants.

The Core Countries of European Postcolonial Migration Having delineated certain contours, we may now ask ourselves where specific European states fit in, and which other countries may provide additional comparative insight. We may begin with the Netherlands; perhaps the easiest case and one which indeed inspired us in the first place to think of postcolonial migrations as a category analytically separate from other migrant groups. There were basically three successive waves of substantial migrations to the metropolis. The first round, from 1945 through to the early 1960s, was directly connected to the process of the decolonization of

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Indonesia and involved selected groups linked to the demise of the colonial regime. The second round, in the 1970s, involved the mass migration of a cross-section of the Surinamese population, preferring the metropolis over an independent republic. In the last and ongoing round that began in the 1980s, citizens of the still non-sovereign Dutch Caribbean islands have exercised their right of abode by settling in the metropolis, permanently or temporarily. These postcolonial migrations had little overlap with two other categories, namely labour migrants recruited mainly in the southern Mediterranean region, followed by family reunion, and political and economic refugees from Asia and Africa. Portugal presents a similar case. Just like the Netherlands and with more justification, Portugal thought of itself as an emigration country up to the 1960s. In addition to the ten million Portuguese living in Portugal itself, there were another five million Portuguese living in diaspora, as Margarida Marques notes in her contribution. This changed after the rather sudden fall of its dictatorship and the subsequent transfer of sovereignty to Angola and Mozambique in the mid-1970s. Within a few years, Portugal had received 580,000 retornados, of whom 60 per cent had been born in Portugal.11 At least 100,000 of them left for another destination, and in this respect there is also a strong similarity to those repatriated from Indonesia, of whom one-sixth left for the United States, Australia and other destinations. Even if those repatriated were relatively privileged, they still had problems in adapting to metropolitan society. The cases of the other two countries experiencing mass migration from the former colonies are more complicated. France recruited foreign labour from the late nineteenth century until the 1970s, mainly from Italy and Poland. This policy was only reinforced by successive waves of (post)colonial labour migrations. Though in the pre-war years hundreds of thousands of labour migrants from French overseas territories were already working in France, the first mass migration dates from the early 1960s and involved one million pieds noirs (including 130,000 Algerian Jews who had received French citizenship in 1870), French settlers departing from Algeria after its bloody war for independence, and about 140,000 harkis (colonial soldiers) and other ‘indigenous’ Algerians. In the same decade, the state started concerted programmes for labour recruitment in the non-sovereign French Caribbean departments, following earlier waves of labour migration from North Africa. Perhaps the immigration of substantial numbers of political refugees from former French Indochina also qualifies as ‘postcolonial’ in the sense we use it – albeit there was a time-lapse of some two decades between the departure of the French and the start of this migration. Much of the immigration into France over the

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past three decades has still been from former French colonies, primarily in Africa.12 The British case has several similarities to the French one. The United Kingdom has a long tradition of immigration, only partially connected to its overseas empire. The links between the collapse of empire and migration are ambiguous. The post-war decolonization of British India in the late 1940s coincided with the beginnings of migration, but this only gained momentum long after. The same applies to other former British colonies in Asia and Africa. In contrast, migration from the British West Indies starting in the 1960s largely preceded the transfer of sovereignty. It is a moot point therefore how we should define ‘postcolonial migrants’ to the United Kingdom, and to what extent it remains useful to speak of postcolonial identity politics and metropolitan receptivity to claims linking the colonial history to migrants’ concerns. But certainly in the work of British postcolonial scholars such as Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy, who have been of crucial relevance to the development of postcolonial studies, ‘postcolonial’ is defined in very broad terms, going far beyond British imperial history and its aftermath.13 This difference between French and British postcolonial consciousness is not coincidental, but hinges on the fact that the United Kingdom has become part of a wider Western postcolonial world shaped by its own former settler colonies and dominions – the United States, Canada and Australia. These three countries play quite an important role in the debates on postcolonialism and multiculturalism. We will return to this point at the end of our introduction.

Other ‘Postcolonial’ States There is a second group of former European colonial powers which prima facie have less to do with the issue of postcolonial migrants. The Spanish Empire had virtually collapsed by 1900, Germany ceded its short-lived African colonies at the end of the First World War, and Denmark sold its tiny Caribbean islands to America in 1917. Migration from these various former colonies was insignificant in all but the Spanish case, and bears no immediate relation to the process of decolonization. The picture becomes more complicated in the cases of the post-war decolonization of the African possessions of Italy and Belgium. Italy was forced to leave its shortlived East African colonies in 1941 and its possessions in the Balkans in 1943/44, while Belgium consented to the transfer of sovereignty to the Congo in 1960. Italy received about 600,000 immigrants from North Africa, but these came both from its own and the French colonial territories.

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Belgium received some 120,000 immigrants from the Congo after 1960, the great majority of these being Belgian repatriates. Germany and Denmark did not experience any significant immigration from their former overseas colonies, and while postcolonial migrations from Africa to Spain, Belgium, and Italy were of some consequence, they have not attracted much scholarly attention. It is debatable whether, in these five countries, colonial reminiscences play a role in attitudes towards migration at large.14 This second group of European countries presents the possibility of an alternative take on the way metropolitan states deal with their colonial past. The question becomes how and when these states, in the virtual absence of postcolonial immigrations (Denmark, Germany) or with much smaller numbers (Spain, Belgium, Italy) and hence less exposed to postcolonial identity politics, have reflected upon their colonial history, if at all. Answering this question, we suppose, may also help us to better understand the British, French, Dutch and Portuguese ‘memory wars’ – including the counterfactual question: how would colonialism resonate had there not been massive postcolonial migrations? An obvious case in point is the way Atlantic slavery is actively commemorated in the three European countries with a sizable Caribbean population, namely France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, but is all but ignored in Portugal, Spain and Denmark.15 In a discussion of migrations linked to the decolonization histories of European powers, Russia seems an odd case, both because the country is not always thought of as truly European and because of the conventional but never tested idea about European colonialism implying expansionism crossing salt water. Yet the Russian case certainly provides intriguing insights. Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union – a decolonization of sorts – about twenty-five million ethnic Russians found themselves politically and culturally displaced. At least three million ethnic Russians living in one or other of the former Soviet Republics either chose to return to Russia, or were forced to do so. The rights of these ‘expatriate’ Russians are still part of Russian power geopolitics.16 However, there is an additional field for comparison, which is spelled out by Blakely in his pioneering contribution. This may not yet cover as much ground as most of the other chapters, but provides us with some remarkable new comparative insights. Just like countries such as Portugal and France, which have their retornados or pieds noirs on the one hand and the (North) African (labour) immigrants on the other, there is a clear demarcation line in Russian postcolonial migration between Slavic and non-Slavic migrants. The Slavic postcolonial migrants to the Russian Federation came overwhelmingly from the (poorer) Asian and Central

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Asian parts of the former Soviet Union. Many of them had belonged to the elites of the non-Russian republics. In contrast, the millions of nonSlavic migrants had provided labour in the realm of the former Soviet Union for half a century, but were subsequently no longer able to obtain work permits. Currently 3.5 million Azeris, Armenians and Georgians are living in the Russian Federation, mainly around Moscow. A substantial proportion, possibly a good majority, does not have a regular status. Their marginalized position in the former metropolis reminds us of the status of sub-Saharan Africans in Portugal and France – though it seems that Russian hostility towards these living remnants of empire is exceptional by any standards. Similar examples of implosion of empire followed by migration (‘repatriation’) from the lost territories to the nuclear state are provided by the Ottoman and German empires. The implosion of the Ottoman Empire stretched over 150 years from the lost sea battle of Çesme in 1770 to the peace treaties of Sèvres in 1920 and Lausanne in 1923. Step by step it lost Southern Russia with the Crimea (1783), Egypt (1811), Serbia (1815), Greece (1829), Algeria (1830), Romania, Montenegro, BosniaHerzegovina and Cyprus (all 1878), Tunisia (1881), Crete (1900), Libya (1912), Albania (1913) and the rest of the Arabian provinces at the end of the First World War. Acts of ethnic cleansing were endemic throughout this process. As a consequence, refugees and those loyal to, or dependent on, the empire took refuge in the shrinking motherland which increasingly lost its multi-ethnic and multi-religious character.17 Ataturk reworked the demographic history of the implosion into the ideal of a purely Turkish nation. In total, many millions of Turks (or, more precisely, Muslim immigrants, including some from the Caucasus) were involved in this ‘repatriation’ – sometimes more than once in a lifetime – the last stage of which may have been the immigration of seven hundred thousand Turks from Bulgaria between 1940 and 1990. Most of these immigrants settled in urban north-western Anatolia. Today between a third and a quarter of the Republic’s population are descendants of these Muslim immigrants, known as Muhacir or Göçmen.18 The German Empire was not dismembered piecemeal but shrunk with two enormous blows: after the First World War it had to cede – apart from its overseas colonies – major border regions with Poland, Denmark and France; and after the Second World War, apart from its conquests since 1939, more border regions with Poland. Both events triggered massive streams of refugees to Germany. Other immigrants of German stock joined in. Their grandparents and other forefathers had settled in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in the preceding centuries, as a rule

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at the invitation of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires, not in the least to populate territories newly conquered from the Turks. After the First World War about one million refugees were registered, 850,000 from the territories ceded to Poland, 150,000 from Alsace-Lorraine, and a mere 16,000 from the tropical colonies.19 After the Second World War the numbers were even more impressive. In 1950 the Federal Republic of Germany in the West counted 7.9 million refugees and the German Democratic Republic 1.4 million. But this was not all: whereas in 1950, 16.5 per cent of the West German population consisted of refugees, five years later this proportion was 17.5 percent.20 These groups were strongly organized and constituted an important part of the electorate. Because of a clause in the German Constitution closely related to the emerging Cold War, any person who could claim German descent was entitled to enter the Federal Republic.21 This resulted in the immigration of 1.36 million Aussiedler between 1950 and 1987 and another 3 million between 1988 and 2004, of which the vast majority were from the Soviet Union. The total number of ‘German’ immigrants after the Second World War amounted to some 14 million.22 For comparative purposes, it is useful once more to look beyond Europe. With regard to openness to multiculturalism, the United States and Japan are on two extremes of the scale. The American academia has played a dominant role in debates on multiculturalism and postcolonialism worldwide. The relative American openness may partly be explained by the fact that, in contrast to European countries, the United States has thought of itself as the quintessential immigrants’ nation, as well as by its growing unease with its own record of dealing with the now small Native American population, and the considerable African-American population. The United States moreover has attracted massive immigration from Latin America, a continent with a long experience of informal American imperialism. The aftermath of Japan’s colonization of parts of continental East Asia, and particularly the post-war repatriation of millions of Japanese, presents an altogether different story. There has been little debate on colonialism within Japan, and it has completely discarded the multicultural rhetoric that was part of its pan-Asian expansionist history. The postcolonial migrants or hikiagesha may well present their multicultural past as a positive extra dimension against a homogeneous Japanese culture – the parallels with the ways in which the pieds noirs in France and the Indische Nederlanders in the Netherlands present their colonial pasts as multicultural are clear. But as Nicole Cohen remarks, there is precious little mainstream appreciation in Japan of postcolonial identity politics, and the postcolonial immigrant population seems to have virtually no political power.

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Multiculturalism and Identity Politics From the above we can only conclude that that there is not an unambiguous historical connection between postcolonial migration, degrees of multiculturalism, and hence openness to identity politics. The different histories of the receiving states, as well as the heterogeneity of the various groups of postcolonial migrants, do not enable us to identify such a connection easily. With this caveat in mind, we may now turn to the question of whether preceding colonial histories determined or at least strongly influenced the formulation of integration policies by postcolonial states. How did these prior experiences impinge upon their receptivity or their rejection of ‘identity politics’ and the development of multiculturalism? In general, we suggest that postcolonial states with pre-colonial native minorities plus long histories of European immigration – for example the United States and Canada, but also Australia and possibly New Zealand – are among the most committed to multiculturalism. On the other end of the continuum, there are a number of states with a long and often violent history of linguistic, cultural, religious and ethnic diversity – Russia and Turkey, but also Austria, heir of a former double monarchy – where the concept of multiculturalism (consequently) has made hardly any impact at all. In Europe, the United Kingdom pioneered multicultural policies, in a context in which vociferous community leaders and intellectuals of postcolonial backgrounds had acquired substantial political influence. A decade or so later, the Netherlands came to adopt a more moderate model of multiculturalism, again stimulated by postcolonial demands. France hesitated between the anti-communitarian republican traditions and the immigrant demands, which in the French case almost equated to the demands of postcolonial migrants. Over the past two decades, more room has been allowed for diversité, but even so, support for multiculturalism has remained relatively low – the more so as republican ideals are associated with laïcité whereas multiculturalism is often associated with extreme communitarian demands, particularly those made by radical Islamists. Meanwhile, over recent decades, Belgium, Germany and Portugal have all taken some steps in the direction of multiculturalism – some steps forward, some backwards, as has been the case all over Western Europe, but with the years post-2000 clearly featuring a return to more nationalist approaches to identity issues. Portugal is a remarkable case, a nation that like its giant heir Brazil has acknowledged its mixed diasporic character. At the same time, the ideology of Lusophony has less to offer to its subaltern postcolonial immigrants from Africa and equally has trouble in accepting

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that along the way the Portuguese language and culture have been thoroughly creolized, with Brazil rather than Portugal now leading the way. Multiculturalism therefore has become a politically contested, progressive alternative to the imperial ideology of Lusophony. It is necessary to disentangle an evident nexus linking a colonial past and the degree of postcolonial immigration to multiculturalism and hence receptivity to the claims of minorities, in this case postcolonial identity politics. It may help if we broaden our definition from ‘postcolonial’ to ‘post-imperial’, which makes it easier to incorporate the post-war experiences of Germany and Russia. There seems to be a remarkable inverse relation between the importance of post-empire immigration and the political choice in favour of or against multiculturalism, as Table I.2 below illustrates. In fact, the higher the demographic impact of post-empire migration, the lower the adherence to multiculturalism. Demography is of course not the only factor impinging upon the ideology and practice of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism works strongly in the U.K. and its former settled colonies, and has captured more progressive political forces in continental Europe in particular. In South European countries it is clearly a countervailing force against the dominant concepts of national identity. Table I.2. Comparing the ranking of countries in terms of post-imperial migration with susceptibility to multiculturalism Multicultualism > Low Post-imperial Immigration \/ High [4.9 +] Medium [3.6–4.2] Low [0.4–1.8]

Moderate–Low Moderate–High High

Germany Japan Portugal Turkey Russia France Italy Belgium Spain

Netherlands Denmark

U.K. U.S.A. Australia Canada

*Percentages from Table I.1

Further, if we compare with recent total immigration, we do not find a positive correlation. France and the U.K. are equally important as immigration countries, but have very different positions regarding multiculturalism. Both Germany and the typical English-speaking former settler colonies (United States, Canada and Australia) are countries with high levels of overall immigration, but clearly Germany is not very susceptible to multiculturalism in contrast to white settler colonies (See Table I.3). One striking commonality, however, in the group of European countries housing substantial numbers of both postcolonial and other migrants (France, Germany and the Netherlands) seems to be their hesitance to

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adopt, if not downright reject, multiculturalism. Perhaps this reflects the fact that the early generation of postcolonial migrants (pieds noirs, Volksdeutsche and Indische Netherlanders) all chose a path of assimilation and indeed ended up being smoothly integrated, thus setting a normative model which other migrants were not able or perhaps willing to emulate. Table I.3. Comparing the ranking of countries in terms of non-postcolonial (‘other’) immigration in general with their susceptibility to multiculturalism Multiculturalism > Low Other Immigration \/

Moderate–Low Moderate–High High

High

Germany

Belgium France

Netherlands

Middle Low

Italy Turkey Russia Japan

Spain Portugal

Denmark

U.S.A. Canada Australia U.K.

From this perspective it seems only natural that high post-imperial immigration in Japan did not produce any inclination towards inclusionary politics and national self-criticism, simply because of the absence of any other types of immigration. In contrast to that, it is striking that three of the four European countries in the moderate to high postcolonial immigration category – France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom – have recently acknowledged the significance of colonialism in their national histories, increasingly allowing for a fair degree of self-criticism. The reason why Portugal has lagged behind in this respect may be that its share of postcolonial migration consisted mainly of repatriates, usually a more conservative community – as were the pieds noirs and Indische Nederlanders. Germany, finally, was mainly welcoming lost compatriots whose reintegration could well be accomplished without broadening definitions of the German nation. And here, we find striking similarities with the imploding former Ottoman and Russian empires. As we proceed into the twenty-first century, we may well wonder about the continuing relevance of categorizations exploring the links between types of migrants and openness to multiculturalism. Throughout continental Europe, but also in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, we observe a tendency towards narrowing definitions of the nation and hence away from a high level of multiculturalism. At the same time, there is broad agreement that immigrant communities have come to stay and that their integration is a top priority. There are heated debates, sometimes attacks on ‘foreigners’ and particularly Muslims, but there is no silencing of dissident voices, and a broad acceptance of postcolonial voices. In

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this respect too, the undigested history of colonialism and post-imperial migration to Japan and Russia produces an altogether different, more uncomfortable postcolonial condition.

Notes 1. Smith (ed.), Europe’s Invisible Migrants, 32. 2. Pilkington, Migration, Displacement and Identity in Post-Soviet Russia, 4. 3. e.g. Penninx, Berger & Kraal, The Dynamics of International Migration and Settlement in Europe. See also Bade, Emmer, Lucassen & Oltmer, Enzyklopädie Migration in Europa. (soon to appear as International Migration Encyclopedia) and the website www.imiscoe.org. 4. See also Perevedentsev, ‘Migratsiia naseleniia’, 69–79. 5. INE statistics provided by Joaquín Arango at the IISH seminar, 8–9 November 2008. Until recently, Spanish American immigrants could obtain Spanish nationality after only two instead of the regular ten years of legal residency; dual nationality was allowed as well. 6. Chilling analogy: almost two decades later, the responsible police chief, Maurice Papon, was convicted for crimes against humanity for his role in deporting Jewish children during the Vichy regime. 7. See for these debates Lucassen, Feldman & Oltmer, Paths of Integration. The very use of concepts such as ‘integration’, ‘assimilation’ and ‘acculturation’ is contested; cf. Hargreaves, Multi-Ethnic France, 37. 8. Calhoun, Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, 327. 9. e.g. Day, Multiculturalism and History of Canadian Diversity. 10. Tinker, The Banyan Tree; Vertovec (ed.), Aspects of the South Asian Diaspora; Cohen, Global Diasporas. 11. See Lubkemann, ‘Race, Class and Kin in the Negotiation of “Internal Strangerhood” among Portugese Reatornados, 1975–1900’, 9 and Rocha-Trindade, ‘The Repatriation of Portuguese from Africa’, 337. 12. Cohen, this book. Recent overviews include Hargreaves, Multi-Ethnic France; Silverstein, Algeria in France; and Beriss, Black Skins, French Voices. See also Qui a peur du postcolonial? Dénis et controverses; and Blanchard, Bancel, Lemaire (eds), La fracture coloniale. 13. Shinder Thandi, this book. See also Hall, ‘Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms’; Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’; Gilroy, The Black Atlantic; Gilroy, After Empire. 14. See, for Italy, Andall, ‘Immigration and the Legacy of Colonialism’; for Belgium, Ceuppens, Congo Made in Flanders?; for Germany, Lutz and Gawarecki (eds), Kolonialgeschichte und Erinnerungskultur; for Denmark, Olwig, ‘Narrating Deglobalization’. 15. Oostindie, ‘Public Memories of the Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery in Contemporary Europe’. 16. Zayonchkovskaya, ‘Recent Migration Trends in Russia’, 117–23, 128–30. 17. Zürcher, Turkey. A Modern History; Hütteroth, ‘Bevölkerungsexplosion und innerstaatliche Wanderungen’; Kitromilidis, ‘The Greek-Turkish Population Exchange’; McCarthy, ‘Muslim Population Movements and Mortality’. 18. Hütteroth, ‘Bevölkerungsexplosion’, 276–79. 19. Oltmer, ‘Deutsche Zuwanderer aus den nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg abgetretenen Gebieten’, 525–29. 20. Bauernkämper, ‘Deutsche Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene aus Ost-, Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa in Deutschland und Österreich seit dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs’. 21. Dietz, ‘Aussiedler/Spätaussiedler in Deutschland seit 1950’. 22. Bauernkämper, ‘Deutsche Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene’. Not included are millions of prisoners of war (POW), repatriated after ten or more years of captivity by the Russians.

Chapter 1

Postcolonial Immigrants in France and their Descendants The Meanings of France’s ‘Postcolonial Moment’ James Cohen

The French ‘Postcolonial Moment’ In the ongoing controversy over the meaning of ‘the postcolonial’, different actors have different ways of defining for themselves what is ‘past’ about colonialism and what is still part of the present; what is new and what is not so new. Researchers may shed much light upon these questions but cannot claim neutrality or immunity from political controversy in which these same questions are posed in other, more immediate and sometimes plainly instrumental ways. The particular form of scientific legitimacy that academic researchers bring to the discussion cannot exist unto itself and should no doubt accept its inevitable interaction with public debate. In France, the postcolonial has been a category of public and not just academic discussion since 2005. The postcolonial controversy is far from absent from the academy but university research is not what has driven current debates. These are best understood as a crystallization of several convergent political controversies over the effects of colonialism in contemporary society. The publication in September 2005 of the collective work La fracture coloniale1 – a product of public intellectuals (social scientists and journalists of the left) – and the subsequent explosion of books and articles on the postcolonial,2 is no great surprise if one understands this wave as a response to emerging debates over the ‘republican model of integration’, including the question of how to treat ethnoracial discrimination, and how to treat religious diversity – in particular as embodied by Islam; over the Notes for this chapter begin on page 56.

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notion of ‘race’ which many sociologists have begun to consider in spite of strong republican presumptions against the legitimacy of the notion; and, last but not least, over the memory of colonialism, slavery and abolition, and the role of public authorities in recognizing and conserving this memory. The urban riots of November 2005 added a graphic and dramatic dimension to these debates and gave them an echo in the media that they would otherwise never have had to the same degree. In its academic dimension, the postcolonial ‘boom’ followed a long period of an embargo on such discussion, which can be explained mostly as a function of the institutional organization of the French university and research, which does not favour interdisciplinary experiments – except in a few privileged spaces – especially when conducted in an openly critical perspective. It took an organized effort to subvert institutionally enforced disciplinary boundaries in order to inaugurate the emerging field of postcolonial studies. Nonetheless, what France has before it today is a debate which is first of all about public policy, the form of citizenship and the concrete possibility of social justice in terms of both ‘distribution’ and ‘recognition’.3 The main, propelling theme of the postcolonial debates is the idea – a certainty for some, a hypothesis for others – of a substantial continuity between the colonial and postcolonial periods, as evidenced above all by continuing racism and discrimination affecting, in particularly serious ways, the life chances of descendants of colonial subjects from North Africa and West Africa; a certain predominant ill at ease in French society, in spite of proclaimed secular (laïc) norms, about the growing presence of Islam; and a certain resistance in French society to a coming to terms with colonial domination and its possible lingering effects. Clearly, some activists are less interested in examining social-scientific hypotheses than in mobilizing the idea of colonial continuity as a certainty, and in some cases even as the basis of a political identity. From a research standpoint, we must treat these ideas as hypotheses to be examined with all due social-scientific rigour even as we admit that there is no one objective, ‘god’s eye’ view of the matter. That is what I shall attempt to do here, with no claim to exhaustiveness but with some effort to draw on the wealth of materials that are now becoming available to interested researchers. Our subject of course involves processes at work not just in the first years after decolonization, but also many years after the arrival of the first postcolonial immigrants, when the central concerns are not those of the immigrants themselves but rather their descendants. The children and grandchildren of postcolonial immigrants are indeed often perceived and referred to as ‘foreign’ or ‘different’ (culturally, ethnoracially or both) and may, according to the hypothesis, experience something quite specific as

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‘postcolonial subjects’, descendants of colonial subjects, that other categories of immigrants may not experience, or not in the same way, which of course does not mean that conditions cannot be extremely unfavourable as well for other categories who have immigrated more recently (Turks, Sri Lankans, and so on) – not to mention exiles and refugees. That, of course, is why our collective effort also involves examining ‘paths to integration’, including the questions of social mobility and participation in public life, as well as ‘models of integration’ (or ‘models of citizenship’), that is, sets of norms that condition public policy. In France this means examining the prevailing model of reference, generally known as the ‘republican model of integration’. We shall explore how the political significance of this republican reference has evolved under the impact of recent debates occurring under the critical sign of the postcolonial, broadly defined. We will look, further, at the forms of organization and participation in public life of immigrant groups and their descendants, in order to determine to what extent the category ‘postcolonial’ is pertinent as a political designation, referring not just to a category of actors but also to certain forms of consciousness and distinct modes of political mobilization. The main argument we shall set forth here is that there are forms of racism and discrimination specific to the colonial/postcolonial condition and which significantly affect in specific ways the life chances of descendants of postcolonial immigrants. Although the French system of demographic statistics does not allow for a precise measurement of the impact of discrimination on given ethnoracial categories, it is clear enough from a growing body of research and from everyday observation that the ongoing effects of racism and discrimination disproportionately affect the descendants of immigrants from North Africa, West Africa and also – though in different ways – those from the Caribbean. A second and related claim is that certain aspects of the reception of Islam in French society, and in the French political system, reflect processes of ‘othering’ which can plausibly be traced in part to colonial contexts among other roots of course. As to whether ‘postcolonial’ also describes given forms of political consciousness, the answer in a nutshell is that most citizens with origins in the postcolonial immigration experience do not consistently invoke such a reference. The frequency of such references is growing, however, thanks mostly to certain small circles of political activists and intellectuals who promote it as a centrepiece of their analysis and a frame of collective action. Their ideas may occupy a critical fringe outside the consensus of the republican model, but their critical questionings have nonetheless provoked broader debate about the model’s underpinnings. Their influence in public life far outweighs their own modest numbers.

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One further clarification about the delimitation of our subject: it is often assumed that discussions about postcolonial immigration refer exclusively to subaltern social categories: peasants, workers, or the unemployed; often poor, often illiterate. It is important, however, to complete this image, because the full set of ‘postcolonial immigrants’ also includes other categories who were in a literal sense immigrants from the former colonies but who were not among the subaltern sectors of colonial society. Their numbers were lesser but without them the examination of postcolonial immigration would not be complete. The first of these categories is made up of colonial settlers from Europe, referred to in the case of Algeria – by far the largest French colony of settlement – as ‘pieds noirs’ (literally ‘black feet’). About a million pieds noirs came to metropolitan France after the Algerian war and the Evian peace agreements in 1962. Among them were about 130,000 Algerian Jews, who had been granted French citizenship in the 1870s and who, by the time of the Algerian war, had become a relatively privileged group.4 The integration of the pieds noirs into French society occurred under conditions that were traumatic and yet materially more favourable than for immigrant workers. The point here is not just to broaden and diversify our portrait of postcolonial immigration, but also to take full account of these categories’ impact on French society. For example, as we shall see further on, pieds noirs in southern France have been disproportionately present among the supporters of the anti-immigrant National Front.

From to Colonial to Postcolonial Migration: Themes and Perspectives We shall now review a few important themes of French postcolonial immigration history, in particular those which shed light on contemporary debates about the postcolonial heritage, with no claim to exhaustiveness. Postcolonial migrations in the literal sense, referring to the arrival of those who came to metropolitan France after the independence of their home country, cannot be understood apart from the significant migratory flows that occurred between the colonies and the metropole during the colonial period itself and in particular its final decades. During the two world wars the colonies supplied large numbers of soldiers to France; during and between the wars and just after the Second World War, they supplied large numbers of migrant workers. According to historian Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard, during the First World War (1914–1918) there were roughly 480,000 soldiers and 225,000 workers in France from

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the colonies, including 172,000 Algerian soldiers, 78,560 Algerian workers, 134,000 West African soldiers, and 49,000 Indochinese workers.5 The contribution of colonial subjects to the French military effort in both world wars has long been, and remains to this day, an important stake in defining the colonial heritage. The figure of the tirailleur sénégalais (the Senegalese rifleman) has been invoked by generations of immigrant associations and immigrants’ rights movements as a ‘reminder’ to French society that in an earlier period African colonial subjects made great sacrifices in blood for the greater glory of France, which is of course to suggest that France has an obligation or ‘debt’ to welcome Africans on its soil today. In a similar vein, the film ‘Indigènes’ (2005), directed by Rachid Bouchareb, a fiction starring three well-known Maghrebi and Franco-Maghrebi actors, is a graphic fictionalized account of the involvement of North African soldiers in the Second World War. The film’s final scene features a written appeal to the public to recognize the plight of thousands of war veterans, now in old age, who never collected a full pension because of their loss of French nationality following the formal decolonization of their countries. President Jacques Chirac answered this appeal a few months after seeing the film, making sure that pensions for soldiers from other countries were equal to those of French citizens. Immigrants to France in the early twentieth century were officially classified in essentializing and racializing fashion, with the attribution of qualities and defects to certain groups being incorporated into official thinking. Care was taken to isolate immigrant workers and their customs from native French people. One of the most important figures in formulating French policy from the 1930s to the 1950s was the demographer Georges Mauco, whose doctoral thesis, defended in 1932, is recognized today to be full of stereotypes about the inassimilable character of immigrants of certain origins: above all Africans and Arabs – colonials – but also Russians, Armenians and Jews. From 1935 on, he occupied a succession of positions of high responsibility in defining immigration policy, and despite his professed anti-Semitism during the Second World War he managed to retain his status as a high government official well into the 1970s. His differentialist schema for classifying immigrants by degree of ‘desirability’ is of course no longer a part of official thinking today, but certain patterns of discrimination in the public and private sectors suggest strong analogies with earlier ways of thinking. Although there was never a system of ethnic quotas, successive governments made efforts whenever possible to encourage European as opposed to African or Asian immigration.

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From Anticolonial Movements to Post-independence in Metropolitan France Police efforts to keep colonial immigrants in the metropole under control were often ineffective. Some independence movements were actually born in the metropole. Historian Mohamed Harbi writes: ‘It is scientifically established that national sentiment in the form of nationalist ideology and in the form of collective movement was born in emigration.’6 Vietnamese students in France in the 1920s began to explore paths to national liberation that involved Marxist and communist references.7 During the interwar period there were also movements among African immigrants that could be called ‘proto-nationalist’ and which were, in Philippe Dewitte’s words, ‘at the confluence of communist anti-imperialism, the pan-Africanism of American blacks and the French humanist and antiracist tradition’.8 During the entire period of the Algerian War, employers and the state tried to avoid recruiting workers from there, given the brutal impact of the conflict within metropolitan France. France, as noted before, was a key site for the independence movement; dues imposed on workers in France provided an important source of income for the provisional Algerian government. A series of politically motivated killings took place between groups of supporters of Messali Hadj’s Algerian National Movement and the National Liberation Front. French police were also frequent targets of the violence of independence militants.9 During the war, police repression against Algerians in France reached a peak. Under the authority of Maurice Papon, police préfet of Paris, an FLN demonstration held in Paris on 17 October 1961 was brutally repressed. Over ten thousand people were arrested; it is still not known today how many were killed, since official records were destroyed, but an investigation carried out by historian Benjamin Stora suggests there were at least 98.10 The date of this massacre has marked historical memory, as attested by the efforts of the ‘Association 17 octobre 1961: contre l’oubli’ to seek ‘recognition by [French] political authorities that a crime against humanity’ was committed on that date.11 With Evian agreements, signed on 18 March 1962, Algerians became foreigners in France, while for Algeria they became ‘temporary’ migrants with strong obligations to their new country. Although for France they were no longer officially enemies, a sense of mistrust and resentment persisted. The exodus of the pieds noirs and harkis (see above) only contributed to this. Algerians already residing in France were allowed to stay without renouncing their Algerian nationality. Children born to Algerian immigrants after 1962 were automatically granted French citizenship, not only because

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of having been born on French territory, but also because their parents, born in Algeria when it was still French, were deemed to transmit French nationality to their offspring. This claim was not recognized by Algeria, on the grounds that it would legitimate colonial domination post facto; under Algerian law, these same children were Algerian nationals. In the early 1980s, a Socialist government in France examined the possibility of changing an article of the Code of Nationality in order to allow children of Algerian immigrants to decide whether or not to accept French nationality, but this proved impossible without also negatively affecting other categories, in particular former colonial settlers of European descent.12 Some historians who have studied the immediate postcolonial period have found signs of a continuing regime of domination under new conditions. Alexis Spire has shown that many civil servants in French Algeria, when repatriated to metropolitan France after 1962, were assigned positions that placed them in direct contact with immigrants, resulting in situations which tended to reproduce the colonial hierarchy after the fact.13 Laure Pitti has shown how the regimes of discipline reigning in workplaces such as the Renault automobile factory in late colonial years had something tangibly colonial about them – and how some of that spirit, including the prevailing methods of enforcing discipline and managing colonial workers’ careers, spilled over into the post-colonial era and represented a form of continuity which tended to block the career advancement of Algerian and other North African workers.14

Labour Immigration, Colonial then Postcolonial For a long time colonial/postcolonial immigrant groups made up a minority of foreigners in France. Until the post-Second World War period, non-Europeans accounted for only a tiny fraction of France’s foreign population. Until 1968, the majority of the foreign population in France came from neighbouring countries. Only in the 1950s did the numbers of colonial migrants begin to grow rapidly. Algerians numbered only 22,000 in 1946 but had reached 805,000 by 1982, in part because the Evian peace agreements allowed for their free circulation.15 By 1982, Europeans represented less than half of the ‘foreign’ population, although they remained a majority of the ‘immigrant’ population (naturalized immigrants as well as those who remained foreign) as recently as the 1990 census. The post-war period of sustained economic growth referred to as ‘the 30 glorious years’ (1945–1975) spans the late colonial period and the early period of decolonization. Beginning in 1956 in particular, there was a large new wave of immigration which, by 1975, led to a percentage of

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foreigners in France equal to the highest pre-war level of 7 per cent, recorded in 1931. The drive to recruit immigrant labour in the post-war era was conditioned, once again, by the choice to favour, whenever possible, ‘the good immigrant elements’ as opposed to the others, including colonials, considered culturally unassimilable. Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard notes that active efforts to recruit workers from other countries (Spain, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Turkey), via signed agreements with these countries, were intended to create a counterweight to Algerian migration. Agreements were also signed, however, with Morocco and Tunisia, French ‘protectorates’ rather than settler colonies, which both gained their independence in 1956.16 In the 1960s, immigrants from former colonies began to make up a substantial portion of the working class. During the same period the practice of hiring large numbers of foreign workers was adopted by other major Western European countries, making France appear as less of an exception in this respect, whatever the specificities of its colonial history. By 1973, France had 3 million foreigners on its territory; West Germany had 2.8 million and Britain 1.6 million.17 The generation of sociologists who worked on immigration and immigrants in this period tended, even as family reunification began to take effect, to apply a class model and refer to ‘immigrant workers’ as a central category of their analysis.18 It was only much later that ethnicity and race began to gain traction as important categories.

Antillais: Migrants, Citizens and Racialized Other The French Antilles (Martinique and Guadeloupe), as well as Guyane on the South American continent and the island of La Réunion in the Indian Ocean, were decolonized via assimilation in 1946 – in other words they were incorporated into France as overseas départements. Their inhabitants became, at least on paper, fully-fledged French citizens. However, the chronic problem of unemployment in these territories demonstrated that decolonization was easier to accomplish in terms of political status than in the deeply rooted socio-economic structures. Starting in the 1950s the French state organized channels whereby young Antillais workers could find employment in metropolitan France. With the advantage of French citizenship and the French school system, they were channelled into jobs in the public sector, in particular civil service and medical services in public hospitals. The experience of Antillais has been substantially different from that of Africans – except insofar as both are perceived and racialized as ‘black’. Pap Ndiaye, in La condition noire (2008), suggests that the children of Antil-

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lais natives, who no longer benefit from the relatively favourable situation their parents had known, have found themselves, because of discrimination, in situations resembling those of Africans,19 a fact which may well be contributing to a growing consciousness of ethnoracial origins.

Patterns of Integration A major turning point was reached in the mid-1970s, not just with economic recession and the official ‘closing of the borders’ to labour immigration, but also with the beginning of family reunification, in 1976, which led to a marked increase in the number of female immigrants, the formation of families, and to an enduring, visible presence of immigrants which was soon to become a political issue and a national obsession. If this study is mainly concerned with the situation of the descendants of postcolonial immigrants, we need to examine the question of how they have fared in French society – the ‘integration’ question. The term ‘integration’ itself is not an innocent one and requires some scrutiny. When, in the mid-1980s, the issue came to be framed as the ‘integration of immigrants’, the term was perceived to have a noble intellectual pedigree, descending from the sociological thought (and republican political engagement) of Emile Durkheim. It was seen as less offensive than ‘assimilation’, with its colonial connotations and its suggestion that in order to become ‘truly’ French – and truly modern – one had to abandon one’s culture of origin.20 Today, however, in the wake of growing doubts that postcolonial immigrants and their offspring have been given adequate chances to ‘integrate’, the term has come to be received by many as an injunction to conformity and as an insinuation that immigrants’ descendants are not yet integrated ‘enough’.21

Patterns of Discrimination: Urban Environment, School, Employment From the mid-1980s on, governments pursued a policy intended to assure more successful integration of immigrant families. It was concentrated in the domain of ‘urban policy’ (la politique de la ville) and included a programme known as the ‘social development of neighbourhoods’. The proclaimed objective was to improve the environment of the most marginalized urban areas by reconstructing dilapidated buildings, repainting stairwells, building playgrounds and the like. Specially targeted areas were given extra attention for programmes in after-school aid for struggling

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pupils, after-school sports and cultural programmes and the promotion of young adult role models. The overall balance sheet of such policies after nearly twenty years is not very encouraging because they have not succeeded in giving sufficient numbers of youth a lift out of their socioeconomic conditions of origin. It is true that by comparison to the United States, the areas designated as ‘sensitive urban districts’, currently inhabited by about 4.46 million people,22 suffer from less radical abandonment. The French welfare state does not always produce spectacular results, but continues to hold poverty in check. The school system welcomes all children even though it does not actually provide equal opportunities to all. As urban sociologists Robert Castel, Loïc Wacquant and others argue, the term ‘ghetto’, which denotes situations of radical ethnoracial segregation and socio-economic exclusion, is not applicable here, since even the most depressed areas in France are populated by ethnically mixed populations who exercise some claims on the state.23 The riots and car-burnings which took place in dozens of French cities in November 2005 were a clear sign – though not the first of its kind – that ‘integration’ was not working very well, in particular for youth of postcolonial immigrant background. Although the participants in these events bore no explicit political message, clearly they were expressing frustration with a pattern of school failure, insufficient economic opportunities and ethnoracial discrimination.24 The riots can be understood as a ‘civic revolt against the deficit of citizenship’, that is, against an ‘unjustifiable treatment based on difference, in key sectors of social life’.25 Discrimination had been officially recognized as a problem in France for nearly ten years at the time of the riots. Although it is extremely difficult under French law to measure discrimination with statistics pertaining to the ethnoracial origin of people, there is clear evidence that discrimination affects the descendants of postcolonial immigrants in particularly harsh ways. The literature documenting discrimination has been accumulating for a decade now.26 A recent essay, La discrimination negative (Negative discrimination) by Robert Castel provides a good summary of these findings.27 In anticipated reply to those who object in principle to any form of so-called ‘positive discrimination’ (the current term in French for ‘affirmative action’), he warns against underestimating the importance of the ‘negative discrimination’ affecting descendants of postcolonial immigrants. The housing situation of immigrant workers, starting in the 1950s, constitutes in Castel’s view one of the key historical roots of the situation now faced by immigrants’ children. In those days immigrants were often housed in special workers’ residences, overcrowded hotels and even

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in shantytowns (bidonvilles) which were visible in some areas surrounding Paris and Lyon until the early 1970s. The ambitious state-sponsored housing construction programme in post-war France succeeded in providing decent shelter for many workers, including immigrants. Many were housed in large projects known as grands ensembles, which, already in the early 1960s, were coming to be criticized for their inhuman character and the absence of neighbourhood relations. One of the ambitions of governments of this period was to promote ‘social mixing’ (mixité) – that is to bring together in neighbourhoods people of different social conditions. The experiment met with limited success, because the upwardly mobile, who were able to move out of public housing, did so at the earliest opportunity.28 Mixité became ‘the mixing of populations who accumulated handicaps in terms of economic resources, the relationship to work, and the capacity to assure their own social independence’.29 Family reunification began in the mid-1970s, just as economic recession and deindustrialization were undermining employment and the chances of social mobility. Castel writes: ‘These populations, in social decline, were in a sense in “house arrest” in areas which represented for them their only possibility for shelter.’30 In spite of their socio-economic situation and the frequently bicultural and bilingual flavour of their family milieu, the children of immigrants in public housing tracts are by no means cut off from dominant French culture. In Castel’s words they ‘share the values of society in general, in particular the taste for consumption, the interest in money and for the external signs of wealth, perhaps even a bit more than others’. The problem is not that they are radically excluded from society but rather from its promised benefits: the have ‘their feet in economic insecurity (précarité) and their head in the cultural universe of the middle classes’.31 Hostile relations between the police and youths – especially males – living in these areas around large cities is one of the most systematic and obvious manifestations of the discrimination problem.32 Tensions with the police have been at the origin of all urban violence since the ‘hot summer’ of Vénissieux, near Lyon, in 1981. Police often operate with a caricatured vision of youth in the housing projects as being dominated by ‘caïds’ (gang leaders); as a result, entire generations of youth come under suspicion and are subjected to random harassment and acts of brutality on the basis of their physical appearance. They are all familiar with the ‘délit de faciès’ – the ‘crime’ of having a certain kind of face. The fact that neighbourhood policing, adopted by governments of the left in the 1990s, has been sacrificed in favour of Nicolas Sarkozy’s ‘culture of results’ – measurable standards of police performance – has not helped to increase trust between the police and local youth.

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Youths of Maghrebi origin are a group at high risk when faced with penal sanctions. In a study of 1,800 cases of youths being convicted for ‘outrage, rebellion and violence against the police’, it was shown that longer prison terms were meted out in 25 per cent of the cases in which the defendants were described in police terminology as of ‘North African type’, but in only 10 per cent of the cases that involved defendants of ‘European type’.33 Among incarcerated youths in the 18 to 24 age range, 39.9 per cent have a father born in the Maghreb. There are proportionately nearly ten times more chances of being incarcerated for those with a Maghrebi father. If one includes parents of Maghrebi origin born in France, the proportion is no doubt even higher.34 Ethnoracial discrimination in employment, denounced by all governments since 1997 and explicitly prohibited by a 2001 law, is becoming better understood thanks to a growing body of sociological literature, but it remains frequent. It is not easy, Castel points out, to determine from available data to what degree discrimination is due to ethnic origin as opposed to school failure, since the two handicaps are often combined.35 A recent study showed that certain residential areas with the highest percentages of immigrants were also among those with the highest rates of youth unemployment (often as high as 40–50 per cent) and the highest profiles during the events of November 2005.36 A test carried out in 2004 by the Observatoire des discriminations on 258 job advertisements showed clearly that employers discriminate in screening candidates for interviews: 75 candidates of French origin were given this opportunity as opposed to only 14 of equal qualification with Arabsounding names.37 A documentary film by Yamina Benguigui, Le plafond de verre (The Glass Ceiling, 2006), shows the devastating psychological effects of job discrimination on highly educated and qualified youths of North African origin, although the film also highlights some success stories. The public school system has in the past been a significant vector of social mobility, but today certain mechanisms of discrimination prevent many schools from playing such a role. The children of immigrants, who are also over-represented in the lowest-rated schools (40 per cent of immigrant youth or children of immigrants are grouped in 10 per cent of the elementary schools), to experience more deeply than others the divorce between the promise of equal opportunity and its actual realization, which would require conditions they do not control.38 Secondary-school dropout rates are much higher for youths of Maghrebi and sub-Saharan African origin than for others. While 17 per cent of young French men of metropolitan origin left the school system without a diploma in 1998, the same was true of 44 per cent of young men of Maghrebi origin and 51 per

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cent of young men of sub-Saharan African origin.39 These youths either will not find employment (40 per cent of the people without diplomas were unemployed in 2004)40 or they will occupy the most unqualified, least well-paid and most precarious positions. Moreover, employers tend more and more to require certification or diplomas even for low-skilled jobs; youths without diplomas find themselves at the back of the line.41 Another major dimension of the discrimination problem has to do with the religious affiliations – real or imagined – of the children of postcolonial immigrants. For reasons related not just to colonial history, but also to pre-colonial history (European orientalism) and to current events (terrorist networks operating in the name of Islam), this religion, now the second most important in France, continues to be the object of an undercurrent of suspicion in French society.42 Not everyone in France shares such perceptions. Islam is often associated not just with fanaticism and violence but also with factional behaviour incompatible with the supposed universality of citizenship in the Republic. ‘Intégrisme’, the term most often used to designate ‘fundamentalism’, is seen as an extreme form of communautarisme (ethnic or ethno-religious factionalism),43 and Islam is suspected of generating it almost by essence. The stigma attached to Islam is associated in turn with the banlieue urban areas, sometimes under suspicion of being influenced by radical Islamic political currents, although all evidence shows that such currents represent a very tiny minority. Instances of sexist male behaviour among Muslim youth are taken as evidence that Islam is by definition insensitive to the needs of women and intolerant of women seeking emancipation; the egalitarian values of feminism are advanced as a progressive pretext for perpetuating the stigma attached to Islam,44 as became clear in a long and ongoing controversy surrounding the Islamic headscarf. The persistent suspicion of Islam, to which we shall return in connection with the republican model of citizenship, is in conflict with the ideal of laïcité, which claims a position of neutrality with respect to all religions. The urban riots of November 2005 were clearly unconnected with Islam, although some foreign media were tempted by such an interpretive frame. However, another ethnic stereotype, no less stigmatizing and replete with colonial overtones, gained prominence when a well-known historian and French Academy member, Hélène Carrère-d’Encausse, declared that the polygamy practised by Africans helped to explain the disorderly behaviour of their children in the streets.45 She was quoted on this point by a government minister in charge of employment and by the president of the majority party.

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Racism, Xenophobia and Politics The patterns of racism and discrimination we have briefly examined must be placed in political context if their impact is to be fully understood. The stigmatization of postcolonial immigrants and their descendants took on new importance in the mid-1980s with the emergence on the national political scene of a party which defended the principle of the ‘Front National’ (FN) led by Jean-Marie Le Pen. The rise of this party was an important factor in turning immigration into the political obsession that it has become for the past quarter-century. Founded in 1972, the FN was barely visible in the political landscape until 1983, when a Front candidate ran a competitive race for the municipal council in the city of Dreux, 100 km west of Paris.46 Thanks in part to Le Pen’s speaking ability and charisma (including an irrepressible urge to engage in transgressive anti-Semitic humour), but also because of the party’s organizing capacities, the FN soon became a serious competitor to the major parties. It briefly commanded about thirty deputies in the National Assembly when proportional voting rules made this possible from 1986 to 1988. Throughout the 1990s and until 2007, the FN averaged 15 per cent in national elections and in some parts of the country achieved scores of 25 per cent or higher. For a short time in the 1990s the party controlled four cities, all in the south of the country, and it is now present in numerous city, departmental and regional councils. The question of immigration, while central for the FN, ties into a broader programme for the assertion of ‘national sovereignty’, including limits on the supranational powers of the European Union. The FN has led the right-wing, nationalist version of the movement to hold in check the process of European integration (but there is also a left-wing, internationalist critique of this process with a far different social content). Not all FN voters have consciously adhered to the party’s full programme of xenophobic exclusion. Clearly, many voters have chosen the FN as a protest vote and as a cry of social distress. Some of its supporters are former working-class sympathizers of the left, but most of its support comes from already-confirmed conservatives. The FN has attracted support from a broad spectrum of social conditions: not just workers and the unemployed, but also small business owners, business executives, technicians and engineers. The FN has frequently been classified as a ‘populist’ movement, but this label, which emphasizes the direct relationship between leader and followers, tends to place responsibility for the party’s success too squarely on the shoulders of the working class,47 while underestimating the presence of many educated activists who form an apparatus and actually do adhere to a programme, not just to a charismatic leader.

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The geographical distribution of support for the FN is highly significant. Declining industrial areas and peripheral residential areas around the largest cities account for high levels of support, but the consistently highest levels, upwards of 30 per cent, have been noted mostly in southern France, from Marseille to the east along the Côte d’Azur (Riviera). The presence in that region of many pieds noirs or former French settlers in Algeria who harbour a particular form of resentment towards Arabs, is not a mere coincidence. Historian Benjamin Stora proposes a loose but suggestive analogy with the slave and segregationist south of the United States.48 Clearly we are dealing here with a particular version of ‘postcolonial’ racism, with directly traceable colonial roots. Le Pen and the National Front embodied a move from ‘scientific’ or ‘biological’ racist discourse to a ‘neo-racism’ based on the premise of incompatibility among differing cultures.49 Instead of declaring Arabs or black Africans to be ‘inferior’, the idea has rather been to emphasize that their ‘cultures’, real or imagined, represent an intrusion when practised on French soil, where local culture must prevail. However, the idea of ‘préférence nationale’, as coined by the right-wing think tank ‘Club de l’Horloge’ in the 1980s, is not just a discourse of culture but of ‘national interest’, with a thinly veiled ethnonational bias. The FN calls for vacant jobs to be reserved for ‘French people’ as a matter of priority. The National Front’s influence clearly reaches beyond the party’s electorate. The stigmatization of immigrants and their descendants is part of a deep-seated mentality.50 Portions of the classic parliamentary right have often ceded to the temptation of stealing the National Front’s arguments in order to seduce a portion of its electorate. The debate, beginning in the late 1980s, over the automatic access of immigrants’ children to French nationality can be understood in this light, as can the wave of legislation inspired by Minister of the Interior Charles Pasqua in the early 1990s, which aimed not just to fight illegal immigration but also to render the status of legal immigrants more fragile.51 Nicolas Sarkozy’s successful presidential campaign of 2007 purposely occupied some of the National Front’s terrain, not only by capitalizing on Sarkozy’s earlier run-in as Minister of the Interior with youth from the banlieue whom he described as ‘racaille’ (hoodlums, scum), but also by instrumentalizing the notion of ‘national identity’ as a key campaign theme in association with ‘immigration’. He pledged to create a ‘Ministry of Immigration and National Identity’, thereby suggesting that the national identity is the object of an official determination – and that immigrants need to adopt it if they want to ‘integrate’ successfully. Thanks to these manoeuvres he did diminish the score of the National Front to ‘only’ 10.44 per cent, down from 17.8 per cent in 2002.

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Upon being elected, Sarkozy actually did create the new ministry. The first move of the new minister, Brice Hortefeux, was to advertise the number of immigrants to be expelled in the coming calendar year. Several scholars associated with the fledgling project for a national museum of immigration history resigned from their positions as advisors to the project rather than be associated with a state claiming to govern in the name of a given ‘national identity’. Among them was historian Gérard Noiriel, who responded with the essay A quoi sert ‘l’identité nationale’ (The uses of ‘national identity’). The expression, he wrote, ‘has most often been used to stigmatize immigrants by fabricating an artificial division between “them” and “us”’. Sarkozy ‘recycles in today’s language the old nationalist logic which locates the threat of foreigners to France in persons’ origins’.52

The French ‘Republican Model of Integration’ in Question The controversies since the 1980s over immigration, ‘integration’, ethnoracial and cultural difference, are all summed up in the public debate over the French republican model of integration,53 since this normative model of citizenship makes a strong claim to providing a coherent synthesis of all these questions. Part of the claim to legitimacy of the republican model is based on history, because in its most general sense the model is a creation of the French revolutionary period: people of all national and religious backgrounds were welcomed into citizenship as long as they respected a clear separation between their private identities (tied to particular origins, languages, religions, and so on) and their public identity as citizens, both national and universal in content. While the partisans of the republican model insist on this eighteenth-century pedigree, one cannot understand the significance of the republican reference today without examining contemporary politics. As the FN in the late 1980s and early 1990s became an undeniable force in French politics, mainstream parties of the right and the left sought to isolate the party and ‘quarantine’ its ideas. This was no doubt the one most important reason for the reconstruction of French republican discourse. In an earlier phase of its efforts to channel the energies of the anti-racist movement, the Socialist Party, the largest party of the parliamentary left, had adopted a more multiculturalist position, without actually using the term. In its earliest form, the organization SOS-Racisme, a creation of the Socialists, emphasized the notion of ‘le droit à la différence’ (the right to difference) as a way of promoting mutual understanding among people of different origins. However, as Alec Hargreaves notes: ‘The rise of the

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FN, campaigning on a platform claiming that immigration threatened not only employment and law and order but also national identity itself, led the left to pull back from its apparently multiculturalist posture. References to le droit à la différence all but disappeared.’54 It is not easy to boil the content of the republican model down to a few simple principles, because there is not one standard and authoritative version of it. Elements of it are written into constitutional law, but other elements have been added on in a process of ideological construction that varies according to political affiliation (left or right) but also along a spectrum of greater or lesser ideological rigidity. There are left-leaning versions of the model which emphasize the social content of citizenship, and more neoliberal versions in which the discourse of citizenship and difference go hand in hand with a more restrictive notion of social rights for working people, and neoliberal policies for generating employment using tax breaks and the like. A more flexible version of the model is put forward by those not entirely averse to the public expression of ‘minority’ identities; but more typically republican discourse tends towards a more rigid ‘republicanism’, in which affirmations of difference are denounced as ethnic factionalism and a threat to national cohesion. The one most central and undisputed principle of the republican model as it has emerged from political controversies over the past twenty-five years is that citizenship in the French republic, and the rights to which it opens access, is an attribute of individuals and not of groups based on ethnoracial origin or cultural identification. The practical conclusions that flow from this precept have generated, in recent years, two major sets of problems. The first problem area concerns the vexed question of how to give substance to the republican principle of equality among all citizens in situations in which certain categories of the population are discriminated against and denied rights. The responses to discrimination associated with the republican reference have been problematic. One possibility, from within the universe of republican discourse, has been to attempt to deny the problem by simply invoking the principle of equality as a mantra – that is, claiming that by virtue of its existence the principle had already been realized or was advancing rapidly toward that goal. This was the reflex of the model’s more dogmatic, ‘republicanist’ exponents.55 The other possibility was to acknowledge the existence of an ethnoracial discrimination problem, as indeed began to happen in the late 1990s. However, the anti-discrimination measures taken in conformity with republican precepts have proven to be rather limited in their impact and have generated frustration among those expecting more tangible results. The second problem area has to do with the suspicion, expressed in most forms of republican discourse, towards groups based on religious,

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cultural or ethnic affiliation which extend their activities into the public sphere. Partisans of the republican model attempt to draw a clear distinction between those forms of solidarity seen as particularistic and those which are legitimately public and worthy of republican citizenship thanks to their universalistic character. Religious communities may operate appropriately in their own private sphere but must not attempt to intervene in the public sphere as communities because, according to the reasoning, this would risk contaminating political life with particularistic thinking and behaviour, placing in danger the universal character of citizenship and the very cohesion of society. This aspect of the republican model is closely related to the notion of laïcité, the radical form of secularism that grew out of the French revolution and resulted in elaborate arrangements to circumscribe the educational activities of the church under the Third Republic. As for ethnic/racial categories, they are accorded no official recognition; although the French constitution does contain the word ‘race’, the notion itself is banned from the proper republican vocabulary. Nor can there be any recognition of the existence of minorities aiming to struggle against the socio-economic discrimination and cultural ‘misrecognition’ racialized subjects undergo. When such groups appear nonetheless, they are treated as illegitimate and are said to contribute to that anti-republican form of behaviour known as ‘communautarisme’ (ethnic factionalism), including an ethno-religious variant. It could easily be shown, however, out that the strict separation between the particularist/private and universal/public spheres is not nearly as clear in practice as in republican theory, and that indeed this principle of separation has in practice not always been such a central dimension of republican citizenship. One of the main political parties in the post-Second World War governing coalition was the ‘Mouvement républicain populaire’, a Christian-democratic party. Ironically, official efforts to manage the relationship between religious groups and the state can result in giving these groups a much greater public role than was ever contemplated by partisans of the republican model. Today, at a time when religious groupings acting in the public sphere supposedly represent a danger to the republic, the Representative Council of Jewish Organizations of France (CRIF) has become an influential lobbying organization whose annual gala dinner is attended by many political leaders. Another key example is that of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), founded in 2005. To make the Council possible, successive ministers of the interior (also in charge of relations with religious communities) worked hard since the 1980s to induce rival tendencies within French Islam to hold elections and be represented in this body. Thanks to the electoral process, the inter-

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nal currents of French Islam have made themselves more publicly known than ever before, in what has become an eminently political process. In both problem areas, the republican model has revealed its limits and run up against contending viewpoints and practices. In a more moderate vein, the critiques and challenges have remained within the discursive universe of the model while challenging some of its conceptions and practices as being too rigid. At the more radical end of the spectrum we find critiques and forms of political mobilization placed under the sign of the postcolonial and accompanied in some cases by the suggestion that the republican model itself is the problem.

Fighting Discrimination the Republican Way The republican model as a guide to public policy has resulted in a situation in which discrimination can be recognized as a problem but cannot be precisely measured or very energetically combated. Republican scruples make it impossible to envision the sorts of solutions that involve a statistical measure of the problem, because this would imply, in one form or another, ethnoracial categories, which are taboo. Some sociologists and demographers have succeeded in incorporating into their research certain types of data that help to measure and circumscribe the discrimination problem,56 but when they dare suggest that such categories might become an instrument of public policy, they expose themselves to attack by a broad coalition of republicans of the left and the right.57 Since 1997, the anti-discrimination measures adopted have included: • A free telephone number, which came into service in 2000, for people who are seeking to testify that they have been victims of discrimination. The results have been negligible; only a small handful of cases have resulted in judicial proceedings against discriminating parties. • A modification of trial procedure which allows parties to prove that discrimination has occurred against them even though they are not able to produce positive proof of an ‘intention’ to discriminate. • The use of staged, controlled ‘tests’ to detect discriminatory behaviour by night club owners, renters of apartments, and employers. • Aid to young job candidates in the form of adult sponsors who facilitate their entry into the professional world, in situations where they might ordinarily meet with indifference or worse. • The creation of an independent body, the Haute autorité de lutte contre les discriminations et pour l’égalité (HALDE, the high authority for the struggle against discriminations and for equality). The founding

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of the HALDE was a success for those who had been advocating that France should demonstrate its seriousness in the struggle against discrimination by creating such an authority, along the lines of the British Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). The HALDE owes part of its authority to European directives which have forced the French state to make more tangible progress in fighting racial discrimination in particular, although French authorities go out of their way to avoid using that term. The HALDE’s mission involves providing ‘counsel to those involved in judicial procedures’, preparing legal briefs, procuring evidence, hearing witnesses, organizing mediations, and testifying in court.58 Further, it can ‘render public practices of discrimination’ and make recommendations to the government. The results have been rather meagre: there has been no significant increase in the number of affairs brought to trial; the mediation procedure promoted by the HALDE makes it easy for employers to obstruct justice by refusing to produce key documents; and the HALDE has no quantitative instruments to measure how the discrimination problem is evolving nationally and in this respect is clearly constrained by republican norms. We shall return to this problem. • Voluntary action by employers, which is the solution preferred by the government under Nicolas Sarkozy. Indeed, growing numbers of employers see a material advantage in hiring at least token numbers of non-white employees and cultivating an image of ‘diversity’. A manifesto entitled Les oubliés de l’égalité des chances (Those whom equal opportunity passes by)59 was co-authored in 2006 by Laurence Méhaignerie, a researcher, and Yazid Sabeg, an Algerianborn businessman. Appointed in December 2008 by Sarkozy to the quasi-ministerial position of Commissioner of Diversity, Sabeg states clearly that he aims to spread the word about the desirability of diversity without taking measures overly coercive to business. The private think-tank Institut Montaigne had earlier promoted a ‘Charter of Diversity’ which enterprises were invited to sign without having to take any concrete measures. Voluntary action has created new opportunities for limited numbers of qualified young men and women of postcolonial immigrant backgrounds. • President Nicolas Sarkozy himself has promoted ‘diversity’ in governmental circles by choosing a few ministers of postcolonial immigrant background. In the Sarkozy era, more verbal recognition is given than ever before to the problem of discrimination, but it is not addressed as a systemic problem fuelled by underlying social inequalities.

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The Obstacles to ‘Diversity’ in Politics Politics is widely recognized in France as a profession where progress towards representative levels of ‘diversity’ is particularly slow and painful, although the more dogmatic exponents of the republican model refuse to acknowledge this as a problem.60 In today’s National Assembly, elected in 2007, there is only one non-white deputy from metropolitan France, a black woman born in Guadeloupe who represents a district of Paris. Amidst much enthusiasm for the candidate Barack Obama, many commentators observed that it would be inconceivable to imagine an electable non-white candidate for president of France. There are a few dozen non-white municipal councillors and a handful of Senators; their numbers have increased in recent years from microscopic levels to still very low levels. There continues to be much resistance within the major political parties to voluntaristic measures to ‘diversify’ the candidate base. Some party leaders simply do not consider the subject suitable for discussion because of its connotations of ethnic factionalism, even as they pragmatically attempt to diversify their personnel in modest proportions. Where diversity goals exist, they are indicative only, and parties have had trouble fulfilling them; not because of any lack of available talent, but mostly because competition for elective positions within parties remains intense. Party activists of postcolonial-immigrant background have often been made to run for office in districts where their defeat has been certain. In the absence of serious efforts by political parties to recruit candidates ‘from below’ – even the parties of the left, which enjoy the electoral support of a majority of descendants of postcolonial immigrants61 – it was not difficult for Nicolas Sarkozy, elected president in 2007, to ‘steal’ the diversity issue from the left by appointing a handful of non-white, postcolonial figures as government ministers. This problem of limited access to a political career for people of postcolonial heritage reflects a broader reticence in French society to recognize people of such background as true members of the national community who are qualified to represent it or assume serious public responsibilities. Does this reticence reflect a lingering colonial heritage? On this point, Vincent Geisser and El Yamine Soum, co-authors of a recent book on discrimination in political parties, prefer a prudent formulation: ‘at no time do we seek to identify the current political situation with a colonial context. To legitimize such a comparison would be an affront to the memory of the colonized and the victims of colonization: the status of the indigénat [a special legal code for colonial subjects] was a system of organized segregation which has no equivalent in current French society.’ They prefer to speak instead of ‘complex filiations, kinships or analogies’.62 In

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this spirit they quote Albert Memmi’s reflections, in his well-known essays Portrait du colonisé and Portrait du colonisateur, on the ‘Nero complex’ of the political elite in France’s former colonies. The colonial ruler, in order to legitimize his power, must ‘extol himself to the skies’, Memmi writes, ‘and drive the usurped below the ground at the same time’.63 In other words, colonial elites saw themselves as being the only ones competent to hold power, and were able at best to imagine sharing power only after a long period of apprenticeship. Something analogous may be happening today under very different conditions. Taking a more resolutely critical postcolonial stance, sociologist Nacira Guénif has not hesitated to suggest that France’s reticence in allowing minorities to occupy positions of political responsibility reflects an inability to move beyond dreams of former imperial glory and refashion its collective self-image for a new era.64 In her view, Sarkozy’s recruitment in 2007 of three women as government ministers, two of North African descent and one of West African descent, has a ‘token’ dimension to it. At least two of these ministers – Rama Yade, in charge of human rights and Fadela Amara, in charge of urban policy, have indeed been been placed in situations of very limited autonomy and been forced publicly to accept orders that contradict their own convictions, suggesting that they were appointed more as minority ‘window dressing’ than out of any serious aspiration to broaden the base of political leadership.

Fear and Loathing of Ethnic Factionalism A more recent response to discrimination has involved the self-organization of its potential victims into public collectives. Whether the term is employed or not, these organizations reflect a new logic of ‘minority’ movements in France. In a republican spirit, such movements are frowned upon, even though they claim in all sincerity to be simply defending the rights that the republic has supposedly granted them as citizens. The goals of these organizations vary. Aside from fighting discrimination and promoting ‘diversity’ in the employment, politics and media, they have espoused at least two other types of objectives: promoting the historical memory of earlier forms of domination (colonialism, slavery) and, in the case of certain Muslim groups, making themselves more visible as Muslims in the public sphere. It is impossible to define the exact contours of the ethnic factionalism denounced by partisans of the republican model, because the notion itself is more of a scarecrow aiming to generate fear – fear of some vaguely defined disintegration of the national community – than a designation

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for any concrete phenomenon, which explains why it is a central target of postcolonial critical thought. This is not to deny that there are individual and collective behaviours which purposely attempt, sometimes successfully, to generate lasting mistrust among groups. However, the phenomena ordinarily denounced as communautarisme come nowhere near to provoking such division. The term serves mostly as a weapon in the republican arsenal to discourage and stigmatize behaviours seen as affirming lasting differences among citizens on the basis of origin, cultural references, religious heritages, or ethnoracial identifications. As noted above, the very notion of ‘race’ is taboo for most exponents of the republican model. Although all researchers today would agree that biological races are a scientific absurdity, the problem, of course, lies elsewhere. With or without inverted commas, the term, when used by sociologists, always refers to social constructions whereby differences in origin or phenotype are essentialized in such a way as to reify or ‘otherize’ given categories of people. Despite the strong resistance to the term, there is an emerging group of sociologists and demographers who feel the need to incorporate the notion into their analysis. The collective volume De la question sociale à la question raciale? (2006)65 perhaps marks a turning point in the social sciences,66 but this does not necessarily reflect a more relaxed attitude toward the question of racial difference in French society as a whole. As Nacira Guénif has observed, the terms ‘Arabe’ and ‘Noir’ are more frequently used by people of colour themselves than the euphemistic and highly mediatized terms ‘Beur’ and ‘Black’, which are more frequently used by white people. Such recourse to euphemisms reflects at some level, in Guénif ’s view, a ‘denial of the existence’ of people of colour and a reproduction of racism in a new guise. This leads her to reflect on whether the one most powerful form of communautarisme in France is not that of whites themselves, whose very denial of the existence of significant differences in condition between themselves and people of colour may be a way of evading the reality of their own privilege.67

Islam and the Injunctions of the Republic The notion of communautarisme is the most persistently invoked with respect to Islam. Although the French republican model’s reference to laïcité is supposed to guarantee an official neutrality with respect to all religions, Islam is often singled out as a religion supposedly unable to adapt on its own to the norms of laïcité, that must be watched over with vigilance and ‘integrated’ with care. In part this attitude reflects the suspicion in which

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some partisans of laïcité hold religion in general, but in part as well it reflects an older tendency for the French state to seek to control this religion in particular, seen as a potential threat. Vincent Geisser and Aziz Zemouri, co-authors of Marianne et Allah, a journalistic investigation into French policy towards Islam, take very seriously the idea that there is a colonial heritage at work in this policy, but they insist that it is not the only influence at work in determining the form of state control. On the one hand, things have changed from colonial times because Muslims in France today are no longer subjects but citizens with full rights. On the other hand, there are ‘numerous permanent features and reminiscences of the Muslim policy of old’, that is, ‘a French tradition of “Muslim governance”’ which has displayed over time an impulse ‘to emancipate the Muslim “Other” while also cultivating Muslims’ particularism, often in spite of what Muslims themselves want, and … confining Muslims to an ascribed identity’.68 After years of efforts by governments of the left and right to create a representative council of Muslims in permanent dialogue with the state, the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), mentioned above, finally saw the light of day in 2005 when Nicolas Sarkozy, Minister of the Interior (and thus head of the French bureau of organized religions), succeeded in convincing the different and rival federations within French Islam to hold representative elections. However, the CFCM is far from being truly representative. Its president, appointed by the Minister of the Interior, was, until June 2008, none other than Dalil Boubakeur, the head of the Mosque of Paris, who was for all practical purposes a functionary of the Algerian state. He was imposed as president because the statesponsored version of Islam in Algeria is considered ‘moderate’, ‘apolitical’, and anti-fundamentalist; and because in matters Islamic, Algeria has been inclined to conform to French rules of laïcité however they are defined at any given moment. The CFCM has failed to promote the emergence of an authentically French culture of Islam. The main currents represented in the Council are still beholden to home states (like Algeria, Morocco and Turkey) and do not include the numerous associations, in particular youth associations, which seek autonomy and do not especially covet recognition by the French state. According to Geisser and Zemouri, there is a clear ‘neocolonial’ logic at work here: ‘young Muslims … are the main absent party in the [state’s] organization of the religion … The Ministry of the Interior speaks a double language, seeking to attract young generations of Muslims into the official orbit while also holding in check their quest for autonomy.’69

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Islam and the Contested Terrain of laïcité As we have seen, the clear division between private and public sphere, as presupposed in French laïcité, is in fact a fuzzy and mobile one which cannot be fixed in theory once and for all; since the 1905 instituting of laïcité in the school system, it has always been negotiated on a pragmatic, caseby-case basis. The rules governing the relationship between public education and private religious schools have been laden with practical details about managing land, buildings, subsidies, school curricula and the like. Laïcité is thus by necessity a flexible doctrine, and when such flexibility is absent, the model of citizenship laïcité embodies may run into problems. An obvious case in point is the regulation on the wearing (or not) of the Islamic headscarf (hidjab in Arabic; foulard or voile in French) in public secondary schools. Since the original headscarf ‘affair’ in a school north of Paris in 1989, this issue has continued to be a major defining test for the French republican model and its capacity to assure Islam its rightful place in national life. The issue is a thorny one because the symbolism of the headscarf is tied up in more than one way with perceptions of Islam as a threat; it cuts across the usual lines of political-ideological division. It raises questions not just about the boundaries between private and public spheres in the practice of religion; it also raises a gender question. Islamophobes may use the discourse of laïcité as a fig-leaf for their intolerance. For those who defend the autonomy of women against the influence of religious tradition and assume the headscarf to be a violation of this autonomy, laïcité is interpreted as a protection of young woman in the public sphere against a form of oppression imposed on them in the private (family and religious) sphere. In response to such arguments, defenders of the right to wear the headscarf react with at least two counter-arguments. First, they contend, there is something ethnocentric and even colonial about declaring Islam to be an anti-feminine religion: it is tantamount to declaring enlightened French civilization to be the saviour of Muslim women against their own religious identifications and against Muslim men. Secondly, they argue, it would be preferable, before deciding whether or not young schoolgirls are coerced into wearing the headscarf, to listen to what they themselves have to say on the matter. Their motivations in fact vary greatly and have little to do with submission to male authority.70 For those who simply see no problem in letting young women cover their heads in school if they see fit, the headscarf question has been cited as the clearest proof that the republican model is rigid, unable to adjust to the actual multiculturality of French society, and guilty in particular of discriminating against Islam.

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Following more than a decade of uncertainty, during which government policy shifted back and forth between dialogue and repression, the National Assembly, in March 2004, passed a law banning the wearing of religious paraphernalia of any sort in the public schools. Although the law explicitly mentions neither the headscarf nor Islam, it was obvious to most observers, thanks in part to the theatrics of the parliamentary hearings leading up to the measure’s passage, that it had been conceived with Islam in mind.71 The threat posed by the headscarf was anything but obvious at the time. At the time of the law’s passage there had been, all told, only a few hundred cases of headscarves being worn to school in fifteen years, and most of these had been resolved through mediation between school authorities, families and a state-appointed mediator, at least during those periods when government policy allowed for such dialogue. Although the more doctrinaire exponents of laïcité would disagree, it could be argued that there is nothing inherent in the notion, or in the republican model, that would dictate such a restriction. Laïcité is supposed, after all, to guarantee freedom of belief and promote peaceful coexistence and mutual tolerance among different religious heritages. One could, then, imagine a more ‘multiculturalist’ form of laïcité, respectful of the individual decision to wear a headscarf to school and mindful of the fact that very few young women who wear it are interested in actively proselytizing for Islam.72 The 2004 law would not have been conceivable without the undercurrent of suspicion of Islam, alluded to above. The overt and virulent forms of Islamophobia, as expressed by politicians such as Bruno Mégret and Philippe de Villiers, and by certain journalists,73 is only the tip of the iceberg of a prejudice that is usually expressed more discreetly. Vincent Geisser, author of the work La nouvelle islamophobie (The New Islamophobia, 2003), warns against establishing ‘a direct and natural continuity between the representations of Islam in the colonial era and those of today as if they were part of a single imaginary’.74 What he calls ‘the new Islamophobia’ is not just a popular phenomenon but also has important vectors among intellectuals and in the media. The fear it generates focuses less, according to Geisser, on ordinary Muslims than on ‘the Islamic peril’: its target is less the religion itself than what is referred to as fundamentalism (intégrisme), ‘islamisme’ or islamo-terrorism. This sentiment can sometimes even take the form of declared support for ordinary Muslims against such enemies, real and imagined. The new Islamophobes ‘are not interested in Islam as people experience it’ but instead obsessed with ‘an imaginary or fantasized Islam placed in the service of an ideological battle in which actual Muslims are mere shadow figures’.75 Islamophobes

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perceive Islam as a monolith, ‘a single system in which each element is supposedly connected with the others’, responsible for political terrorism. They are convinced that republican values are being defeated at the hands of ‘multiculturalism’ or an ‘American’ system of ‘ethnic lobbies’.76 Despite such feverish rhetoric, Islam is slowly becoming a familiar feature in the French landscape.

An Emerging Minority Presence Everything we have observed here leads us to the conclusion that the republican model today suffers from contradictions that may understandably be interpreted by critics as flaws or insufficiencies. Although some criticize the model frontally and others ‘from within’, the general atmosphere of unease surrounding the republican reference is a key dimension of the ‘postcolonial moment’, in terms of the revisiting of the postcolonial continuities, that France began to experience around 2005. In the eyes of dyed-in-the-wool republicans, to challenge the model is in one way or another to indulge in the sin of communautarisme against which the model stands as a normative rampart. If the notion of ‘identity politics’ were operative in French (which it is not), defenders of the model would no doubt mobilize it to disparage the activities of groups that have begun to organize as ethnoracial or religious minorities. However, it is worth asking whether the notion of ‘identity politics’ is adequate to characterize what these groups actually do. Are they staking out a place in the public sphere on the basis of particularistic ‘identities’ that they cultivate as such? And in the public arena do they identify themselves as postcolonial subjects? A thorough answer to these questions would require us to examine various groups, because generalizations are impossible. It can be safely said that an explicitly postcolonial form of consciousness is not cultivated by many groups; there is one in particular, the Mouvement des Indigènes de la République, which has made the postcolonial its ‘trademark’, as we shall see below. In other emerging minority activist circles, the idea struggling against a modern-day form of (post)colonial domination usually exists in a more diffuse form. The fact that such groups are forming shows at the least that the contours of the republican model are forcibly being modified. Although some doctrinaire defenders of the republican model consider such groupings to be strictly illegitimate and unrepresentative of anything but personal ambitions, there is nothing they can do to prevent such groups from forming.

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We cannot review here the full range of minority movements in France today, but we will briefly examine three types of such movements: (1) the associations that have taken up the cause of the memory of slavery and abolition; (2) an association created in 2005 to promote the interests of black people in the struggle against discrimination; and (3) a group of intellectual activists, several of whom are of North African origin, who organize on the basis of a radical critique of what they call ‘postcolonial colonialism’. (It would also be interesting in this context to examine some of the larger associations of Muslim youth which do not belong to the Islamic currents officially represented in the CFCM, but there is to date very little documentation available on these groups.)

Black Solidarity and the Memory of Slavery and Abolition Pap Ndiaye, historian and sociologist, specialist of U.S. history but also a close observer of (and participant in) the public life of blacks in France, is among the first to account in theoretical terms for a black public presence. ‘The black question’, he writes, ‘is not born automatically from the presence of black populations in the metropole (even if that is a necessary condition); it is, in the sociological sense of the term, an invention, that is, a shaping of social experience by persons who have sufficient resources to make it become visible in the public sphere’.77 The movement for the official recognition of the memory of slavery and abolition goes back to the 1970s in the Antilles, but Ndiaye links its appearance in metropolitan France to the emergence in the 1980s of a more permanent presence of Antillais, including children of immigrants. A landmark date for this movement is 23 May 1998, when a crowd of roughly forty thousand, mostly Antillais, commemorated the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, a subject to which public authorities had up to then paid little attention. In 2001, Christiane Taubira, deputy in the National Assembly from Guyane, took the lead in persuading legislators to adopt a law recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. A well-known comic of French and Camerounese family background, Dieudonné Mbala-Mbala, took up the same cause in a more strident and reckless way; he soon began linking up with the racist far-right in ways which reflected badly on the movement, but his stance was hardly representative. Other episodes generated much unease, including an attempt to take legal proceedings against a historian, Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, who was accused of not having treated the slave trade as a crime against humanity. To explain the emergence of this movement in the 1970s, Ndiaye proposes to place it in the context of the wave of regionalist movements for

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cultural and linguistic recognition within France (Corsica, Brittany, and the Languedoc). Two factors, in Ndiaye’s view, made this movement different in the Antilles: the very violence of the colonial/slave past, and the proximity of North America, where more ‘pluralist’ and ‘postmodern’ influences were at work than in metropolitan France, including black movements in the United States. A broad current of thought and activism based on the notion of ‘difference’ took shape in the Antilles – in the absence, Ndiaye notes, not without regret, of a solid local tradition of scholarship on slavery and abolition. The emergence of such a movement in metropolitan France is tied up, as Ndiaye points out, with the movement against ethnoracial discrimination; he speaks of a ‘conjunction of, on the one hand, the identity question in a de facto multicultural society … and, on the other hand, the demand for a more determined struggle against racial discrimination’. Many activists came to assume there was ‘an obvious link … between the situations of past and present domination’.78 ‘It would be easy’, writes Ndiaye, ‘to demonstrate the reductive character of these historical causalities’; ‘although it would be simplistic to claim that racial discrimination is due to the old colonial slaveholding order, it would also not be honest to claim that discrimination has nothing to do with that order’.79 In other words, although critical thinking of postcolonial inspiration is not always on target with its answers, it does raise valid questions; he expresses hope for more and better scholarship in order to help the movement avoid simplistic formulations. The main adherents to this movement in metropolitan France today are citizens of Antillais origin who no longer benefit from the relative security their parents enjoyed as public sector workers. The movement for the recognition of the memory of slavery and abolition may indeed, in Ndiaye’s view, play a compensatory role: he admits to being ‘struck by the place taken up by slavery among black Antillais, and blacks in general, even as they experience difficulties in analyzing the situations of domination that many of them undergo’. ‘The memory of slavery can be a factor of withdrawal into one’s group of origin and bitter indifference to the rest of the world … but it can also be the ferment of an opening toward others, of attention to other forms of suffering … and to what is universal in each singular experience.’ 80

Black Solidarity in the Struggle against Discrimination The objectives of the National Council of Representative Black Associations of France (CRAN, Conseil représentatif des associations noires de France), founded in 2005, are rather different from, though not neces-

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sarily contradictory to, those of the movement for the memory of slavery and abolition. Pap Ndiaye is singularly placed to account for this group, being one of its intellectual advisors. In order to do so he begins by drawing a distinction between two types of black solidarity (borrowing from the work of philosopher Tommie Shelby): the kind which develops on the basis of a specifically black identity and proceeds to define interests on the basis of that identity, and the kind which is based on a ‘thinner’ conception of cultural identity but which does recognize a community of interests, in particular the common need to struggle against discrimination and its effects. The CRAN’s ‘identity’, he writes, is a ‘thin’ one, ‘defined more by a social experience than by a culture’.81 The very idea of identifying themselves as blacks at first posed a problem to the CRAN’s founders. Patrick Lozès, the association’s president, originally preferred the term ‘residents and citizens of sub-Saharan African and overseas origin’, but later he and other co-founders of the CRAN reached the conclusion that ‘if we are discriminated against, it is not because of our origin, or that of our parents, but because we have black skin’.82 The CRAN does not go out of its way to challenge the republican model but rather attempts to strike a compromise between the appeal to black solidarity and the spirit of the model. In the words of spokesperson Louis-Georges Tin, the CRAN seeks to ‘be a pressure group in the classic sense and to carry out a republican mission’. Among the ‘frequently asked questions’ on the CRAN’s website is the quintessentially republican (rhetorical) question: ‘Is the CRAN communautariste?’ The answer: No. The CRAN works toward equal opportunity, so that the diversity that constitutes French society can be better represented. But this dynamic implies a questioning of established hierarchies. Those who are disturbed by such criticisms take refuge behind an abstract universalism which masks (very badly, in fact) a symbolic order that is masculine, white, bourgeois, Catholic, etc. A lazy defense offers itself to those who are uneasy with diversity: denouncing as ‘communautaristes’ all those who struggle for equality; that is, blacks, Arabs, Jews, homosexuals, etc. Indeed, the CRAN says yes to universalism, but no to what might be called ‘uniformalism.’83

The CRAN thus seeks to modify the terms of the republican model from within. It aspires to establish within the republican perspective a legitimate place for ‘difference’ in order to better understand and act on situations of unequal treatment. Among the advisors and public supporters of the CRAN is sociologist Michel Wieviorka, who has made the notion of ‘difference’ a key category of his thought while waging a persistent battle against what he sees as overly rigid versions of the republican model.84

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Radical Postcolonials: The ‘Mouvement des Indigènes de la République’ The militant group known as the Mouvement des indigènes de la République (MIR), created in January 2005, refers in its founding manifesto to the notion of ‘postcolonial colonialism’. The group’s name requires some explanation. Literally, it means ‘the movement of the indigenous people of the Republic’, but the keyword ‘indigenous’ is used in a specific historical sense: it is an ironic reference to the days when the colonial subjects of Algeria were governed by a special legal code (le code de l’indigénat), which codified their subaltern status. To identify oneself in this way is thus a mordant way of stating that one is not quite recognized as a citizen and that the promise of republican equality has been betrayed by a treatment reminiscent of colonialism, if not a direct continuation of it. (The subtle irony of the name is lost on many.) This current was founded by a group of intellectuals with a sharp reading of history and a flair for the theoretical, but their enterprise is not essentially academic; their aims are above all to create political and ideological space for a radical minority movement. The MIR is in important ways a component of the radical left, and like the rest of the left it claims a secular identity,85 but it also includes members whose activism is based explicitly on their public commitment as Muslims. It has taken up slogans that mark an equal distance from the right and the left. They also adhere to a radical critique of gender relations; naturally opposing any suggestion that Islam is ‘by definition’ anti-feminine, they strive to develop a feminism compatible with Islam. Their critique extends as well to the relations between metropolitan France and its former colonies; ‘postcolonial colonialism’ as they understand it also includes ‘neo-colonialism’. They were very much in their role (but they were hardly alone) in mordantly criticizing a speech made by Nicolas Sarkozy in Dakar in July 2007, in which Africans were portrayed as being locked into an eternal reproduction of their ancestral culture. The MIR has mounted a provocative and sometimes frontal challenge to the republican model of integration. While they have not sparked a questioning of the model on a broad scale, they have contributed, well beyond the strength of their numbers, to the current postcolonial intellectual ferment. Although their critics often assume them to be espousing a simplistic, linear model of continuity between colonialism and ‘postcolonial colonialism’, their analyses are less dogmatic than is often assumed, and the questions they raise are usually thought provoking.

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The MIR’s founding appeal asserts bluntly that ‘the treatment of populations who are products of colonization prolongs colonial policy’. However, it goes on to say that such treatment is not reducible to its colonial dimension: ‘The figure of the ‘indigène’ … has become interwoven with other logics of social oppression, discrimination or exploitation.’ For example, ‘in the context of neoliberalism, immigrant workers are made to play the role of deregulators of the labor market’ and ‘facilitate the extension of the logics of precarious living and flexible production to the entire wage-earning population’. 86 Two types of measures are called for by the MIR to overcome the inequalities they denounce. First, a redefinition of France’s relationship to its colonial past: ‘State and society need to make a radical critical return to their colonial past/present. It is high time … for the egalitarian universalism, affirmed during the French Revolution, to repress that form of nationalism which clings to the ‘chauvinism of the universal’, thought to ‘civilize savages’. Second, they call for ‘radical measures of justice and equality in order to put an end to racist discrimination in access to jobs, housing culture and citizenship’. Even as they call for ‘common struggle of all oppressed and exploited people for a social democracy that is truly egalitarian and universal’, the indigènes are jealous of their political autonomy, because ‘no political or trade union force has given the necessary attention to the populations emerging from colonization’. Such autonomy is ‘neither a goal nor an ideal, but a necessary means for building alliances on the basis of equality’. The appeal did not succeed in reaping broad support among those invited to sign it. Many intellectuals, whose anti-racist credentials cannot be challenged and who have openly questioned the republican model in its dogmatic guise, preferred not to sign the text; some found it badly written or disputed its historical inaccuracies; others found it strange to be invited to identify as indigènes when they themselves were not descendants of colonial subjects; still others were worried that the critique of ‘postcolonial colonialism’ might encourage a culture of victimhood and thereby undermine a suitably future-oriented struggle for equality. It is too early to measure and declare the MIR a success or a failure, but its very existence suggests that profound changes are occurring in the French republican order. The positions taken up by the MIR have provoked some division within the left, but rather than a lasting schism what we are witnessing is no doubt a moment of clarification of questions long swept under the rug either in the name of an abstract republican unity or because of a sheer lack of attention to such matters in the past.

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Conclusion: A Deficit of Citizenship Although much of the information reviewed here suggests that there is substance to the hypothesis of significant continuity between the colonial and postcolonial eras, nothing we have observed would contradict the idea of postcoloniality as a new and different historical situation as well. In the current era, descendants of colonial or postcolonial immigrants may be treated in many situations as racialized subjects rather than as full citizens and may thus feel a strong need to understand the specificity of their historical condition.87 Yet they rarely lose sight of the fact that they are citizens after all, and that this status affords them rights that can only reinforce their struggles for a more substantive equality. The deficit of citizenship from which many descendants of postcolonial immigrants suffer can be construed as a glass half empty (or even more so) – or half full, but there is a growing consensus regarding the existence of a deficit. One lasting effect of France’s recent ‘postcolonial moment’ is the fact that descendants of postcolonial migrants are shedding complexes that had earlier inhibited them from seeking participation in public life as descendants of immigrants, as minorities. The political idioms in which they express their mode of being citizens vary greatly; some see the glass as outrageously empty, while others, often from more comfortable social positions, mitigate their critique and prefer to see the glass slowly filling. Some express themselves in a discourse that remains mostly republican while others – a minority – are more self-consciously ‘postcolonial’ and scornful of the usual terms of the republican reference. Taken as a whole, this range of critical attitudes may be seen as configuring France’s current ‘postcolonial moment’. The specificities of the French case, which I have tried to bring out here, take on their full significance only in comparison with other cases and only in a global context. Comparisons with other former colonial powers – Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium in particular – are most promising, not just thanks to comparable colonial heritages but also in light of the broad mixture of immigrants, postcolonial and otherwise, now found in all these countries. The stark distinction between postcolonial immigrants and others, while in some contexts most significant, is in other ways artificial and misleading because these categories presuppose a framework in which national cases are simply juxtaposed and ‘methodological nationalism’ goes unquestioned.88 ‘Postcolonials’ in one setting (for example Jamaicans in Britain or Algerians in France) may not look like postcolonials in another (such as Jamaicans in the United States or Moroccans in Belgium) but they are nonetheless part of a global picture which the category of the postcolonial may not fully capture. A

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complementary mode of analysis is emerging in the work of some Latin American sociologists, in particular Aníbal Quijano, who examine contemporary migrations not just in the light of specific colonial heritages but also in the light of a global ‘coloniality of power’ which has survived well beyond formal colonialism, in which patterns of ethnicized/racialized domination spill beyond national boundaries and contribute to persistent global patterns of inequality.89

Notes 1. Blanchard, Bancel and Lemaire (eds), La fracture coloniale. 2. See for example: ContreTemps no. 16 (‘Postcolonialisme et immigration’), 2006; Labyrinthe no. 24 (‘Faut-il être postcolonial?’), 2006 ; Mouvements no. 51 (‘Qui a peur du postcolonial?’), September–October 2007; Vergès, La mémoire enchaînée, and numerous other contributions. 3. See Honneth and Fraser, Redistribution or Recognition? 4. Stora, Les trois exils. Juifs d’Algérie, chapter entitled ‘Troisième Exil. La guerre et l’indépendance’, 132–83. 5. Blanc-Chaléard, L’histoire de l’immigration, 25. 6. Interview with Mohamed Harbi ‘Immigration algérienne et nationalisme’ in Boubeker and Hajjat (eds), Histoire politique des immigrations (post)coloniales. France, 1920–2003, 57. 7. Levasseur, ‘Les Vietnamiens en France, du milieu des années 1920 au milieu des années 1950. Une immigration entre nationalisme et communisme’, 31–41. 8. Dewitte, ‘Les mouvements nègres’, 23. 9. See Lequin (ed.), Histoire des étrangers et de l’immigration en France, 396–98. 10. Stora, ‘Manifestation d’Octobre 61 à Paris. Les fantômes du 17 octobre’, interview, grandsreporters.com, January 2003, http://www.grands-reporters.com/1961-Les-fantomes-du17-octobre.html 11. See http://17ocobre1961.free.fr/ 12. Hargreaves, Multi-Ethnic France, 153. 13. Spire, Etrangers à la carte. L’administration de l’immigration en France (1945–1975). 14. Laure Pitti, ‘Différenciations ethniques et luttes ouvrières à Renault-Billancourt’ (interview with Sadri Khiari on the basis of her doctoral research), ContreTemps, n° 16, April 2006, 64–75. 15. Information in this paragraph is borrowed from Hargreaves, Multi-Ethnic France, 20–21. 16. Blanc-Chaléard, L’histoire de l’immigration, 62. 17. Ibid., 62. 18. See Rea and Tripier, Sociologie de l’immigration, chapter III (« Migrations de travail: exploitation et mobilité sociale »), 33–48. 19. Ndiaye, La condition noire, chapters V and VI. 20. See, for example, Beaud and Noiriel, ‘Penser l’« intégration » des immigrés’. 21. See, for example, Boubeker, ‘Le “creuset français” ou la légende noire de l’intégration’. 22. Castel, La discrimination négative. Citoyens ou indigènes?, 28. 23. Ibid., and Wacquant, Parias urbains. Ghetto, banlieues, Etat. 24. This is the argument developed at some length by Castel, La discrimination négative. See also Mouvements no. 44 (‘Emeutes, et après?’), March–April 2006; and Mauger, L’émeute de novembre 2005. Une révolte protopolitique; Kokoreff, Sociologie des émeutes. 25. Castel, La discrimination négative, 42.

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26. Among the first important sociological studies of this problem were those of Philippe Bataille, Le racisme au travail (1997), who studied the discrimination as practised not just by employers but also within labour unions; de Rudder, Poiret and Vourc’h, L’inégalité raciste (2000). See also Body-Gendrot and Wihtol de Wenden, Police et discriminations raciales. Le tabou français (2003); Borrillo (ed.), Lutter contre les discriminations (2003). The literature has greatly expanded since then. 27. R. Castel, La discrimination négative. We shall draw heavily on Castel’s findings in the paragraphs which follow. 28. See Donzelot, Quand la ville se défait (quoted by Castel, 22). 29. R. Castel, La discrimination négative, 22. 30. Ibid., 21. 31. Ibid., 37. 32. Various French sociologists of high reputation have contributed important works to the understanding of this problem. See in particular the works of Fabien Jobard, Laurent Mucchielli, Michel Kokoreff, Catherine Wihtol de Wenden. 33. See Jobard, ‘Police, justice et discriminations raciales’ (quoted by Castel, La discrimination négative, 44). 34. See Khosrokhavar, L’Islam dans les prisons (quoted by Castel, La discrimination négative, 45). 35. R. Castel, La discrimination négative, 46. 36. See Beaud, ‘L’insertion professionnelle en question’ (quoted by R. Castel, La discrimination négative, 46). 37. See Weil, La République et sa diversité, 78 (quoted by R. Castel, La discrimination négative, 47). 38. Weil, La République et sa diversité, 52. 39. R. Castel, La discrimination négative, ‘Annexe 6’ (Appendix 6), 132–33. Data is derived from a study by Silberman, Alba and Fournier, ‘Segmented assimilation in France? Discrimination in the labour market against the second generation’. 40. Castel, La discrimination négative, 50. 41. Ibid. Castel draws here on the work of S. Beaud ‘L’insertion professionnelle en question’. 42. The literature on this subject is becoming abundant. See Geisser, La nouvelle islamophobie, and Deltombe, L’islam imaginaire. La construction médiatique de l’islamophobie en France, 1975–2005. See also Geisser and Zemouri, Marianne et Allah. Les politiques français face à la ‘question musulmane’. 43. ‘Ethnic factionalism’ is the translation proposed by Hargreaves, Multi-Ethnic France, 114. 44. See Guénif-Souilamas and Macé, Les féministes et le garçon arabe. 45. Le Monde, 17 November 2005. 46. In retrospect it was not surprising that the FN would emerge in a place such as Dreux. As demographer Tribalat revealed in Dreux, voyage au coeur du malaise français, this city was marked by a social, ethnoracial and spatial divide between the essentially white, central residential and commercial district, and the upper city, where public housing was predominant and immigrants and their families were numerous. 47. See Collovald, Le ‘populisme du FN’, un dangereux contresens. 48. See Stora, Le transfert d’une mémoire. De l’Algérie française au racisme anti-arabe.  49. See Balibar, ‘Y a-t-il un “néo-racisme”’. 50. Tissot and Tévanian, Dictionnaire de la lepénisation des esprits. 51. On the nationality issue, see Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, chapter VII. On the Pasqua laws, see Naïr, Contre les lois Pasqua. 52. Noiriel, A quoi sert ‘l’identité nationale’. 53. The term ‘model’ can refer to various different levels of analysis and discourse. Suffice it to say that we refer in this study to the ‘republican model of integration’ as a normative model of citizenship conduct that can also claim with some legitimacy to be a fully-fledged ‘public

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philosophy’ in the sense defined by Favell in Philosophies of Integration, i.e. a normative model that plays an active structuring role in public policy and social behaviour. 54. Hargreaves, Multi-Ethnic France, 183. 55. This situation provoked a series of critical responses, including de Rudder, Poiret and Vourc’h, L’inégalité raciste. See also Body-Gendrot, ‘L’universalisme français à l’épreuve des discriminations’. 56. Several of the authors in the collective work De la question sociale à la question raciale? Représenter la société française, edited by Didier and Eric Fassin, have engaged in such work. 57. A recent controversy of this sort took place in late 2007, over a collective study entitled ‘Trajectoires et origines’, under the auspices of INED (the national demographic institute) and INSEE (the national institute of economic statistics), which aimed to determine the impact of a person’s origins on their access to housing, education, employment, leisure, and public goods and services. Anonymous respondents were to be asked, among many other questions, how they defined themselves in terms of colour and religion. Authorization for the study was granted in an amendment to a larger bill concerning immigration. The more rigid partisans of the republican model, of both left and right, including the spokespersons for SOS-Racisme, organized vigorous public protest against the authorization of the study and succeeded in having the amendment removed on the grounds that such research might result in ethnic profiling of a sort reminiscent of the Vichy regime. See the dossier in Mouvements (online): ‘Statistiques ‘ethniques’, les syllogismes de l’antiracisme: http://mouvements.info/spip.php?article264. 58. See the HALDE’s website: http://www.halde.fr/Presentation.html. 59. Hachette Littératures, 2006. 60. This portion of the paper draws on everyday observation of the French political scene, as well as some works explicitly devoted to the subject, including Geisser and Soum, Discriminer pour mieux régner? Enquête sur la diversité dans les partis politiques. See also several recent televised debates on this subject on the programme ‘Toutes les France’ (channel France Ô, RFO network) hosted by Ahmed el Keiy. 61. Although there is no official measurement of the ‘ethnic vote’ in France, it has been possible to determine through exit polls that postcolonial immigrants and their children who vote favour the parties of the left in their immense majority. See Hargreaves, Multi-Ethnic France, 134. 62. Geisser and Soum, Discriminer pour mieux régner?, 62. 63. Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, 52–53. 64. This was the gist of Nacira Guénif ’s comments on the television show ‘Toutes les France’ (channel France Ô), 24 November 2008. Her remarks are reminiscent of Gilroy’s Postcolonial Melancholia. 65. D. and E. Fassin (eds.), De la question sociale à la question raciale? Représenter la société française. 66. Ibid. See also Pap Ndiaye, La condition noire, in particular chapter 1. 67. Television programme ‘Toutes les France’, channel France Ô, 24 November 2008. 68. Marianne et Allah, 7–8. 69. Ibid., 83. 70. See Gaspard and Khosrokhavar, Le foulard et la République; Chouder, Latrèche and Tevanian, Les filles voilées parlent. 71. The law, in point of fact, has been largely respected. The main currents of organized Islam in France, even those favouring the use of the headscarf, have chosen not to press the issue. The cases of confrontation over the headscarf have been very few in number. 72. Jean Baubérot, historian of religions, was the one dissenting member of the Stasi Commission, appointed by President Jacques Chirac, whose hearings paved the way for the anti-headscarf law. His book L’Intégrisme republican contre la laïcité, defends the idea of an ‘inclusive’ laïcité.

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73. See Deltombe, L’islam imaginaire. 74. Geisser, La nouvelle islamophobie, 114. 75. Ibid., 115. 76. Ibid., 116–17. 77. Pap Ndiaye, La condition noire, 336. 78. Ibid., 346. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., 347. 81. Ibid., 353. 82. Ibid., 354. 83. From the CRAN website, ‘Frequently Asked Questions’: http://www.lecran.org/articles/ foire-aux-questions,6,1,17.html 84. See Wieviorka, La difference (2001) and the report submitted by Wieviorka to the Ministry of Higher Education and Research: La Diversité (2008). 85. See the text entitled ‘Qui sommes-nous?’, a product of the group’s first plenary assembly in 2006: http://www.indigenes-republique.org/auteur.php3?id_auteur=19 86. For the full text of the appeal, see: http://www.indigenes-republique.org/spip.php?article1 87. See the excellent compendium of texts assembled by Boubeker and Hajjat, Histoire politique des immigrations (post)coloniales. 88. See Wimmer and Glick Schiller, ‘Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-state Building, Migration and the Social Sciences’. 89. See Quijano, ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America’. See also Ramón Grosfoguel, Colonial Subjects: Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective.

Chapter 2

Postcolonial Migrants in Britain From Unwelcome Guests to Partial and Segmented Assimilation Shinder S. Thandi

Introduction Whilst there has been a long history – well over four hundred years – of migration of non-white people to Britain, the significant rise in non-white population has resulted mainly from two major phases of migration, the first one beginning with the end of the Second World War and start of the de-colonization process in the British Empire and the second one beginning in the 1990s and associated with political upheavals in parts of Africa and West Asia (notably through an increase in asylum seekers from Bosnia, Afghanistan and Somalia) and the enlargement of the European Union resulting in the influx of migrants from East European states. Both these phases, especially the post-war postcolonial migration, have undoubtedly made Britain culturally more diverse than ever before in two important aspects. Firstly, according to the 2001 census, although 91.3 per cent of the British population was still white by ethnicity and therefore only 8.7 per cent non-white, the latter had increased from 6.4 per cent in 1991.1 Secondly, migration had a significant impact on creating heterogeneity within both the ‘white’ and ‘non-white’ categories, notwithstanding the increased impetus given to religious diversity and pluralism. Since the vast majority of the new, second-phase migrants are not strictly speaking ‘postcolonial’, this has created new challenges both for the state in terms of ethnic management and for the older, more established migrant communities who settled in large numbers in the 1950s. The challenges to the latter have been felt most acutely in certain (mostly poorer) metropolitan neighbourhoods where the older communities have resided, in many cases Notes for this chapter begin on page 90.

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totally transforming local landscapes and causing ethnic tensions and periodically even ethnic riots. Given the prevailing poor livelihoods of earlier migrants in these localities and the anxieties created by new migration, the case for building a more socially cohesive community became more and more imminent and pertinent. In Britain, this has led to renewed discourses in assimilation, integration and social cohesion – discourses which are not very different to those rehearsed in the 1960s and 1970s, albeit in new contexts and with different rhetoric. This paper is divided into four main sections. The first section provides a statistical overview of postcolonial non-white communities in Britain. The second maps the history of migration to Britain from erstwhile colonies; this section also discusses the settlement pattern, consolidation within communities, various forms of experiences in the economic, social, political and cultural spheres and growth in socio-economic differentiation within postcolonial migrant communities and their implications for present-day levels of social integration. The third section focuses on issues relating to multicultural politics and the rise of ethnic identity politics, and uses case studies from major South Asian postcolonial migrants to examine new forms of mobilization and assertion, and invocation of identity politics. This section also makes some comments on issues relating to national identity, the nature of Britishness and notions of home and belonging, especially given the rapid pace and growth of transnational activities and practices. The fourth and final section provides a commentary on present discourses on multiculturalism in general, and on issues relating to integration and social cohesion and the general direction of travel of the British form of multiculturalism.

A Brief Profile of the Contemporary Postcolonial Migrant Community in Britain Ethnic, Religious and Spatial Demographics The 1991 census of the British population for the first time collected information on ethnicity, and religious identity was also added to the census in 2001. These data sets offer a detailed profile of socio-economic conditions and lifestyles of postcolonial migrants in Britain. The 2001 census confirmed that the overwhelming majority of the U.K. population – 92 per cent – was still white. Of the 59 million people living in the United Kingdom, 4.6 million (8 per cent) were non-white. Of the non-white population, Asian or Asian British accounted for around 2.3

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million (50 per cent). Indians accounted for just over 1 million (23 per cent), Pakistanis for 0.75 million (16 per cent), Bangladeshis for 283,000 (6 per cent), and ‘Other Asian’ (which includes Sri Lankan and Nepalese) for 250,000 (5 per cent). The Black or Black British population was 1.1 million (2 per cent of the U.K. total; or 25 per cent of the non-white population), comprising 565,000 Black Caribbean, 485,000 Black African and around 97,000 Black Other. The other largest single category of non-white migrants was the Chinese at just under 250,000. In terms of religious affiliation, Christians remained the largest single group in the United Kingdom, accounting for just over 41 million (nearly 72 per cent) of the population. Only 3 million people (5.36 per cent) identified themselves as belonging to a non-Christian religion. Amongst South Asian faith groups, the largest three segments were Muslims (1.58 million or 2.8 per cent of the population, but 52 per cent of the nonChristian group), Hindus (558,342 or 1 per cent of the population, and 18 per cent of the non-Christian group), followed by Sikhs (336,179 or 0.6 per cent of the population and 11 per cent of the non-Christian group). So clearly, of the non-Christian population, the Muslims represent the largest group. But it is also worth emphasizing that over 8.5 million people (15 per cent of total) declared that they had no religion and a further 4.4 million (8 per cent) did not state their religion. Thus 23 per cent of the British people basically stated they had no religious affiliation or ignored the question on religion. This may demonstrate the significance of secularist values within British society. In terms of ethnicity and religion, 97 per cent of Christians were white, 74 per cent of Muslims were from a South Asian ethnic background (43 per cent from Pakistan, 16 per cent from Bangladesh and 8 per cent from India), and 84 per cent of Hindus were from an Indian background, as were 91 per cent of Sikhs. Thus non-Christian religious groups are overwhelmingly postcolonial South Asian migrants, whether born in the U.K. or not. When studied according to their country of birth, in terms of ethnicity, the Indian group turned out to be religiously more diverse: 45 per cent of Indians were Hindu, 29 per cent Sikh and a further 13 per cent Muslims. In contrast, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis appeared to be the most homogeneous groups, with Muslims accounting for 92 per cent of each ethnic group. These figures, of course do not pick up sectarian divides such as between Sunnis, Shias and Ahmediyas or different traditions within Asian or Caribbean communities. When studied according to their country of birth, in terms of religion, Hindus were least likely to have been born in the U.K. – only 37 per cent, with 39 per cent born in Asia (mainly India and Sri Lanka), 21 per cent born in Africa (being ‘twice postcolonial mi-

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grants’ from East Africa, as will be discussed later). Of the Muslims, 46 per cent were born in the U.K. and 39 per cent in Asia (mainly Pakistan and Bangladesh). Of the remainder, 9 per cent were born in Africa (Somalia and Kenya) and 4 per cent in parts of Europe (mainly Turkey). The vast majority of the black Christians, especially the younger age groups, were born in the U.K. Thus overall, despite the significant influx of migrants in the 1990s, the vast majority of the non-Christian population is South Asian in origin – postcolonial or children of postcolonial migrants. From the point of view of the subject of this book, perhaps the most interesting aspect of all is the non-white population’s perception of their national identity. Most non-whites identified themselves as British rather than English, Scottish or Welsh. South Asians and blacks (African and Caribbean) were no exception, identifying with a strong British national identity – 80 per cent of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and 75 per cent of Indians identified themselves in this way. It suggests that while most South Asian groups affirm a strong religious identity – in fact over 50 per cent of most non-Christian adults said their religion was important to their self-identity – they affirm an equally strong British national identity, giving us the hyphenated British-Hindu, British-Sikh, British-Muslim and Black-British categories, with which most British-born postcolonial migrants and their children would readily identify. At an individual level, however, especially among the British-born youth, identities are more fluid and situational: research suggests that these young people affirm a shifting school, home, work, local, regional or national identity, contingent on the context. The spatial demographic picture highlighted by the census is also extremely revealing. The majority of the non-white population of the U.K. is concentrated in the large urban areas, and the London region has nearly half of them (46 per cent). This concentration is also evident in terms of ethnicity. For example the South Asian population remained concentrated in the two large urban areas of London and the West Midlands. The extent of concentration, however, varied according to the South Asian group. More than half the Bangladeshi group lived in London, compared with only 19 per cent of Pakistanis who were concentrated mainly in the West Midlands (21 per cent), Yorkshire and Humber (20 per cent) and the North West (16 per cent). Clearly, there has only been a small increase in dispersion from the high concentrations of the early 1960s, prompting Peach et al. to observe ‘the stubborn persistence of ethnic residential segregation despite the cycle of dispersal and assimilation traditionally expected by academics and policy makers alike’.2 It means that all South Asian groups are over-represented among people living in the most deprived local authorities, with Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups consti-

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tuting the largest over-representation.3 If we consider the U.K.’s black population, 78 per cent of the Black Africans and 61 per cent of Black Caribbeans were living in London, followed by smaller communities in the Midlands and North West.4 The problem faced by many early migrants, who were forced to settle in run-down inner-city areas suffering from multiple deprivation (especially poor public provision of education, housing, transport and social services), still persisted, suggesting a cycle of economic deprivation, low business development and low employment generation. We need to remember, however, that the census statistics may conceal the possibility that some of the earlier communities of Indians and Pakistanis may have moved out of deprived areas to better, leafy suburbs within the same borough or city.5 Indeed, this pattern in housing mobility is probably repeated in many localities: better-off South Asians, especially Indians, move out, while the relatively poor remain and new immigrants move in. Where first-generation migrants or their children have retained ownership of their original properties or purchased more, and where they rent out to poorer or new immigrant groups, a significant Asian rentier or landlord class has emerged. The census also revealed that most South Asian groups, particularly Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, have relatively young age structures (with a high proportion of their population under the age of sixteen), suggesting that population growth for these groups is likely to remain relatively high in the near future. The Black Caribbeans, in contrast, had the largest proportion of people over sixty-five, indicating an ageing population with potential for rapid disappearance of first generation pioneer migrants, especially as some have returned home. The census also showed that South Asians tend to live in larger households: Bangladeshis in the largest, with an average household size of 4.5 people, followed by Pakistanis at 4.1 and Indians at 3.3, compared with the white British households and Black Caribbean at 2.3, with the latter also having a significant number of single-person households. In contrast, the continued importance attached to the extended family unit among South Asian communities is underlined by the fact that over 50 per cent of all households contained a married couple and often more than one family with dependent children. Also in such households it would not be unusual to find three generations living together. The incidence of inter-ethnic marriages (a critical but contested factor in debates about British identity and arguments about the relative merits of multiculturalism and assimilation/integration) was very low in the 2001 census and accounted for only 2 per cent of all marriages in

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England and Wales. Most of these involved a white partner and/or mixed race person, and in many instances, especially in mixed marriages among media and sports personalities or business people, they tended to be strategic alliances, allowing one of the partners access to a different social or business network. The data also showed that people from South Asian backgrounds were least likely of all minority ethnic groups to get married to someone of a different ethnic group. Only 6 per cent of Indians, 4 per cent of Pakistanis and 3 per cent of Bangladeshis had married outside the South Asian group. This does not preclude the possibility that there may be significant numbers of intra-Asian marriages – Hindus marrying Sikhs or Muslims, or vice versa – but, in reality, religious and cultural sanctions have tended to limit both inter-ethnic and intra-Asian marriages. As a consequence, the majority of the second- and third-generation British Asians largely adhere to ethnic or caste boundaries in negotiating their choice of marriage partner with their parents. It is worth noting that anecdotal evidence suggests cohabitation rates between whites and South Asians or Afro-Caribbeans, and between different South Asian groups, are probably higher than actual marriages. Among the Black Caribbean and Other Black category, the most striking feature was that almost half of the households with dependent children were headed by a single parent, reinforcing the view that marriage and family structure had come under pressure. Education is generally acknowledged to be an important vehicle in securing a good job, enabling upward social mobility and social integration. Evidence also confirms a strong link between educational qualifications and an individual’s lifetime earnings. The 2001 census revealed that 47 per cent of Indians were in social classes I and II (professional, managerial and technical), having moved up the social class ladder from classes V and VI (partly skilled and unskilled) over the previous couple of decades – a reflection of their educational advancement and career progression. All South Asian parents commonly place a high value on education and develop proactive strategies to access quality education for their children. However, the 2002 educational qualifications of South Asians (measured by the achievement of 5 GCSEs at A*–C grade) are varied, with the Indian group at the top end (at around 64 per cent) and Bangladeshi and Pakistanis at the lower end (around 45 and 40 per cent respectively), although recent studies show that the gap may be narrowing.6 Studies also show that South Asians have disproportionately higher rates of participation in higher education (almost 80 per cent of 18- to 19-year-olds), compared with whites. For the high fliers, irrespective of the social class of their parents, degree courses in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, accountancy and law remain strong favourites. If we examine the situation for the

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Black British community, Black Caribbean pupils have the lowest levels of GCSE attainment, are more likely to be permanently excluded from school (especially boys) and least likely to have a degree. This difference in the level of qualifications and achievement suggests there is a ‘forking’ path among children of postcolonial migrants: between Indians on the one hand and Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Afro-Caribbeans on the other, and also ‘within’ postcolonial migrant communities as well – for example, a small number of Hindu, Sikh or Muslim children may do quite well whilst the majority of them do not. Interesting gender differences also emerge from recent evidence. Girls from a South Asian background (also girls from among the black community) on the whole do much better than boys, both in terms of qualifications and career development, whereas boys, especially Afro-Caribbean, tend to underachieve (as is the case nationally), though structural changes in the economy, with female and service-oriented jobs becoming more plentiful, may be a factor. But it is true that girls often show a greater motivation to succeed. Evidence certainly suggests that in the media, arts, government employment, business and education, Asian females are becoming more visible. However, we need to keep in mind that although quite a large number of young Asians are doing well in education, and subsequently in the workplace, there remains a significant minority who simply fall out of the system. They become discouraged, demoralized and alienated, and this affects their chances of employability even further. Some fall foul of the law, become victims of drug or alcohol addiction, or join fringe or extremist religious groups, especially if the latter promise to provide ‘easy’ answers to complex questions. Taking stock of the statistical evidence presented above it becomes clear that the different South Asian and black communities exhibit different degrees of disadvantage or deprivation (and hence integration) in relation to mainstream British society. This is reflected in the diversity of lived experiences, both between and within postcolonial migrant groups. The census suggested that the most advantaged or integrated of all postcolonial migrants were Indians (especially ‘twice’ migrants arriving via East Africa); then Black Caribbean and Pakistanis, and the least advantaged were the Bangladeshis (also incidentally the most recent postcolonial arrivals). In terms of an absence of religious or ethnic conflicts,7 the Indian community (largely Hindu and Sikh) would appear to be the least troublesome and the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities (largely Muslim) the most problematic.

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Decolonization and Migration 1947–80: Unwelcome Guests from the Colonies General Trends In the three decades after the Second World War, migration from the ‘new commonwealth’ to Britain surpassed anything that had occurred in the previous four hundred years. The make-up of migrants arriving in the U.K. was different too, with a higher proportion of manual workers and fewer members of elites, sailors and servants. Furthermore, after the partition of India, settlers were now coming from newly created nation-states in South Asia (India, Pakistan and East Pakistan – Bangladesh after 1971) and the British Caribbean islands, especially Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and British Honduras (now Belize). This new development is especially important in understanding the eventual pattern of postcolonial migrant settlement in Britain, the evolution of identity politics, and the persistence of a strong nostalgic yearning among many postcolonial migrants. The 1950s and 1960s were decades of uncertainty and despair for many of the new migrants still unsure of their long-term plans. But, seeing the prospects of a better life in Britain and needing to take a decision ahead of impending restrictions on further immigration, many of them, especially South Asian migrants, decided to make Britain their home and asked their wives and children to join them. Thereafter, settlement expanded rapidly, through family reunion and natural increase, and this category of migrants was given a further boost by fresh immigration from East Africa in the early 1970s. Starting small at the beginning of the 1950s but growing fast, sizable and visible migrant communities developed in the major metropolitan areas of Britain – predominantly in England but also in the port cities of Glasgow and Cardiff, in Scotland and Wales respectively. By the 1970s a new British-born second generation had begun to emerge. Their values were derived both from their home culture and those of the dominant British community, and it was difficult to speculate on how they would adapt – though academics and policymakers of the day, preoccupied with the idea that the new generation was ‘between two cultures’, predicted intergenerational conflict and greater assimilation of the younger generations into ‘British’ society. In fact, at the same time as putting down roots in Britain, newly confident migrants began to campaign for their economic, social, political, cultural and religious rights. Many of these struggles, involving respect for religious symbols and traditions – especially for Sikhs and Muslims – were to take many years to win because they caused much controversy, forced legislative changes and in fact

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challenged the very notion of Britishness. Over time, however, migrant communities achieved important victories, implying perhaps a growing understanding and tolerance of cultural diversity. Thus, by the 1980s, the foundations of a vibrant, urban, multicultural, multireligious and multiracial Britain were fully laid.8 Looking at these decades as a whole, three broad features stand out. First, is the highly conspicuous settlement pattern showing the spatial concentration of almost all postcolonial migrants in specific localities of Britain. Second, the dramatic life-changes for these new migrants (as most originally came not only from villages but in many cases also moved from tropical to temperate climate) as they adjusted to urban metropolitan living. And third, the struggles they undertook to secure their cultural and religious rights – over turbans, headscarves, halal food, places of worship, faith-based schools and community language provision etc. For the West Indian migrants, being the closest in terms of language, religion and values to the indigenous population, the legacies and trauma of the double whammy associated with slavery and colonialism meant cultural struggles took on different forms, especially with community activities focused around the black church but nevertheless without changing the generally negative character of overall experiences. These features strongly suggest the considerable diversity in experiences and outcomes, both between and within postcolonial communities in post-imperial Britain.

Causes Although the causes of ‘new’ commonwealth’ or ‘postcolonial’ migration to the U.K. are varied, complex and indeed contested, the dominant narratives of post-war migration emphasize the interplay between the push and pull factors.9 The primary push factors included demographic pressures, economic dislocation caused by events such as the construction of the Mangla Dam in Pakistan or hurricanes in the Caribbean, low levels of income, lack of employment opportunities and political tensions, as for example in Sri Lanka. The main pull factor was the increased demand for labour in war-devastated Britain. Insufficient numbers of native workers meant that many manufacturing industries, especially those requiring unskilled labour, and public services, such as the newly created National Health Service and the public transport system, needed ‘ready-made’ labour. To fill such vacancies quickly, government departments actively promoted immigration, especially in the Caribbean islands.10 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that most of earlier settlers from the empire colonies ended up in three industrial regions of the U.K. in urgent need of extra

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manpower: the textile mills in the northern cities in Lancashire and Yorkshire, the metal-bashing foundries and hosiery industries in the West and East Midlands, and the light manufacturing industry and transportation systems in the Greater London area, particularly in the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Lambeth, Ealing, Hounslow and Hillingdon, the latter three being close to Heathrow airport. For the Indian postcolonial experience, the Midlands provide a good snapshot of the situation at this time. Here, Coventry was a favourite destination for migrants from both South Asia and the Caribbean. A rapidly expanding local economy, boosted by reconstruction work and an emergent car industry, created employment opportunities for unskilled labour, and many new immigrants took jobs in the local foundries of Sterling Metals, at Dunlop, Dunns, and at toolmaker Alfred Herberts. Later, in the same area, South Asian women worked for General Electric Company, manufacturing and assembling light telecommunications equipment. In Birmingham and other key Midlands locations such as Smethwick, Dudley, Darlastan and Walsall, a (disproportionately) large number of migrants were employed in the metal-bashing foundries which served the thriving manufacturing industry of the region at the time. Many of these settlers came from rural areas of South Asia – Indian Punjabis, predominantly Sikhs (with a smaller number of Hindus), from the central districts of East Punjab (known as doaba), Pakistani Muslims from Campbellpur in West Punjab, Kashmiri Muslims from Mirpur district of Azad Kashmir, Bangladeshi Muslims from Sylhet, a north-eastern district of Bangladesh, and Sri Lankan Tamils fleeing ethnic conflict in the Jaffna province of Sri Lanka. Historically, most of these districts shared an imperial connection with Britain: for generations Sylheti seamen had worked on East India Company ships and Punjabi soldiers had served in the British Indian army in large numbers. But, unlike many earlier migrants (except perhaps lascars), most of these post-war pioneer migrants were relatively young men in their early twenties, illiterate or semiliterate, with predominantly farming or rural backgrounds. Although it would be true to say that they were relatively poor, by no means were they ‘pushed’ out of their homelands due to poverty. They were, in fact, economic migrants par excellence, with aspirations to better themselves. They were joined by other categories of migrants, such as retired soldiers of the British Empire who, since the First World War, had been given special dispensation – ‘vouchers’ – to enter Britain. Professionals, such as doctors, and political refugees from the Punjab, Kashmir and Bengal also migrated to Britain at this time, but they remained a minority. Large scale post-war migration to Britain from the very disparate and geographically spread British Caribbean islands preceded South Asian mi-

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gration by a few years. Although the general causes of migration from the British Caribbean are similar to South Asian ones, additional factors were also at work. The British Caribbean islands had a long history of migration to different destinations around the region, such as Panama and the United States, but from 1950 onwards, Britain emerged as the largest single destination and contributed towards the development of Gilroy’s notion of Black Atlantic. Although the population of the West Indian islands was historically low it increased over time; the people lived in poor tropical conditions and sometimes in high densities such as in Barbados. With rising population in the first half of the twentieth century but declining sugar and other primary commodity industries on many islands, unemployment and underemployment became serious issues. Periodic natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes added to the pressure on resources and unemployment. Out-migration was thus an important safety valve to escape poverty, but one important avenue was closed in 1952 when the U.S. government passed the McCarran-Walter Act which consolidated the discriminatory immigration regulations of 1924. The increase in labour demand in Britain in the post-war period and active recruitment in the region became important permissive factors in facilitating migration to Britain.11 As regards recruitment, although the British government had set up an interdepartmental working party to look at possibilities of recruiting surplus labour in certain colonial territories, a number of events were to force their hand. In June 1948 the SS Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury with 492 adventurist Jamaican immigrants on board. They had been warned about the risks before embarking on their journey, but since most of them were skilled or semi-skilled craftsmen they found employment relatively quickly. This acted as a signal for others, and in September 1948 another ship, Orbita, docked at Liverpool with 108 Jamaicans on board and who again found work within weeks of arriving. This was followed by other ships such as SS Reina del Pacificus, SS Georgic, SS Auriga and others. Thus in many ways spontaneous movement of people from the West Indies had already begun before the British government was able to develop its post-war manpower policy. Subsequently, as chain migration took hold until the early 1960s, Britain became home to a significant Afro-Caribbean community.12 However, by the early 1980s fresh migration from the Caribbean had tailed off very significantly. Non-white presence during the colonial period was traditionally concentrated in London and other major port cities such as Bristol, Cardiff, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow, though the numbers were relatively small, and some of these people moved frequently between Britain, India, Africa and the West Indies. After the Second World War, the situation was quantitatively, as well as qualitatively, very different. Not only was there

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a sharp rise in numbers, but South Asian as well as Afro-Caribbean migrants also began to penetrate the interior cities of England (though concentrated in only a few of them). Census data show that the total South Asian population rose from 43,000 in 1951 (of whom 31,000 were Indians, 10,000 Pakistanis, 2,000 East Pakistanis/Bangladeshis) to just over a million by 1981 (676,000 Indians, 296,000 Pakistanis and 65,000 Bangladeshis). The Afro-Caribbean migration peaked at 66,000 in 1961, but slowed down after the United States in 1965 and Canada subsequently relaxed their earlier immigration laws and emigrants once again began to prefer these locations.13 The remarkable rise in the non-white population, due both to the increase in British-born children of migrants and fresh immigration, was to have a permanent effect on the socio-economic and religious landscape of the inner-city areas receiving them.14 But how do we explain the concentration of specific communities in particular geographical localities? What led, for example, Pakistanis to settle predominantly, not just at first but later too, in the textile mill towns of northern England, or Sikhs to settle in West London and the ‘black country’ of the Midlands, or Bangladeshis to live mainly in East London? Naturally, access to employment opportunities was paramount. But, for a more nuanced understanding we need to explore the dynamics of chain migration. Often, chain migration had its roots in villages, where the first steps to migrate to Britain were taken. A villager received information (about the British government’s labour voucher scheme,15 for instance) from a travel agent in a local town, or in a letter from a friend or relative from the same village already living abroad. Family and local ties were crucial. Many aspiring migrants were sponsored by their friends and relatives, and, once they had arrived in Britain and secured a job, they would quickly send letters to friends or to other members of the kinship network, extolling the virtues and benefits of living in Vilayat (a common word used for a rich western country, but Britain in particular). As a result, dense patterns of emigration developed in those villages with information networks, and excluding villages in which information networks were not in place. So, in the case of the pioneer Sikh settlers, whose kinship relations were mainly spread across the two neighbouring central districts of doaba – Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur – it is not surprising that most of the earlier post-war migrants came predominantly from villages located in these two districts, especially the former.16 Even within Jalandhar district, migrants originated predominantly from a few particular tehsils – Nurmahal, Phagwara and Nawanshahr – reinforcing the point that it was kinship networks that determined who was included, and who was excluded, in the chain migration. This had important implications at the receiving end too. It was not uncommon for migrants to arrive at seaports or airports with hardly any

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money or belongings except a handful of addresses or old letters. Since the date of arrival was often uncertain, their kinsmen were seldom there to meet them at their port of entry, and many had to make a long and uncertain journey alone to the address of the nearest acquaintance. In many cases, the first address was only a temporary abode: it could be weeks or months before a close relative or friend could be contacted and informed about the new arrival.17 Their final destination, however, tended to be in a locality where their closest relatives or village kinsmen were already settled – which reinforced the conspicuous settlement patterns of most postcolonial migrants. It is also important to note that, with the exception perhaps of the few Afro-Caribbean migrants who sometimes travelled as complete families to the so-called ‘mother country’, it was not necessarily the intention of migrants to settle permanently in Britain. Far from it, the initial aim for most migrants was to earn as much money as possible and return with it to their homelands. Thus obtaining employment was the first priority. Since most of the early migrants were relatively young, healthy men and largely unskilled, the vast majority of them ended up in what may be termed as ‘3D’ jobs – dangerous, dirty and demanding, and offering very low pay. These were the jobs routinely offered to migrants – to the dismay of the minority of educated migrants, those with BA or MA degrees for instance, whose qualifications were not recognized and who were often forced to take demeaning employment as bus conductors or teaching assistants. Many qualified teachers contested their case with local authorities, with some winning recognition later, but even then they found themselves employed only as teachers of remedial English or of community languages. Many migrants worked anti-social hours, often night shifts, readily taking advantage of whatever overtime was offered to supplement their meagre wages. Frugal living allowed them to build up their savings and send regular remittances back home. In the 1950s, many of these early migrants lived in all-male households, usually in Victorian two-up, two-down terraced houses in run-down inner city neighbourhoods, where low-cost, rented accommodation was easier to find. Shift work and overtime allowed multiple and shifting occupancy of bedrooms, and communal living kept expenditure to a minimum. Since a major objective of the migrants was to accumulate as much money as possible before returning home, home-ownership was not considered a viable option. It was only later on, with the ‘myth of return’ receding and settlers no longer perceiving their stay in Britain as temporary, that we witnessed a period of family re-unification, allowing those individuals who had the means, especially those from the Indian community, to buy their own houses for family use. No doubt the impending immigration laws (discussed later in

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this chapter) designed to curtail primary migration also helped in this decision making. But for many newly arrived or relatively poorer migrants, especially from the Bangladeshi and Afro-Caribbean communities, access to social housing, often in the most deprived estates, remained the only option as far as housing was concerned and this has largely remained the experience ever since.18 The 1960s was a crucial period in the development of these communities. Family reunion prompted migrants to engage in new spheres of British life as users of public services such as schools and the health service, and later, through increased female participation in the labour market. Each of these new engagements brought a fresh set of problems both for migrant families and local authorities. It was a period of social adjustment and cultural adaptation, in which wives, mothers and children had to acquaint themselves with local school procedures, learn how to access health care through their General Practitioners, and deal with the administrators of social services and welfare benefits – all formidable tasks. With their propensity to acquire new language skills more quickly, it was often the South Asian migrant children who acted as intermediaries or translators for their parents in such situations. For the Afro-Caribbean community however, whilst language was not an issue, the challenges were more to do with awareness and accessibility of services, and general racialized hostility. As ex-colonial subjects, most migrants admired the British system of education, and were keen that their children should benefit from it. A good education was seen by all migrants as an important vehicle for upward social mobility, and many parents, especially South Asian, began to make important strategic choices, ‘pushing’ their children to gain the right school qualifications for entry into ‘ideal’ and ‘highly respected’ careers. Within two decades or so, the first crop of ‘home-grown’ doctors, dentists, pharmacists, lawyers, accountants, engineers and teachers began to emerge from the child migrants and second-generation, British-born children. Despite these successes, however, the actual number of high-achieving children, relative to the total number of schoolchildren of postcolonial migrants, remained – and still remains – low. More precisely, though children from India and Sri Lanka have excelled, children both from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Afro-Caribbean children, have tended to lag behind in educational achievement at all levels.19 This failure has had important repercussions on their higher education and employment opportunities, labour market experiences, and housing options.

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The Forgotten Case of Anglo-Indian Migration The dominant narrative on postcolonial commonwealth immigration often neglects the case of Anglo-Indians, a small minority community of people of mixed heritage which grew with the increased colonial presence of the various European colonialists in India, starting with the Dutch, French Portuguese and then of course, in much greater numbers, the British. The Anglo-Indian community at the point of decolonization is variously estimated at around eighty to a hundred thousand,20 although this is likely to be a considerable underestimation. Having been protected and to some extent privileged under the British, especially in terms of access to employment and political representation, understandably the community suffered considerable anxiety with the impending departure of the British. Some had begun to emigrate to Britain even before 1947, but quite a few did so by the 1950s when they began to realize that the project of Indian nation-building was, despite assurances, unlikely to meet their economic aspirations and cultural sustainability, and many started to migrate to either Britain or to the other new British Commonwealth countries of Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Indeed their fears were not completely unfounded, and the Anglo-Indians who remained behind, mainly those who neither had the means nor networks to move out, have been largely marginalized in the new economic and political arrangements that emerged in the Indian subcontinent in the postcolonial period. Although socio-economic pressures may have forced them out, they were not expelled as may have been the case with other “White British” groups at the point of independence, or as was the case with South Asians being expelled from some African countries in the 1960s. Furthermore, the Anglo-Indian postcolonial migrant community which emerged in Britain has remained largely estranged from the other South Asian communities despite having successfully assimilated into mainstream society. The Anglo-Indian community now forms a global diaspora and various associations exist in Britain and around the world which try to promote and raise awareness about the Anglo-Indian community. The global community is also engaged in various charitable projects oriented towards the economically deprived Anglo-Indian community on the Indian subcontinent.

Twice Postcolonial Migrants’ from East Africa The next major phase of settlement starts with the arrival of migrants, mostly of South Asian origin, from East Africa – ‘East African Asians’ – who were to have a significant impact on both the socio-economic

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composition and future evolution of the British South Asian community, providing an important new impetus to an emergent minority ethnic business sector. The history of Indian migration to Africa, and especially to East Africa, is somewhat complicated and in any case beyond the scope of this chapter, but a basic understanding is important in appreciating the manner of their arrival and their reception in Britain in the early 1970s. During the heyday of the British Empire a hundred years earlier, the British administrators in East Africa had recruited thousands of Indians from southern, western and eastern states through what was known as the ‘indenture system’, to work on the tea, rubber and sugar plantations,21 and later, drawing on skilled artisans and administrators from the Indian states of Punjab and Gujarat, to build the East African railways. Although this policy was terminated in the 1920s, many contracted workers stayed on where they were joined by their relatives on a voluntary basis. Over time, therefore, a significant South Asian community, divided into distinct religious and kinship groups, had developed in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. There, with their specific craft and administrative skills, they began to dominate local petty trading and came to occupy an intermediate socio-economic status above the indigenous Africans but below the white colonial masters – the middle layer of the ‘colonial sandwich’. It was a precarious position: the resentful Africans blamed them for their economic problems and the British colonial masters excluded them from government. When the British finally left in the early 1960s, politically independent African leaders found it expedient to generate anti-Indian feeling, and in 1972, pursuing a policy of Africanization, Idi Amin, the new President of Uganda, decided to expel all South Asians, even those who had taken up Ugandan nationality at the time of independence. Involuntary mass migration followed, not just from Uganda but also from other East African states. Some South Asians went back to the Indian subcontinent; others preferred to go to U.K., the perceived ‘mother country’, especially those who had taken up British citizenship in British African colonies and were entitled to make the move.22 Ironically the East African experience of different British Asian communities has left an enduring, sometimes nostalgic, legacy amongst them, and many of them still retain strong transnational links with Asian communities currently living in East Africa.23 Despite their right to settle in Britain, these ‘twice migrants’ experienced growing hostility from some sections of the British population. They had arrived at a time of increased anti-immigration feeling. As early as 1962, the first Immigration Act had sought to limit numbers of immigrants. Six years later, Parliament rushed through the 1968 Immigration Act in a matter of days, which effectively institutionalized racial discrimi-

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nation, removing the automatic right of entry to British passport holders whose parents or grandparents were not born in the U.K. A further Act followed in 1971, redefining British citizenship by clearly demarcating between patrial overseas British passport holders (whose parents or grandparents were born in Britain) and non-patrial passport holders (whose parents or grandparents were not). Since the parents or grandparents of most East African Asians were born on the Indian subcontinent, this had the immediate effect of excluding them. Although they held British passports, they were rendered stateless (not possessing dual African or Indian nationality). Furthermore, they were divided from their families living in India, East Africa, and the United States or previously settled in the U.K. Under international pressure, the British government allowed some East African Asians to settle in Britain, but under a strict quota system which did not allow them entry for a number of years. The damage to notions of an inclusionary British citizenship had mainly been done.24 The outbreak of the Ugandan-Asian crisis and the new influx of immigrants to Britain caused panic and anger amongst British politicians and anti-immigration lobbyists. It was not surprising that East African Asians should sense a high degree of hostility on their first entry to Britain (and recently released Cabinet papers reveal that their fears were not entirely unfounded).25 Their sense of unease was reinforced by new resettlement procedures introduced by the government which restricted their destinations to ‘green zones’ (a euphemism for areas where there were no or very few South Asians), away from ‘red zones’ (areas considered already ‘swamped’26 by too many immigrants). This dispersal policy fitted neatly with changing theories of race relations. Under the new Labour government, the old belief in gradual assimilation (a belief that over time, new immigrants naturally adopt the British way of life in all its forms) was giving way to a policy of integration (that it was necessary to create an integrated society in which there is an acceptance of cultural diversity and equal opportunity for all within an atmosphere of mutual trust). This was the first sign of the multiculturalist thinking which would dominate policymaking in the 1980s. In the majority of cases, however, the zoning policy proved to be a total failure at the implementation stage. One major problem was that very few local councillors were prepared to accept new migrants because of fears of an electoral backlash. Second, the migrants themselves showed a strong preference for moving into neighbourhoods where they already had friends and relatives and which offered relative security. Hence, in the early 1970s, a large number of East African Gujaratis moved to Leicester and Wembley, and Punjabis to the West London boroughs of Ealing and Hounslow or to the Midlands, perpetuating the earlier conspicuous pattern of spatial concentration.27

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British Responses: From Hostility to Reluctant Accommodation From the beginning of the 1950s, the arrival of thousands of new migrants had evoked a largely negative response both from local communities and politicians. At the local level, certain stereotypes developed about the new neighbours: they ‘smelled of curry’, were ‘dirty’, wore ‘funny’ clothes, lived like ‘sardines’, ‘talked funny’ (in accents later mocked by the comedian Peter Sellers) and had ‘strange’ religious traditions and customs.28 Popular television comedy shows such as Love thy Neighbour, On the Buses, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Till Death Do Us Part and Please Sir reinforced the racist stereotypes of the ‘comical’ Orientals. In reality, these migrants experienced discrimination in housing and employment; their access to social services and educational provision was restricted; and they suffered verbal and physical racial abuse. Property damage, street muggings and stabbings were common occurrences, with the tabloid press often blaming the victims. In many cases, far-right groups such as the Union Movement, and later the National Front, actively sought to provoke a violent reaction by deliberately operating in areas of immigrant settlement.29 At the infamous National Front meeting in Southall on 23 April 1979, they succeeded. They had been granted permission to hold an election meeting in the town hall, despite opposition from local community groups. On the day of the meeting, local residents organized a peaceful protest but, as a result of media coverage, a large number of anti-racist groups also joined in, creating – according to the police – a potential law and order problem. Overreacting to the situation, and spearheaded by the elite Special Patrol Group (SPG) of the Metropolitan Police, officers used violence mainly on the unarmed and peaceful protestors, and one of them, Blair Peach, a schoolteacher from East London, was fatally struck on the head with a truncheon. His assailant was widely believed to be a member of the SPG, although no police officer was subsequently charged.30 The Notting Hill riots and the Southall incidents were crucial turning points in the politicization and mobilization of second-generation London Asians and blacks against racist organizations, and many joined the Asian Youth Movement or other anti-racist groups such as the Anti-Nazi League. This period was incidentally the most successful in demonstrating relative unity between Asian and black organizations, a unity that became ever more unachievable over time. In response to the growing problem, organizations such as the Institute of Race Relations began to monitor racial violence and harassment in a more systematic way.31 In fact, racial hostility was not altogether surprising, given that this was the first time provincial British communities had been exposed to postcolonial migrants who were often perceived as

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‘natives’ or ‘strangers’ from the colonies, with little to do with the British communities. Since these new immigrants were moving into already disadvantaged and depressed working-class areas with their overcrowding and housing shortages, limited job opportunities and poor access to public services, it was not surprising that these problems should quickly become associated with their arrival. New immigrants were convenient scapegoats for local politicians, trade unions and community leaders. Local political discourses became increasingly racialized.32 In some localities, white workers staged strikes to protest against the employment of Indian workers, for example in Nuneaton, near Coventry.33 As postcolonial migrant settlement grew, many members of the dominant white community moved out of the inner-city neighbourhoods which created space for more migrants to move in, consolidating their position in these areas. It was only gradually – and more through perseverance and determination rather than welcome – that postcolonial migrants began to gain acceptance as hard-working, law-abiding citizens; this was the first necessary step in the process of building friendships across communities, sharing communal activities and celebrations such as Christmas, Eid, Diwali or Vaisakhi, the Notting Hill Festival and, eventually, inter-racial marriages. Throughout this period, the British government adopted a dual approach towards immigration, on the one hand pandering to calls from right-wing politicians and the general public for more stringent immigration controls, and on the other upholding liberal values of equality and fairness by outlawing racial discrimination and promoting good race relations. The 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act was very much a response to growing political unease about the high levels of immigration and its potential impact on race relations. This legislation effectively curtailed most primary migration, limiting it to dependents and potential spouses (although Category C vouchers continued to be issued for highly skilled workers such as doctors, scientists, engineers and nurses). The first Act to promote good race relations was passed in 1965, the second in 1968 and the third, and most important, in 1976. The Race Relations Act 1976 (later amended and strengthened by the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 and the Race Relations Act 1976 (Amendment) Regulations 2003, incorporating European Union directives) made it unlawful to discriminate against anyone on grounds of race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnicity. More importantly, it also created the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and a network of over one hundred local Racial Equality Councils, largely funded by the CRE.34 Thus, the body of regulations concerning racial relations grew rapidly after 1976, continually expanding to cover many spheres of peoples’ lives and now re-oriented towards promoting community cohesion policies.

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New British Postcolonial Identities, Multiculturalism and the Rise of Identity Politics: The Case of South Asians Immigrant achievement, enthusiastically celebrated by all postcolonial migrant communities themselves, and supported in general by the British public which has embraced ethnic cuisine, literature, music, dance and fashion, has also been officially sanctioned with the promotion of multicultural policies encouraging and financially rewarding cultural difference at both national and municipal levels. Local authorities have sponsored multicultural melas and festivals, and some have even used immigrant neighbourhoods to promote tourism. In Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, Lambeth, Ealing and Tower Hamlets, ethnic cuisine and culture have been the focus of promotions attracting tourists to ‘Baltistan’, ‘Banglatown’, ‘Little Punjab’ and ‘Curry Mile’. At the same time, minority ethnic communities have developed a sense of community pride, a particular kind of diasporic self-image and sensibility – which they are prepared to protect against attacks by outsiders who denigrate their faith, values and institutions. In recent years, minority ethnic groups, specifically South Asians, have asserted their cultural identities by invoking identity politics, both nationally and globally, signifying an important change in the nature of immigrant protest. But even the Caribbean community with its strong Christian background has developed its own sense of ‘Caribbean’ community identity, especially through the development of a separate black church movement which looked for inspiration from the black church movement in the United States rather than the mainstream Christian churches of Britain due to the latter’s rejection, exclusion and downright prejudice.35 All these developments have had the effect of dividing South Asian and Caribbean groups along faith lines. Whereas in the 1970s and 1980s South Asians (along with the Afro-Caribbean community) were relatively united in their fight against racism or unfair work practices (for example, the infamous Grunwick dispute)36 and were mobilizing through pan-Asian groups such as the Asian Youth Movement in Southall, from the 1990s onwards agitations have often only involved specific communities, be they Muslims, Hindus or Sikhs. For example, recent high-profile agitations – the anti-Iraq War movement or protests against the abuse of anti-terrorist laws – have mainly involved Muslim communities, with only lukewarm, if any, support from other South Asian or Afro-Caribbean groups. This development is very marked if we look at recent cases of protest involving each of the three main South Asian faith groups.

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Muslims Until the late 1980s, British Muslims were largely invisible in their public contribution to British national or ethnic issues. According to Werbner, their lives were largely ‘submerged into hidden networks of kin, friends, and work or business partners. These networks were sustained by an elaborate ceremonial gift economy controlled by women, and by antagonistic rivalries for status and power by men’.37 This perception of Muslims – assuming it was correct in the first place – was, however, to change drastically with the eruption of the ‘Rushdie Affair’. Ever since then, and especially since 9/11 and 7/7, the issue of Muslim identity politics, both nationally and globally, has been passionately debated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The Rushdie affair started soon after the publication, in 1988, of Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel Satanic Verses, which the majority of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims found blasphemous and deeply offensive to their religion – especially as it came from an allegedly lapsed Muslim. Expressing their indignation, Muslims across Britain engaged in peaceful protests and campaigns to persuade the government to ban the book. Some of these protests, however, turned violent. At the infamous protest organized by the Bradford Council of Mosques and others in January 1989, copies of the book were burned. Shortly afterwards, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa sentencing Rushdie to death, and offering a reward for anyone carrying it out. After receiving many death threats, Rushdie, largely unrepentant and repeatedly reaffirming his strong belief in free speech, thought and expression, was forced to go into hiding under special police protection. The British public and the global literary community expressed sympathy for his right to free expression, but not until 1999, nine years later, was the fatwa finally lifted. By then Rushdie had decided to settle in the United States, where he has remained a strong critic of militant Islam and its increasingly intolerant nature. The Rushdie affair both exposed and radicalized Muslims. With their violent protest and book-burning – but not murder as in the Dutch case of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 – they appeared intolerant of values held dear by a secular society, and incapable of rational debate; some even labelled them ‘fifth columnists’ or ‘the enemy within’ (as they did after the London bombings in July 2005). Muslims who remained silent appeared to be condoning both the calls to ban the book and the fatwa. In general, the Muslim community seemed alienated from popular opinion, isolated, polarized and at odds with British values. After the book-burning incident in Bradford, the local newspaper labelled the protestors ‘intellectual hooligans’, comparing their action with those of the Nazis.38 Subsequent at-

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tempts by some Muslim groups to bring about an extension in blasphemy and race discrimination laws to include religion failed, largely because they could not convince other major faith communities to support them. Many Muslims openly began to question the way in which secular values of equality, fairness and justice were being applied. The relationship between the Muslim community and the British public in general had reached a new low, with any possibility of civic engagement on the basis of mutual trust seriously compromised. Over time, this general ‘mistrust’ between British Muslims and the state was to become even more problematic and largely unresolved.39 The Rushdie affair proved to be an important turning point for Muslim identity politics in Britain. As a result of this experience, the Muslim community learned new mobilization strategies, realized the importance of communicating in the right idiom and developed a tendency to explore their location in the transnational moral religious community, the umma. In many ways, as Werbner fittingly observed, ‘it liberated Pakistani settler-citizens from the self-imposed burden of being a silent, well-behaved minority, whatever the provocation, and opened up the realm of activist, anti-racist and emancipatory citizenship politics’.40

Sikhs Traditionally, Sikh protest has been peaceful and law-abiding. In their successful campaigns for legal protection of their cultural and religious rights in the 1970s, they had appealed to the special Anglo-Sikh relationship (largely through British army recruitment) rather than resorting to violent protest. Demonstrating against the Indian Congress government’s decision, in June 1984, to send the army into their holiest shrine, the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar, they kept their anti-India protests largely within the confines of British law. Even during many years of political and financial support by a small minority of British Sikhs for the Khalistan movement in Punjab,41 there were only few instances of violence and these remained largely contained within the community. Recently, however, this has changed. Some Sikhs have taken a more militant, agitational stance on certain cultural practices which they see as detrimental to Sikh religion. One such issue has been the alleged disrespect shown to Shri Guru Granth Sahib, Sikh’s holiest scripture and living Guru, by allowing it to be taken to weddings or religious functions held in clubs, hotels and community centres where alcohol and/or smoking are permitted. In a number of cases, self-styled leaders of the Respect for Guru Granth Sahib group have halted some ceremonies by force rather than reason.42 This

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growing intolerance came to national attention when Sikh protests forced the premature closure of the play Behzti (Dishonour), by a British-born Sikh woman, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, in Birmingham in 2004. The Behzti affair in some ways mimics the Rushdie affair. Set within the precincts of a gurdwara (Sikh Temple), the play aimed to expose hypocrisy and pretence among the Sikh community, and human failing in general. Billed as a black comedy and featuring three lead characters, two female and one male, it attempted – rather ambitiously according to many – to explore a wide range of topical but taboo subjects, such as homosexuality, corruption, social status and acceptance, suppression, drugs, domestic violence, rape, murder, mixed-race relationships and paedophilia, using Bhatti’s own Sikh community as the backdrop. Aware of the controversial nature of the play, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre held consultations with the local Sikh community before staging the play. However, negotiations broke down, with the latter insisting that the play be moved from its setting inside a gurdwara to a community centre. Importantly, the Sikh community objected not to the content of the play, but to the setting, which in their view violated ‘Sikh sacred space’. Taking the contrary view, that shifting the setting would be a form of censorship, the Birmingham Rep compromised by inviting the Sikh community to write a statement expressing their views, which was to be given to every member of the audience and also read out in the auditorium before each performance. The play opened on 9 December 2004, and was set to run until 30 December. At first, the daily protests of members of the Sikh community were peaceful. On 19 December, however, they turned violent: 400 Sikhs attempted to storm the theatre, attacking security guards, destroying a foyer door and breaking windows in a restaurant. At the height of the fracas, eighty-five police officers – thirty in riot gear – were involved. Two people were arrested and five police officers were slightly injured – and the play was indefinitely cancelled, although the Birmingham Rep was quick to emphasize that this was not because the Sikh community found the play offensive but because the Rep had a ‘duty of care of its audiences, staff and performers’.43 As with the Rushdie affair, the dispute became a classic conflict between the artist’s right to freedom of expression in a secular society and a community’s wish to have their faith treated with dignity and respect. The incident made headlines in the global media, leading to expressions of sympathy for the Birmingham Sikhs from the U.K. Sikh community, as well as from Sikh organizations around the world. Sikhs felt betrayed by the lack of a law to protect the sensibilities of religious communities. The artistic community on the other hand, both South Asian and nonSouth Asian, fully supported the Birmingham Rep and Bhatti’s right to

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stage the play, and organized an active media campaign to publicize their cause. Leading figures from the art world were among the seven hundredplus signatories, who wrote an open letter to the Guardian supporting the freedom of expression of the Sikh playwright.44 Bhatti also made an impassioned defence of her play in a letter to the Guardian, ending with: ‘You can all rest assured – this warrior will not stop fighting.’45 But, like Rushdie, Bhatti was forced to leave her family home and go into hiding because of hate mail and death threats. Four years on, she has yet to make a public appearance. As before, with the Sikhs’ turbans and beards campaigns of the 1970s, the Behzti affair threw the British Sikh community into the limelight, and some Sikh commentators were concerned that the community’s image had been ‘tarnished by third-rate talent’, warning that it could have ‘catastrophic’ effects if the British media portrayed Sikhs in the same negative light as British Muslims, or if once again (as they had done during the years of the Khalistan agitation) they tried to equate the turban with terrorism. However, this appeared to be an over-sensationalized reaction, and there is no evidence to suggest that the anti-Behzti protests left any permanent negative-image problem. If anything, the Sikh community’s anxieties in the post-9/11 and post-7/7 periods have related more to the potential for mistaken identity between Muslims and Sikhs, especially due to similarities in forms of headgear.

Hindus Recently, the Hindu Forum of Britain, an umbrella organization of different Hindu groups in Britain, commissioned the Runnymede Trust to conduct research into the identity and public role of British Hindus under the Connecting British Hindus Research Programme. The results of the project, sponsored by the Cohesion and Faith Unit of the Department for Communities and Local Government, were released in the summer of 2006.46 The report acknowledged the need for Hindus (the third largest faith group in Britain) to become more visible and active in the public realm, and to contribute to the ongoing debate about the role of faith communities in relation to the state. The report also subtly attempted to differentiate Hindus from other South Asian and Indian communities, presenting them as progressive, dynamic, tolerant and more integrated into the British way of life. Like the Sikhs, who have also campaigned to legalize separate ‘ethnic’ monitoring, Hindus began to challenge the notion of a generalized British-Asian identity and to question whether it still remains a meaningful category in contemporary Britain. In a sense, they were reacting against a form of British multiculturalism and ethnic classification which does not

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necessarily take into account religious identities, thus potentially leading to situations in which, for instance, a company or government policy target to recruit British Asians (based on Asian ethnicity alone) can be met without a single Hindu, Sikh or a Muslim being recruited. This report reflects a new level of confidence and a changed image among British Hindus, who are now aiming to give a cohesive voice to Hindu interests, and this has been reinforced by the way Hindu groups have recently mobilized to stop the misuse of Hindu sacred and cultural symbols. Spearheaded by the London-based Hindu Human Rights organization, but with the global Hindu audience in mind, British Hindus have increasingly used agitational politics to secure their aims. In this way, they attempted to ban the use of ‘Lord Ram’ on designer shoes sold by the French firm Minnelli’s; they got a Californian company, Fortune Dynamic, to withdraw a range of shoes with Hindu images on them; they protested against ‘Café Press’ for putting sacred Hindu symbols on thongs; they protested against the fashion designer Roberto Cavalli for depicting Hindu goddesses on bikinis; they campaigned to stop the abuse of the ‘swastika’ (a sacred Hindu symbol) and the misuse of the term ‘Aryan’, after Prince Harry wore a Nazi outfit at a party; they protested against the film Goddess, in which Tina Turner plays a sex goddess dancing on a tiger (implying denigration of the image of Mata Sherawali); and they protested against the Royal Mail for abusing Hindu imagery. The website of the Hindu Human Rights organization has even produced a pictorial gallery to illustrate the many misuses of Hindu imagery worldwide.47 Sometimes this recent Hindu militancy has a more sinister side as seen in the activities of U.S.- and British-based Hindu groups which, acting under cover of charitable organizations, funded communalism and hate in Gujarat in India.48 More recently, Hindu organizations forced the closure of an exhibition of paintings by internationally renowned Indian Muslim artist Maqbool Fida Husain at Asia House (a pan-Asian organization in Britain that promotes greater understanding of the rich and varied Asian cultures and economies). The exhibition, inaugurated by the Indian High Commissioner, Kamalesh Sharma, on 10 May 2006, was due to continue until 5 August. But the Hindu Forum of Britain and the Hindu Human Rights group, alleging that Husain’s paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses had outraged the global Hindu community by ‘showing obscene images of Hindu goddesses’, called for its ban. On 22 May, Asia House abruptly cancelled the exhibition on security grounds, apparently after two paintings had been vandalized. Surprisingly, the incident did not get much coverage in the mainstream British media. Lord Desai, in a letter to the Guardian on 26 May, commented: ‘This is an outrageous attack on artistic freedom in the British context. Would the media have ignored

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such an event had the protesters been Muslims and not Hindus?’49 He went on to point out that: Hindu goddesses can be seen in a variety of poses which many may find erotic in the temples of Khajuraho and Tirupati and many others. Hindu society and religion are remarkably relaxed and tolerant about sexual practices of human beings as well as of their gods and goddesses. What we are witnessing is the import into the UK of a group which under the guise of Hindu human rights is practising censorship for which there is no sanction in Hindu religion.50

Another letter to the Guardian on 30 May, signed by over fifty leading scholars in South Asian studies, reiterated the point about diverse traditions of expression in Hinduism, and questioned the legitimacy of the protesters to represent all Hindus. They suggested that: ‘Groups such as Hindu Human Rights and the Hindu Forum of Britain are wielding the same tactics used by organisations in India. These groups are known for repeatedly attacking the works of artists and intellectuals, undermining India’s constitutional right to freedom of thought and expression.’51 The previous examples of new forms of South Asian militancy show the growing importance of the invoking of identity politics in Britain, where some British Asians, aided by their global and transnational networks, engage in the increasingly high-profile conflict between ‘traditional’ British secular values and the public promotion of religions under the guise of multiculturalism. Paradoxically, there are other issues urgently in need of discussion, which may be overlooked – issues which challenge all South Asian communities but which many British Asians are afraid to discuss openly for fear of a backlash, often from within. These are exactly the sorts of issues sensationalized in the worst possible way in the British tabloid press – ‘forced marriages’, ‘honour killings’, ‘sex selection and illegal abortion’, ‘genital mutilation’, ‘alcohol and drug abuse’, ‘domestic violence’, ‘dowry harassment’, ‘human trafficking and illegal immigration’, ‘forced conversions’, ‘conflicting doctrinal interpretations over wearing of the veil, the niqab’, ‘child abuse, incest or paedophilia’, ‘homosexuality’, ‘prostitution and pornography’, ‘growing acceptance and popularity of black magic and spiritual healers to exorcise the “evil eye”’, and so on. Such issues are often met by British Asians with blank silence or denial, or deflected as attempts at blaming the victim and/or claiming that the problems have been ‘imported’ from western secular culture, or even that the problems belong to ‘other’ Asian or black groups, not themselves. Both Hindus and Sikhs have tried to distance themselves from them by blaming Muslims for giving British Asians a bad name, a doubly unfortunate posture because no Asian or black community is immune to such problems, and because it further fuels Islamophobia which subtly affects all non-white migrants.

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The rise in Islamophobia, not surprisingly, reached new heights after the tragic London bombings of 7 July 2005, which killed fifty-two morning commuters and the four Muslim suicide bombers themselves. Three of the bombers came from Yorkshire (two from Leeds, one from Dewsbury; the fourth was born in Jamaica), where they had apparently lived totally normal lives. None had any record of previous political or terrorist involvement. The bombing came as a big shock for the British, who found it difficult to understand the circumstances which might have created ‘home-grown’ suicide bombers, the first ever on British soil. For Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims, it formed an absolutely critical juncture. What made these angry young Muslims take such drastic action? What right did they have to tarnish the whole community? Did they act out of frustration at seeing large numbers of their community living in deprivation? Were they reacting to the persistent institutionalized racism in British society, especially intolerable for young British-born Muslims? Or were the bombings a sign of an unnoticed growth in radical Islam among Muslim youth, some of whom had been influenced by the inflammatory speeches of visiting imams (clerics) and the activities of fundamentalist (and jehadist) groups such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun (which have suspected links with Al Qaeda), not to mention recent British foreign policies and media coverage of global ‘Muslim suffering’, whether in Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan or Iraq? All are likely contributory factors. But it is interesting, in this context, to read the comments of Moazzam Begg, a British Muslim detained for two years in Guantanamo Bay. Writing about the reasons which pushed him towards a greater acceptance of his Muslim identity, he reveals that he was first attracted to the idea of joining ‘a gang’ (that is, an anti-fascist organization) in reaction to the collusion he witnessed between the state (particularly the police) and racist elements operating in their neighbourhoods. He further states: Britain has the best multicultural society in Europe, but still in most parts of the country I feel out of place. I’d like to go to an English country village, with my dark skin, my beard and my wife in her hijab and not be stared at or singled out. … I’d like the people to see that we generally want the same things in life, that they should not feel threatened by me. I want the English to like me, because they are accepting – not just to tolerate me, if I am trying to assimilate.52

Clearly, multiculturalism in Britain failed Begg, and he looked for something else. International events, such as the first Gulf War and the massacre of Bosnian Muslims, proved life-changing for him.

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Whatever the motivations of the suicide bombers, the July 2007 bombings badly damaged British–Muslim relations and opened up new divisions among the largely peaceful community itself, exacerbating the general ‘mistrust’ developed during the earlier period. The post-bombing period has been marked by a significant increase in hate crime against Muslims, although, because perpetrators have usually been unable to distinguish between Muslims and other South Asians, many non-Muslim South Asians have suffered too. In the political domain, the July bombings sharpened the debates on the merits of the British form of multiculturalism and whether it had a future.

Growing Backlash against Multiculturalism and the Future of Postcolonial Migrant Identities The British brand of multiculturalism, described by Trevor Phillips (exChair of the Commission for Racial Equality) as ‘sleep walking to segregation’, has come under increasing criticism over the last decade, but especially since 9/11 and the bombings in London in July 2005.53 The charges against multiculturalism have been numerous: that it encourages abuse of political patronage at civic level with a view to gaining electoral advantage; that it leads to the formation of numerous ‘unrepresentative’ organizations in the race industry such as the CRE, local Race Equality Councils and now Community Cohesion Units, and so on; that it tolerates public policy consultation through unrepresentative community organizations; that it allocates public funding, through the Lottery and Heritage Funds and other funding bodies, to very marginal communities or sectarian groups who want to assert their own minority tradition and identity within the larger faith groups; and so on. In many cases, British multiculturalism has resulted in the transplantation of a South Asian type of politics at local level, where community vote banks are used – and appeased through promises of extra funding – by councillors and MPs to maintain political influence. Many such state policies have tended to undermine the credibility of the British form of multiculturalism, and their contribution in facilitating and perpetuating ethnic segregation is now openly criticized. Undoubtedly British multiculturalism has propelled postcolonial migrants towards integration and assimilation, promoting mixed relationships, a more secular outlook, value systems based on respect for individualism and rule of law. A sizable middle class has emerged amongst all British Asian and Black communities, especially through self-employment in business activities, media and sporting success. The black community’s

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successes in athletics, boxing and football are legendary and a source of national pride. Political representation has also increased although not in line with their proportion in population. At the same time, however, in a globalized and networked world, counter-pressures have pulled postcolonial migrants and their children towards a homeland identity, albeit in a diasporic ‘in-between’ sense. The growth in popularity and support for Indian/Pakistani/Sri Lankan/West Indian cricket teams amongst British born non-white youth, the huge popularity of Bollywood cinema and of Asian and American black popular music (such as Bhangra, R&B, Rap and Hip Hop), the proliferation of South Asian satellite television channels catering for every conceivable taste, and the development and increasing popularity of heritage tourism are some of the factors which directly strengthen a British postcolonial diasporic identity, even among Britishborn second and third generation youth. Such a diasporic identity is further strengthened with the explicit assistance of ‘homeland’ states’ outreach policies. India, for example, has tried to inculcate an idea of Indianness among diaspora Indians by introducing favourable policies towards them – offering privileges in savings and investment facilities, holding annual celebrations (such as Pravasi Bharatiya Divas) for diaspora communities, granting dual nationality, fast-tracking legal redress, and even promising voting rights in Indian elections. The influence of such homeland policies should not be underestimated, especially among groups who have a ‘homing desire’ or continuing pride in their South Asian or Afro-Caribbean ancestry. Although many young second- or third-generation Asians and Afro-Caribbeans, especially those determined to better themselves in Britain, may only be marginally affected by ‘homeland’ cultural influences, even they may find it difficult to escape them totally. For instance, the rise of India as a global power, with its growing influence on global business, education, media, fashion, arts and culture further draws British-born Indians towards hybrid, hyphenated and multiple identities. In the context of contemporary and ongoing debates about community cohesion, it seems highly doubtful if integration (if defined as assimilation or acceptance of a broadly Christian ethical value system and loyalty to prevailing notions of British identity) can potentially be achieved. The experience of the Afro-Caribbean community suggests even the acceptance of a broadly Christian ethical value system is no guarantee of inclusion. British identity has, in any case, undoubtedly fractured with devolution and the setting up of separate assemblies for the Irish, Scots and Welsh. If anything it is the English who feel that their ‘British’ identity is under threat, since it is difficult for them to see a clear demarcation between Britishness and Englishness. As one former British Prime Minister, John

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Major, is said to have remarked, warm beer and cricket on the green, was the essence of Englishness. Thus British identity is in urgent need of redefinition and renewal. Just as many postcolonial migrants and their children need to demonstrate greater cultural accommodation and to reaffirm their sense of belonging to the British State, the British public too needs to accept a renegotiated notion of Britishness, which is not exclusivist, is decolonised and which offers equal respect and dignity to all postcolonial migrants’ ‘home’ cultures. Resolution of this debate is likely to be the major challenge facing Britain and other continental European countries in the next decade, and may well be an important precondition for successful management of ethnically and religiously diverse populations in urban metropolitan European cities. The generally negative reaction to the Parekh Report on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain indicated that influential sections of the British public are not yet ready to accept a redefined notion of Britishness. Furthermore, the current historical phase, still dominated by the ‘war on terror’, may have lasting unintended consequences, both on relations between the white majority community and postcolonial migrant communities, and within these communities themselves – especially the more numerous South Asian ones. Non-accommodating and exclusionary European policies coupled with a reversal in the real achievements of multiculturalism, which have enriched the lives of most people in Britain and Europe, would be the worst outcome of all for the citizens of Europe.

Notes 1. All data presented in this chapter is taken from official British census data supplied by the Office for National Statistics. Full data for the 2001 census can be accessed at http://www. statistics.gov.uk/census2001/access_results.asp 2. For full details see Peach, Robinson, and Smith, Ethnic Segregation in Cities, 21. 3. Tinsley and Jacobs, ‘Deprivation and Ethnicity in England: A Regional Perspective’, 39. 4. For a recent paper which assesses the experience of ethnic minorities regarding concentration and segregation in housing see Phillips, ‘Black Minority Ethnic Concentration, Segregation and Dispersal in Britain’. 5. Ibid. 6. Department for Education and Skills, Aiming High: Raising the Achievement of Minority Ethnic Pupils. 7. For details see Hansen ‘Measures of Integration’. Of course, in any nuanced discussion on preconditions for integration, absence of hostility needs to be considered as a proxy for lack of acquisition of English language skills, high unemployment levels and poor educational qualifications. 8. For a recent comprehensive account of four hundred years of history of migration and the cultural encounter between Britain and the Indian subcontinent, see Fisher, Lahiri and Thandi, A South-Asian History of Britain: Four Centuries of Peoples from the Indian Sub-Con-

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tinent. For a similar treatment focused on Afro-Caribbean migration, see Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain: Black People in Britain Since 1504. 9. There exists extensive literature that examines the South Asian experience and pattern of post-war migration to Britain. Some of this literature covers South Asians in general and some looks at the experience of specific communities. For good examples of earlier writings, see Watson (ed.), Between Two Cultures: Migrants and Minorities in Britain, and Ballard (ed.), Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain. For a most recent survey, see Ali, Kalra, and Sayyid, A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain. For single community studies, see Shaw, A Pakistani Community in Britain; Helweg, Sikhs in England; Kalsi, The Evolution of the Sikh Community in Britain: Religious and Social Change among the Sikhs of Leeds and Bradford, and Kalra, From Textile Mills to Taxi Ranks: Experiences of Migration, Labour and Social Change. 10. The evolution of early policies towards immigration and migration is discussed in great detail in Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain: The Institutional Origins of a Multicultural Nation. For a contrasting approach, especially focusing on the 1948 British Nationality Act, see Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era. 11. One of the earliest studies on causes of West Indian migration to Britain is by Glass, Newcomers. Also see a more detailed study by Peach, West Indian Migration to Britain: A Social Geography. 12. For further details and witness accounts see Phillips and Phillips, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain. 13. Apart from the geographical proximity, which allowed more frequent travel between U.S.A./Canada and the Caribbean islands, Caribbeans felt more at home and at ease given the presence of the large number of black people there already. For details of U.K. migration figures from the 1960s to the early 1980s, see Hennessey, ‘Workers of the Night: West Indians in Britain’. 14. For details, see Peach and Gale, ‘Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in the New Religious Landscape of England’. 15. Labour vouchers fell into different categories. These were issued by the Ministry of Labour under the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 and 1969. The vouchers were issued in three categories: Category A for applications by employers in this country who have a specific job to offer to a particular Commonwealth citizen; Category B for applications by Commonwealth citizens without a specific job to come to, but with certain special qualifications (such as nurses, teachers, medical doctors) and Category C for all others. 16. Ballard, Desh Pardesh for instance, has pointed out that the Jalandhar and Mirpur districts of India and Pakistan, respectively, provided the greatest numbers. 17. Aurora, The New Frontiersmen: A Sociological Study of Indian Immigrants in the United Kingdom, provides some fascinating details of the lifestyles of earlier migrants. 18. For a recent paper which assesses the experience of ethnic minorities regarding concentration and segregation in housing, see Phillips, ‘Black Minority Ethnic Concentration, Segregation and Dispersal in Britain’. 19. Educational research looking at school and post-school experiences has demonstrated that there are multiple but inter-related reasons for underachievement, and these would include the length of migration and settlement in U.K., the class and educational background of parents, a poor neighbourhood with under-resourced schools, poor language skills and special needs, a mainly Anglo-Saxon curriculum inappropriate for a multi-cultural setting, ethnic stereotyping by teachers, low expectations on the part of teachers, discriminatory admissions procedures, etc. For one recent attempt at explaining and improving underachievement, see Tikly, Hill and Gillborn, Aiming High: Raising African Caribbean Achievement. 20. Although a relatively neglected community by scholars, more literature has become available with time. For details on the Anglo-Indian experiences during colonialism see Wright and Wright, ‘The Anglo-Indian Community in Contemporary India’. For more recent

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literature see Anthony, Britain’s Betrayal in India: The Story of the Anglo-Indian Community; Caplan, Children of Colonialism: Anglo-Indians in a Post-colonial World. 21. This led to the emergence of the ‘old’ Indian diaspora. For details on this emergence, see Jain, Indian Communities Abroad: Themes and Literature, and Jayaram (ed.), The Indian Diaspora: Dynamics of Migration. 22. In the pre-independence period, the question of nationality was not important as all subjects were either British subjects or British-protected persons. However, after the independence of India and the passing of the 1948 British Nationality Act, the situation became more complex. Indians residing in British colonies in Africa were given the status of citizens of the U.K. and Colonies, and many who retained their British passports had a right to enter the U.K. until the 1962 Immigration Act. With Africanization gathering pace, the Indians felt uneasy; but Britain (as a result of the 1962 and 1968 Immigration Acts) would not give them entry into the U.K., neither would India allow them back as the constitution did not allow automatic re-entry to Indians who had relinquished their Indian citizenship. This period of uncertainty for the East African Indians continued until the summer of 1968 when the British and Indian governments came to an agreement on how to manage the East Asian migration. For a discussion on the legal status of the Africa Asians, see Lall, India’s Missed Opportunity: India’s Relationship with the Non Resident Indians, 96–101. 23. Research by Bhachu, Twice Migrants, and Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, poignantly capture the experiences of these ‘twice migrants’. 24. Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain, provides a very comprehensive overview of the major debates in the framing of immigration legislation and the changing meaning of British citizenship, from the British Nationality Act of 1948 to the British Nationality Act of 1981. 25. Cabinet papers released by the Public Records Office on 1 January 2003 under the 30-year rule revealed that there was a ‘deep sense of alarm’ over the expulsion of around seventy thousand East African Asian-British passport holders. In September 1972, the airlift of twenty-seven thousand Ugandan Asians to Britain triggered a campaign by Enoch Powell, the right-wing Monday Club and the National Front to keep them out. Fearing a second wave of expulsion, by November of that year serious consideration was being given to passing a bill in Parliament to strip East African Asians of their British nationality. The cabinet also instructed the Foreign Secretary at the time, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, to deal ‘with the threat of a substantial new influx by instituting some scheme of comprehensive resettlement on British territory other than the United Kingdom’. The Foreign Office began to look for a suitable island among the remaining British possessions and considered Bermuda, the Solomon Islands, the Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Seychelles and even the Falklands so that ‘it can serve as a place of settlement for U.K. passport holders long enough to make it possible to admit them to Britain over a period of time under a voucher system’. 26. This word is used as in Margaret Thatcher’s assertion in 1978 that Britain ‘might be rather swamped by people of a different culture’. 27. The city of Leicester was one of the largest settlement areas for East African Asians and over time it developed into one of the largest ethnic minority populations at 35 per cent; it may have exceeded 50 per cent by 2010. The city is often portrayed as a model of civic multiculturalism by academic writers. For example see Steve Vertovec, ‘Multiculturalism, Multi-Asian, Multi-Muslim Leicester: Dimensions of Social Complexity, Ethnic Organisation and Local Interface’. 28. Vivid details of white perceptions are given by Brah, ‘Inter-generational and Inter-ethnic Perceptions: A Comparative Study of South Asian and English Adolescents and Their Parents in Southall, West London’. 29. One of the major post-war race riots took place in the autumn of 1958 in Notting Hill and targeted the growing West Indian presence in West London. The so-called ‘Teddy Boys’ and members of Oswald Mosley’s right-wing Union Movement were instrumental in starting

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racially motivated violence which spread over several nights in late August and early September. Nine white youths were later imprisoned for their part, and a year later the annual Notting Hill Carnival started which continues to showcase West Indian culture and pride. 30. For details of the day’s events, see Grewal, ‘Southall, Capital of the 1970s: Of Community Resistance and the Conjecture of April the 23rd, 1979’. 31. One of the earliest organizations, funded publicly as an independent educational charity in 1958, was the Institute of Race Relations (IRR). It began to carry out research, collect resources and publish widely on race relations, not only in Britain but throughout the world, and it has remained one of the most progressive and radical anti-racist bodies. Since 1991, IRR has also kept a record of racially (known or suspected) motivated murders. 32. Enoch Powell made his infamous speech in Birmingham in April 1968, towards the end of which he stated: ‘As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’ Many workers, especially in the London docklands, came out on strike in support but with some in opposition. This speech was seized upon by the National Front and other right-wing organizations to spread racist propaganda. Enoch Powell himself was sacked as a Shadow Cabinet Minister by the Shadow Leader of the Opposition, Edward Heath. Following the ‘race riots’ in Brixton, Toxteth and Handsworth in the early 1980s, Powell is reported to have stated that his prediction had come true. 33. The front page of the Coventry Evening Telegraph of 11 February 1959 reported that 680 men had staged a walk-out strike at the Sterling Metals works in Nuneaton, bringing the iron foundry to a standstill. Harry Urwin, Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, blaming management style for the dispute, explained, ‘At present there are many problems arising from up-grading and down-grading of workers, not only in relation to their nationality. The problem is aggravated by the fact that there is growing unemployment and that there has actually been redundancy in this department recently.’ A spokesman for the management, however, emphasized the role of white worker hostility, arguing that the dispute started when, ‘some core shop workers refused to operate core block machinery with Indian workers in the gang’ after the Indian workers had been transferred there from another site. 34. The work of the Commission for Racial Equality was merged with the newly created Equality and Human Rights Commission in 2008. The local community councils were also disbanded or renamed ‘Community Cohesion Councils’. 35. For a recent brief outline of the rise and role of black churches in Britain see Cartwright, ‘Black Pentecostal Churches in Britain’. For a more nuanced treatment of British black culture and black theology or Christianity, see Beckford, Jesus is Dread. Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, remains the classic study on connecting West African slavery, the Caribbean, U.S.A. and Britain in the making of the Black Atlantic. 36. The infamous Grunwick strike, involving a predominately ‘twice migrant’ South Asian female workforce erupted during the summer of 1976 and lasted for nearly two years. This dispute, led by popular leader Mrs Jayaben Desai, brought into the public eye the harsh working conditions of Asian women at the film-processing plant in Willesden, North West London, and challenged the British popular stereotypes of South Asian women as ‘docile, submissive, difficult to unionise and as exploitable cheap labour’. 37. Werbner, Imagined Diasporas among Manchester Muslims, 62. 38. Yorkshire Post 18 January 1989, quoted in Ansari, The Infidel Within: The History of Muslims in Britain, 1800 to the Present, 233. 39. Ironically the British government finally succeeded in legislating against ‘incitement to religious hatred’ in the controversial Religious and Racial Hatred Act of 2006 – an Act prompted by the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings and the growing intolerance and inflammatory speeches of certain Muslim clerics in Britain. For a recent assessment of government policies towards the British Muslim community see The Economist, ‘Britain and its Muslims: How the Government Lost the Plot’, 26 February 2009.

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40. Werbner, Imagined Diasporas among Manchester Muslims, 258. 41. The Khalistan movement, to fight for a separate homeland for the Sikhs in Punjab, started in the late 1970s but gained momentum after the army’s Operation Bluestar of June 1984. By the early 1990s it was largely crushed through a combined police/army operation, although some organizations in India and overseas still continue to pursue the agenda. 42. Robert Booth, ‘Sikh Protestors Disrupt Wedding’, Guardian, 27 June 2005. 43. Guardian, ‘Playing with Fire’, Leader, 21 December 2004. 44. Tania Branigan, ‘Stars Sign Letter in Support of Playwright in Hiding’, Guardian, 23 December 2004. 45. In a direct challenge to her opponents, Bhatti stated: ‘The Sikh heritage is one of valour and victory over adversity. Our ancestors were warriors with the finest minds who championed principles of equality and selflessness. I am proud to come from this remarkable people and do not fear the disdain of some, because I know my work is rooted in honesty and passion. I hope bridges can be built, but whether this prodigal daughter can ever return home remains to be seen.’ Quoted from the Guardian, ‘The Warrior is Fighting On’, 13 January 2005. 46. Hindu Forum of Britain, Connecting British Hindus: An Enquiry into the Identity and Public Engagement of Hindus in Britain. 47. This gallery can be accessed at www.hinduhumanrights.org/Gallery/Gallery2.html 48. The two major reports which exposed these organizations were: (1) Sabrang Communications Private Limited and The South Asia Citizens Web (2002), The Foreign Exchange of Hate: IDRF and the American Funding of Hindutva, 20 November. Accessed at stopfundinghate.org/sacw/index.html, October 2008; and (2) In Bad Faith: British Charity and Hindu Extremism, Awaaz – South Asia Watch Ltd, 2004. Accessed at http://www.awaazsaw. org/ibf, November 2008. 49. Meghnad Desai, ‘Closure Threat to Artistic Freedom’, Guardian, 26 May 2005. 50. Ibid. 51. Guardian, ‘Re-instate Indian Art Exhibition’, signed by Dr Chetan Bhatt, Goldsmiths College, London, Prof. Rajeswari Sunderrajan, Oxford University, and Dr Priyamvada Gopal, Cambridge University, Letters, 30 May 2006. 52. Moazzam Begg was picked up as a suspected Al Qaeda terrorist on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and imprisoned in Kandahar, Bagram and Guantanamo without charge for over three years. He was freed after a great deal of public pressure on both the Blair and Bush governments to release him. His autobiography was published under the title Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram and Kandahar. 53. The media and right-wing reaction to the Parekh Report on The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain was indicative of hostility towards any workable solutions towards an effectively managed British multiculturalism.

Chapter 3

Postcolonial Migrants in the Netherlands Identity Politics versus the Fragmentation of Community Gert Oostindie

Introduction Over one million of the 16.4 million citizens of the Netherlands are firstor second-generation migrants from the former colonies. This paper discusses the post-war history of these postcolonial migrants. At some points comparisons are made with other groups of so-called ‘non-Western’ migrants. It is appropriate to emphasize beforehand that this analytical division between postcolonial and other non-Western migrant communities is important for the Netherlands, as it is also for Portugal and perhaps Spain, but it seems largely irrelevant to the United Kingdom and France. The arrival of non-Western migrants in most other Western European states had little to do with their own colonial history.1 In the Netherlands, the largest community of postcolonial migrants stems from the turbulent decolonization of Indonesia immediately after the Second World War. The formation of the Surinamese community in the Netherlands is directly linked to the highly contested transfer of sovereignty in 1975. The last, still ongoing, chapter in this postcolonial history is written by migrants from the (former) Netherlands Antilles, in particular Curaçao (Figure 3.1, Table 3.1). The first two streams of migration were directly linked to the transfer of sovereignty, albeit in dissimilar ways. The later Antillean migration continues to this day precisely because there has been no such change in constitutional status. This contribution provides an analysis of the backgrounds, processes and consequences of these post-war migrations. The first sections discuss Notes for this chapter begin on page 124.

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the colonial backgrounds of the migrant groups, the nexus between decolonization and migration, and the actual processes of migration. Thereafter the focus shifts to patterns of integration of these highly divergent postcolonial communities in the metropolis and, as a corollary, the ways the host society reacted to these migrations and was transformed in the process. Particular attention is given to the contests over group and national identities, and the applicability of the concept of identity politics. This type of analysis begs for analytical clarity and broader contextualization. As for the first, in much of what follows there is little theoretical reflection on the key concepts of ‘community’ and ‘identity’.2 It has become a truism that such concepts refer to processes rather than givens, a reality obscured by the everyday labelling and self-presentations of individuals and groups. This point is taken but slightly glossed over in what follows. ‘Community’ is simply used as a common denominator for a group of people sharing elements of a prehistory in a former Dutch colony. There is some discussion of common characteristics arising from this background. There is no firm assumption that these various communities jointly or separately share one identity, or are in the process of forging (or forsaking) one such postcolonial identity. Neither is it taken for granted that the majority of second and following generations of ‘postcolonial migrants’ think of themselves in such terms at all.

Mapping Postcolonial Migrations Colonial Origins On the eve of the Second World War, the Dutch colonial empire consisted of one huge colony, the Indonesian archipelago, and two tiny ones in the Caribbean. An enormous demographic disparity characterized this empire. While the Netherlands had fewer than nine million inhabitants, the population of the Dutch East Indies numbered seventy million. Suriname, in spite of its large surface, had no more than 140,000 and the six Caribbean islands together a mere 108,000. An immense territory and great ethnic heterogeneity defined the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch ruled the colony, but made up an insignificant proportion of its total population. Colonial rule had institutionalized a rigid ‘ethnic’ classification into three classes. ‘Europeans’ were either metropolitan or locally born. In contrast to British India, a majority in the latter category were of Eurasian origin. The Chinese made up the majority of ‘Foreign Orientals’. The overwhelming majority of the population was labelled ‘Indigenous’, a category including local aristocracies as well

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as the destitute masses throughout the archipelago. Members of the last two categories were defined as ‘colonial subjects’ rather than full citizens of the Dutch empire.3 Throughout the colonial period, a migration circuit had linked the colony to the metropolis. For present purposes, what interests us most is not the constant coming and going of metropolitan Europeans, but rather the extent to which people actually living in the colony visited the metropolis and perhaps settled there. There was a small but steady stream of such migrants, mainly middle- and upper-class, locally born, legal ‘Europeans’, often accompanied by their own servants. The objectives of these metropolitan sojourns included the pursuit of higher education, furlough, or simply the desire to ‘repatriate’ to a European country only known through family stories. By the turn of the century, The Hague had acquired the epithet of ‘the widow of the [East] Indies’. Some twenty thousand ‘Indische Nederlanders’ lived there.4 With the economic growth of the colony and the intensification of the colonial nexus, the numbers of migrants increased and widened. In the late colonial period, students from the ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Foreign Oriental’ elites started to enrol at Dutch universities. Small numbers of lower-class Indonesians followed, but throughout the entire period, the character of the colonial migrant community was anything but a representative sample of the archipelagic population. Totoks – first-generation Dutch settled in the colony – and Indische Nederlanders (born in the colony) taken together added up to less than 1 per cent of the population in the colony, but dominated the expatriate community in the metropolis. There was thus a class as well as an ethnic and cultural bias, as the majority of migrants were white or Eurasian, Christian, had a fair command of the Dutch language, and had participated in Dutch education or would do so – in short, an extremely unrepresentative sample. Migration from the Caribbean colonies presents a slightly different picture. This contrast starts with the actual settlement in the Americas. With the exception of small numbers of Amerindians in Suriname and on the island of Aruba, immigrants made up the entire population of these Dutch colonies. Europeans formed a minority amongst an overwhelming majority of enslaved Africans and their descendants. After the abolition of slavery in 1863, large numbers of indentured labourers from British India and Java were transported to Suriname. In contrast to the Dutch East Indies, all inhabitants of these colonies would eventually be considered full Dutch citizens, and hence have the right of abode in the metropolis. Throughout the colonial period, there was a small but steady stream of Dutch ‘repatriates’ to a metropolis some of the migrants had never seen before. The motives were much the same: education, furlough, or a com-

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fortable retirement. During the period of slavery, members of the white elites would visit the Netherlands and perhaps settle there, often taking their slaves with them. Post-slavery, the composition of the modest Caribbean migrant community came to reflect changes in the social fabric of these societies. ‘Creoles’ of mixed descent joined the students enrolled in Dutch universities. The first lower-class black migrants followed. But all of this was a mere footnote to the exodus that was to follow.5 West Indian migrants had much in common with the ‘Europeans’ from the East Indies. They spoke Dutch and had gone through Dutch education. Most belonged to the colonial upper and middle classes. They enjoyed full citizenship rights in the metropolis. Many of them were of mixed origins. And all were creolized to the point that the metropolitan population often considered them far less ‘Dutch’ than they themselves thought they were. Like their counterparts from the East Indies, the Caribbean migrants started various types of associations. Some of these were educational, cultural, or social. Others had explicit political goals, and indeed in the 1930s the Netherlands witnessed serious pro-independence agitation by a handful of left-wing radicals, notably the Indonesians Semaoen, Mohammed Hatta and Rostam Effendi, and the Surinamese Anton de Kom. Dutch authorities reacted strongly against this flag-waving. Only the Communist Party supported the cause of independence, while all major parties, including the Social-Democrats, considered a transfer of sovereignty a possibility for the remote future.

Decolonization and Migration This self-serving naïveté was shattered during and immediately after the Second World War.6 The Netherlands was occupied by the Germans in 1940, while Japan took over the Dutch East Indies in 1942. Only the Caribbean territories remained ‘free’, that is, colonial possessions ruled by the government in exile. During the war, the London-based Dutch cabinet finally came up with proposals for colonial reform, including autonomous rule in the various territories. All of this was too little, too late for the major colony. On 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese capitulation, Indonesian nationalists Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed independence. It would take a full four years of bitter warfare and thorny negotiations before the transfer of sovereignty was accomplished at the end of 1949. New Guinea (Papua) was left out of this deal, but to great Dutch resentment it would be added to the Republic of Indonesia in 1962.

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In the lee of this violent and, for all parties, traumatic episode, the first phase in the decolonization of the Caribbean was quietly negotiated. By the 1954 ‘Statuut’ or Charter of the Kingdom, both Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles attained autonomy within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This constitutional status would prevail for Suriname until the full transfer of sovereignty in 1975. The Statuut still binds the six islands to the Netherlands in an ambivalent postcolonial imbroglio – not that the Dutch wanted to retain their former colonies in the Caribbean, but rather they found no valid arguments or effective means to impose independence on populations who consistently refused the ‘gift’ of sovereignty. These three highly divergent patterns of decolonization in turn marked very dissimilar migration histories. During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, most of the European population had been concentrated under horrible circumstances in detention camps, while many males had been deployed as forced labourers under even worse conditions. Many ‘Europeans’ of Eurasian background had not been sent to the detention camps, but would find themselves increasingly isolated, and were threatened and harassed by both the Japanese and the Indonesian population. Thousands of Europeans perished during the war. Things were not getting any better for the European citizenry in the immediate post-war years, as the armed fight over the country’s political status became wedded to social and civil struggle, and plain criminality. This so-called bersiap period caused the death of thousands of white and coloured Europeans. With the transfer of independence, order was more or less restored, but the remaining resident European and Eurasian population segments felt increasingly marginalized in the new republic which, in turn, saw these groups as remnants of a despised racial colonial order. The end of the war and the following successive turbulent phases of the decolonization process triggered a series of migrations to the metropolis.7 The first round consisted mainly of repatriating first-generation Dutch families. In the successive rounds, the proportion of Eurasian Indische Nederlanders, who had never been in the Netherlands before, increased, while in the 1950s Moluccans joined this migration. In addition, several thousand ethnic Chinese settled in the metropolis. The exodus from Indonesia was more or less completed by the mid-1960s. By then some 300,000 had migrated to the Netherlands. The volume of the postcolonial community rooted in Indonesia stands at 519,000 today, with the first-generation migrants now forming a minority of some 40 per cent (Table 3.1). These are considerable numbers – but of course of little demographic importance to the country they were leaving, which had a population of seventy-five million in 1950 and has three times that number today.

Gert Oostindie

Number of immigrants

100

Year

Figure 3.1.  Net immigration from the former Dutch colonies, 1937–2005 Source: CBS, and Bosma, Terug uit de koloniën, 27.

Migration from the Dutch Caribbean was not linked to the war, but did relate to the decolonization process.8 At the time of the proclamation of the Statuut, not many more than 5,000 Surinamese and Antilleans were living in the Netherlands. This figure had grown to 40,000 by 1970. Thereafter, the numbers exploded. The Surinamese community has increased to over 330,000 today – as against 475,000 in contemporary Suriname itself. The share of second-generation ‘Surinamese’ is well over 50 per cent, but declining (Table 3.1). The growth of the Antillean population came later. Today, the Antillean community in the metropolis is some 130,000. Of these, 40 per cent belong to the second-generation (Table 3.1). The total population of the six islands is about 300,000. A turbulent decolonization triggered the migration from Indonesia, and the same applies to Suriname. Yet beyond this congruence there are more meaningful disparities. The mass departure from Indonesia was a matter of minority groups directly connected to the waning colonial order. The Surinamese exodus, in contrast, consisted of a fairly representative sample of the total population and was sparked by the Surinamese government’s highly contested decision to attain independence by the end of 1975. While the Dutch government was delighted to comply – partly in the hopes of curtailing migration – a large number of the Surinamese voted with their feet. In the next decades, the spectre of the Surinamese exodus would haunt not only the young republic, but equally the former metropolis. The vain hope of the Dutch government of enticing the Antillean population and

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Table 3.1. Postcolonial and other major non-Western migrant communities in the Netherlands, 1960–2008 Total population†

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2006/8 (d)

11.4 million

13.0 million

14.1 million

14.9 million

15.9 million

16.4 million 519,000*

‘Indische Nederlanders’, total 1st generation 2nd generation Moluccans, total 1st generation 2nd generation Surinamese, total 8,000 (b) 1st generation 2nd generation Antilleans**, ca. 2,500 total (b) 1st generation 2nd generation Moroccans, total ca. 100 (c) 1st generation 2nd generation Turks, total

157,091

232,776

302,514

204,000 315,000 58,349 26,000 32,349 331,900

126,107 30,974 40,726

158,772 74,004 76,552

183,249 119,265 107,197

187,483 144,417 129,683

54,881 21,671 163,458 112,562

69,266 37,931 262,221 152,540

80,102 49,581 335,127 167,063

25,900 (a) 35,200 (a)

28,985 (b)

13,630 (b)

29,515 11,211 17,400 (c) 69,464 57,502 11,962

ca. 100 (c) 23,600 (c) 112,774

50,896

109,681

168,064

203,647

308,890

372,714

1st generation

92,568

138,089

177,754

194,556

2nd generation

20,206

65,558

131,136

178,158

† Sex ratios for the total population were balanced throughout this period. The same applies to the Indische Nederlanders, Moluccans, Surinamese (since 1970) and Antilleans (since 1970). Strong male preponderance characterized the Moroccan and Turkish population up to 1990 and 1980 respectively; hereafter, this imbalance was offset. * For alternatives figures, see Beets et al., De demografische geschiedenis. ** From all six islands of the (former) Netherlands Antilles; the great majority from Curaçao. CBS figures for 2006. Source: All figures taken from Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS), unless indicated otherwise: a. Penninx, Schoorl and Van Praag, The Impact. b. Oostindie and Klinkers, Knellende koninkrijksbanden II, 225. c. Commissie-Blok, Bruggen bouwen. d. Bosma, Terug uit de koloniën, 30 (postcolonial migrants, 2006), CBS (total, 2008; Moroccans and Turks, 2008).

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its leadership to accept independence became increasingly linked to the equally futile wish to curtail Antillean migration to the Netherlands. The opposite transpired. The choice against independence made by the Antilleans has not simply confirmed their citizenship in the Kingdom of the Netherlands and their right of abode in the metropolis. These privileges are now key arguments for Antilleans to reject a transfer of sovereignty. In sum, decolonization was pivotal for the formation of postcolonial migrant communities in the Netherlands, but the contrasts are enormous. Migration from the Dutch East Indies mainly involved minority groups linked to the colonial system that irrevocably lost their way of living because of a resented transfer of sovereignty. The choice for independence in Suriname triggered an exodus of a fairly representative sample of the total population and heavily affected the feasibility of the young republic. The Antillean refusal to accept independence not only precludes Dutch yearning to stop Antillean migration, it also reflects the islanders’ determination to retain all rights attached to citizenship in the Kingdom, particularly the right of abode.

Profiles: Migrants from the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia The notion of a ‘postcolonial migrant community’ is an adequate pointer to differentiate the various groups subsumed under this heading from other migrant communities. There is a shared history of Dutch colonialism, a measure of pre-migration experience and perhaps affinity with the Dutch language and culture, and prior to independence, in most cases, undisputed Dutch citizenship and the unrestricted right of abode. One question then is how these commonalities affected self-understanding, outside perceptions, and paths of integration within this broadly defined ‘community’. But first we need to address the obvious fact that this common denominator conceals a great deal of diversity within this presumed community, and even within the three colonial communities. We simply cannot understand postcolonial migration history without taking these contrasts seriously. But we also need to ponder other factors, particularly the consequences of the distinct timing of the three migrations. In keeping with chronology, we first return to the migrants from Indonesia. This migration was demographically insignificant to the sending country, and represented anything but a cross-section of its population. The great majority of the migrants were totoks or Eurasian Indische Nederlanders. Numerically smaller groups included some twelve thousand former colonial Moluccan soldiers with their families, and about seven thousand ethnic Chinese rooted in Indonesia.

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Pre-migration socioeconomic and cultural characteristics had evident ethnic correlations. Generally speaking, the totoks had occupied the higher strata of colonial society and had been relatively successful in securing some sort of continuity with Dutch ways in the tropics. A majority in this group were strongly affected by the shock of the Japanese camps and the bersiap period, and deeply resented the transfer of sovereignty, the loss of private property and perhaps kin. Back in the Netherlands, they also have suffered status decline. Yet leaving aside personal trauma, these repatriates with their high levels of education, social and cultural capital, and white skins were certainly the best positioned of all postcolonial migrants to start a new life in the metropolis. On the eve of their exodus to the Netherlands, the Eurasian Indische Nederlanders formed a more differentiated and ambivalent community. From the early days of Dutch colonization up to the mid-nineteenth century, this Eurasian group had developed its own creolized culture. Its socioeconomic profile was highly differentiated, with only a minority undisputedly prosperous and well educated. After the First World War, the Indische Nederlanders did compete with the metropolitan Dutch, actually with success, but on the other hand they faced increasing competition themselves from the emerging educated Indonesian middle class. A measure of anxiety, status insecurity and resentment therefore characterized the community long before 1942. Nevertheless, and in spite of the havoc created by war and bersiap, many of this group would have opted to remain in their homeland had it not been for the new republic’s growing impatience with this group, which was perceived as colonial. Ultimately, over 90 per cent of those with Dutch citizenship left Indonesia, most settling in the Netherlands, but some fifty thousand moving on to the United States and other predominantly ‘white’ non-European destinations. The pre-migration profile of the Indische community settling in the metropolis was mixed. While they had shared an in-between colonial status, mixed racial descent and Christianity, there were wide disparities in socioeconomic position and educational careers, affinity with Dutch culture, and command of the Dutch language. The unsought-for parting with Indonesia was traumatic and initially caused a decline in status for all. The prospects for them in the white metropolis were therefore not particularly good at the start. Of the two minorities mentioned above, the Chinese from Indonesia underline that socioeconomic performance rather than racial characteristics determine the qualification of ‘invisible migrants’.9 Throughout the colonial period, and of course before that, Indonesia had had a Chinese population of several millions. Categorized among the ‘Foreign Orientals’, these peranakan (domestic) Chinese were disproportionately represented

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in the middle and upper socioeconomic layers of the colonial state. Most ethnic Chinese would stay in Indonesia after 1945. The minority migrating to the Netherlands were overwhelmingly middle class, well educated, Christian, and Dutch speaking – in short, well equipped. Apparently their pre-war status as ‘Foreign Orientals’ did not preclude their early attainment of full Dutch citizenship. In contrast, the majority of the twelve thousand ‘Ambonese’ or Moluccans arriving in the Netherlands in the early 1950s had a pre-war history of modest socioeconomic status and education.10 Male service in the colonial army and their Christian faith had set them apart from the overwhelming majority of the ‘Indigenous’ population. Their previous commitment to colonial rule and particularly their ongoing support for Moluccan separatism made them unacceptable to the new Indonesian regime. The men came to the Netherlands with their families under military orders but subsequently lost their military status. What was left was an ethnic minority group with a shared tradition of commitment to colonial rule and strong affinity with the Christian monarchy, but overall low pre-migration educational levels, little command of the Dutch language, an undefined legal status, and a strong affinity with the programme of political separatism in the Moluccas. These were poor qualifications for successful integration.

Profiles: Migrants from Suriname In the 1970s, migration from Suriname attained the proportions of an exodus. Most of the natural demographic growth of the Surinamese ‘nation’ was in the Netherlands, with at present something of a 60/40 division of the total Surinamese population. Pre-independence Suriname was a quintessential plural society, with a population divided along ethnic lines. In the 1970s, Surinamese of African descent still slightly outnumbered their compatriots of Asian descent. By that time, the majority of AfroSurinamese were urban carriers of the creolized culture which had been pioneered by enslaved Africans.11 Middle- and upper-class educational, cultural and religious orientations were explicitly Dutch, while lower-class orientations were of a more mixed character. The population with Asian backgrounds is more heterogeneous. Between the 1870s and the Second World War, indentured labourers were recruited from British India and Java. Their subsequent history testified to the desire of these groups to retain distinct identities. The degree of exogamy has been limited and Asian Surinamese still classify themselves primarily as either Hindustani or Javanese. Within the former population, the majority are Hindu, and perhaps 15 per cent Muslim. Islam remains

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the dominant religion among the Javanese. Christianity is a minority religion among the Surinamese of Asian origins.12 Colonial rule did not attempt to do away with the ethnic segmentation it had produced. Religious and cultural difference was respected, as was the private usage of various ethnic languages. But in contrast to the strategy in Indonesia, government policies in Suriname made Dutch education the norm for all, and Dutch the language for administration. Upper- and middle-class Surinamese of all ethnicities came to share a strong orientation towards the metropolis and were well versed in Dutch. The picture was more ambiguous among the lower-class majorities of all ethnicities, but by the 1970s the majority of Surinamese had a reasonable command of this language. The exodus of the 1970s involved, more or less, a cross-section of the sending community, with a slight Asian overrepresentation. ‘Racially’, all Surinamese differed from the Dutch. In culture and religion, the Afro-Surinamese were closer to Dutch culture than the Hindustani- or JavaneseSurinamese. But divisions of class and hence educational and linguistic skills cut across such ‘ethnic’ lines and would ultimately prove to be of more importance in the integration process.

Profiles: Migrants from the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba The 1954 Statuut endowed autonomy to a six-island country, the Netherlands Antilles, with its seat of government on the largest island, Curaçao. The major constitutional change in the following half century has not been the step towards full independence, but rather the disintegration of the six-island country. The second-largest island, Aruba, attained separate status in 1986, while the dismantlement of the Antilles-of-Five was completed in October 2010.13 Migration to the Netherlands has been a predominantly Curaçaoan affair, with Aruba following at quite a distance. About 132,000 Antilleans and Arubans live in the Netherlands as against less than 300,000 on the six islands, hence roughly 30/70. The distribution of the Curaçaoan transnational population is even in the order of 45/55. The Antillean exodus is the most recent of the postcolonial migrations under review here. It is analytically also the most straightforward. All Antilleans can enjoy full citizenship and the right of abode in the Netherlands. One consequence of this constitutional arrangement has been a high incidence of circular migration. The Antillean migrant community in the Netherlands came to represent a cross-section of the Curaçaoan population and included more limited sections of the other islands.14

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Throughout the post-war period, the overwhelming majority of the Antillean community in the Netherlands has been of African descent, Christian, and Papiamentu-speaking. Initially, the migrants were mainly middle class, seeking higher education and so on. Their educational levels were above average and their command of Dutch was good. From the 1980s, the growing Antillean community came to represent a crosssection of the sending islands, and in particular of Curaçao. This meant a dramatic change in the socioeconomic profile of new arrivals from the Antilles. Middle-class migrants continued arriving, but they were now far outnumbered by lower-class islanders with meagre educational skills, a poor command of Dutch, and little affinity with Dutch culture in general. This last episode in the history of postcolonial migration to the Netherlands therefore presents a glaring contrast with the opening chapter written by Indische Nederlanders.

Social Mobility and Integration Faced with the prospect of relatively massive movements of people from the former colonies to the metropolis, Dutch policy makers agonized over the chances of the new arrivals and their willingness and ability to adjust to Dutch society. They moreover worried about possible hostile reactions in the host society, and pondered over ways to curtail free immigration from the former colonies. Was there really that much reason to worry? There is no unequivocal answer to this question. A first analysis of major indicators of socioeconomic status and mobility however does suggest that initial appraisals were too pessimistic for immigrants from both Indonesia and Suriname – perhaps more time needs to pass before we can seriously evaluate the current pessimism about the Antillean lower classes. In chronological order, the first large groups to arrive were repatriating totoks followed by Indische Nederlanders. While the repatriation of the first group had not evoked much concern, there had been widespread anxiety that the second group, being firmly rooted in Indonesia, would not be capable of integrating in Dutch society. This in turn provoked debate about the possibilities of curtailing migration, but to no avail. A concerted effort was made to help the adjustment process. Government at all levels, churches, and private institutions built a paternalist but rather effective machinery to provide temporary housing and to help the integration in the educational system and the labour market. Studying this integration process in the late 1960s, British sociologist Christopher Bagley spoke of a success story in race relations.15 Perhaps this achievement owed more to the pre-migration social and cultural capi-

Postcolonial Migrants in the Netherlands: Identity Politics versus the Fragmentation of Community 107

tal and post-migration stamina of the Indische Nederlanders than to Dutch policy. Either way, this first round of assimilation of ‘alien’ Dutch citizens was remarkable by any standard. Perhaps the most telling evidence of this is that we cannot present any serious longitudinal data on integration. By the late 1970s, at the time the Dutch government and academia started to monitor its minorities, not only the totoks but equally the Indische Nederlanders were considered successfully integrated and therefore no longer of interest for policy purposes. Not surprisingly, the same applies to the Chinese with Indonesian roots.16 The Moluccan community in contrast did figure as a major concern when policies for Dutch minorities were being formulated in the late 1970s. By then, the Surinamese exodus was taking shape and the signals that the Mediterranean ‘guest labourers’ would not repatriate but rather bring their kin over became clear. In the following decades, the emergence of a multicultural society would induce the government to develop a sophisticated system for monitoring minorities. By the 1980s, the Surinamese, Turks and Moroccans were the three largest migrant communities and, from the 1990s on, they were increasingly the subject of comparative studies. The Antilleans were soon added to the list (Table 3.1). Still it would be an awareness of the continual crisis of the Moluccan minority that stimulated the first formulation of a Dutch minorities’ policy. The immediate trigger would be political violence committed by second-generation Moluccan youth. It soon transpired that a tragic mix of geographical segregation, deficient educational and linguistic skills, political resentment, and inadequate policies had produced serious integration problems. Concerted effort resulted in gradual improvement, but over half a century after arrival and well into the third generation, contemporary statistics for the Moluccan minority continue to disclose serious problems. Overall statistics for the Surinamese testify to significant progress since the 1970s, to the point that many politicians, spokespeople for the community, and expert scholars claim, somewhat prematurely, that this community’s integration is nearly successfully completed. The aggregate figures indeed inspire cautious optimism, but with qualifications. There is little hard data to differentiate between the situations of the various ethnic groups, so we cannot know whether progress is evenly spread. Moreover, there are indications that increasing socioeconomic differentiation has meant the transmutation of a particular Afro-Surinamese culture of poverty into new metropolitan patterns of deprivation and deviance. Up to the 1970s, migration from the Antilles had a middle-class bias and tended to be for educational purposes and, therefore, temporary. While this strand of migration continues up to the present and causes no problems, the situation of a disproportionate number of the contempo-

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rary Antilleans, predominantly the Curaçaoan community, is considered worrisome, whether one looks at education, income and the labour market, family stability, or criminality. Three explanatory factors should be singled out. First, there is a direct continuity here: the exodus has involved a cross-section of an insular population characterized by the same grave problems. Next, the widespread deficiency with regard to command of the Dutch language has hampered upward social mobility on the island and has become an impediment to subsequent integration in the metropolis. Finally, unlike the migrations above, Antillean migration remains an ongoing and circular process. This means that room for an effective intervention has been limited. Of course, integration is not only about hard issues such as income, labour market participation, educational achievement, health, deviance and the like, but also about participation in society outside of one’s own community – to the point that it may become less self-evident to define these ‘communities’ by ‘ethnic’ criteria at all. In this respect, the postcolonial migrant communities have come to differ from the other major migrant groups. The most telling indication of this is the high frequency of interracial relations and offspring for Indische Nederlanders, Moluccans and Indonesian Chinese, as well as for Afro-Surinamese and Antilleans. The figures are much lower for Hindustani and Javanese from Suriname. At this point it is useful to provide some comparative figures. Unemployment is a good place to good start (Table 3.2). After a dramatic peak in the early 1980s, national unemployment figures decreased well into the twenty-first century. Unemployment for the major non-Western migrant communities likewise decreased spectacularly, but remained clearly above the overall national figure. In 2006, with the exception of the Antillean community, first-generation unemployment was lower than secondgeneration figures for these communities. The initial considerable edge the Surinamese and Antilleans had over Moroccans and Turks, however, seems to be slowly fading. Net labour participation since the late 1980s discloses a similar trend for all migrant communities. Their rates may improve but are still behind the equally improved overall Dutch figures. For participation rates we do see a consistent advantage for Surinamese and to a lesser extent Antilleans over Moroccans and Turks.17 According to Dutch national statistics for 2006, average household incomes in the four major migrant communities still lagged behind the national averages, with the Surinamese at the high end (82 per cent of the national average), followed by the Turks (71), Moroccans (68) and Antilleans (63). The low figure for Antillean households may partly be explained by the high incidence of single-parent, female-headed households; the same probably applies to the Afro-Surinamese community.18

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Table 3.2.  Unemployment figures (per cent), postcolonial and other major non-Western migrant communities in the Netherlands, 1981–2006 Total Moluccans Surinamese Antilleans Moroccans Turks

1981

1983

1988

1991

1998

2002

2006

8

14 41 35–40 43 37 34

7.7

5.9

4.1

2.2

3.3

33 35 38 38

26 31 36 31

13 15 23 21

10 12 14 14

12 17 17 15

21 21

Sources: CBS for totals. Dagevos, Perspectief op integratie, for 1981, 1983. Veenman, De arbeidsmarktpositie, for 1988. Veenman, ‘De maatschappelijke positie’, for 1998. Dagevos, Gijsberts and Van Praag, Rapportage minderheden 2003, for 2002. Dagevos and Gijsberts, Jaarrapport integratie 2007, for 2006. CBS for totals 1991, 2002, 2006.

Long-term figures for educational achievement are hard to come by, but the data we have do allow for some conclusions.19 There is a gradual improvement for all migrant communities. This is particularly evident for Moroccans and Turks, whose second generations, not surprisingly, do much better than the poorly educated first generation. Ever since this type of monitoring started in the 1980s, the Surinamese and Antillean communities have had a clear edge over the Mediterranean migrants. Today their overall educational profiles are still superior, even if still below the Dutch average. While there is some ground to assume that the Dutch system worked reasonably well in helping the second generation to higher educational levels than the first one, there is still a considerable gap compared with the local white population. With the steady increase in the proportion of nonWestern populations in all major cities and the ensuing emergence of ‘black schools’ over the past decade, there is much concern about whether the educational system can continue to help to bridge the gap. There is some historical evidence against too much optimism and laissez-faire here. In the 1980s, research on the relatively small Moluccan community pointed to the failure of regular education to significantly raise the educational achievement of second- and third-generation Moluccans. It took considerable extra investments in the 1990s to, at least partly, redress this situation. To the extent that the Dutch educational system does facilitate better educational performance and thus, we may assume, stimulate successful integration, the second and later generations of the postcolonial communities face the prospects of declining competitive advantages over the Mediterranean migrant communities. By the second and certainly the third generation, citizenship issues are no longer relevant, the educational system works more or less the same for all, and the advantage of the

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first postcolonial generations’ prior knowledge of Dutch society and command of the Dutch language diminishes. From this perspective, we may well understand why spokespeople from the Moluccan and, particularly, Caribbean communities voice concern over the narrowing of the debate on minorities to the integration of Moroccans and Turks, as if postcolonial migrants’ integration had been successfully completed by now. Figures on delinquency provide a sad indication that successful integration has not been achieved. The arrival of migrants in the Netherlands as elsewhere has always been accompanied by unsubstantiated stories of crime and other deviant behaviour. While we should be extremely cautious about such often xenophobic reports, recent figures for all migrant communities confirm higher crime rates. Moreover, the postcolonial bonus does not seem relevant here, as Antilleans champion some of the wrong statistics, followed in this precise order by Moroccans, Surinamese and Turks.20 On the scale of interethnic relations, postcolonial migrants are definitely more integrated. Why the incidence of interracial relations would be higher for postcolonial migrants is not hard to surmise. No matter what ‘racial’ and political differences there may be, there were pre-migration affinities in education, culture, and, for most groups, religion. The latter also most likely explains why Hindustani and Javanese integration stopped at that point. Nevertheless the contrasts with all other major migrant communities are significant. The majority of the latter are Muslim and – unlike in France – adhere to an interpretation of the Koran that interracial marriage may be good, but interreligious marriage is unacceptable. Moreover, choice of marriage partners tends to be along national lines. Both Moroccans and Turks have strong national orientations and are reinforced in this by ‘home’ authorities. Average command of the Dutch language is less accomplished than among postcolonial migrants and its usage in private is more limited. These factors combined are not conducive to interethnic mixing. This brief glance at some relevant statistics therefore confirms that in spite of overall improvement, Moroccan and Turkish integration so far lags behind the averages for the majority of postcolonial migrants – not even counting the Indische Nederlanders who no longer figure in any of these listings. Coupled to post-9/11 apprehensions about a Muslim ‘fifth column’ unwilling and unable to integrate, this had a slightly perverse effect on the status of postcolonial migrants in the Netherlands, making them a more preferable – or perhaps less resented – type of immigrant, and was ‘proof ’ that the problem lies not with the host society.21

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Political Opportunity Structures Did the post-war Netherlands really provide such good opportunities? Answering this may lead on to the question of how racist or xenophobic Dutch society has or has not been, between 1945 and today. It is not the objective of this contribution even to begin to answer this exceedingly complex and perhaps embarrassing question. Suffice it to say that Bagley’s praise for Dutch success in dealing with migration and race relations was open to criticism in 1970, a fortiori so once the mass migrations from the Caribbean and the Mediterranean gained momentum, and certainly with the rise of anti-migrant populism in the new millennium. While open racism was and remains unacceptable in most spheres of Dutch society, toleration of immigrants has oscillated strongly over time – but it seems not to have significantly affected the integration trajectories of postcolonial migrant communities. Any discussion of the vicissitudes of Dutch toleration should take the broader context seriously. In 1945, the Netherlands was a white country with a long but not very recent history of mainly northern European immigration. In the 1950s, the idea that the small country could no longer provide opportunities for all of its inhabitants resulted in state-sponsored emigration to countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. Some three hundred thousand Dutch left. In these circumstances, it is no surprise that the arrival of many more immigrants, a majority of non-Western origin, has gone down in history as a rupture. Today, amongst a population of 16.4 million, there are over 1 million with roots in the colonies, nearly 1 million from Muslim countries, mainly from North Africa and Turkey, and another 750,000 ‘Western’ migrants. The total proportion of first- and second-generation immigrants is just below 20 per cent. Of the total immigration population, 45 per cent is classified as Western and 55 per cent as non-Western. Within the larger cities, all proportions for immigrants are above the national average. In Amsterdam and Rotterdam, first- and second-generation immigrants form a majority of the population, and many lower-class neighbourhoods are now predominantly non-white. These demographic changes have caused serious tensions, but arguably strong political articulation dates only from the late 1990s. Before that, mainstream politics maintained a low profile on migration issues. Most politicians advocated an inclusionary policy, certainly for the postcolonial migrants. This applied first to issues of citizenship. There is a paradox here. Recent studies demonstrate that, like their rank and file, many politicians were questioning whether previous colonial citizenship should translate into the right of abode in the metropolis.22 Thus there were seri-

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ous debates about withholding such rights from the Indische Nederlanders and Moluccans, who were supposedly ‘rooted’ in Indonesia and therefore not able to re-root in the Netherlands. Next, in the debate over a transfer of sovereignty to the former Caribbean colonies, the need to stop migration by withdrawing citizenship was a serious argument for Dutch politicians. After Antillean independence had proved to be a Dutch illusion, mainstream politicians advocated the curtailment of the right of abode. A series of confidential commissions explored ways to restrict migration from the overseas territories. The paradox in all of this was that most politicians, and all successive governments, no matter their reluctance, and even though fully aware that a good part of the electorate advocated the closing of the borders to migrants from the former colonies, ended up publicly defending the citizenship rights of overseas citizens. Hence no legal restraints were imposed on the ‘repatriates’ from Indonesia, nor on the Surinamese, until five years after independence, and, up to the present, there are none on the Antilleans. Moreover, the defence of this unpopular stance implied solemn and dramatic admonitions not to forget that the Dutch shared a long history with these new immigrants. Prime Minister Willem Drees declared publicly in 1953, in spite of his personal scepticism about the prospects of Indische Nederlanders, that there was a ‘special responsibility’, and even a ‘duty’, to welcome this group with a ‘right’ to a place in ‘our society’.23 Such public statements discredited critics of unrestricted access as unreasonable. The same public rhetoric would be deployed to counter protests against the growing migration from Suriname, even if members of cabinet actually shared the misgivings expressed in the media. It is ironic that only in the past few years have members of the government and parliament alike been less reticent vis-à-vis Antillean migration, hence from the Antillean perspective eroding the fundamentals of the 1954 Statuut with its solemn words about shared and equivalent citizenship. As it is, the citizenship of the postcolonial migrants implied full access to all state provisions, from education and housing through health services to unemployment and seniority allowances. There were few political debates about limiting access to such provisions. At the time of the mass migration from Indonesia, the overall level of such provisions was very modest anyway. The Dutch economy was in a shambles after the war and it took another twenty years before the ‘Dutch miracle’ permitted the establishment of a generous system of public provisions, later regarded as a symptom of the ‘Dutch disease’. So what type of policy did the Dutch government enact? The main support was help with finding temporary housing, followed by guidance about coping with Dutch ways, to facilitate integration. This is often re-

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garded as paternalistic if not condescending. Direct financial assistance was meagre. There was clearly much bitterness expressed in Indische remembrances when collected years later. But as a recent study suggests, the level of material support was not negligible by the standards of the time. Perhaps the lack of empathy left more of an enduring resentment.24 As it was, the spectacular post-war economic growth soon provided room for substantial progress. By the time of the exodus from Suriname, the Dutch welfare state was at its zenith. Inevitably the sudden arrival of so many migrants with full Dutch citizenship placed a heavy burden on housing and welfare provisions. The good thing about this was that the settling of the Surinamese population occurred without major crises. The bad thing was that there was a disproportionate dependence of Surinamese migrants on state provisions. This was not getting better as the Dutch economy entered into a crisis with staggering rates of unemployment in the early 1980s. Only the new round of economic growth in the 1990s enabled the Surinamese community to attain significant socioeconomic progress. Again, the case of the Antillean community is paradoxical. The Curaçaoan exodus dates from the 1990s, precisely a period of impressive economic growth. Yet while the Surinamese community did manage to benefit from this bonanza, the Antilleans did not and hence remain far more dependent on welfare. This may be explained by the socioeconomic profile of the community which was mainly lower class and generally lacked the appropriate linguistic and educational skills. Related to this, female-headed households with young children came to dominate Curaçaoan migration in the 1990s. What followed was a ‘welfare trap’ and levels of deviance among youngsters unparalleled in the history of postcolonial migration to the Netherlands. In reviewing the socioeconomic development of the various communities one cannot escape the conclusion that government was crucial in restraining overt racism and in securing the right of abode and unrestricted access to citizenship rights such as education, the labour market, and welfare provisions. Only the latter proved a mixed blessing. Government policies aiming at – or forsaking – cultural assimilation will be discussed below. One may debate whether these had any consequence whatsoever in the socioeconomic arena. Historians of migration tend to have a rosier picture of migration than sociologists and political scientists.25 While scholars from the social sciences tend to focus on ‘new’ contemporary problems, historians, following their interest in long-term trends, often feel that successful integration is simply a matter of time. Three generations, migration historians often affirm, is the more reliable time-span to evaluate whether integration is

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successful or at least well underway. Departing from that principle, we can only evaluate the migration from Indonesia – concluding, of course, that the totok, Indische and Chinese stories are all successful, the Moluccan record mixed. The first three communities made good use of their postcolonial social and cultural capital as well as the post-war Dutch economic miracle. The question is why the last group failed to do so. What of the Caribbean migration, with its shorter time lapse? Well over thirty years after the initial exodus, the Surinamese community seems on the right track, but there are two caveats here. We do not have good longitudinal surveys to differentiate between the various ethnic groups. Secondly, the fact that the Surinamese are doing better than most other migrant communities does not mean they are on a par with the rest of society – and there is no reason not to deploy that yardstick. Still the conclusion is warranted that the Surinamese community did benefit from the postcolonial bonus, that is, undisputed citizenship and a fairly good knowledge of, and some degree of affinity with, the Dutch language and culture. The Hindustani case shows that a religious match with the Christian traditions of the metropolis per se is not a significant factor. The crisis in the Antillean community – again, not including its middle class – seems deeper than any previous one among the postcolonial migrants, except for the Moluccans. Of course, the time elapsed is shorter here. Yet as with the Moluccan community, the postcolonial bonus apparently was less active. This may seem surprising. Both groups are Christian and their middle-class segments have a long history of strong and cordial relations with metropolitan policy makers, spiritual leaders and the like. There is a strong tradition of interracial relations. But in both cases, prior command of the Dutch language and educational skills were poor. Both groups moreover have nurtured political resentment over colonialism and its legacies. Finally both communities have tended towards self-isolation, in the Moluccan case initially supported by Dutch policy, in the Antillean case in spite of vain governmental efforts to accomplish the opposite. A political opportunity structure is partly determined by the way politicians, opinion leaders and the like debate issues in public. Arguably the historical nexus worked well here, certainly favouring postcolonial migrants over other immigrant communities. As with the debate over the right of abode, opinion leaders have tended to emphasize long-standing relations, historical responsibilities, and the like. The one exception to this rule is of recent date. With the general hardening of the public debate over migration issues, the cases of the Indische Nederlanders, and at times also the Surinamese, are still quoted as proof that flexible, hard-working migrants will be allowed to find their place in society, but the Antillean youth are increasingly excluded from this benign discourse.

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In politics, and other sectors of public life such as the mass media, postcolonial migrants were the first among the post-war immigrants to make it to positions of responsibility and visibility – again the cultural and social capital of the postcolonial nexus paid off. The first generation of immigrant members of parliament and municipal councils was dominated by members of the postcolonial communities, as were the first non-white faces on television. The same applied to sports, although it was precisely in the most popular of all sports, soccer, where the rise of black protagonists caused some of the most virulent debates about the complexities of racial relations in Dutch society. Either way, we may safely conclude that in the public arena, white is no longer the norm. Perhaps more telling is another observation. Over the past decades Indische Nederlanders have been less conspicuous in politics and the media than people of Caribbean origin – apparently the need to ‘present’ the former is no longer seen as urgent. Successful integration thus has contradictory effects. And indeed recently there have been complaints from the Caribbean community that their representatives and concerns are increasingly neglected, as the focus has now shifted to the symbolic inclusion of the Muslim communities.

Degrees of and Varieties in Multiculturalism In the mid-1970s, radical Moluccan youths organized a series of violent actions to protest about what they, following their parents, thought of as the ‘colonial occupation’ of the Moluccas by Indonesia. They blamed the Dutch government for its lack of support for an independent Moluccan republic, and for its betrayal of their fathers who had been demobilized against their will in the metropolis. Linked to this political anger was deep frustration over the lack of progress the community had made in the Netherlands. Political violence was unheard of in the tranquil post-war Netherlands. Train hijackings, and occupations of the Indonesian embassy and a primary school were met by military counteractions and left several casualties. From this bloody episode, coinciding with the exodus from Suriname and the permanent settlement and family reunion of many of the labour migrants from the Mediterranean, emerged the conviction that the time had come to formulate a minority policy. In 1979, the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) published the first report explicitly stating that most immigrants from the former colonies and the Mediterranean had come to stay, and that their settlement required specific policies. The government accepted the argument – but it would take ten years, the influx of several hundred thousand new immigrants, and a second WRR

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report before it was officially recognized that the Netherlands had indeed become an immigrant country.26 Much has been made in the past decade of the supposed failure of Dutch minority policies. In 2002, the Dutch parliament installed a commission to investigate ‘what went wrong’. The report published two years later by parliamentarians of diverse political leanings and ethnic backgrounds offered nuanced conclusions. Yes, migration had changed the Netherlands fundamentally and permanently. Yes, there were serious problems with several ethnic communities, but there was also progress in all groups. And no, there was no reason to state that overall, minority policies had failed or that there had been a clear alternative.27 By the early twenty-first century, the hardening debate over ethnic minorities had become part and parcel of a larger debate about Dutch identity. Multiculturalism was attacked as a silly idea of leftist politicians forsaking the justified desire of the silent white majorities to preserve a national Leitkultur. Much more may be said about this, but for present purposes the question is whether Dutch politics had indeed moved to reckless multiculturalism since the 1970s, allowing for mass immigration, neglecting the labour market and educational issues, pampering migrants with welfare provisions, encouraging them to cling to their own cultures, and neglecting to ensure that they would adhere to the fundamentals of an open society. There are no consensual answers to these questions. Up to the late twentieth century, there was more anti-immigration rhetoric in parliament than effective policy to this end. Now this seems to have changed, with a remarkably broad consensus in parliament. There has indeed been an explosion of government spending on minorities, from some 9 million euros in 1980 to over 1.2 billion in 2003.28 But this spending was mainly on ‘hard’ sectors and certainly not on cultural and religious immigrant organizations. The 1970s idea of helping minorities to retain their own culture and language never became a central feature of minority policies, and had been abandoned altogether by the late 1980s. Much of the debate of the past decades has been obscured by the semantic question of what is meant by a multicultural society. From the start, there was a descriptive use, very appropriate in times when politicians were unwilling to openly acknowledge the fact that the ethnic and cultural make-up of the country was changing. There is also a more normative reading, championing a broadening of the concept of national identity and hence rejecting the idea of assimilation or integration as basically one-sided processes. The more radical interpretations of the latter stance have been severely criticized in the past decade. But looking back over the entire post-war period, we may as well conclude that there never

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was any serious political commitment to a radical version of multiculturalism. Integration has never ceased to be the norm. The only real issue has been the degree of toleration for ‘non-Western’ additions to a hegemonic Dutch Leitkultur. In reviewing recent debates on multiculturalism in the Netherlands, one is struck by the fact that postcolonial migrant communities hardly figure anymore – and when they do, it is mainly as evidence that massive immigration need not pose enduring problems.29 This is partly explained by their better performance in the major statistics, but there are other considerations. The present Dutch debates have a strong cultural dimension; ‘culture’ often being but a thin disguise for ‘Islam’, and Islam perceived as a somehow unassimilable culture. This radical rejection is not mainstream, but has certainly achieved wide popularity and respectability. In this context postcolonial migrant communities seem to have become something of a shining example. One has a point here. In spite of ethnic ‘otherness’ and initial socioeconomic backlogs, the majority of postcolonial migrants were able to achieve successful integration – and their pre-migration ‘colonial’ cultural capital did help. Throughout the post-war period, postcolonial communities have articulated political and ideological resentment, as will be discussed below. But there was nothing like a rejection of Dutch society. The postcolonial migrant experience then becomes a showcase of migrants adjusting well in a presumably tolerant, non-racist host society. There are some problems with this approach. Partly these are of a cultural nature, such as the glossing over of the fact that the ‘Asian’ half of the Surinamese is neither from a Christian background, nor exogamous – parameters often quoted as crucial for successful integration. There is also a neglect of the uneasy class-cum-culture dimension to Afro-Caribbean integration problems, as in female-headed households, a hustlers’ street culture, and the like. Nonetheless it seems that representatives of the postcolonial migrants do not fundamentally question the assertion that their communities are more capable and willing to fully integrate – and that their right to retain a distinct ethnic identity does not imperil this integration.

Minority Associations, Cultural Heritage, History and Identity After the Second World War, over 2,500 associations of postcolonial migrants were established in the Netherlands. They served pretty much the same objectives as the few dozen pre-war colonial ones: articulation of

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ethnic cultures, religious services, providing a home away from home, and defence of group interests. The database recently inaugurated at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam enables us to follow the life and times of postcolonial migrant organizations in unusual detail.30 In Terug uit de koloniën, Ulbe Bosma provides the first systematic analysis of these associations.31 He underlines that most associations were organized by the immigrants themselves: government policies and finance were crucial for a minority only. He does suggest that the striking under-representation of Indische associations reflects a remarkable political opportunity structure. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s the Dutch government discouraged the establishment of separate ethnic organizations, while at the same time the repatriates had easy access to the conservative political establishment anyway. The fact that Moluccans did create an astonishing number of associations may indeed be taken as evidence of this group’s long isolation from wider society, as well as its long engagement with the political issue of an independent Moluccas. The number of Surinamese organizations likewise is considerable. While initially most, and even at a later stage many, of these were founded as national, including all Surinamese, the ethnic plurality of the sending society was increasingly reflected in its postcolonial migrants. Something similar may be said about the less numerous assortment of Antillean organizations. While the majority of these would claim to be simply Antillean, most are predominantly Curaçaoan in character. As Bosma observes, over 2,500 may seem a lot, but the figure pales in comparison with the estimated 60,000 or so organizations extant in the Netherlands today. Also, the ratio of ethnic organizations to the scale of their community does not suggest a specific postcolonial propensity to found associations. The Antillean, Moroccan, Surinamese and Turkish ratios (in that order) are more or less in the same category. And all organizations suffer from the same problems of limited active membership, funding, and so on. Whether such ethnic associations are conducive to integration is a moot point, and experts offer contradictory interpretations. Suffice it here to observe that postcolonial organizations have been decisive in many instances in the articulation of political demands. All communities campaigned for more generous state support for the new arrivals but there were also more specific demands. Thus, totoks and Indische Nederlanders jointly lobbied for back pay of salaries and pensions forgone because of the Japanese occupation, bersiap and the transfer of sovereignty, as well as a more generous entrance policy for repatriates. Moluccan associations sought to pressure the Dutch government to support the case for an independent republic of the Moluccas. Surinamese societies urged the Dutch

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government to isolate or even dethrone the military dictatorship of the 1980s. And today, Antillean associations aim to ensure continuing, unrestricted entrance to the Netherlands. There were many more such lobbies. Some succeeded, others failed. But the point is that these political endeavours invariably included explicit reminders of the colonial past and the ensuing obligations of the Dutch government. Postcolonial migrant organizations had an evident asset here over other migrant associations. (‘We are here because you were there.’) Moreover, their leadership benefited from easier access to the authorities and media, not only because of such postcolonial reminders but equally because the colonial legacy had given them a distinct advantage in cultural capital. They had historical and political arguments, and the language and style to express these effectively. These bonuses allowed them to imply ‘we have always been Dutch, certainly more so than other migrants’. But there was a concurrent and certainly not less pronounced affirmation of unique ethnic identity. Often one and the same organization would engage in both discursive strategies, as indeed individuals did and do. Apart from the countless smaller ceremonies, parties, tournaments, and the like, over time a few massive cultural manifestations of postcolonial identity emerged. Thus we have the annual Indische Pasar Malam Besar in The Hague. It has celebrated its fiftieth anniversary and is the largest cultural festival in the city. The annual Hindustani Milan festival also takes place there. Amsterdam hosts the annual Afro-Surinamese Kwakoe festival, and Rotterdam has the annual summer carnival which started as an Antillean fiesta. All of these share postcolonial origins and continue to be bonding celebrations of ethnic affirmation, pride and perhaps nostalgia. Over the decades, they have striven to widen their audience amongst the locals. Not all have been equally successful, but clearly there are no similarly inclusive festivals among the other migrant communities. Postcolonial migrant cultures seem to have more of a propensity for building social bridges. But the very success of such festivals has prompted debates about authenticity. The issue is generally not whether bridging is acceptable or even desirable, but rather on what terms the ‘authentic’ culture is presented – not only in festivals, but equally in the media, in museum exhibitions, in artistic expressions, and the like. In her book Ons Indisch erfgoed, Lizzy van Leeuwen comments on these debates in the Indische community.32 Her analysis of the endless post-war contests over Indische authenticity graphically illustrates the pointlessness of essentialism, yet at the same time evokes the strong feelings within the community – if there is one at all – about identity, authenticity, and the right to define its contents. None of this becomes easier once the issues of

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social bridging and the prospects of widening the audience crop up. From here it is only one more step to debates about the commoditization of identity and the cultural heritage industry. Such dilemmas are not unique to the Indische community and indeed are discussed in Caribbean circles as well. But again, something sets the combined postcolonial community apart here from other migrant groups, to wit, the predicament of defining a cultural identity of one’s own while at the same time stressing the long-standing colonial and postcolonial linkages. One way of reconciling these seemingly contradictory approaches is the return to history. Indeed, over the past two decades we have witnessed several postcolonial ‘memory wars’ – though ‘wars’ is too strong a word for very emotional but strictly verbal contests. Over the past decades Dutch authorities facilitated the establishment of a series of monuments commemorating the war years in Indonesia. After much hesitation, in 1999 the government marked 15 August, the day of the Japanese capitulation, as a national day of remembrance. Repatriates from Indonesia had led the way here, and urged for more.33 Disenchanted with the way Loe de Jong, author of the monumental, state-commissioned history of the Kingdom during the Second World War, had depicted pre-war colonial society and particularly with regard to their role in it, a good number of totoks and Indische Nederlanders rose in protest in the late 1980s, paving the way for the initiation of a series of research projects on the history of Indische Nederlanders; the Japanese occupation and its aftermath; the supposedly cold-hearted post-war reception of the repatriates; and the handling of financial claims by the Dutch government.34 After protracted negotiations, this packet of historical studies led to a wider ‘Gesture’ (Gebaar) in the 1990s, which consisted mainly of individual compensation, but also financial support for a wide range of institutions and initiatives having to do with Indische history and culture. Serious funding was also provided for the cultural institution ‘Het Indisch Huis’ (Indisch Home) which, as Lizzy van Leeuwen details, unfortunately ended up as an embarrassing failure.35 With this broad fin de siècle programme, the Dutch government responded to the resentment in the Indische community and hoped to close the debate on the late colonial period and its aftermath. Predictably, this has turned out to be a premature hope. In the 1980s, as part of another package of reconciliatory policies, the Dutch government funded the establishment of a Moluccan historical museum in Utrecht. This was the first, and up to the present only, museum exclusively dedicated to a specific post-war immigrant community. Two decades later the government financed yet another historical research project, this time on sixty years of Moluccan history in the Netherlands.36

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Again, government had responded to the postcolonial urge to tell the story and hence broaden the national narrative. No such specific ‘gestures’ have been made for the entire Caribbean community. There is no museum or official history of migration from Suriname or the Antilles. But again in the late 1990s, the Dutch government responded to the urge to address the most delicate element in this area of colonial history. In 2002 a national monument in commemoration of slavery was unveiled, with an educational and research institute added. In addition, a series of museum exhibitions and educational television programmes were sponsored. Reconciliation is an explicit objective, and once more there are hopes of closing this chapter. Meanwhile, of course, this leaves the Surinamese of Asian descent unattended on this carousel. At present it seems representatives of these groups take pride in not urging for such state-sponsored gestures. But this may change. In 2006, at the initiative of the Dutch parliament, an official commission presented a new canonical version of Dutch history.37 Much has been said about the initiative itself and its results. But clearly the new canon reflects thorough changes in Dutch society and self-understanding, hence its critical attention to colonial history, including slavery, as well as post-war migrations. There is also an explicit awareness of multivocality and a questioning of assumptions about the relation between history and national identity. Certainly this is no longer the canon of a homogeneous white nation, and certainly the new profiles reflect debates in which postcolonial migrants have successfully staked their claims. At the same time, such initiatives beg for critical reflection. Thus one may well wonder about the correspondence between official canons and popular feeling, between historiography and memory. Moreover historians cannot ignore the perils of rewriting history to fit social objectives, even one as laudable as promoting integration.

Identity Politics The concept of identity politics is widely used and perhaps misused in the study of minority groups. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘The laden phrase “identity politics” has come to signify a wide range of political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experiences of injustice of members of certain social groups. Rather than organizing solely around belief systems, programmatic manifestoes, or party affiliation, identity political formations typically aim to secure the political freedom of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context. Members of that constituency assert or reclaim ways of understanding

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their distinctiveness that challenge dominant oppressive characterizations, with the goal of greater self-determination.’38 There are some problems with this definition, the first being that the locus of identity politics is placed squarely with distinct, presumably minority, groups. One may well argue that any hegemonic discourse in any given state implies identity politics as well. There is no such thing as an undisputed national identity. Moreover, in democratic societies minorities may claim the right of distinction without having to worry about the political freedom to do so. Finally, a discourse of ‘distinctiveness’ easily results in essentialism. With these caveats in mind we may nonetheless ask ourselves whether it is useful to speak of identity politics of the postcolonial migrant communities in the Netherlands, and if so, to what end and with what results were these played out. In the early post-war decades, first totoks and then Indische Nederlanders did organize themselves to attain political goals. In some cases this was moderately successful, as in the prolongation of entrance rights for repatriates long after 1949 and perhaps also in urging for governmentsupported housing. Other elements proved futile, as in the 1945–1949 protest campaigns against the transfer of sovereignty. Joint claims for financial compensation had only limited success. It seems, though, that in these first post-war decades, there was no appreciable political articulation of a separate identity within the Dutch imagined community. That had to wait until the later 1980s, and continues even to this day. From the start, cultural distinctiveness has been an issue in the Moluccan community, but again up to the 1980s, the objective of organizing and lobbying was mainly political: in particular the attempt to find support for their ideal of an independent republic of the Moluccas. It was a futile effort. Implicitly, the clinging to housing arrangements in separate locations singled out for Moluccans reflected a desire to sustain distinctiveness. This striving was however undermined from within, as members of the community were marrying and moving out anyway, and from without, as Dutch government policies actively and effectively discouraged separate housing arrangements. This policy did not change when, in recent times, there was more official recognition of the uniqueness of the Moluccan community and its migration history. One may debate whether there is a Surinamese identity in the first place, or rather a series of contrasting but remarkably easily coexisting ethnic identities. Perhaps one should add that whatever the results of nation-building in Suriname itself, the ‘community’ in the Netherlands has demonstrated decreasing internal cohesion. Of course there has been joint lobbying throughout the past decades, mainly for political objectives. These include prolonging the right of abode and improving conditions

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in the Netherlands, restoring democracy after the military coup, securing continuation of development aid and municipal cooperation, and so on. But precisely when it comes to identity issues, each ethnic group has gone its own way, with the Afro-Surinamese clearly being the most vocal in bringing cultural distinctiveness into the public debate. There is some irony in the fact that the latest arrivals, the Antilleans, stem from the only former colony still part of the Kingdom and yet have a leadership continually emphasizing cultural distinctiveness alongside historical bonds. Again, the objectives have been mainly political: against the imposition of independence, against the Dutch wish to keep the six islands together, against Dutch projects to curtail free entrance to the Netherlands, in favour of more active policies to improve the socioeconomic situation of the community. The way cultural distinctiveness is used as an argumentative tool is ambiguous. There is much talk of pride in identity, of insular cultures that should be allowed to prosper, of the beauty of creolization and particularly Papiamentu. Yet in advocating vigorous and well-endowed integration policies, Antillean spokespeople invoke precisely elements of this cultural specificity – Papiamentu, matrifocality, sometimes ‘slavery trauma’ – as explanatory factors for the present crises in their community. If we narrow the concept of identity politics to cultural issues, we can easily see how postcolonial migrants have been instrumental in changing the parameters of the debate on multiculturalism. Even before coming to the Netherlands, the majority were culturally akin or at least well-acquainted with Dutch culture, whether metropolitans acknowledged this or not. The right to undisputed citizenship was claimed with reference to a shared history and cultural affinity. Over the past decades, it is not so much a change in cultural orientation among the postcolonial migrants that catches the eye, but rather the gradual acknowledgement that Dutch culture today is more pluralistic than before. Leaders of the postcolonial migrant communities have been crucial to these reappraisals. There is no doubt their pre-migration cultural capital helped them to accomplish this.

Conclusion The successive waves of postcolonial migrants were an unanticipated consequence of the decolonization of the Dutch empire, with deep consequences for the migrants and their children and for Dutch society at large. This contribution has painted a broad canvas of the colonial backgrounds of the various migrant communities, the context of their arrival in the Netherlands, the changing political opportunity structures, the processes

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of socioeconomic integration and questions of identity. Clearly there is no such thing as one homogeneous, postcolonial migrant community in the Netherlands, and one wonders whether ‘postcolonial’ is much more than just a descriptive adjective. Certainly the separate, and increasingly less cohesive ethnic ‘communities’ discussed here have not always thought of themselves as homogeneous and like-minded. Much less have they promoted the concept of a ‘postcolonial migrant community’ as an encompassing denominator. There has been little practice of postcolonial identification and no tradition of postcolonial theory. There are noteworthy contrasts here with the French and particularly the British experiences. There are more dissimilarities, which need further reflection, particularly the little overlap between the Muslim and postcolonial migrant communities in the Netherlands – and in Portugal – as compared with France and the United Kingdom. As for the Dutch debates on the place of colonialism and its excesses in the larger narrative of the nation, there seems to be more of a convergence here between the British, French and Dutch cases, whereas the two Iberian countries seem to lag behind – possibly because there is no immediate postcolonial migrant community in Spain, while for this community in Portugal colonialism is not a critical issue. The wider question here has to do with national sensibilities and responsiveness to identity politics. For comparative purposes, one may also look at the cases of lesser colonial powers such as Germany and Italy. Indeed we may also begin to include other postcolonial migration experiences in the equation, such as Turkey, Russia or Japan – but it will take far more comparative research before we can sort out whether this widening of focus really helps us understand the phenomenon of postcolonial migrations any better.

Notes This paper was first presented at a workshop on ‘Postcolonial migrants and identity politics’, Amsterdam, IISG, 7–8 November 2008. I thank the participants of the workshop as well as Ruben Gowricharn for their comments and suggestions, as well as those from anonymous readers. The paper was rewritten during a research leave at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study (NIAS) in Wassenaar in the spring of 2009. The present article summarizes several of the arguments made in my recent book Postcolonial Netherlands. 1. I am fully aware that the very concept of ‘non-Western’ is contested on solid grounds. Though I share many of these objections, I follow the statistical and conceptual usage in the world of Dutch statistics and policy makers here. 2. For a discussion of these concepts, see the introduction to this book by Bosma, Lucassen and Oostindie.

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3. See Bosma and Raben, De oude Indische wereld, and Being ‘Dutch’ in the Indies; and Meijer, In Indië geworteld, for the pre-War history of the ‘European’ population of the Dutch East Indies, including migration to the Netherlands. On the history of ‘Indigenous’ Indonesians in the Netherlands, see Poeze, In het land van de overheerser I. 4. Bosma, ‘Sailing through Suez from the South’. 5. See Oostindie and Maduro, In het land van de overheerser II on pre-war migration from the Dutch West Indies to the Netherlands. 6. For Dutch decolonization policies for Indonesia, see van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië. For the Dutch decolonization of the West Indies, see Oostindie and Klinkers, Decolonising the Caribbean. 7. The most recent scholarly overviews of migration from Indonesia are Willems, Uittocht uit Indië; Smeets and Steijlen, In Nederland gebleven; and Bosma, Terug uit de koloniën. 8. Recent overviews of post-War Caribbean migration to the Netherlands are Oostindie, Paradise Overseas, 136–57; Oostindie and Klinkers, Decolonising the Caribbean, 177–200; and again Bosma, Terug uit de koloniën. A general discussion of ethnicity in Suriname and interinsular difference in the Netherlands Antilles is provided in Oostindie, Paradise Overseas, 52–79 and 111–35. 9. Smith, Europe’s Invisible Migrants. 10. Ambon is one of the Moluccan islands in the eastern part of the archipelago. Initially, the term ‘Ambonese’ was used as a pars pro toto, even including (equally Christian) inhabitants of the Minahasa in Northern Sulawesi. Contemporary usage prefers ‘Moluccans’ as the common denominator. 11. The urbanization of the Maroons, descendants of runaway slaves who established free and culturally distinct communities in the interiors of the country, dates from the 1980s. They are underrepresented in the Netherlands. 12. The Chinese minority from the colonial period integrated in the Afro-Surinamese segment. 13. That the internal cohesion of this colonial construct was never strong is not surprising. The three English-speaking Windward Antilles lay some 900 kilometres north of the three Papiamentu-speaking Leeward Islands just off the Venezuelan coast. Only Dutch rule and internal migration kept the islands together. 14. Over the past decade, all islands sent students to the Netherlands, many not returning to their native islands afterwards. During a short economic crisis in the mid-1980s, migration from Aruba was relatively high and possibly included a disproportionate share of the island’s Afro-Caribbean segment. 15. Bagley, Dutch Plural Society, passim. 16. The volume of the latter community is estimated at ca. 15,000. Vogels, Geense and Martens, Maatschappelijke positie van Chinezen in Nederland, 3. 17. Table 3.2, and Dagevos and Gijsberts, Jaarrapport integratie 2007, Figure 8.1. 18. Data provided by CBS, www.cbs.nl 19. Data from CBS; Dagevos and Gijsberts, Jaarrapport integratie 2007; Dagevos, Gijsberts and Van Praag, Rapportage minderheden 2003; Roelandt and Veenman, Minderheden in Nederland; Veenman, Arbeidsmarktpositie van allochtonen and Veenman, ‘Maatschappelijke positie van allochtonen’. 20. In 2000, according to CBS, 1.1 per cent of all Dutch people were suspected of one or more crimes. This percentage was 3.8 for Surinamese, 6.0 for Antilleans, 4.7 for Moroccans and 2.6 for Turks. In 2005, these figures were all up: 1.6 per cent for Dutch, 4.9 for Surinamese, 7.2 for Antilleans, 5.8 for Moroccans and 3.7 for Turks. 21. The ongoing migration from Curaçao is usually excluded from this narrative. 22. Jones, Tussen onderdanen, rijksgenoten en Nederlanders; Schuster, Poortwachters over immigranten. 23. Quoted in Oostindie and Klinkers, Knellende koninkrijksbanden, II, 226–27. 24. Bossenbroek, Meelstreep.

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25. Lucassen, Immigrant Threat, 1–24. Lucassen, Feldman & Oltmer, Paths of Integration, 7–23. 26. WRR, Etnische minderheden; WRR, Allochtonenbeleid. 27. Commissie-Blok, Bruggen bouwen. 28. The total budget in this period amounted to some €16.5 billion. Commissie-Blok, Bruggen bouwen, 583–84. 29. E.g. Scheffer, Land van aankomst. 30. The database was built as part of the research project ‘Bringing History Home’ by Marga Alferink and Ulbe Bosma. See http://www.iisg.nl/research/migrantenorganisaties.php 31. Bosma, Terug uit de koloniën. 32. Van Leeuwen, Indisch erfgoed. This book is another result of the research project ‘Bringing History Home’. 33. Several decades after their return from the vain mission to regain colonial control over Indonesia in 1945–1949, former Dutch military personnel would add another perspective to the debate. This debate is not discussed here; see Scagliola, Last van de oorlog. 34. Boekholt, De staat, Dr. L de Jong en Indië. The studies by Bosma and Raben, Bossenbroek, Meijer and Willems cited above all form part of this state-sponsored project. See also Bosma, Terug uit de koloniën, Chapter 5, and Van Leeuwen, Indisch erfgoed, Chapters 4 and 5. 35. Van Leeuwen, Indisch erfgoed, Chapter 5. 36. Smeets and Steijlen, In Nederland gebleven. 37. Van Oostrom, A Key to Dutch History. See also http://entoen.nu/ 38. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/

Chapter 4

Postcolonial Portugal Between Scylla and Charybdis M. Margarida Marques

By 1981, six years after its former African colonies had gained their independence, Portugal had become home to half a million people ‘returning’ from Africa. This is but a pale reflection of six centuries of colonial expansion, though. As a small country with less than a million inhabitants in the early fifteenth century, Portugal succeeded in creating an effective trading network that spanned the globe, and involved people from all over the world. In colonial times, foreign visitors were stunned by the exceptionally large presence in the city of Lisbon of people of many different origins.1 Miscegenation was one of the key features of the Portuguese Seaborne Empire, and had been an official policy in Asia and in Brazil, sustained by religious assimilation into the Catholic faith.2 In many ways this Lusophone world survived the decolonization processes. Most countries that belonged to the former colonial empire still feel an engagement with a wider Lusophone world. It was Brazil, for example, rather than Portugal that established the Community of the Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) in 1996. All the African countries that use Portuguese as an official language have been members since its inception.3 In spite of this common denominator, the backgrounds of the ‘postcolonial immigrants’ in Portugal are rather heterogeneous. They come from Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Macao,4 Mozambique, the Portuguese enclaves of India, Sao Tome and Principe, and Timor.5 In addition there have been considerable migratory movements between Portugal and Brazil since the latter became independent in the early nineteenth century. Notes for this chapter begin on page 148.

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This paper will focus on some key issues of Portuguese postcolonial immigration. It presents the different groups of postcolonial immigrants, with their specific features in terms of language, educational level, citizenship status and socioeconomic performance. The paper goes on to explore some indicators of integration and the opportunity structures for postcolonial immigrant populations. It brings out the increasing tensions between the official objective of promoting a postcolonial sense of a Lusophone world, and the grassroots attempts to include the black African immigrant culture in the Portuguese narrative, in a context of the pervading influence of Brazilian popular culture. The paper concludes by drawing attention to the fact that there is still a long way to go before the disturbing aspects of the colonial past become part of the national narrative.

The Retornados The largest group of postcolonial immigrants came from Africa. Initially, migrants to Portugal were students, people in search of specialized health care and a limited number of professionals, usually employed in the higher positions of the colonies. In the 1960s, facing the twin developments of large-scale emigration and booming internal economic growth, the Portuguese authorities set up a labour recruitment programme from the colonies.6 But this was quite modest.7 Everything changed with the dissolution of the Portuguese colonial regime, between 1974 and the mid-1980s. Large numbers of families formerly living in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and Sao Tome and Principe were able to settle in Portugal with support from the state. These immigrants were termed ‘retornados’, the Portuguese word for returnees. After the removal of the Salazar regime in 1974, Portuguese demographics underwent radical changes. The immigrations of political exiles, returning former labour emigrants, and notably people from the colonies that gained independence in 1975, involved over one million people – that is to say an increase in the population of over 12.5 per cent.8 These colonial returnees also involved large numbers of soldiers, engaged from 1961 onwards, in the wars in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. According to the newspapers of that period, there were around one million repatriations from Africa. Some scholars numbered the retornados at eight hundred thousand.9 Yet these estimates are based on the number of repatriations, not on the people who actually remained in Portugal. According to a census in 1981, there were around half a million residents in Portugal who were living in Africa on 31 December 1973 (the year before the change in the Portuguese regime). If one takes this figure as a

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more accurate estimate of the retornados who settled in Portugal (as most Portuguese scholars do), one can therefore suggest that around three hundred thousand re-migrated after repatriation. They went to neighbouring African countries such as South Africa, but also to the Americas (Brazil, Venezuela, the United States and Canada) and Europe (France, Switzerland and elsewhere). They were joined by members of the elite of the former Salazar regime. According to the 1981 census data, over 60 per cent of the half a million retornados were born in Portugal (see Table 4.1). Around 60 per cent came from Angola, one third from Mozambique and 5 per cent from the three other colonies (Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and Sao Tome and Principe). Table 4.1.  ‘Retornados’ according to the birthplace stated in the 1981 population census Angola Returnees Born in Portugal Born in the colonies Born elsewhere

Mozambique Other % (horiz) % (horiz)

Total % (horiz)

290,504 61.6 183,288 61.4 104,858 63

158,945 33.7 99,847 33.4 55,302 33.2

21,978 15,441 6,242

4.7 5.2 3.8

471,427 298,576 166,402

2358

3796

295

4.6

6,449

36.6

58.9

Source: INE, Census of 1981, cit. in Pires, Migrações e Integração, p. 203.

Several historians have noted that although ‘creating new Brazils’ in Africa had been a much voiced ambition of the Salazar regime, the ‘imperial mystique’ and the state-led initiatives aimed at fostering the migration of white, skilled people from the metropolis to Africa met with very little success until the mid-twentieth century.10 Castelo’s meticulous analysis11 of migration from the metropolis to the colonies revealed that the proportion of ‘whites’ in Angola and Mozambique was very low until independence. An upsurge of European migration occurred in the 1940s, followed by a new, significant impetus in the 1950s; yet, as Castelo points out, against much of the ‘Luso-tropicalist’ rhetoric,12 a substantial mixed population did not emerge.13 The exodus of Portuguese citizens from the African colonies was almost complete after decolonization. What has happened recently, however, is a new influx of Portuguese into Angola, thanks to its rapidly improving economy.14 During colonial times, most of the metropolitan white migrants to Portuguese Africa had urban origins. Many of them were technicians or had above average educational credentials, and were attracted by the post-Second World War growth of Angolan and Mozambican economic opportunities – including those arising, once the independence wars ex-

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ploded, from the economy of war.15 The beginning of the three African wars, as well as the economic recovery in Europe in the early 1960s, significantly curbed the trend. All in all, Africa was always a secondary option for Portuguese emigrants. The post-revolutionary Portuguese government had made a pledge to achieve decolonization and to bring safely ‘back home’ those ‘nationals’ who wished to leave the colonies. Besides repatriation, specific measures were taken to accommodate the sudden demographic outburst resulting from those who decided to settle. First of all, retornados were recognized as a specific category in need of special assistance in terms of welfare, employment, emergency housing and acquiring the necessary documents. This process was coordinated by a secretary of state.16 In addition, the settlement process for the returnees was facilitated by public loans for starting up businesses, the guarantee of public employment for the civil servants in the colonies, and so on.17 In spite of the measures taken to facilitate the settlement process, their shortcomings were soon to become obvious, given the social, political and economic turmoil of that period. After a thirteen-year war, the ‘imperial mystique’ and its visible actors, the returnees, were associated with a contested past. The retornados became targets of both the political and ideological grievances towards the past. They were also blamed for the economic hardships of the time. For their part, the grievances and the hardships endured by them in the new context helped magnify the perceived distances from the host society. The important fact that the political and economic elites of the Salazar era had fled was a blessing for the incoming immigrants. The exodus from the top positions in public administration, the nationalization of the economy and the renewal of the political system created a sort of vacancy chain dynamic. Economic, political and ideological entrepreneurs with a retornado background could avail themselves of the opportunities stemming from these new dynamics – and they did. Although not all the African-born were retornados, there is much overlapping and closeness. Pedro Tavares de Almeida and António Costa Pinto found, in a study on Portuguese elites, that ‘[t]he transition to democracy … brought a novelty: a sizeable minority of ministers (ten per cent) in the provisional governments were born in the former African colonies, which by that time had achieved independence’.18 In journalism too many new job opportunities arose, including for those arriving from the former colonies. Nina Tiesler notes that a Muslim of South-East Asian descent, who came from Mozambique before independence and was a member of a centre-right party (Partido Social Democrata), was recruited to become the head of the national news agency after 1974.19

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Furthermore, a sociography of the retornados shows two important characteristics.20 First, nearly two thirds were born on the mainland (the ‘metropolis’), and could therefore count on family and informal ties upon their arrival to ease their settlement. Second, their educational credentials and occupational skills were higher than average, as a consequence of the selective process that led them initially to the colonies. Some poverty clusters, however, still remain to this day. And as chain migration began to accumulate, the newcomers amplified these clusters. As several monographs show, poverty and racial boundaries often overlap in the suburbs of Portuguese cities.21 By the same token, a wider vacancy chain dynamic now definitely dispersed the bulk of retornados and their offspring into the mainstream. Whatever cultural expressions or other specific claims are made in the name of retornados today, they are usually self-ascribed and willingly endorsed as ethnic references – no longer are they imposed from the outside, as a stigma.

Mapping the Fluxes While Angola and Mozambique were conceived of as settler colonies by the Salazar regime,22 this was not the case with Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Sao Tome and Principe. Today only a few Portuguese nationals live on the Cape Verde islands.23 Cape Verdeans have a long history of emigration, to the United States in particular, where the largest expatriate community currently lives. It was only after independence that Portugal became the preferred destination for Cape Verdeans.24 The same happened in Guinea-Bissau, where emigration was mostly to neighbouring countries and to France;25 significant migration to Portugal started only after independence. Sao Tome is a special case, because its plantations of cocoa were important recruiters of labour from other colonies.26 Here too, emigration to Portugal only became significant after decolonization. In general, migration to Portugal from Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, and Guinea-Bissau started with the higher educated, most of who were Portuguese citizens. The 2001 census only counted 329,116 African-born people living in Portugal. The majority of them were retornados, as over two-thirds were Portuguese citizens (see Table 4.2). This figure should include many of the 166,000 born in the colonies and registered in the 1981 census; in addition, it should also include the holders of a regular permit of residence (according to the data of the foreigners control authorities, there were 137,000 people from Lusophone Africa with such a status in 2007). On the other hand, non-official figures suggest that the total number of ethnic

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Africans in Portugal could have amounted to 350,000, the majority being Angolans and Cape Verdeans. This means that there could have been a small number of irregular immigrants from Lusophone Africa. The usual channel for the later inflows was chain migration, and they came either as refugees or as labour migrants, mostly unskilled and predominantly male, thus contrasting with the pioneer waves. Due to neglect by governmental authorities,27 many were left to their own devices. They had to eke out a living under harsh conditions and suffered from social exclusion. If the first generation did not receive much public attention, their children took a much more visible place in society, as they went to school, entered the labour market and began to organize cultural events. This became particularly visible around Lisbon, where the majority lived.28 The non-Portuguese immigrants from Africa usually had a lot more problems finding their way in Portuguese society than did the postcolonial immigrants from Asia. They came from Goa, Damao, Diu (annexed by India in 1961) and Macao (transferred to China in 1999). Many belonged to a Creole elite of mixed European, Malaysian, Indian and Chinese descent. This category also included people of an Indian or Chinese ancestry who settled in Portuguese Africa (notably Mozambique), before and after India’s annexation of the Portuguese enclaves.29 The majority of these migrants who settled in Africa re-migrated to Portugal after Mozambique’s independence.30 Although Portugal went through a period of great instability after the 1974 revolution, their arrival in the late 1970s and early 1980s did not raise significant problems in terms of schools, welfare, employment or housing. Their social capital enabled them to find work easily, both in the private and public sectors. They belonged to the higher echelons of the colonial bureaucracy, the army or the economy. They had usually received their (higher) education in Portugal, were proficient in Portuguese, held a Portuguese passport, and are now fully assimilated into the metropolitan Portuguese culture and society.31 And yet, they have a clear sense of identity, and have maintained a dense web of ethnic institutions (e.g. associations, schools and religious congregations). As this group included a significant non-Christian population, specific provisions had to be made with regard to the right to non-Christian name-giving for their children, to specific burial ceremonies and sites, and to religious holidays (both at work and in school). All of these demands were satisfied without any negative response from the receiving society. The same occurred with the acquisition of decent spaces to build temples. The Timorese refugees who fled the country’s Indonesian annexation in 1975 represent a rather marginal group. Other than a few students and scholars who came to Portuguese universities, the Timorese had not settled elsewhere in the Lusophone world. Although these refugees were

471,427 329,116 99,185 136,713

290,504 174,210 37,014 32,728

Angola

50,000 40,000 700

158,945 76,017 4,685 5,700 120,000 -----

21,978 44,964 33,145 63,925 50,000 -----

21,435 15,824 23,733

15,000 -----

12,490 8,517 10,627

Mozambique Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Sao Tome and Principe

Note: * Considering that we used different sources, each having a distinct understanding of ethnic group, this should be read as a mere indication. Besides, all ethnic groups are heterogeneous – including people of African, European, Asian, and mixed descent. Furthermore, according to available evidence on the groups coming from Africa, middle classes were over-represented in the first waves, arriving in the aftermath of decolonization (Saint Maurice, Identidades Reconstruídas. Caboverdeanos em Portugal; Machado, Contrastes e continuidades, inter alia).

is overwhelmingly Portuguese, and the persistent presence of irregular migrants); Brazilians: Ministério das Relações Exteriores, Brasileiros no mundo. Estimativas, 2008; Ethnically Indians (migrants and their offspring) – sources: Bastos & Bastos, Unity within Plurality of a Tricontinental Indian Diaspora; Tiesler, Muçulmanos na margem; Ethnically Chinese (migrants and their offspring) – source: Rocha Trindade & Neves, The Chinese Business Communities in Portugal.

147,500 – 160,000 Over 350,000 > 100,000 -------------

--49,891 31,869 66,354

Total Africa

Sources: Citizenship and place of birth, as registered in the 2001 census (Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Censos da População de 2001); estimates on resident holders of a residence permit in 2007, Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (estimates, 2008); for the returnees, INE, Census of 1981, cit. in Pires, Migrações e integração; for the ethnic group (marked with *) we used several sources: Angolans: Associação Nacional de Médicos Angolanos em Portugal http://www.anmap.org/programa_accao. htm (Nov. 2008) [Possidónio’s (2006, p. 100) estimate is of 40,000]; Cape-Verdeans: A Semana online http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:tWSl_ny77MJ:www.asemana.cv/article.php3%3Fid_article%3D36 328+residentes+da+guiné+em+portugal&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd= 22&client=safari (15 Oct. 2008); Guinea-Bissauans: Branco, Dados sobre a Guiné-Bissau, which includes 20,000 Muslims. Machado, Contrastes e continuidades, 86 suggests at least 23,000, in 1996; Mozambicans: Pondja, Um olhar sobre os moçambicanos estudantes; Santomese: own calculation (considering both the fact that the middle class

‘Retornados’ (1981 census) Foreign born (2001 census) Foreign citizens (2001 census) Foreigners holding a residence permit (aliens control, 2007) Ethnic Group * Indo-Mozambicans Chinese-Mozambicans

Brazil

Table 4.2.  Residents in Portugal coming from Portuguese-speaking countries, or having such an ancestry – by legaladministrative status, citizenship, place of birth and ethnic group, 2008

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formally considered as Portuguese citizens,32 they had at best a poor command of the language, were heavily dependent on welfare, and often suffered from tremendous hardships and social exclusion. Many moved on to settle elsewhere, in places where larger Timorese communities already existed, notably Australia.33 East Timor was, even during the colonial times, a territory much neglected by the Portuguese authorities. Apart from the urbanized areas where the colonial administration and a Creole population used the Portuguese language, state schools were conspicuously absent. Actually, this neglect of the educational system was a general feature of the Portuguese colonial administration – but not of the Indonesian occupation that followed, which can help to explain the present general absence of command of the Portuguese language.34 A special case is Brazil. Even after this country had become independent in the early nineteenth century, the migration circuit with Portugal continued to grow. Brazil was the most important destination for Portuguese emigrants until the early twentieth century.35 After the Second World War a new upsurge in migration flow occurred, and again in the mid-1970s when Brazil became a safe haven for the Portuguese elites, and also for postcolonial immigrants from Africa who had affiliated themselves with the Salazar regime and now fled the newly established democracy. After a while, however, 90 per cent of them left, to Portugal or elsewhere.36 Recently, Brazil has become an important business partner for large Portuguese companies, and a highly popular destination for tourists and pensioners, whereas Brazilians themselves come in increasing numbers to Portugal, taking advantage of their ties with the relatives of those who migrated to Brazil and live all over the country. With the rising numbers, the educational and occupational levels of the Brazilian immigrants in Portugal declined.37 The students and businessmen of earlier times were followed by poorer Brazilians. According to the Brazilian authorities, the number of Brazilians who left for Portugal had reached 150,000 by the end of 2008, which is more than twice the number of regular Brazilian residents in Portugal (Table 4.2).38 Since this data is derived from the administrative registers of the Brazilian representations abroad, one may assume that a significant number of these citizens do not have resident status.39

Integration and Segregation It is clear that the circumstances under which postcolonial immigrants settled in Portugal varied greatly depending upon whether they were Portuguese citizens, their previous positions in colonial societies, and the timing of their arrival. In the following section we look at how different

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levels of education, employment and housing played out in the integration processes of the postcolonial immigrant populations – and we begin with language. With the exception of Brazil, Portuguese is not the first language for the majority of the population in each of the former territories under Portuguese rule. However, after the former Portuguese colonies in Africa gained independence, Portuguese continued to be the official language. In daily practice a variety of creolized versions of Portuguese is spoken throughout the former empire, if not local vernaculars.40 In fact, the percentage of early school leavers in Portugal lies above the European average, partly due to the fact that the Portuguese school system still has difficulties in accommodating diversity.41 Many of the children of postcolonial immigrants are disadvantaged at school because of the resistance of the authorities to recognize non-European forms of Portuguese as formal school languages.42 With regard to employment, the retornados and the migrants from Asia clearly had the least difficulties. The retornados generally received support from the state and did not face significant difficulties in the labour market,43 although we might add the caveat that we cannot be entirely sure, as they are difficult to trace in the statistics because they do not exist as a separate category. Next to the retornados in terms of successful integration come the immigrants from Asia, who are apparently so successful in Portuguese society that they tend to escape the attention of social scientists.44 As for the other groups of postcolonial immigrants, the general observation to be made is that the formal labour market was not easy to enter for non-Portuguese citizens, and this particularly applied to those who came from Africa. Workers from Portuguese-speaking African countries often found themselves in precarious situations and employed in unskilled activities.45 To this day, there is clear evidence of the heavy overrepresentation of immigrant labour in specific economic sectors, such as construction, sales and commerce, and the service sector. Ethnographic surveys and censuses in the 1990s corroborate this evidence.46 Women are doing significantly better than men and are more likely to follow a path of upward mobility. They do better at school than young men, who as a result are generally less educated and therefore have to resort to unskilled or low-skilled jobs.47 At this stage we do not have comparable surveys on the situation of Brazilian labourers in Portugal.48 Their position did not attract as much academic interest as did the situation of the retornados and that of the African immigrants. Two points are worth mentioning here, however: first, the intensive media attention towards the presence of Brazilian female sex workers, which led to a protest movement in a Portuguese town (Bra-

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gança) in 2003 initiated by local women, self-proclaimed as the ‘Mothers of Bragança’, against the presence of the sex industry in their city. This left a stigma on Brazilian women in general.49 The second topic that made newspaper headlines was the case of Brazilian dentists who, according to Portuguese medical representatives, should not be allowed to practise their skills in Portugal for ‘public health’ reasons. This was of course strongly opposed by Brazilians, who considered it a simple act of discrimination.50 Both cases reveal the difficult incorporation of Brazilians into Portuguese society. Meanwhile, and this might appear somewhat in contradiction of the former statement, Brazilian popular culture is widely disseminated in Portuguese society through music, literature and, notably, television, in the form of the Brazilian ‘telenovelas’ (television soaps). Available employment figures for Brazilians indicate their uneven absorption into the labour market. Those who arrived early on were usually better educated and could still find a job relatively easily. Also to their advantage is that Brazilians are less concentrated in particular areas than African immigrants. Moreover, the Brazilian government has been able to play an effective role in furthering the interests of its citizens in Portugal. The problems with regard to irregular Brazilian citizens in Portugal were tabled at the highest political levels, and prompted a political agreement between the two governments to grant an amnesty to all irregular Brazilian residents in Portugal and a more forthcoming attitude on behalf of the Portuguese authorities with regard to their settlement.51 The housing conditions of the various postcolonial immigrant groups more or less mirror their situation in the labour market. While the retornados received considerable support from the state (but also from informal sources) with regard to housing, other postcolonial immigrants who arrived later were left to their own devices. Around the outskirts of Lisbon, large shanty towns emerged in the 1980s, where poverty and being black became synonymous with exclusion.52 In the early 1990s, a nationwide public re-housing programme was initiated, which only had mixed success even though it did not exclude residents from abroad from access to social housing.53 In practice, municipal authorities often turned a blind eye to the legal status of their municipal residents, insisting rather on the imperative of engaging themselves with local problems.54 Housing projects followed different paths in different localities, because they depended heavily on the resolve of the municipal authorities and their financial resources. In some municipalities, the shanty towns exist even today. Visits by African politicians to the shanties put some pressure on the central and local governments to speed up the process of re-housing, but no organized grassroots movements emerged. There were, however, some fragmented protests against the way in which the re-housing projects were

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being carried out, as some inhabitants argued that, together with their sheds, the local collective memory was being demolished.55 Most of the re-housing was arranged in specific purpose-built neighbourhoods, and it was concentrated on families who lived together in shanties, but who were not necessarily of the same ethnic background. Clashes between youngsters of different ethnic groups in these neighbourhoods have been attracting a lot of media attention,56 prompting a recurring debate on the rights of non-citizens to welfare, and on the drawbacks of the policies of the 1990s in creating spatially confined and publicly subsidized estates for the slum inhabitants. The suburbs are home to the majority of immigrants, and the spatial concentration of certain ethnic groups is becoming significant in specific districts of suburban Lisbon.

Political Opportunity Structures Successive Portuguese governments have been encouraging to all initiatives aimed at fostering the idea of a worldwide ‘Lusophone community’. The term ‘Lusophony’ exists to refer to the use of the Portuguese language as a vehicle of communication between the countries and populations that adopted it as an official language after the African colonies gained their independence in the 1970s. Political elites use the term Lusophony extensively, and institutions were created to foster it.57 Development cooperation is practically limited to the former colonies. The Portuguese institutional and legal frameworks are further deliberately biased in favour of citizens from officially Portuguese-speaking countries. The idea of a ‘Lusophone community’ was initially formulated by the political elites in the 1980s and was supported by both the ideological right and left. It fits well into the national matrix. According to Portuguese historian Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, the outward move is a structuring factor in Portuguese national identity building.58 The jus sanguinis provisions of the new Portuguese nationality law that was adopted in 1981 reflected the idea of the five million Portuguese in diaspora (in Brazil, the United States, and elsewhere in the world) still being part of the nation.59 The Lusophone project expands this presence even further. The quotidian use of Lusophony often refers to Portuguese-language literature, music and other forms of cultural production from outside Portugal.60 Cultural elites and institutions with an immigrant background of African origin, and settled in Portugal, also sometimes endorse it as a way of ‘negotiating an identity’.61 On the other hand, some Portuguese scholars denounce the Lusophone project as a new form of old colonial fantasies. Margarido calls it one of the ‘new Portuguese myths’, and Jerónimo &

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Domingos see it as ‘ideological manipulation’, obscuring the violence of colonization. I will return to this point later on. What is the bonus of Lusophony in terms of citizenship for residents in Portugal from the former colonies? In a systematic and thorough exploration of several arenas of participation, the judge from the Portuguese Constitutional Court, Mário Torres, demonstrates how the Portuguese state has been consistently affording similar rights to citizens and foreigners (‘national treatment’), acting from a human rights philosophical frame of reference.63 The Portuguese Constitution (dating from 1976) considers, in Article 15, three special categories of citizens entitled to special rights, as long as reciprocity is respected: citizens from Lusophone countries (number 3); regularly settled foreigners (number 4); and EU citizens (number 5).64 As far as the first category is concerned, the above-mentioned article of the Constitution states that: ‘Permanent resident citizens, from Lusophone states, are recognised, under condition of reciprocity, … rights not recognised to foreigners’. Special bilateral agreements specify the Lusophone bonus. A Friendship, Co-operation and Consultation Treaty was signed with Brazil in 2000,65 which stipulates that Brazilian citizens settled in Portugal and Portuguese citizens settled in Brazil can ask for a special statute (similar to nationals), after three years of residence.66 Under this statute, a Brazilian citizen can be a member of the Portuguese Parliament, a member of the Cabinet, or a Judge of the Constitutional Court, and can vote in the Presidential elections.67 The Special Agreement between the Portuguese and the Cape-Verdean Republics and the Special Agreement between the Portuguese and the Guinea-Bissauan Republics, dating from 1976 (one year after independence), are similarly premised on reciprocity. They both suppose the ‘national treatment’ of foreign citizens, but are ‘less ambitious’ than the former treaty signed with Brazil.68 Finally, the General Agreement for Cooperation and Friendship signed in 1975 between Sao Tome and Principe and Portugal, also premised on the reciprocal ‘national treatment’ of settled foreign citizens, is more limited than all the former ones.69 Many of these rights based on the ‘national treatment’ of foreigners are also afforded to citizens from non-Lusophone states.70 This notably concerns political and welfare rights, including the right of petitioning to the Parliament (idem). But a Lusophone bias exists explicitly on such issues as: the period of regular residence required in order to have the right to vote and be elected in local elections (Decree-Law 701-B/1976), which is of two and four years respectively (also for EU citizens), instead of three and five years for other foreigners;71 the participation in local referenda (Organic Law #3/2000), which is possible for Lusophone (and EU) citizens, regularly settled for a minimum period of two years (idem).

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This bias is, however, not definitive. It also existed concerning access to citizenship, until 2006, when the norm ruling the access to Portuguese nationality was ‘radically altered’72 by the Organic Law #2/2006. In the original redaction of the nationality law (Law 37/1981), six years was the minimum period of regular stay required before a citizen from a Lusophone state could ask for Portuguese citizenship, instead of the ten years required for other foreign citizens. The ‘new formulation [of the nationality law] re-states a unique period of stay’ for all foreign citizens before they are able to file for Portuguese citizenship.73 In the 1990s, important steps were taken towards the integration and empowerment of the immigrant communities in Portugal (who were mainly postcolonial and of whom a considerable proportion did not enjoy citizen rights, or were even irregular), such as the establishment of a High Commissioner for Immigration and Ethnic Minorities (HCIEM) and the creation of two committees to involve immigrant organizations in policy making on integration issues and the protection of their rights. The office of the HCIEM was created in 1996, and its position was directly under the then Socialist government prime minister, after a decade-long centre-right government which had ostensibly ignored fast-growing immigrant populations and the ethnically based exclusion-pervading Lisbon suburbs and specific labour markets. The main objective of the HCIEM was to establish the basis for inclusionary policies and the integration of immigrants and ‘national minorities’.74 In addition, the Consultative Council for Immigration Issues (CCII) and the Commission for Equality and Against Social Discrimination (CEASD) were created, both initially autonomous and operating next to the HCIEM. Since it was primarily the ‘major communities’ who were allotted seats on these committees, it was the postcolonial representatives who dominated. During its first two mandates (1996–2002), three amnesties and a series of measures aimed at extending social rights to immigrants and ethnic minorities obtained parliamentary consensus. With the establishment of the CCII and the CEASD, a platform was shaped whereby representatives from immigrant communities could advise and influence the government with regard to immigration issues.75 Meanwhile, the Law on Portuguese citizenship has undergone three significant changes since the 1980s. The last one in particular was rather consequential. The first postcolonial Law was passed in 1981, six years after decolonization, and marked a shift from the principles of ius soli to ius sanguinis, interestingly enough at the very moment that the expatriate flows towards the former metropolis were soaring. As the judge of the Constitutional Court, Rui Moura Ramos, explained,76 this entailed a long-due recognition of expatriates as being part of the nation. Moreover,

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this change was also to accommodate the dominant jus sanguinis orientation of the EU, which Portugal was to join five years later.77 Another revision in 1994 further strengthened the jus sanguinis character of the law on Portuguese citizenship, which made naturalization more difficult. This was both in response to concerns voiced by the media about abuses, as well as to comply with EU guidelines. In 2006, it had become evident, both to the political right and left, that access to citizenship had to be adjusted in accordance with the new reality. A new revision was issued,78 which represented a shift towards a more encompassing idea of citizenship, partially premised on the recognition of rights acquired by being born, or having long-term residency, in the country. This happened in spite of the fact that concerns were being voiced that immigrants were mainly interested in Portuguese citizenship in order to gain access to other countries (in the EU and elsewhere). Within the context of the new policy attitude towards immigrants, non-governmental organizations have been progressively involved in the task of furthering access to welfare and public services.79 In the pioneering phase of the early 1990s, religious, anti-racist and other NGOs took on the role of mediators between immigrants and the public sphere, also acting as welfare providers. Against these solid and well-connected institutions it was difficult for immigrant organizations to compete.80 But as soon as immigrant associations received formal recognition, they could begin to play a pivotal role in mediating the access to public resources. This often happened at the expense of the political activism that had marked these organizations in the early 1990s.81 Yet in the 1980s and the 1990s, when extensive, significant exclusion existed, immigrant organizations and their leaders were able to enter into strategic alliances with politicians, influence local and national political agendas, and act as effective local development institutions.82 This was first and foremost the case with the associations for immigrants of African origin. One strategic moment is worth mentioning here, namely the 1996 amnesty. This came as the fulfilment of a promise made to immigrant associations by the Socialist Party during their political campaign for the 1995 elections. In fact, as the first amnesty (1992–93) had been criticized for leaving many immigrants in irregular situations, the second amnesty was supposed to correct these flaws, which led to a doubling of the number of immigrants who received a legal status.83 Churches, immigrant associations and labour unions joined in campaigning. The participation of labour unions in this process was instrumental in fighting the informal labour markets and the concomitants of social dumping and of wage downscaling. It allowed the recruitment of immigrants by the unions and the incorporation of some African workers in leadership

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positions, and was followed by the adoption of campaigns against racism and xenophobia in the workplace. Activist organizations from a variety of backgrounds (religious, political and human rights) and last but not least immigrant organizations themselves have been most vocal on the issues of amnesties, housing and anti-racism. Recently, after the election victory of the Socialist Party in 2005, the HCIEM changed its name into the High Commission for Immigration and Intercultural Dialogue (although it did not change its leadership), aiming at ‘promoting the dialogue between the different cultures, ethnicities and religions’.84 At the same time, the consultative CCII and the anti-discrimination CEASD were integrated into the HCIEM. A network was established of specialized agencies (local and national boards for immigrants) on integration issues and ‘the distinct ethnic minorities’ problems’.85 These institutional reforms reflect the multicultural position of the Socialist government. The High Commission started to encourage public recognition of distinct ‘cultures, ethnicities and religions’ and to commit the state to an active role in ‘promoting’ an ‘inter-cultural dialogue’ between them. The 2007 Plan for the Integration of Immigrants included 122 concrete measures, and proposed an improvement of coordination between the HCIEM and several ministries and government departments.86 The absorption of CCII and CEASD into the HCIEM, and the creation of a network of local and national relays based on the participation of rank and file members of immigrant associations, created an organizational framework well ensconced in immigrants’ voluntary associations and specialized in servicing this particular segment – whereas the initial mandate of the HCIEM was confined to identifying and removing the institutional obstacles for a ‘national treatment’ of foreigners.87 The UNDP Human Development Report 2009 praises the efforts made by the Portuguese state concerning the formal recognition of rights for immigrants.88 Although there is always a gap between formal arrangements and actual practice, in Portugal this lack of synchronization could be significant.89 For example, the education system can prolong social marginalization through higher levels of school failure among the offspring of postcolonial immigrants, rather than providing equal opportunities. Criminal behaviour occurs in a trajectory of exclusion; and foreigners, most notably postcolonial youths, have significantly higher probabilities of incarceration than indigenous youths.90 The process of building the institutional infrastructure to accommodate immigration influxes is part of the transformation towards a more inclusive state, and develops in distinct ways and at a different pace in different sectors. It is still very far from the goals stated in the institutional blueprints.

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Migrants’ Associations, Cultural Manifestations, Cultural Heritage The great majority of the 106 immigrant organizations in Portugal that had an officially recognized status in 2007 had names referring to the country of origin.91 Only six of these organizations carried ‘Lusophone’ or the hyphenated ‘Luso-some other nationality’ in their names or referred to it in another way. Another five organizations adopted a pan-ethnic reference (e.g. African). Lusophone and African references are used by recently formed and officially recognized associations established by second generation immigrants. These organizations bring together immigrant populations that do not share characteristics such as national origin, social class, gender or age. It is an outcome of a voluntary process of ‘institutional assimilation’92 based upon the expectation that the words Lusophony and Africa will make the immigrant elites, the authorities and the general public more susceptible to the general recognition of grassroots immigrant organizations. Many immigrant organizations were founded in the early phases of migration to metropolitan Portugal. This happened in particular in local communities with large numbers of African immigrants, with the objective of assisting them in the settlement process. They became incorporated into the welfare arrangements that were developed by local authorities. Once the phase of settlement was closed, many associations went through a process of ‘goal displacement’, 93 as described in the previous section. Some immigrant institutions began to shift to, or strengthen, their cultural activities such as uncovering roots and memories as well as articulating identification processes with the countries of origin. The second generation youths claiming an African ancestry play an important role in the shift towards a more symbolic elaboration of identities, often oppositional to Portuguese society. A negative reference to Portuguese society is central to their identification process, to define ‘what we do not want to be’: prejudiced, ignorant (about Africa), cold or led by self-interest.94 Some Brazilian citizens articulate a similar rejection of the unfair and insensitive way they feel they are being received in Portugal – evidence of a lack of reciprocity, as Portuguese have been migrating to Brazil for centuries.95 These oppositional identifications contradict the transnational ‘Lusophone community’ imagined by the political elite (both of the right and the left) who still embrace the model of Portuguese worldwide expansion.96 It is precisely this cultural dialectic that generates all sorts of creative activities.97 Grassroots cultural expressions (such as ‘hip hop’) are increasingly sponsored by the authorities and large Portuguese corporations, alongside government-sponsored mainstream events.98 These top-

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down initiatives are trickling down through Portuguese society and thus becoming incorporated into everyday practices. The postcolonial immigrants themselves are conspicuously absent from these activities though, as in daily life ‘banal nationalism’99 prevails in Portuguese society, rather than a more encompassing view of who belongs to Portugal’s history.100 In fact, traces of the African presence nearly disappeared from twentiethcentury Lisbon city guides, as if they had been laboriously wiped out during the recent past.101 It is no wonder that the attitudes underpinning such views of the past are themselves rejected by the youths of postcolonial communities.102 They are now being industriously recovered, in some rare, recent initiatives. And now two or more images of Lisbon coexist – one being the version of the ‘African’ city.103 For a long time the cultural life of immigrants stayed within their own communities. African immigrant associations played an important role in hosting cultural initiatives and passing on the cultural heritage to the youth. But entering into the public sphere was inevitable as a significant second generation of African ancestry came of age.104 Indo-Mozambican, Chinese-Mozambican and Brazilian communities have different agendas. The cohesive and supportive community structures of the first two protect their members and facilitate the youths’ transition into professions and entrepreneurial activities; the latter are recently settled, and no significant second generation has, as yet, emerged. Meanwhile, Brazilian popular culture pervades Portuguese society, much as any other expression of global mass culture – through ‘telenovelas’, music, cinema, cable television and, to some degree, through literature. In this respect Brazilian immigrants constitute a new niche market for these cultural productions.105

Politics of Identity Public events organized by immigrant organizations usually only attract modest outside participation. The events that succeed in reaching out, however, add a new cultural idiom to the urban cultural arenas that are sustained by an increasingly diverse migrant population and a growing cosmopolitan taste. A small portion of the very diverse group of retornados and of other groups who have had a migratory experience (from Africa and elsewhere) are important anchors for such ‘cross-over’ experiences. Music is the first medium to catch public attention. It is therefore an attractive activity for a significant number of youths of African descent, born and settled in Lisbon, who, like the majority of the young, are first and foremost attracted to global trends echoed through the global media.106 Only a few can make a living from their music, of course. But it is clearly

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a voice in the public sphere, denouncing inequities and discrimination, and is a way of asserting a public identity. Harassment by the police and strained relationships with parents are some of the topics addressed, notably by rappers.107 Often having an ephemeral existence, myriad initiatives under the hip-hop umbrella emerged in liminal spaces, contesting and defying social order, and notably using skin colour as a marker of social boundary. Nuno Domingues,108 who studied such underground hip-hop experiences, concludes that asserting particular forms of belonging (to the neighbourhood and its socioeconomic context) goes hand in hand with the use of race as a form of moral critique against the mainstream, which is in itself a force of ideological mobilization. But music can be used for many other purposes as well, such as reviving and celebrating the roots in the ancestors’ homeland, creating new accords, or something else. The music and other minimally structured initiatives (restaurants, theatre, discotheques, dance performances and a kaleidoscope of other leisure activities) operated on a much smaller scale in the context of Lusophony than mainstream cultural events. Two surveys made on the supply of such grassroots activities revealed the obvious fragility of many of them, and the distinct geographical location of ‘African’ Lisbon. And yet, as Francisco Carvalho’s research on tourist guides, magazines and newspapers has demonstrated,109 it is beginning to make its mark on the urban image of Lisbon. Moreover, this regular supply of entertainment and cultural events in Lisbon can also assume more organized forms. Two such specific initiatives are worth mentioning. One is the ‘Sabura – Africa in the vicinity’110 ethnic tourism project, organized by a local association in a shanty town called Cova da Moura, on the outskirts of Lisbon. This was an empty private space, squatted by retornados who could not find or afford houses to live in, and who decided to build their own houses there. Once the chain migrations started to arrive, it developed into its present dimensions. As public re-housing progressed in the 1990s, this space became an object of fierce competition between urban development planners and the residents of the area. A local association, Moinho da Juventude (the ‘Youth Mill’),111 had (and still has) a crucial role in organizing resistance against the urban development schemes. Its leader, a Belgian citizen who had read about ethnic tourism to the Netherlands, decided to initiate something similar together with Cape-Verdean youths from Cova da Moura. The aim of the initiative was to obtain outside support. In order to attract visitors to this rundown and feared neighbourhood,112 the ethnic tourism project mobilized local businesses (restaurants, hairdressers, music stores, and so on) and fostered individual skills (for example residents who could play traditional music or dance to Cape-Verdean rhythms) to present ‘Africa’ to the visitors. Another objective was to expose the youths to the culture

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of their elders and imbue them with a sense of pride. The association was granted the Human Rights award by the Portuguese Parliament in 2007. The second initiative, Batoto Yetu Portugal (BYP),113 is a project initiated by an Angolan-Congolese dancer and choreographer, who gathered together children of African origin in order to create a group of ‘African dancers’. The initiator lives in the United States, where he formed the first Batoto Yetu in New York. He was granted support by the Portuguese ambassador to the U.S. (a returnee from Angola), the Luso-American Foundation and the Municipal Council, to create a similar group in Portugal. BYP is located on the outskirts of Lisbon, in Oeiras, a district where there is a significant immigrant population of African ancestry and with few resources. The founders’ goals were to establish a sort of ‘magnetic pole’ that would keep the youth away ‘from the streets’ and other ‘bad influences’, and at the same time create an opportunity to ‘recover the culture’ of Africa. In the same vein as the ‘Sabura’ project, BYP also aims at boosting pride among the youth in their cultural inheritance, and show to the outside world the richness of African culture. The instrumental use of ethnic markers takes much more than simple logistics (restaurants and the like); it also takes the creation and diffusion of cultural markers and identities. As shown by Costa,114 a variety of agents are involved, including associations, music and dance groups, writers, mass media specialists, NGOs, politicians, and so on. They produce new readings of the present, past and future. In common, these activities show that cultural production is used to assert specific roots and a sense of commonality through building an African identity – which makes sense to second generation immigrants, but not to the first generation which strictly identifies itself with ethnicity and nation. Building a meaningful ‘African identity’, and reaching beyond other schisms (notably, national), where skin colour and transnational attachments convey both a sense of ‘distinctness’ and ‘authenticity’, allows reaching out to the mainstream with an autonomous vision generated by the community itself, and negotiating it with contrasting understandings of ‘Africa’ and ‘Europe’. Sheila Khan’s study on Afro-Mozambicans,115 focusing on their agency as postcolonial migrants in the former metropolis, refers to ongoing negotiations of new, hybrid forms of understandings. The cases above show how multifaceted these references to the relationship with Portugal are – spanning from a stance of utter rejection, to a proposal of a reboot for a new ‘encounter’ of cultures, and to an instrumental appropriation of ethnicity seen as an opportunity. The diversity of such negotiations should not be overlooked if one wishes to understand the postcolonial situation in Portugal. A third type of event is worth mentioning, involving transnational circulation and more professional organization. For young, grassroots art-

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ists, a stint in Lisbon is essential for a career in the cultural arena and to be able to make a living from their art. It is also an opportunity for creators living in Portugal to widen their transnational connections. Both Santos Rocha’s and Augusto’s case studies116 of the transnational lives of CapeVerdean musicians give evidence to the importance of the central location of Lisbon for economic reasons, and for achieving a professional critical mass as well.117 The same occurs with literature, according to Angolan writers Agualusa and Ondjaki.118 Other transnational anchors are also important for achieving a sustainable market. When this involves other Portuguese-speaking countries, Lusophony or a multicultural (metiss) identity premised on the common language is the backdrop of a ‘shared understanding’119 and a lever for mobilizing transnational social capital. This is not the case when artists have reached the heights of cultural recognition. In that position they operate as common transnational economic units, and the local and transnational ties are strictly a professional matter. As for the Brazilian communities, no such processes can be discerned. Whatever presence Brazilian symbols may have in the Portuguese public sphere, it comes through commercial mass diffusion, not from immigrants – except when they act as interpreters of the former. However, a parallel can be drawn, as the dense, everyday presence of such communities in specific places, and the distinct Brazilian cultural symbols they consume, new in the Portuguese context, contribute to these districts being labelled as outsider’s places.

How Portugal Grapples with its Colonial Past The history of Portuguese colonial expansion both transformed other peoples’ cultures, economies, institutions and social structures, as well as leaving deep imprints on Portuguese society itself. José Sobral120 aptly examined the way this process was interpreted and discussed throughout history. Portuguese intellectuals held opposing views on whether miscegenation was the cause of decadence and destruction of the Portuguese ‘inheritance’ or, on the contrary, had been essential to the singularity of the Portuguese culture and people. The discussion continues to this day, albeit under distinct guises. Miguel Vale de Almeida121 argues that although the reciprocal influences are by and large acknowledged, the stress is still placed on what the Portuguese ‘give to the world’ – not on what is gained from the contact with others.122 Immigrants (notably postcolonial), and no longer the empire, are now a central element of the discussion. Evidence gathered from polls reveals that the stereotypes of these newcomers emphasize supposed continuities with the subaltern colonial subjects

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– not the virtues of cross-fertilization. How can a cosmopolitan climate emerge in such a context? The aforementioned ‘Lusophone community’ ideology that is endorsed by the government and a large part of Portugal’s cultural elite aims at a national discourse where commonalities speak louder than historical differences. Recent national celebrations used history as a central motive and presented the maritime expansion as an ‘encounter of cultures’. This ‘Lusophone community’ is, however, by and large ignored by the majority of Portuguese society, and even dismissed by some. Those who do pay attention to other Lusophone political and cultural expressions beyond mass culture represent a cosmopolitan fringe of society, which does not necessarily endorse the government vision. Outside Portugal, the political and economic initiatives aimed at creating bridges (such as the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries) are acknowledged, but no real attempt has been made at going any further.123 In fact, the Brazilian scholar, Oscar Thomas, labels the project as a ‘paper tiger’.124 Regrets about the secondary status that other Lusophone countries allegedly hold in Portuguese foreign policy, and the lack of actual and substantial political, economic and cultural ties between the non-metropolitan Lusophone states, are recurrently echoed.125 Since the overthrow of the Salazar regime in 1974, Portugal has gone through three decades of intense transformation. The sudden exit from the colonies, the repatriation and integration of hundreds of thousands of retornados, the demobilization of a huge army, the process of ridding Portuguese society of the remains of the authoritarian regime, the rebuilding of the political, institutional, cultural and economic connections with the former colonies, and the necessary revision of the history taught in schools, was all done in few decades. While integration in the European Union took place, the ‘privileged ties’ with Africa were replaced by a ‘return to Europe’. And the racialized structure of Salazar Portugal with its colonies in Africa was replaced by the emergence of a human rights discourse in favour of diversity in the former metropolis. The ‘Lusophone community’ project was bound, in this context, to meet with lack of interest and even strong resistance – from reactions of mistrust towards the other Lusophone nations, to accusations of being a project of the elites and for the elites. There is a huge and growing body of scholarly literature on the maritime expansion and the imperial experience, an increasing literary production on Africa, Asia and Brazil, and more recently, a significant production of multi-media initiatives on the war, the retornados, the colonial economy, the Portuguese cultural heritage outside Europe, and so on. But that the awareness of, and affinity to, the Lusophone world on the part of the

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Portuguese people is at best superficial, has been demonstrated by public surveys.126 The bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007 did not draw much attention. Apart from a few academic initiatives and sparse references in the media, the event had no significant organized echo in Portugal. This is denounced by a new generation of Portuguese researchers, such as Jerónimo & Domingos,127 as the expression of the inability of Portuguese society to come to terms with the remains of its imperial ideology. In the same vein, Cláudia Castelo sees the old ideas of Gilberto Freyre, the Brazilian scholar whose elaboration on the ‘Lusotropical’ world inspired the pre-1974 authoritarian regime, resonating in the ‘Lusophone community’ project.128 In this context, how does Portugal grapple with its colonial past? In order to answer to this question raised by the editors of this volume, one should bear in mind that decolonization and the end of nearly five decades of authoritarian rule occurred simultaneously, as part of the same process. The internal conditions leading to that outcome (notably the fastpaced socio-economic differentiation in the 1960s) also help to explain the surprisingly consensual attitude of the elites on how to deal with history and the colonial legacy. After the intense anti-colonial rhetoric of the revolutionary period, new bases had to be built to present the overseas experience as an ‘encounter of cultures’, and at the same time to integrate the many disturbing aspects of colonialism in the national narrative. This is, however, on the whole ignored by society at large. In this context, immigrants and their offspring, and the widening group of transnational cultural artists, have an important role in forging and down-rooting new understandings of the past and of the present. Both top-down and bottom-up initiatives are, progressively and following different paths, reestablishing the transnational ties cut off during the 1970s, and increasingly negotiating a new narrative. However, there is still a long way to go before achieving the cosmopolitan ‘Lusophone’ project.

Notes Research partially funded by the national Foundation for Science and Technology, through the project grants POCTI (SOC/47152/2002) and Praxis XXI (P/SOC/12104/1998).

1. Godinho, Os Descobrimentos e a economia mundial; Tinhorão, Os negros em Portugal. 2. Bethencourt & Curto, ‘Introduction’. 3. http://www.cplp.org/ 4. Although it had a distinct statute (see details in Costa, Fronteiras da identidade), we also considered Macao, as it has joined (or requested to do so) the institutions built under the Portuguese-speaking community project (see section 3).

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5. Following the editors’ guidelines, this list includes people from the overseas territories under Portuguese rule until the Second World War. 6. A previous colonial migration circuit was in place between the colonies – see Umbelina Neto, ‘Les iles de Sao Tome & Principe (1853–1903)’. The novelty of this scheme lay in the fact that now a flow was being channelled to the ‘metropolis’ – with a double goal: reducing the hardships in the place of origin (Cape Verde, hard hit by drought and famine) and providing labour to meet the industrial demand (Carreira, Migrações nas Ilhas de Cabo Verde). 7. See Saint-Maurice, Identidades Reconstruídas; Carreira, Migrações nas Ilhas de Cabo Verde. 8. Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision, Estimates 1950–2010, http://esa. un.org/unpd/wpp2008/peps_stock-indicators.htm; http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp2008/ peps_period-indicators.htm (accessed September 2009). 9. e.g. Ovalle-Bahamón, ‘The Wrinkles of Decolonization and Nationness’. 10. Alexandre, Velho Brasil Novas Áfricas, inter alia. 11. Castelo, Passagens para África. 12. According to Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre’s much diffused thesis in Portugal, there are unique characteristics of the ‘world created by the Portuguese’, the ‘Luso-tropical’ world – see also Castelo, Modo Português de Estar no Mundo. 13. Castelo, Passagens para África, 216. 14. Whereas Mozambique in the 1997 census counted only 8,000 Portuguese (source: INE, II Recenseamento geral da População e Habitação, the second census after independence; we are grateful to Dr Inês Raimundo, from the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane [Mozambique], for this valuable information), Angola is now attracting significant numbers of Portuguese technicians and professionals: around 60,000 according to recent figures (see, among others, http://www.angonoticias.com/full_headlines.php?id=20393 [4 Feb 2009]; and http://noticias.sapo.pt/lusa/artigo/9451960.html [19 Mar 2009]). 15. Castelo, Passagens para África. 16. ‘Secretaria de Estado dos Retornados’, Decree-Law #584-B/1975 (source: Pires, Migrações e Integração). 17. Pires, Migrações e Integração, 227–45. 18. Tavares de Almeida & Pinto, Portuguese Ministers, 12. Although no equivalent study on business people is available, several monographs show the economic success of Mozambican-Indians settled in Portugal. 19. Tiesler, Muçulmanos na margem: a nova presença islâmica em Portugal, 10. 20. Pires et al., Os Retornados. 21. Marques et al., Realojamento e Integração Social; id., Renovação Urbana em Oeiras; Leitão, ‘Combater a exclusão’. 22. Called the Estado Novo (new state), this regime was formally instituted with the 1933 Constitution; scholars generally use the 1928–1974 time bracket to refer to it. 23. Over 500 according to the census made in 2000, not including returnees (Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Recenseamento geral. População e habitação. Ano 2000, pdf document). We are grateful to Dr Francisco Carvalho, from the Universidade de Cabo Verde (Cape Verde), for this valuable information. 24. Carreira, Migrações nas Ilhas de Cabo Verde. 25. Machado, Contrastes e continuidades. 26. Umbelina Neto, ‘Les iles de Sao Tome & Principe’. 27. For a long time the prevailing opinion was that Portugal was an emigration country. Public government and administration started acknowledging the presence of immigrants only in the mid-1990s. 28. See details in Valente Rosa et al., Contributos dos imigrantes na Demografia Portuguesa, and Fonseca et al., Reunificação familiar e imigração em Portugal.

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29. In 1975, the date former Portuguese Africa officially recognized independences, a special bill granting Portuguese citizenship to certain groups of citizens living in the colonies – including those of Asian descent – was passed (Decree-Law #308-A/75). 30. This group is identified in Table 4.2 as Indo-Mozambicans or Chinese-Mozambicans. 31. See further details in Bastos & Bastos, ‘Unity within Plurality of a Tricontinental Indian Diaspora’, and id., De Moçambique a Portugal; Costa, Fronteiras da identidade; Malheiros, Imigrantes na região de Lisboa; and Dias, ‘Remigração e etnicidade’. 32. As Portugal never recognized Indonesian annexation. 33. See also Manuel, ‘Conhecimentos, atitudes e práticas sobre planeamento familiar’, esp. Chap. 3. 34. Also in the former metropolis and in Portuguese Africa, until the early 1960s when economic pressures forced a change. See details in Paulo, ‘Da “educação colonial portuguesa” ao ensino no Ultramar’. 35. Barreto & Almeida, Capitalismo e emigração em Portugal. 36. Venâncio, Presença portuguesa. 37. Casa do Brasil em Lisboa, A segunda vaga da imigração brasileira para Portugal. 38. This is not, however, the largest community outside of Brazil; it comes after the United States, Paraguay and Japan, and is roughly equivalent to the one settled in the United Kingdom (Ministério das Relações Exteriores, Brasileiros no mundo. Estimativas, 2008). 39. Brazilians may enter Portuguese territory with a tourist passport. 40. See also the following sources: http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/cvc/conhecer/bases-tematicas/historia-da-lingua-portuguesa.html; and http://www.observatoriolp.com (accessed November 2008). 41. Marques & Lopes Martins, Schooling and Migration in Portugal; Marques et al., School and Diversity in a Context of a Weak State. The proportion of early school leavers was 39 per cent in 2005 – 46 per cent for foreign students (source: European Commission, 2006). 42. In spite of the fact that both Portuguese Brazilian and Portuguese European norms are formally recognized by Portuguese school authorities. 43. Pires, Migrações e integração. 44. A number of people of low-skilled and low socio-economic status of East Asian descent, coming from Oriental Africa and recently directly from Asia, make up an altogether marginal segment – by and large shunned by the group of ‘established’ ethnic Indians (see Bastos, A Comunidade Hindu da Quinta da Holandesa). 45. Baganha, ‘Immigrant Involvement in the Informal Economy’, estimates the share of the informal economy at around 20 per cent of GDP in the 1990s. Her extensive review of official and census data for the first half of the 1990s suggests that foreigners’ presence in the informal economy does not contrast with South European patterns. 46. Cachada et al., Imigração e Associação; id., Os números da imigração Africana; França, A Comunidade Caboverdeana em Portugal; Honório & Evaristo, Estudo de Caracterização da Comunidade Caboverdeana. 47. Marques, Rosa & Lopes Martins, School and Diversity; Machado, Jovens como os outros? 48. A survey was made by a Brazilian association (Casa do Brasil em Lisboa 2003), on the self-reported modes of incorporation of Brazilians who settled in Portugal between 1998 and 2003; later, a publication commissioned by the High Commissioner for Immigration included these results and presented them alongside the exploration of official data (Malheiros [ed.], A Imigração Brasileira em Portugal). 49. This protest eventually even made the cover of Time magazine. 50. Feldman-Bianco, ‘Entre a “Fortaleza” da Europa’. 51. The amnesty (so-called ‘Acordo Lula’) was signed on 11 July 2003. The Brazilian President visited Portugal twice in a short space of time (in 2003 and 2005). 52. Marques et al., Realojamento e Integração Social; id., Renovação Urbana em Oeiras; Leitão, ‘Combater a exclusão’.

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53. Decree-Law #163/93, 7 May. 54. Marques & Santos, ‘Politics, Welfare and the Rise of Immigrant Participation’; id., ‘Welfare and Immigrants’ Inclusion’. 55. A film was made voicing this concern: ‘Outros bairros’, by Angolan director Kiluange Liberdade. 56. Especially in the summertime – coinciding with school vacations. 57. The Community of the Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) was created in 1996. Ten years earlier, in 1985, and only ten years after African independence in 1975, the Union of the Portuguese-African-American-Asian Portuguese Speaking Capital Cities (UCCLA) was created. In 1999 the International Institute for the Portuguese Language (IILP) was established. See also Marques et al. (2005). 58. Godinho, Portugal. 59. See the analysis of this trend in Levitt & Glick-Schiller, ‘Conceptualizing Simultaneity’. 60. And does not include the literature by political exiles and other expatriates. 61. We use the term after R. Kastoryano’s La France, l’Allemagne et leurs immigrés analysis of the collective identity negotiations in France and Germany. According to Maciel, Língua Portuguesa, postcolonial theories, notably regarding literature, have a significant resonance in scholars of African origin who use Portuguese. But, in an interview, one such scholar complains about the ‘peripheral’ place of African cultural expressions using Portuguese in the face of the overwhelming presence of English and French on the African continent – a ‘periphery’ of the ‘periphery’ – pleading for stronger and more assertive actions in order to achieve a greater recognition of the Portuguese language (António Caeiro, Professora sãotomense defende «livre circulação de bens culturais» na CPLP, http://www.noticiaslusofonas. com/view.php?load=arcview&article=553&catogory=CPLP [accessed: 9 May 2008]). 62. Margarido, A Lusofonia e os Lusófonos; and Jerónimo & Domingos, ‘O “grémio da civilização”’. 63. Torres, ‘O Estatuto Constitucional dos Estrangeiros’. 64. Ibid., 24. 65. Replacing the 1971 Convention on Equality of Rights and Duties between Portuguese and Brazilian Citizens. 66. Torres, ‘O Estatuto Constitucional dos Estrangeiros’, 24–25. 67. Ibid., 25; Leitão, Estudo sobre cidadania, 20. 68. Leitão, Estudo sobre cidadania, 21. 69. Ibid., 23–24. 70. Torres, ‘O Estatuto Constitucional dos Estrangeiros’, 15. 71. Ibid., 24–25. 72. Ramos, ‘A renovação do Direito Português’, 233. 73. Ibid., 202. 74. i.e. the Roma, still officially designated as Gypsies in Portugal. 75. See full composition of the boards at: http://www.acime.gov.pt/docs/decrt2512002.pdf; and http://www.cicdr.pt/ (accessed 25 September 2008). See also Leitão, O processo de institucionalização das associações de origem imigrante. 76. Ramos, ‘A renovação do Direito Português’. 77. See also Ramos, ‘A renovação do Direito Português’; Ramos, Continuidade e mudança; and Ramos, ‘La double nationalité’. 78. Organic Law #2, 17 April 2006 (http://www.dgpj.mj.pt/sections/leis-da-justica/livro-viileis-da/nacionalidade/lei-da-nacionalidade [accessed 10 February 2009]). 79. Leitão, ‘O processo de institucionalização’. 80. Danese, ‘Participation beyond Citizenship’. 81. Leitão, ‘O processo de institucionalização’. 82. Marques & Santos, ‘Politics, Welfare and the Rise of Immigrant Participation’; id., ‘Welfare and Immigrants’ Inclusion’.

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83. There were 39,166 in 1993, and 35,082 in 1996 – overwhelmingly citizens from Lusophone African countries. Source: SEF (Board for the Control of Foreigners and Borders). 84. Decree-Law #167, 3 May 2007 (http://www.portaldocidadao.pt/NR/rdonlyres/20A8FF9328F9-4746-A67C-208BBC3725CB/8292/Lei_organica_ACIDI.pdf). The new High Commissioner was the former deputy to the previous High Commissioner. 85. Decree-Law # 251/2002 (http://www.acime.gov.pt/docs/decrt2512002.pdf). 86. http://www.dgeep.mtss.gov.pt/planeamento/pimigrantes.pdf 87. See above in this section the reference to ‘national treatment’ in the Portuguese Constitution. 88. http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2009 89. Santos, Pela Mão de Alice. 90. Seabra, ‘Delinquência a preto e branco’. 91. Marques, ‘As associações de origem imigrante’. But the reference to ‘minority’ or ‘immigrant’ is nearly absent. 92. Kastoryano, La France, l’Allemagne et leurs immigrés. 93. We use the term after Robert Michels’s Political Parties analysis of the ‘oligarchical tendencies of organization’. 94. Carvalho, Filhos de imigrantes caboverdeanos em Portugal; Pondja, ‘Um olhar sobre os moçambicanos estudantes’. 95. The first time I heard the argument, it was voiced by a Spanish-speaking South American student at an event organized by the University of Madrid; later on, I heard it in Portugal from Brazilian students. 96. As stated by Carlos Fortuna and Paulo Peixoto, ‘history’ is, undoubtedly, the typical brand associated with Portuguese cities (Fortuna & Peixoto, ‘A recriação e reprodução de representações no processo de transformação’). The 1998 Lisbon world exposition extensively used symbols of the maritime expansion period, and anchored the city brand in references to cosmopolitanism, with the aim of boosting its competitive capacity (Ferreira, ‘A exposição mundial de Lisboa de 1998’, and ‘Processos culturais e políticos de formatação de um mega-evento’); the 17th European Exposition of Art, Science and Culture, held in 1983, and Europalia in 1991, also used the same references. 97. Notably research in history, people creating new symbols and working in the mass diffusion of mega-events, experiments in hybrid cultural expressions … See also Claudino Ferreira, Intermediação cultural e grandes eventos, and ‘Processos culturais e políticos’. 98. Lusophone book fairs, and academic events convening researchers from the Lusophone countries and the like, are presently rather common. Maciel’s Língua Portuguesa listed fairs dedicated to Lusophone African literature, festivals of African cultures, a whole month dedicated to Africa, and even a database on Lusophone African artists, among myriad other initiatives. 99. Billig, Banal Nationalism. 100. Delicado, ‘A solidariedade como valor social no Portugal contemporâneo’. 101. Carvalho, ‘O lugar dos negros na imagem de Lisboa’. 102. Carvalho, Filhos de imigrantes caboverdeanos em Portugal; Domingues, Jovens Negros em Lisboa. 103. See Agualusa, O mundo em Lisboa; and Loude, Lisboa, na cidade negra. 104. Domingues & Carvalho, ‘Post-Colonial Second Generation’. 105. Pacheco, ‘Música brasileira’. 106. Domingues, Jovens Negros em Lisboa. 107. See the interview with several musicians of Cape-Verdean ancestry living in Lisbon, in ‘Música e músicos caboverdeanos em Lisboa’, February 2009. 108. Domingues, Jovens Negros em Lisboa. 109. Carvalho, ‘O lugar dos negros na imagem de Lisboa’. 110. ‘Sabura – África aqui tão perto’. Sabura is a Creole term meaning ‘something enjoyable’. See details in Costa, Globalização, diversidade e cidades criativas. 111. ‘Moinho da Juventude’ (http://www.moinhodajuventude.org/index.html).

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112. Perceived as dangerous, and associated with drug trafficking and gangs. 113. Batoto Yetu is a Swahili term meaning, so we were told, ‘our children’. See further details in http://www.batotoyetu.pt; and Costa, Globalização, diversidade e cidades criativas. 114. Costa, ‘Globalização, diversidade e cidades criativas’. 115. Khan, ‘Identidades sem chão’. 116. Santos Rocha, A Projecção da Música; Augusto, Popular Music. 117. The first one focused on musicians living in Cape Verde and Portugal, and the second one on musicians living in the Netherlands. 118. Cordeiro, Portugal no Caminho dos Criadores de África. 119. Maciel, Língua Portuguesa. 120. José Sobral, ‘O Norte, o Sul, a raça, a nação’, inter alia. 121. Almeida, Um Mar da Cor da Terra. 122. See, on this particular aspect of the imperial ideology, Castelo, O Modo Português de Estar no Mundo. 123. The ‘Lusophone Citizen’ statute, the basis for the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries, never really existed. Yet, two small states, Cape Verde first (in 1997 [http:// www.parlamento.cv/lusofonia/index.htm]) and later Guinea-Bissau (in 2008), both passed national bills instituting such a statute. (See, concerning Cape Verde, José Luís Jesus, ‘Direitos de cidadania no espaço lusófono’.) 124. Thomas, ‘Tigres de papel’. 125. See Costa and Varela, ‘Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa’. 126. See, inter alia, Cabral & Pais, Os Jovens Portugueses de Hoje. 127. Jerónimo & Domingos, ‘O “grémio da civilização”’. 128. Castelo, O Modo Português de Estar no Mundo, 140.

Chapter 5

Return of the Natives? Children of Empire in Post-imperial Japan Nicole Leah Cohen

Introduction The journey to Japan of young Japanese born and raised in colonial Korea is one snapshot of the experiences of over 6.5 million Japanese nationals repatriated from all parts of the empire after the Second World War. As children who were ethnically Japanese but not natives of Japan proper, they participated, along with their families, in one of the largest collective migrations in history. The repatriation of over one million former colonial subjects living and working in Mainland Japan – mostly Taiwanese, Korean and Chinese – back to their respective countries after the dissolution of the empire is the flipside to this narrative. When Japanese relocated to mainland Japan they were not treated as homecoming nationals. The Government and non-governmental organizations worked to ease their transition, but resources in a time of scarcity were devoted more to rebuilding the country and economy than helping a population linked to imperialism and war, which people wanted to forget. Given the emphasis on monoculturalism and unity in the post-war period, there was no immediate nexus between the colonial experience and the post-war adoption of multicultural policies – something linked more to later migrants to Japan in the 1980s and 1990s than to populations displaced by the collapse of the empire. Perhaps this is the most conspicuous difference between the Japanese case and postcolonial migrations to Europe. The Japanese repatriate population was extremely diverse in that its constituents were displaced not only from the ‘formal’ empire, which consisted of Korea, Taiwan, the southern half of Sakhalin (Karafuto), the Liaotung Peninsula, and the South Seas mandates of the Mariana, Marshall and Notes for this chapter begin on page 177.

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Caroline Islands, but also from the ‘informal’ empire, which encompassed territories like China and Manchuria that the Japanese ostensibly treated as independent sovereign countries. In some regions like French Indochina, which the Japanese occupied in 1942, the Japanese population consisted mostly of soldiers, whereas in others like the Philippines, which the Japanese also occupied in 1942, the Japanese population were mostly civilians who had a history of settlement, particularly in Luzon and Davao, that traced back to the late 1890s.1 However, ‘Japanese policymakers came to perceive both the territories of the formal empire and the newly occupied areas as one undifferentiated unit,’ Mark Peattie has argued, adding that ‘[e]ven though they spoke of Asians as their brothers, it was clear the Japanese saw themselves as a masters people’.2 Thus, while differences may have distinguished the Japanese repatriate from Luzon, Kuala Lumpur or Pyongyang – as each region was incorporated and administered by the Japanese differently – Japanese occupied these countries with the wish not so much to eradicate but to replace the European colonial infrastructure with a new power structure emanating from Tokyo. In this respect ‘postimperial’ is a fitting label for the 6.5 million Japanese who made their way back to the Mainland Japan after the Second World War. In Korea, one of Japan’s older colonies, Japanese settlers had lived between two worlds, on the margins of both their ancestral homeland and its colony. They developed a hybrid identity as Japanese, who felt ‘at home’ in Korea and whose connection with Japan derived more from education than experience. From the earliest days of settlement in the late 1870s to the end of the empire with defeat in the Second World War, this identity was strongest among Japanese children who were born and raised there. Policy makers, and teachers charged with their education, took pains to define what makes someone ‘Japanese’ and how such Japaneseness might be inculcated in a colonial society. When they were repatriated after the war, these children, many of them now grown-up, found themselves strangers in Japan. Suddenly deprived of the colonial parts of their hybrid identity, their very cosmopolitanism ill suited them to a post-war society bent on redefining itself as a monoethnic, homogeneous and peace-loving nation, an image for which the Occupation was also partly responsible. Having grown up in an empire now dissolved and renounced, the children of empire were caught not only between the colonial and the postcolonial world orders, but were also compelled to negotiate their identities in a hypernational context that characterized both the Korean and Japanese sides of the strait.

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Mapping Postcolonial Migrations By the mid-1940s, the number of Japanese residents in colonial Korea approached seven hundred thousand, the largest percentage of them concentrated in Seoul (called Keijô in Japanese), where one in six residents were Japanese. A significant difference between members of this sizeable Japanese community and their predecessors, who had arrived in Seoul following the Treaty of Kanghwa in 1876, was that they regarded Korea as a permanent home in which to marry, raise children and pursue careers. They worked in diverse professions, as journalists, company employees, teachers, salesmen, waitresses, seamstresses, policemen, photographers, priests, fishmongers, pharmacists, and restaurant proprietors. They lived in a material environment which, like other colonial cities of the Japanese empire such as Taipei, Xinjing and Harbin, included many of the comforts of urban life in the homeland, including air-conditioned cinemas, and department stores stocked with Japanese clothes and food. Second- and third-generation Japanese living in Seoul were raised in this bustling, cosmopolitan environment, which was also a very hierarchical one. Their lives were characterized by a complex dynamic that at once distanced them from the Koreans living in their communities, and at the same time drew them near to the physical and cultural landscape of their colonial home. Although their lifestyles resembled, and were indeed modelled on, those of the Mainland Japanese, as in most settler societies they remained different in many ways. These tensions, which determined their identity as children growing up in the empire, became more problematic when defeat forced them to repatriate to Mainland Japan and confront their differences as ‘Japanese’ from those born and raised in the metropole. The Japanese emperor’s proclamation of surrender on 15 August 1945 was a ‘bolt from the blue to the Japanese living in Korea’, a reporter wrote in the Yomiuri-hôchi.3 According to him, the news was all the more staggering because Japanese in Korea were largely unaware of immediate political trends and decisions in Japan and were confused as to what to do next. Without seeing it, nor did they comprehend the extent of devastation from the atomic bombing. The reality of defeat, however, sunk in as the American Occupation forces, Army XXIV Corps, arrived in Korea on 6 September 1945; and on 9 September, Governor-General Abe Nobuyuki, Chôsen Army Commander Lieutenant General Kozuki Yoshio, Navy Commander Vice Admiral Yamaguchi Gisaburô and other senior military officials formally surrendered to Commanding General John R. Hodge in Seoul.4 In contrast to the euphoria of the newly liberated Koreans, this was a time of mourning for the Japanese in Korea. They were one part of Ja-

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pan’s overseas imperial community, which comprised nearly 9 per cent of its national population [see Table 5.1]. The end of the war initiated new questions of belonging and identity as approximately 6.5 million Japanese, over half of them military personnel, were hikiage – literally lifted and pulled – from the colonies to Mainland Japan. Allowed to bring onethousand yen and the luggage they could carry, adjusting to life in postwar Japan was, for many, like starting all over again. Of course, many former colonial subjects would argue this was a penalty of war and their just due. Table 5.1 Repatriation of Japanese as of 1 May 1950 Area

No. Evacuated since End of War

China Manchuria South-East Asia area Korea (South of 38°N) Taiwan Siberia Korea (North of 38°N) Sakhalin & Kurils Dalian Australia (including Borneo, Papua New Guinea

1,501,265 1,045,525 710,727 595,479 479,339 470,356 322,546 292,590 225,954 138,680

Philippines Pacific islands Okinawa and vicinity French Indochina Hong Kong Dutch Indonesia Hawaii New Zealand TOTAL

132,917 130,906 131,764 32,037 19,222 15,590 3,592 797 6,249,286

Source: Hikiage Engochô, Heiwa o motomete, 1950. Note: Figures vary according to source due to the movement and transfer of peoples over national borders in the days, months and years following the end of the war.

The repatriation of Japanese throughout the empire had different timelines and was influenced by different factors. Article 9 of the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945 prioritized military demobilization, specifying that ‘the Japanese military forces, after being completely disarmed, will be permitted to return to their homes with the opportunity to lead peaceful and

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productive lives’.5 Once the process of repatriating soldiers and ‘undesirables’ such as Shintô priests and prostitutes6 was underway, the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers, General Douglas MacArthur, began to turn his attention to the repatriation of Japanese civilians living in places like Korea, Manchuria, Siberia, the southern half of Sakhalin, China, SouthEast Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines. The logistics involved in repatriating such a large group of Japanese nationals were tremendous. In the early stages of repatriation, from September 1945 to February 1946, Japanese ships which were still operational after the war and a limited number of U.S.-operated ships were used to transport Japanese back to Japan. As the repatriation process reached its peak from March to July 1946, more American ships were made available to assist in this process. From July 1946 onwards, efforts shifted more towards removing Japanese from Soviet-controlled areas as well as SouthEast Asia.7 Historians have characterized the repatriation of Japanese from Taiwan as the most straightforward. In Taiwan, which was a less violent regime than Japanese colonial rule in Korea and elsewhere, there was little retribution against Japanese in the aftermath of the war. Officials from the Chinese Nationalist Party helped to oversee the deportation of some 350,000 Japanese civilians living there. The Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare, which oversaw repatriation efforts, depicted this process as peaceful and orderly in their reports, although some of the Japanese repatriates, who felt that they suffered, later disputed this characterization.8 The deportation of Japanese from the Chinese mainland was initiated in November 1945 from Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tanggu, and by May 1948 most of the approximately 3.5 million Japanese in China had returned to Japan. After the Communist victory and Mao Zedong’s establishment of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949, the fate of some tens of thousands of Japanese still in China grew increasingly uncertain. The eventual repatriation of these individuals would take much longer, with some, like the so-called ‘China orphans’ not returning to Japan until the 1970s and beyond.9 Japanese in Soviet-controlled territories had the most harrowing experiences at the end of the war; 41 per cent of the overseas Japanese population, or approximately 2,720,000 people, was in Soviet-occupied territory. The Soviets opened fire on the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria on 9 August 1945, and attacked the southern half of Sakhalin on 11 August, and the Kurils on 18 August. From their brief war with Japan, and the agreements previously arranged at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Soviets occupied these regions, including Korea north of the 38th parallel. Many Japanese soldiers ended up as prisoners of war

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in Siberian labour camps or elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Japanese civilians in northern Korea and Manchuria, as well as Koreans and Chinese living there, were subjected to brutal attacks and sexual violence by the invading Soviet army. Hundreds of thousands died from illness, injury, starvation, and exposure to the elements.10 By the end of 1946, despite the erratic nature of Soviet border control along the 38th parallel, American military records indicate that most Japanese in northern Korea had crossed into the south, approximately 272,000 of them (including those who had entered the north from Manchuria). By September 1948, when the Soviets transferred their control to the North’s new government, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, nearly all of the remaining Japanese had been repatriated.11 At the time of Japan’s defeat, a majority of the Japanese residents of Korea were living in southern Korea, with as many as one hundred and sixty thousand in Seoul.12 Like a changing of the guard, almost immediately after the announcement of surrender, the landscape of Seoul changed – Japanese people dressed in the khaki wartime national uniform almost disappeared from public view, and thousands of Koreans dressed in traditional white took to the streets. Shouts of mansei (hooray!) rang through the air, and colourful Korean flags flapped in the breeze where Japanese ones had the day before. Although there were few stories of unrest in Seoul, where tanks and armoured motorcars stood prepared for mobilization at a moment’s notice, fighting, looting, and incidents of violence erupted elsewhere throughout Korea. At mass demonstrations, Koreans carried banners that read, ‘Japanese! Go home walking to Pusan, swimming to Hakate’, and ‘Remember the Great Kantô Earthquake’ – referring to when the Japanese massacred thousands of Koreans in 1923 in Mainland Japan. In the eight days between the emperor’s announcement of unconditional surrender and 23 August, 146 acts of violence against Japanese were reported throughout the country, and even more against Koreans deemed pro-Japanese.13 Merrell Benninghoff, political advisor to the American Occupation forces, warned, ‘Southern Korea can best be described as a powder keg ready to explode at the application of a spark’. The lingering presence of Japanese, for whom, ‘the hatred of the Koreans … is unbelievably bitter’, was a further provocation for violence.14 Despite this uneasy atmosphere, many of the Japanese living in Korea wished to remain on Korean soil, which illustrates how rooted their lives were there. In a meeting of prominent Japanese citizens in Seoul on 25 August 1945, the issue was raised: We want to restore calmness without further delay and see to it that those who wish to return [to Japan] return, and those who wish to stay [in Korea] stay … We want

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to do as much as possible to help those who wish to return to the homeland [but] with present circumstances being such that our return will not be warmly received, for the sake of the future we want to see as many people as possible stay, and see to it that they are properly cared for.15

The desire of some Japanese to remain in Seoul after the defeat reflects a colonial myopia. Many Japanese were aware that circumstances in Mainland Japan, which had suffered severe air raids and two atomic bombings, were less than ideal for starting a new life. Their property, businesses, schools and social networks were firmly established in Korea. Yet, at the same time, the Japanese of Korea did not fully grasp the resentment with which most Koreans viewed them, no matter the shouts of mansei that filled the air. Perhaps they were expecting the fervour to dissipate in a couple of days. In any case, following the formal surrender of the Japanese military to General Hodge on 9 September 1945, this vision of permanent residency in Seoul was shattered. The Japanese were given no choice but to return ‘home’. They were repatriated from the south relatively quickly, many in the first months after the end of the war, and all of them within a year. Also caught in the post-war shuffle were millions of non-Japanese residents in Japan, mainly Korean, Taiwanese and Chinese, who wished to be repatriated to their respective homelands. Nearly two million Koreans were living in Japan at the end of the war according to statistics of the Home Ministry. The Act of Annexation in 1910 had permitted them to travel and work throughout the Japanese empire, and many went to Japan to seek employment, settling in large numbers in cities like Osaka, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukuoka. Economic opportunities following the 1931 Manchurian Incident lured many more Korean workers to Japan in the 1930s, and under the National Manpower Mobilization Act of 1939, Koreans were conscripted in large numbers to work in places like factories, mines and munitions plants.16 With the end of the war, many of these Koreans wished to return home. Those who stayed in Japan as so-called resident Koreans (zainichi) ‘suffered a complex and multiple discrimination under the Occupation’ when both Japan and the United States promoted an image of Japanese homogeneity in the interest of creating national cohesion, unity, and regional stability.17 The Occupation’s policy on the repatriation of Koreans as well as other ethnic minorities was to ‘get them out’.18 Indeed, most of Japan’s two million Koreans were repatriated to Korea after the war ended. Those who remained in Japan – an estimated six hundred thousand of them – lost their voting rights in 1945, were required to register as resident aliens under the Alien Registration Law, and were stripped of their Japanese nationality under the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1952.19

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Adjustment, Acculturation, and Repatriate Activism At the end of the war, Japan’s largest cities experienced a mass exodus as people fled to the countryside in search of shelter, food and stability. Tokyo’s population had plummeted from nearly seven million in 1940 to less than three million in 1945, and similar reductions in population were evident in cities like Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama and Kobe; bombing had destroyed 58 per cent of Yokohama, 56 per cent of Kobe, 40 per cent of Tokyo, and 35 per cent of Osaka. Two and a half million dwellings, most of them in the cities, were obliterated in air raids.20 Many repatriates consequently settled in rural areas when they first returned to Japan. In addition, a large number of Japanese had originally emigrated to Korea and the other colonies from rural areas, particularly in western Japan, and wanted to return to places where they still had family ties. Once repatriates arrived in Japan, responsibility for processing and resettling them was assumed by the Japanese government, specifically the Ministry of Health and Welfare, with limited supervision by the Allied Powers.21 With repatriation centres in places like Maizuru, Shimonoseki, Sasebo, Senzaki, Kagoshima, Kure, Hakata, Uraga, Yokohama, Moji and Hakodate, a Demobilization Ministry initially handled the repatriation of military personnel whereas an Institute for the Welfare of Repatriates (Hikiage engo in) addressed the repatriation of civilians. Eventually both civilian and military repatriation were subsumed by the Office for the Welfare of Repatriates (Hikiage engo chô), which later became the Bureau of Repatriate Welfare (Hikiage engo kyoku), and finally the Bureau of Social Welfare (Shakai engo kyoku). This bureau, in its various incarnations, was responsible for supplying repatriates with their immediate needs, including clothing, meals, temporary housing, and transportation to their ‘home’ towns.22 Because jobs, food and housing were scarce, and others regarded repatriates as willing participants in wartime militarism, there was a stigma against them when they returned, a stigma other repatriates like Portuguese retornados shared. The latter ‘returned’ to Portugal from its five former African colonies in 1974–75, increasing Portugal’s population by 6–7 per cent at a time when housing and jobs were similarly scarce and the economy ailing.23 Yet just as retornados were recognized as citizens of Portugal provided they could produce the paperwork, Japanese hikiagesha were considered legal nationals of Japan once they disembarked from ships and received repatriate certificates. Looked down upon only perhaps more than civilian repatriates, were the millions of demobilized soldiers, especially wounded veterans who were concrete representations of Japan’s defeat. Most troubling were the hundreds of thousands of Japanese

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POWs who began returning from Siberian prisoner of war camps in the late 1940s still singing ‘the International’, repeating Communistic propaganda, and waving red flags. One such released POW recalled returning to his high school and being told by the same principal who sent him off to war with great fanfare that he could receive his diploma, but to then ‘please go somewhere else’. Veterans were shunned.24 Although ‘the greatest single aid in the social rehabilitation of the repatriate [was] … the cohesive force exerted by the Japanese family’, a number of political, social and economic associations also aided in their resettlement.25 Aside from limited assistance from the government and its local war victims’ relief bureaus in the form of job counselling, housing, and rehabilitation loans, a combination of nationwide and grassroots organizations played an important role assisting repatriates. Some examples of the dozens of repatriate groups are: the Relief Association for the Compatriots Overseas (which was affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the Association to Support Compatriots in Manchuria and Mongolia, Self-Help Association for Former Agrarian Colonists in Manchuria, and the Relief Society of Compatriots Repatriated from Korea. The socalled ‘Movement of Love’, which did not begin until 1948, also provided a myriad of services to returnees, including counselling, at the same time as working hard to promote awareness about repatriation throughout Japan by distributing posters, stickers, newspapers, leaflets and teaching materials, as well as sponsoring radio broadcasts, films, puppet theatre, street fairs, job workshops, and even exhibitions featuring the artwork of repatriated children.26 Integration into Japanese society was difficult in many respects for repatriated children who had been born and raised overseas. They found themselves marked by their experience abroad. Children raised speaking standard Japanese in national schools in Seoul, for instance, lacked the regional accents of the Japanese hometowns of their relatives.27 When children, like Sakuma Teru,28 were repatriated to regions such as Kôchi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, they found themselves altogether unfamiliar with the intonations, terminology and expressions of the local patois.29 Kikuchi Mikiko, who returned to Nagasaki as a twelve-year-old, discovered that: ‘Because words were dialect, I was out of step. Unlike today when we have become used to hearing it in the media, I didn’t understand Nagasaki dialect to the extent that it sounded like a foreign language.’30 The inability to communicate made returning children stand out, branding them as strangers in their own ‘home’. Although there was nothing that physically distinguished them from other Japanese youths, their lack of accent immediately betrayed their identity.

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Most difficulties, at least for the Japanese relocated from Seoul and other urban centres, however, stemmed from the shock of moving from a big cosmopolitan city to the Japanese countryside. Japanese children who grew up in Seoul were an educated and urbane lot, accustomed to a public transportation system, an environment populated by a substantial international community that included Europeans, Americans and of course Koreans, and access to facilities like libraries, theatres and museums. Saitô Masatada, who was twelve at the end of the war, felt that, ‘At the time, it was a strange feeling for someone like me who was born and raised in the capital of Korea, Seoul, to have a complete change of pace by coming to a Japanese rural environment.’31 Toyota Takeo, aged sixteen at the end of the war, recalled, ‘I returned to a farming village and didn’t want to enter the public baths. I was shocked that I would mention Fujiwara Yoshie [a famous opera singer] and nobody would know who I was talking about.’32 And Okamoto Yoko, also sixteen when the war ended, remembered that, ‘Since I was used to city living, there was a gap [between me] and the people of the countryside and at first I was ignored.’33 Such children effectively became exiles, forced to live apart from their native land, Korea and not Japan. Upon arrival, Japanese children who had never been to Mainland Japan before were also astonished by many of the sights they saw. The reality corresponded very little with images of the metropole based upon childhood glimpses of it in popular media like magazines and films. Everything, from the train rides and scenery, to the people they encountered, was different from what they were accustomed to. Although these Japanese had learned at schools in Korea that Mainland Japan was a green and beautiful place, looking out of the train window and seeing long stretches of burned land with destroyed and abandoned property, there seemed very little that was beautiful about it. The physical destruction caused by air raids was one aspect of the war from which they had been shielded in Korea, and seeing it for the first time, especially for those returning to areas such as Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was shocking. So, too, was the sight of physical suffering. When Kikuchi Mikiko enrolled in school, she was surprised to have classmates who were survivors of the atom bomb and suffered from leukemia and keloid scarring. There were students with tufts of hair falling out and girls with abnormal periods. She was also stunned by the sight of her countrymen performing strenuous physical labour, recalling that, ‘In the fallout from the dramatic changes experienced by the entire nation … my pure eyes were exposed immediately after I was repatriated to the gap between the mainland [naichi] and the colonies [gaichi] in regard to the social classes.’ In the world in which she was raised, manual labour was performed only by impoverished Koreans, and the sight of Japanese

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people pulling horse-drawn carriages, disposing of night soil, and doing construction work was traumatic.34 In Korea, being Japanese colonizers essentially meant freedom from such work, but back in Japan there were no such clear-cut boundaries. Kikuchi was forced to rethink her notions of what it meant to be Japanese, just as others had to look at her – a Japanese child born and raised outside of Japan proper – and do the same. Both sides needed to be acquainted. Repatriates also faced logistical problems of finding houses and jobs once returning to Japan. Three generations of Matono Mariko’s family lived in Seoul so they had no close relatives whose home they could stay in until they got settled. Although they had heard that ‘special’ bombs had been dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, conditions back in Kisa in Hiroshima prefecture where they repatriated were far worse than they ever could have imagined. They sought shelter in a shack that had no electricity or running water.35 Honda Yasuharu’s family repatriated to farmland in Nagasaki where they began their new life living in a distant relative’s utility shed.36 Kikuchi also found herself living in formerly unimaginable conditions when her family was repatriated to Nagasaki. Whereas the family’s house in Seoul had been spacious, bright and modern, the Nagasaki house her parents purchased for two thousand yen was cramped, dark and dilapidated. Situated on a plot of scorched earth and separated from the surrounding remainders and reminders of the destruction of the atomic bomb by a rickety bamboo fence, the house had missing tiles, holes in the ceiling, and the sky in plain view. When it rained hard, the whole family got wet. Kikuchi does not remember laughing or smiling for two years.37 To go from a prosperous and privileged colonial lifestyle to barely eking a living is a reversal indeed. For children and their parents, the logistics of transferring schools was also an immediate concern, especially for those children who had been on ‘vacation’ since the war had ended. Japanese nuns at the Nagasaki school to which Kikuchi hoped to transfer expressed concern that, as a child who had been raised in Korea, she wouldn’t be able to understand Japanese. Their reaction suggests that, ironically, while Seoul had to an extraordinary degree been integrated with the metropole by the 1930s and 1940s, this integration was relatively one-sided; the nuns seemed ignorant of trends in the broader Japanese community, and the fact that Japanese children raised in colonial cities such as Seoul, Dalian, Harbin and Taipei were educated almost identically to their peers in Mainland Japan, and that if they spoke any of the local language at all, they were in the minority.38 These children were from a virtual no man’s land after the colonies and the boundaries that defined them were obliterated. Now that they had been brought ‘back’ to Japan, people were not prepared to accommodate them.

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Besides the logistics of transferring schools and finding shelter, there was a psychological element to adjusting to life in Mainland Japan with which some, although not all, returning Japanese children and adolescents grappled. For these youths, being there for the first time highlighted differences that distinguished a colonial from a mainland upbringing. In particular, many repatriated Japanese noticed a difference in mentality. Sakamura Masahiko, who was twelve at the time of Japan’s defeat, found the people of Mainland Japan to be ‘narrow-minded, small, very conservative … [and] deeply superstitious’. 39 Takeda Toshio, who was sixteen, thought that his upbringing was far more ‘continental and relaxed’ in Seoul than for those in the mainland.40 And Nishizono Akiko, aged seventeen when repatriated, stated, ‘You could say our way of thinking was larger than those brought up in the mainland.’41 In Seoul, where Japanese children grew up surrounded by a different culture and were exposed, however minimally, to different ideas and people, the ‘mainland’ way of thinking could feel closed and narrow-minded. Some felt psychologically constricted in their new setting. Of course, this feeling of constraint might have been derived as much from moving to a rural setting from an urban one as from moving to Japan from the colonies. Nevertheless it is interesting to reflect how children growing up in colonies, whether Dutch children in Indonesia or British children in India, seem to associate their lifestyles in the colonies as generally having been freer and more relaxed than in the countries to which they returned.42 On one hand, this is logical considering they lived lives of privilege in the colonies, but faced certain social realities and inequities back in their respective metropolitan ‘homelands’. On the other hand, it seems that distance from social conventions in the metropole and proscribed ways of thinking afforded a more relaxed pace of life that not only seemed psychologically freer, but also spatially less constricted. Many people who experienced repatriation as children insist that what was most difficult after arriving in Japan was not adjusting to the mainland mentality and lifestyle, but rather, to life in a post-war society. Indeed, there was a range of emotions and some did feel a sense of spiritual ‘homecoming’ when repatriated to Japan even if the process was challenging in other, particularly material, respects. For example, the writer Muramatsu Takeshi had grown up believing Japan was a distant and sacred homeland while reading about it and its history in his elementary and middle school textbooks. He always felt as if a piece of him belonged to Japan no matter where he was living.43 Another Japanese who grew up in Seoul reflected: ‘Rather than adapting [to life in Mainland Japan] the big difficulty was getting on in a society devastated by war. Because repatriates lost everything they had and came to Japan as refugees with only

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one rucksack, it was difficult starting life from zero.’44 ‘Starting from zero’ is a phrase one sees over and over again when reading memoirs about repatriation or speaking with former repatriates whose lives after the war were typically characterized by hunger and scarcity. ‘I worked after being repatriated, not having time to think about various things’, explained one man who was born and raised in Seoul. In order to make enough money to eat, he dabbled in odd jobs from coal mining in Fukuoka to trucking and shipping.45 In such a time, forgetfulness was in fact encouraged. The experiences of people the Japanese government once encouraged to settle throughout the empire were ‘occluded at home by the defeat and the mythic postwar new beginning’.46 The story of empire vanished even as a returning population of over six million was a living embodiment of it. Ian Nish likened this amnesia to an ‘imperial hangover’ from which Japan only began to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s. The cause of the hangover was the loss of the war, and for repatriates, the loss of their homes and not being welcomed back into Mainland Japan.47 One repatriate wrote that of six members of his family, only his wife, who was born in Nagasaki, was not a ‘child of Seoul’, and that this connection to the empire was something his children, and to some extent he himself, were ashamed of. ‘How can we say we were born in Seoul, it’s so embarrassing’, is what his youngest used to say.48 Because of reluctance to speak about the empire, or one’s status as a former colonizer, few repatriates took advantage of political opportunity structures to advance their interests and needs as a group in the immediate post-war era. However, political advocacy and activism was pronounced in a few realms. Repatriates and their family members helped to mobilize support for those Japanese still stuck behind in Soviet-occupied territory and Communist China in the years immediately following the war. Additional activism was organized around the goals of compensation and commemoration. The first form of activism did not focus much on repatriate rehabilitation, for that was secondary to actually bringing home the thousands of Japanese still left behind. Repatriate groups attempted to remind the Japanese public at large that many of their brethren remained detained overseas, hoping to accelerate their repatriation. Their efforts were largely limited to organizing rallies and distributing leaflets on street corners. By and large, however, the activists met with indifference from the Japanese public, who were struggling with their own problems after the war. Among them, there seemed to be a general lack of sympathy for the plight of Japanese throughout the collapsed empire.49 Probably the most pressing concern for the repatriate community itself was obtaining compensation for lost property and assets. The lead

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organization formed in 1946 to keep track of lost assets and to advocate for repatriate compensation was the National Federation of Repatriate Groups (Hikiagesha Dantai Zenkoku Rengôkai), abbreviated ‘Zenren’. Zenren developed into a powerful pressure group with links to officials in all the major Japanese political parties. In no small part due to the group’s advocacy and repeated pressure on the Japanese government, a 1957 Repatriate Benefits Allowance Law granted a small aid package, which was doled out by the Ministry of Health and Welfare to former repatriates, and over three million were said to have been beneficiaries. A second law, passed ten years later in 1967, awarded additional benefits, with increased aid to repatriates who had lived in the colonies for over a decade. Nonetheless, such compensation was minimal and certainly did not cover the majority of the repatriates’ losses. Furthermore, companies that were based in the colonies were not able to regain their assets, which in line with post-war Occupation policy were used as war reparations.50 A second version of public advocacy involved repatriate groups who lobbied for the creation of repatriate museums and memorials in the 1970s and 1980s. Many of the memorials, which were the fruits of their labour, were located at former ports of repatriation, like the Repatriate Memorial Park, established in 1970, and overlooking the former Maizuru Regional Repatriation Center that had been in operation from 1945 to 1958. Such memorial parks portrayed the repatriates as victims of Japan’s wartime government, not as active imperial aggressors.51 Involved in this web of activism exist powerful groups like the Japan War-Bereaved Association formed in 1947, and the Japan Veterans’ Association founded in 1955, which both have strong ties to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan’s leading political party. In fact, many of their members and key administrators come from its ranks. Over time, the organizations have used their money and influence to lobby for things like repatriate compensation and commemoration, the encouragement of ‘bone-collecting’ missions to recover the remains of the war dead abroad, and even visits by Japanese prime ministers to Yasukuni Shrine, where military war dead are enshrined. In exchange, the LDP is rewarded with the continued support, votes, and money of these large and powerful organizations and their members.52

Cultural Associations Related to veterans and war-bereaved organizations are school and other cultural associations for Japanese who lived throughout the former empire. Although the members of such groups certainly overlap, the main

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purpose of cultural associations is neither economic nor political, but rather is to forge a social community among those Japanese of a similar age group who shared common experiences in the past. As former Japanese colonizers began to age, many began to revisit their roots and seek out former friends. A sense of isolation among some of them stemmed not from a difference in appearance from other Japanese or even separation in terms of residence or occupation, but rather from the cloak of silence and amnesia that surrounded their life stories. They found a welcoming environment in alumni associations as well as community organizations like the Japan-Korea Association, which helped to fill a void in their lives as people who had been removed from their native places (furusato). A member of the Misaka Elementary School Association explained, ‘In our daily lives, we must live as a bit strange, slightly isolated Japanese. So our gatherings … [are] helpful as an opportunity to reaffirm our own identity.’53 The story of the formation of the Nanzan Elementary Alumni Association is fairly typical of the genesis of post-war alumni organizations, which also existed for repatriates from Manchuria, Taiwan, and elsewhere. The Tokyo Nanzan alumni organization was created in the 1960s to restore the community that Japanese from Korea, and in particular graduates of this school, lost when they were repatriated to opposite ends of Japan proper. It first started as a casual local get-together between former classmates, which then sparked an interest in creating something more organized and national. The classmates began by attempting to compile a list of the addresses of Nanzan graduates they knew. Altogether there were 4,470 Nanzan graduates, but there was not enough information about what had become of these students, their addresses in Japan after repatriation, or changes in their names due to marriage. News of the organization thus spread by word of mouth and through advertisements placed in local newspapers. Although the first gathering, which took place at a Chinese restaurant in Tokyo’s Ginza district, only attracted about ten people, the group slowly expanded and the participants eventually elected a supervisory council to preside over the organization and arrange future gatherings. The association began by holding reunions in different cities, from Tokyo to Fukuoka. By the 1980s the organization had attracted upwards of three hundred participants, enough to plan more elaborate activities, including a trip to Seoul to visit their alma mater, which is still a school today. They also organized international trips to New York, Paris, Madrid, Honolulu, Berlin and elsewhere. Alumni associations for Japanese who attended elementary schools in colonial Seoul banded together in 1982 to form the Forsythia Club, and school associations for former Japanese middle schools in Seoul similarly

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joined a larger cohesive organization shortly thereafter.54 Like the Nanzan Elementary Alumni Association, such organizations initially only attracted a couple of dozen participants, but peaking in the early 1990s they drew crowds of several hundred wishing to reconnect with others who shared their colonial upbringing. Today their numbers hover in the ‘two hundreds’, but with numbers steadily dropping as members age and pass away. They gather at annual events held in hotel ballrooms and meeting halls, which typically include a short memorial for the deceased, nostalgic speeches, a celebratory meal, and the singing of sentimental songs from their childhoods. Members of school associations also participate in various types of communal memory work, which includes publishing reminisces about the colonial period in the form of school histories, pamphlets and newsletters. Maurice Halbwachs described collective memories as mutual memories of a group that shared and experienced them together, which are preserved perhaps above all through place memory. ‘Since our impressions rush by, one after another, and leave nothing behind … we recapture the past only by understanding how it is … preserved in our physical surroundings’, Halbwachs wrote. When the relationship of a group to place alters due to a significant event – in this case the uprooting of over six million Japanese from the colonies – the group actively tries to recover it.55 The map projects of school associations powerfully illustrate the connection between place memory and collective memory. The Shôrro Elementary Alumni Association created a map in 1983 identifying former residences, restaurants, stores, temples, and other buildings of its members’ youth in Seoul. Although it lacked the accuracy of a map dating from the colonial era, it captured in visual form the relationship between memory and history through its detailed comments in the margins and short poems next to place names.56 The map reflects a deep attachment to remembered space as well as the desire to record the contours of a community that no longer exists except in the recesses of the mind. The exploration of the past and the vestiges of their old communities has initiated, for some, far deeper questions about national belonging and identity as well. For Japanese born and raised in the colonies, the fact that they were no longer the Japanese of Korea, Manchuria, or the South Pacific was always accompanied by the unsettling question of who they were, and where they belonged. Many Japanese born in the colonies felt the lack of a native place. Many also felt estranged in personality and interests from mainland Japanese. Because they were different, they stuck out from ordinary Japanese, much like resident Koreans in Japan who were also written out of ‘nationness’ in a post-war society seeking to rid itself of its multiethnic pre-war and wartime past. In order to camouflage this

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past, former children of empire felt themselves either pushed aside or else subsumed by the hegemonic culture, not unlike colonists had once tried to assimilate colonial peoples as imperial subjects. This process was suggestive of a colonial present in which Japan failed to learn from its past, probably because it failed to address it adequately. It was from this space of marginality that children of empire consciously and unconsciously began to search for new ideas of community, belonging, and national identity.

Who are we Japanese? Nationalism, Identity, and later Debates on Multiculturalism Considered by some a late-modernizer and by others a late-imperialist, Japan also came late to the global debate on multiculturalism (tabunkashugi or maruchikaruchurarizumu), although debates on multiethnicity had long been part of the imperial dialogue.57 Whereas dislocation is one of the more obvious legacies of empire and its collapse, a less apparent outcome has been the overwhelming insistence on a univalent national identity. This insistence was a reversal – indeed abnegation – of the past. Although the imperial nationalism of pre-war Japan saw colonial ethnic nationalism as a threat to the imperial ideology of multiethnicity and PanAsianism, small-country ethnic nationalism became the backbone of postwar Japanese society with the help of the Occupation. A state built on the principle of a homogeneous, primordial Japanese culture was critical to forging national cohesion following the collapse of empire, as well as creating national security and stability in the Cold War.58 Just as the former colonial people like Taiwanese and Koreans were effaced as national boundaries were redrawn, people who had a direct hand in colonialism, specifically former colonizers and their experiences, were collectively isolated from ‘Japan’ and ‘the Japanese’ as well. To this day, both Japan and the two Koreas remain stubbornly national, even hypernational. In the case of North and South Korea, this stubbornness derives in part from Cold War politics and division, but also from identities formed largely in opposition to Japan and the colonial era. In the case of Japan, nationalism is a product both of the post-war ideology of homogeneity, and of the Japanese failure to confront its imperial and wartime past. Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the activities of alumni associations and cultural organizations for former Japanese colonizers coincided with a boom in nationalistic discourse on ‘who are we Japanese’, or Nihonjinron. Such literature touts Japanese uniqueness and the virtues of a harmonious society, purportedly based more on group than individual identity. It is predicated on the belief that Japanese are homogenous

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and racially unified.59 For instance, in the late 1960s the anthropologist Nakane Chie famously wrote, ‘Japanese society is monoethnically constituted. It is an island nation, and it does not interact with different cultures … The opportunity to know the existence of systems other than our own is non-existent.’60 Yet cosmopolitan leanings of the Japanese government’s policy at the same time of internationalization (kokusaika) were at odds with this Nihonjinron discourse about Japanese exceptionalism, which excluded populations in Japan like resident Koreans and other ethnic minorities. Furthermore, such writings did not resonate for some children of empire, who could not identify with this supposed group identity or feel in harmony with post-war Japanese society as a whole. Their experiences growing up outside of Mainland Japan, and being in contact with other cultures, languages and people, set them apart no matter how much they tried to fit in. Through her prolific writing on Japan’s downtrodden, including coal miners, women, and ethnic minorities, Morisaki Kazue, herself repatriated from Korea as a teenager in 1945, struggled to define her identity within the political and social climate of Japan in the late 1960s through to the 1980s. Some of her earliest writing was a response to the so-called Kim Hi-ro affair of February 1968 in which a Japanese-born Korean shot and killed two Japanese mobsters, barricaded himself in an inn with thirteen hostages, and used the media to stage a public condemnation of discrimination against ethnic Koreans in Japan. Kim’s subsequent trial captured the attention of the entire nation as prominent journalists, activists and intellectuals debated and testified about what it meant to be a minority in Japan.61 It was this incident and the media frenzy it generated that propelled Morisaki to write and reflect on her past as Kim’s mirror image: a Japanese born and raised in colonial Korea. Both Kim and Morisaki were children of Japanese imperialism, and both felt marginalized in contemporary Japan. Morisaki recognized frightening continuities between the past and late-1960s Japan, and observed that some Japanese possessed an impulse to eradicate difference or assimilate it into its monolithic fold. Far from gentle, this process paralleled the violence of rape. Although Morisaki had originally tried to assimilate when she was repatriated to Japan, she gradually came to resent the contradiction between people trying to absorb her and at the same time dismiss her because she was different from them. Of mainland people in the immediate post-war she wrote: ‘They consumed me with a naked greediness that can only be described as cannibal. Their attempts to force their mode of thought upon me were as brazen as if they had spread their legs and invited me to drink from the loins of their lives.’ It was as if they sensed something different about her,

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but ‘would not be happy until they had eradicated that taint from their minds with an affection they expressed by totally ignoring the essence of my being’. She blamed this same drive to absorb and ignore that which is different – something which she deemed part of the ‘mentality of the Japanese masses’ – for colonial policies in Korea and Taiwan, like kôminka, the making of colonial people into imperial subjects from 1937 to 1945.62 In contemporary Japan, she believed the Japanese were doing exactly the same thing by insisting on the invisibility of difference and therefore avoiding confronting a past history of colonialism, racism and discrimination. This denial was tantamount to a colonial present where the same tools of discrimination applied. She did not look any different from ‘ordinary’ Japanese (those born and raised in Mainland Japan), but believed others were intolerant of people like her who differed more in ‘affiliation’ than in ‘essence’. Because Morisaki was a Japanese national, yet raised elsewhere, it seemed to frustrate and confuse people. ‘Should a person or persons determined by the group to be different appear on its fringes,’ as Morisaki was when as an 18-year-old she arrived in Japan from Korea in 1945, the group has no alternative, she reflected, ‘but to see that the new arrivals put down their roots outside its boundaries.’63 And so Morisaki, like many of her peers, was relegated to the fringes of post-war Japanese society. People around her, including her neighbours and her own children, had difficulty categorizing her, which contributed to her burgeoning identity crisis. She recounts how a resident Korean neighbour approached her saying, ‘Please don’t be offended, but is it true what they say about you, that you’re a foreigner? … I said your Japanese was too good for you to be a foreigner. But they wouldn’t listen to me. They said they’d heard that you had foreign blood in your veins. Is it true?’ When Morisaki asked what the woman meant by being ‘a foreigner’, the neighbour responded, ‘You know, from America or someplace, not Korea or Japan.’ Morisaki was confused. ‘How does one prove one’s ethnicity’ she pondered, writing: It shook me to be told that I must be Japanese because I spoke the language well. My son has asked me the same thing. ‘Mommy, if you’re a Korean, how come your Japanese is so good?’ I paled slightly when I heard this and tried to defend myself to the boy. ‘I know that much’, he protested. ‘Korea used to be a Japanese colony, right?’ ‘Yes, Korea was a Japanese colony, and Mommy was …’ After I explained the whole thing, my son looked at me and said, ‘I get it. That’s why you’re a Korean. Then what about me?’ ‘You? You’re a Japanese.’ ‘You’re a Korean and I’m Japanese?’

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‘What’s wrong with that?’ ‘Of course Mommy’s Japanese, silly’, my daughter informed her little brother after glancing at me. ‘She’s Japanese by race.’

Her daughter’s assumption that blood so easily determined one’s nationality, speech, citizenship, and ethnic affiliation, deeply unnerved her. Yet, it was and remains a common understanding. Norma Field observes that being Japanese today ‘means having Japanese blood, means being a citizen of the nation-state called Japan, means feeling Japanese’. Such determinants of course create ‘a vise on the many different kinds of people inhabiting the archipelago’.64 Indeed, Morisaki often felt as if her identity was cleaved into two, one part Japanese and one part Korean. She wrote: ‘Perhaps my personality really is split, for there is a vein of pure Korean running through me. I need Koreans around me. I want to open the graves and give them voice. (I want, that is, to disembowel myself intellectually, to plunge the dagger deep into the fact that my confusion is itself my reason for being.)’65 Morisaki’s confusion became the driving force behind her lifework, a quest to understand the relationship between her personal past and Japanese history and Japanese society as a whole. She resisted the temptation to blend in with mainland Japanese and used the pen as a tool to freely express the myriad, yet conflicting sides of her complex identity as a Japanese, as a Korean, as a woman, and as a repatriate. These were all different sides, which, in combination, were out of place within the political climate of the society in which she was situated. It really was not until the late 1980s and early 90s, over twenty years after Morisaki wrote the words above, when the topic of multiculturalism as a political ideal, linked to internationalization and globalization, began to come to the fore in Japan. The discourse on multiculturalism was in many respects a reaction against Nihonjinron. Furthermore, in the economic bubble years of high growth in the 1980s, the influx of foreign workers to fill shortages in low-wage jobs brought new migrants to Japan, primarily from other Asian countries like the Philippines and Thailand. Also among the newcomers to Japan were over three hundred thousand people of Japanese descent from South America, particularly Brazil and Peru, in search of job opportunities. The presence of a growing overseas population was a reminder of the ‘older’ minority populations in Japan (called ôrudokama or ‘oldcomers’), like Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Ainus and Okinawans, who were legacies of Japanese imperialism.66 Debates arose as to how the newer migrant populations (called nyûkama or ‘newcomers’) should be treated in the new ‘international’ Japan, a debate that is still raging with respect to immigration laws, job opportunities, citizenship, and integration into Japanese society. Tokyo Governor

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Shintarô Ishihara created a media furore in 2000 when he employed the pejorative term sankokujin (third-country people) to refer to Chinese and Koreans in Japan, calling upon the Self Defense Forces and police to be prepared to restrain them from rioting in the wake of a natural disaster. However, on the flipside, more progressively minded civic groups have worked to welcome foreigners, to establish organizations for ‘multicultural exploration’, and to pool together support and resources in order to help foreign workers to stay in Japan. Immigrant rights’ activists advocate for a more open immigration policy that takes into consideration Japan’s plummeting workforce.67 Nonetheless, today, Morisaki and members of her imperial cohort who are still alive are in their eighties, nineties, and beyond. Their identity crisis as children of empire and as repatriates existed largely outside the debates on multiculturalism, which is a more contemporary conversation, and today it remains hotly contested just how multicultural Japan is or will become. Some recent English language titles to appear on the subject include Multicultural Japan: Paleolithic to Postmodern (1996), Multiethnic Japan (2001), and Multiculturalism in the New Japan (2008). In the latter, the contributors tackle topics ranging from international marriage to the education of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants, and differ in their prognoses with respect to the possibility of multiculturalism actually taking root in Japan; some suggest that the larger Japanese community is moving towards a greater acceptance of people of different cultural backgrounds, while others argue just the opposite. Statistics of Japan’s rapidly declining workforce, aging population, and declining birth rate have convinced some that Japan cannot avoid becoming a multiethnic society in the future, whereas others staunchly argue that Japan is unlikely to become multicultural anytime soon given the near absence of state policies committed to accomplishing that goal.68 The Japanese government’s official stance on the colonial period, which has not been revised since 1995, may have something to do with this. Its official position is the so-called Murayama Statement, a brief speech by former Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi. Commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the war’s end, Murayama issued the following apology in succinct terms: Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt

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apology. Allow me also to express my feelings of profound mourning for all victims, both at home and abroad, of that history.69

This official stance on the war and empire has remained the benchmark for successive prime ministers ever since, from Hashimoto Ryûtarô to Tarô Asô, who have lent their support to the statement, but refrained from elaborating or reflecting further upon it. At the same time, many of them continue to visit or send offerings to Yasukuni Shrine in their official capacity as prime minister, where they pay their respects to the war dead, including war criminals. The incongruence between formal official parlance, represented in the Murayama Statement, and behaviour, represented in the shrine visits, continues to enrage those in the very countries Japan formerly colonized. Furthermore, right-wing nationalists, like Tokyo’s governor, repeatedly draw ire for sensational statements to the tune that Japanese colonialism was fairer and more equitable than Western colonialism, and that the Nanjing Massacre did not occur. Such claims hamper the healing process. As the centennial of Japan’s annexation of Korea approaches, the government cannot continue to sit back and rely upon a statement issued fifteen years ago. It will once again be forced to reflect upon and comment upon the colonial past, and how it relates to multiculturalism in Japan in the future.

Conclusion Acknowledging that imperial Japan once spilled into many different countries and that there were some 6.5 million Japanese citizens living in Indonesia, Siberia, Sakhalin, Manchuria and elsewhere, belies the myth of homogeneity associated with the post-war, downsized Japan. Post-imperial repatriates ranged from the more smoothly rehabilitated Japanese from places like Taiwan, on one end of the spectrum, to Japanese war orphans abandoned in China for decades, on the other. The latter, in particular, ignited debates about Japanese identity, ‘homeland’, nationality and citizenship when they ‘returned’ from the 1970s through to the 1990s. Indeed, the collective experiences of all such repatriates – young, old, male, female, first-, second- and third-generation – reintegrating into Japanese society illustrates that the post-war climate was not as harmonious as the institutional narrative typically suggests. When they returned to Mainland Japan following the Second World War, they were not typically returning to places they viewed as home, nor were they welcomed as homecoming nationals by their compatriots. Rather, many returnees felt themselves to be, and were indeed regarded as, outsiders. This could just as easily be said

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of the Dutch who returned to Holland or the French from Algeria whose experiences similarly epitomize the hybrid nature of settler communities and their populations. Settler colonists, especially youths who grew up in the margins, developed a double identity as they made overseas territories their permanent homes at the same time as they continued to identify with, and enjoy the living standards and privileges of, the metropole. The end of colonialism meant the disintegration of their hybrid identities as well as the collapse of the links between their two ‘homes’. Although largely silenced by the story of post-war Japan’s ‘rise from the ashes’ and Korea’s unrelenting antagonism toward its former colonizer, the experiences of Japanese children repatriated from the Korean empire are reflective of the remapping of boundaries and identities that followed the end of the war. Their experiences invite comparisons with more contemporary newcomers in Japan, particularly the Japanese Brazilians who have Japanese facial features, yet unlike children of the colonial empire, arrived in Japan not speaking or comprehending the Japanese language. The challenges that these newer populations face are many, not least of which is that the government is taking what many view as inadequate steps to integrate them. Like the former repatriates, they have inherited a society still insistent on homogeneity. With greater discussion of multiculturalism, it remains to be seen whether such discourse will actually impact on what ordinary people think and believe, and more specifically, how the presence and actions of these new migrants will continue to challenge notions of national identity in the decades to come.

Notes 1. U.S. Dept. of the Army, Reports of General MacArthur, Vol. 1, The Campaign of MacArthur in the Pacific, 460; Yu-Jose, ‘World War II and the Japanese in the Prewar Philippines’. 2. Peattie, ‘The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945’, 243–44. 3. Ashihara Seizô, ‘Kaeru ni wa fune nashi konran suru Keijô, Pusan’, 2; Ashihara Seizô, ‘Delay in Repatriation Irks Korea Japanese’, 1. 4. McWilliams, Homeward Bound, 22–23. 5. Lu, Japan a Documentary History, 453–54. 6. While Shintô priests were seen as advocates of Japanese nationalism and impediments to Korean national reconstruction, entertainers and prostitutes were deemed hazardous to the morals of United States Armed Forces personnel, and ‘not the right kind of people’ to have around. 7. U.S. Dept. of the Army, Reports of General MacArthur, Vol. 1, suppl., MacArthur in Japan, 149–50. 8. Watt, ‘When Empire Comes Home’, 40–45, 54; also see Wakatsuki Yasuo, Sengo hikiage no kiroku, 88–95. 9. Watt, ‘When Empire Comes Home’, 45–56; Tamanoi, Memory Maps, 91–99.

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10. Wakatsuki Yasuo, Sengô hikiage no kiroku, 50–51; Watt, ‘When Empire Comes Home’, 45– 51; Tamanoi, Memory Maps, 65–83. 11. McWilliams, Homeward Bound, 66–83. 12. Ibid., 10. Statistics differ slightly from source to source, particularly statistics recorded in the volatile days after surrender. According to annual statistics of the Japanese colonial administration, there were 752,823 Japanese living in Korea in 1942. According to the government-general’s ‘Jinkô chôsa kekka hôkoku sono ichi’ (10 September 1944), the population dropped to 712,583. Figures that were provided by the Japanese Information Center in Seoul on 29 September 1945 to the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea reported 650,000 Japanese civilians (215,000 north, and 435,000 south, of the 38th parallel) with an additional 240,000 Japanese armed forces stationed throughout the north and south. 13. Wakatsuki, Sengo hikiage no kiroku, 233–34; Morita Yoshio, Chôsen shûsen no kiroku, 94–95. 14. US Government Printing Office, Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers 1945, vol. 6, The British Commonwealth the Far East, 1049. 15. Morita Yoshio and Osada Kanako, Chôsen shûsen no kiroku, shiryô hen, Vol. 2, 135–36. 16. De Vos and Changsoo Lee, ‘The Colonial Experience, 1910–1945’, 37, 52; Weiner, ‘The Representation of Absence and the Absence of Representation’. 17. Koshiro, Trans-Pacific Racisms and the United States Occupation of Japan, 112. 18. Gane, ‘Foreign Affairs of South Korea’, 152. 19. Lee, ‘The Legal Status of Koreans in Japan’, 137–43; Kashiwazaki, ‘The Politics of Legal Status’, 20–23. 20. Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, 45–47. 21. Willoughby (ed.), Reports of General MacArthur, Prepared by his General Staff, Vol. 1 suppl., 19–150 and 211–12. 22. Trefalt, Japanese Army Stragglers, 28–30. 23. Lubkemann, ‘Unsettling the Metropole’, 257–59, 264. 24. Takahashi Tetsuro, Kaneko Kotaro and Inokuma Tokuro, ‘Fighting for Peace After War’. For more about the return of soldiers, see Trefalt, Japanese Army Stragglers, esp. 38–43. 25. Warner, ‘Repatriate Organizations in Japan’, 272–76. 26. Hikiage Engochô, Hikiage Engo no kiroku, 106–9; Orr, The Victim as Hero, 156–57. 27. Watt, ‘When Empire Comes Home’, 3–5. 28. Interviewees’ names have been changed. 29. Questionnaire, 18 April 2003. 30. Kikuchi Mikiko, letter to the author, 18 August 2005. 31. Questionnaire, 18 March 2003. 32. Questionnaire, 6 October 2003. 33. Questionnaire, 15 May 2003. 34. Kikuchi Mikiko, letter to the author, 18 August 2005. 35. Sawai Rie, Haha no Keijô, watashi no Sôru, 131. 36. Honda Yasuharu, Watashi no naka no Chôsenjin, 164. 37. Kikuchi Mikiko, personal interview, 16 August 2003. 38. Kikuchi Mikiko, personal interview, 16 August 2003. 39. Questionnaire, 6 October 2003. 40. Questionnaire, 18 April 2003. 41. Questionnaire, 18 April 2003. 42. Buettner, Empire Families, 63–64; Beekman, Troubled Pleasures, 516–17. 43. Muramatsu Takeshi, Chôsen shokuminsha, 108. 44. Questionnaire, 18 April 2003. 45. Questionnaire, 6 October 2003. 46. Gluck, ‘The Past in the Present’, 77. 47. Nish, ‘Regaining Confidence – Japan after the Loss of Empire’. 48. Usui Ryûji, Keijô yonjûnen, 5.

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49. Itô Tsutomu, ‘Beginnings of Repatriation of Internees’. http://www.heiwa.go.jp/en/10_ contents.html, 547–49. This online book is an abridged and translated version of the original Japanese publication, which consists of eight volumes. The Public Foundation for Peace and Consolation is a government foundation that was created in 1984. 50. Orr, The Victim as Hero, 156–69; Sun, ‘The Reverse Impact of Colonialism’, 23–31. 51. Watt, ‘When Empire Comes Home’, 133–49. 52. Trefalt, Japanese Army Stragglers, 50. 53. Misakakai, Tesseki to chigusa, 356. 54. Forsythia was designated Seoul’s city flower in the 1970s. 55. Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, 130–40. 56. Kawamura Minato, Sôru toshi monogatari, 118–21. 57. Oguma Eiji has written extensively about the mixed ethnos theory (kongô minzokuron) which first emerged in the mid-Meiji period and saw the Japanese nation as a mixture of native peoples (for example Ainu) and various peoples of Asian origin, including Taiwanese and Koreans. See Eiji, A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images. 58. Sakai, ‘Subject and Substratum’, 463; Koshiro, Trans-Pacific Racisms, 112. 59. For more on the myth of homogeneity, see Burgess, ‘Multicultural Japan?’, http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2389; Howell, ‘Ethnicity and Culture in Contemporary Japan’; Eiji, A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images; Lie, Multiethnic Japan; and Michael Weiner, Japan’s Minorities. 60. Lie, Multiethnic Japan, 135. 61. Wender, Lamentation as History, 24–25. 62. Morisaki Kazue, ‘Two Languages, Two Souls’, 16–17. 63. Ibid., 16. 64. Field, In the Realm of a Dying Emperor, 278. 65. Morisaki Kazue, ‘Two Languages, Two Souls’, 13, 18. 66. Morris-Suzuki, Re-inventing Japan, 192; Lie, Multiethnic Japan, 18; Graburn and Ertl, ‘Introduction’, 7. 67. Graburn and Ertl, ‘Introduction’, 11, 18. 68. For arguments on both ends of the spectrum, see Burgess, ‘Multicultural Japan?’, and Arudo Debito, ‘The Coming Internationalization’, http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2078; also see ‘Multicultural Japan? Don’t Bring me your Huddled Masses’, The Economist, 30 December 2008, http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory. cfm?story_id=12867328. 69. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, ‘Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the war’s end, 15 August 1995’, http://www.mofa. go.jp/announce/press/pm/murayama/9508.html

Chapter 6

Postcolonial Immigration and Identity Formation in Europe since 1945 The Russian Variant Allison Blakely

Formation of the Russian Empire Comparison of postcolonial immigration in Russia to that in the rest of Europe requires first a historical overview of the formation of the modern Russian state, given the distinctive nature of Russia’s colonialism. The tsarist Russian empire and its nearly identical replication by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the twentieth century resulted from contiguous expansion, in contrast to that of the major Western global maritime powers. Even Russia’s overseas expansion into North America was contiguous. Defining the identities and status of those emigrating from their traditional homelands into the diminished Russian republic that remained after the collapse of the Soviet Union is therefore more complex than tracing the experience of groups and individuals that have been subject to the decolonization of European empires abroad and later immigrants in the former metropolis. The titular non-Russian republics in the former Soviet Union that would correspond to the standard European concept of colonies were after all at least legally autonomous and their citizens constitutionally equal to Russians in the Soviet democracy, while European colonial societies made no such pretence before the mid-twentieth century period when decolonization began, and new relationships with the former colonies were being fashioned. In order to gain a sense of the perspective of both the Russians and their colonized peoples, it is necessary to Notes for this chapter begin on page 191.

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consider briefly how Russia became a colonizer in the first place, and the status of the regions colonized before they came under Russian control. The motivations for Russian expansion displayed a combination of rivalry between Russian political factions, defensive and offensive wars against rival neighbouring states, and the need of this land-and-ice-locked giant for agricultural land, warm water ports, and access to the outside world in order to become a competitive great power. The formation of the modern Russian state began in the wake of the collapse of the Mongol Eurasian Empire, first with the conquest of the prosperous commercial city-state of Novgorod in the 1470s by the princes of Moscow. Moscovy’s supremacy was further consolidated in the middle of the next century when Tsar Ivan IV defeated the remnant Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan along the upper and lower Volga River in the 1550s. By the end of the seventeenth century, Russian military control and colonists moved further east across the Eurasian steppe, gaining domination over other Tatars and various Siberian natives, and reaching the Pacific by 1639. An administrative district of Siberia and a Russian Orthodox Church archbishopric were established by the middle of the seventeenth century. Alaska was discovered in 1732, but not exploited until the end of the century with the formation of the Russian America Trading Company along the mould of those of the major European maritime powers. This one overseas colony was of course later sold to the United States in 1867, before that region’s worth in terms of gold and minerals had become known. On the western border, in the middle of the seventeenth century, Russia annexed Ukraine, formerly part of Kievan Rus, the original Russian state that had been destroyed by the Mongols, causing much of its population to flee west into lands controlled by the rulers of Poland and Lithuania. These were just two of the several neighbours with whom the Russian rulers would intermittently engage in warfare over the centuries. The tsar who took the lead in shaping the north-western border was Peter the Great, who in the first two decades of the eighteenth century gained access to the Baltic through the Great Northern War with Sweden, acquiring much of what would become Latvia and Estonia. The western border drastically changed in the late eighteenth century, as the combined territory of Poland and Lithuania – which for over a century had stretched almost from the Baltic to the Black Sea – literally disappeared from the map through successive agreements crafted by her more powerful neighbours Sweden, Austria, Prussia, and Russia with the aid of internal Polish factions. On the southern border a half century later, Catherine the Great gained a foothold on part of the Black Sea coast by the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji in 1774. This returned areas earlier taken from Slavs by various invaders since the Kievan period. Russia defeated Turkey in the Balkans and

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Crimea, and gained the right to send merchant ships through the Bosporus and Marmara straits. The eighteenth century also witnessed engagement in Central Asia, when in 1730, Abu’l-Khair, Khan of one of the three main Kazakh groups, asked for Russian overlordship to end raids by rival Eastern nomads. Firm organization and control in this area did not come about until the nineteenth century, when during the period between 1801 and 1878 the territories that would become Soviet Georgia, Armenia, Azerbadjan, Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan would be incorporated into the empire through successful wars against the Persian and Ottoman empires. Also in the early nineteenth century, Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy under Russia as a result of another war with Sweden, regaining independence only at the end of the First World War. It is important to note that, since the first Russian state had adopted in the tenth century what would evolve into its variety of Eastern Orthodoxy, the conflicts determining the borders of the Russian Empire were religious as well as military clashes: on the south and east with Islam; and on the west and north with Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity, respectively. Thus the added diversity of cultures resulting from the incorporation of some of these bordering lands into the empire represents an important dimension of the question of how peoples from these regions are now received as immigrants, despite Soviet Communist efforts at uprooting religion. On the whole, while some of Russia’s expansion was aimed at establishing viable boundaries – and some was mainly defensive – it showed many similarities to aggressive European overseas expansion and colonization. Regardless of the original motives, Russian rule brought with it a greater loss of autonomy than the annexed peoples desired, considerable administrative corruption in some areas, and various degrees of involuntary Russification. Keys to Russian success were similar to the process practised by the other European colonial powers in the Americas, Asia, and Africa: collaboration with native rival groups; superior arms; and economic and religious zeal. The Russian achievement meant that Eurasia was to be dominated by Western-oriented racial and religious outlooks, just like the rest of the world for much of the same historical era.

Postcolonial Immigration in Russia A number of observers have pointed out that a major reason the Russian Federation might be expected to have difficulty in dealing with postcolonial immigration is a lack of experience, due to the fact that Russia was

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not historically a place to which people moved in large numbers.1 Indeed, only in 1992 did the Russian legislature (Duma) adopt the Geneva Convention of 1951 on the Status of Refugees. This limited familiarity with immigration proved all the more consequential because one of the most striking characteristics of Russia’s decolonization was its suddenness, and the consequent extent of social dislocation. The rush to dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1991 resulted from the dual effect of President Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempted liberalization reforms, perestroika and glasnost, spinning out of control, and his personal rivalry with the President of the Russian Federated Republic, Boris Yeltsin. The latter knew that ending the Soviet Union would bring him immediate pre-eminence. The magnitude of the disruption the collapse represented can be seen in the United Nations High Commission on Refugees finding that, while at the time of the collapse the number of internal refugees was between seven hundred thousand and one million, by 1996 it recorded some 164 territorial disputes based on ethnic issues in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and nine million forced migrants.2 In weighing the significance of these high numbers against related developments in other European societies, it is important to keep in mind that even after the disintegration of the Soviet Union the population of the remnant Russia is one and three-quarters the size of the second largest European country; is around 20 per cent non-ethnic Russian, mainly Tatar, Ukrainian, Bashkir and Chuvash; and perhaps as much as 15 per cent of Moslem faith. The large size of the Russian population coupled with the fact that Russia’s colonial empire lay along the border largely account for another prominent feature of the Russian decolonization experience: the majority of migrants from former Soviet republics have been ethnic Russians. In 1989, 25.3 million ethnic Russians lived outside Russia in other parts of the Soviet Union, half of them in non-Slavic republics. Between 1990 and 1996, 2.4 million moved to Russia, and of those only 250,000 were from Ukraine and Belarus. This shows that it was mainly from the non-Slavic republics that they were coming. By 1997 no more than 350,000 were still identified in Transcaucasian republics, and only 135,000 in Tajikistan. In 1993 ethnic Russians accounted for 76 per cent of the immigrants, and fell into the category of ‘forced migrant’ used by the Federal Migration Service established by the Russian Federation in 1992. Their main reasons for moving to Russia are reflected in the criteria used for that designation: ‘citizens, forced to leave their former place of residence due to persecution or violence on the grounds of their race, nationality, religion, language, societal group affiliation or political conviction’. Non-citizens who have left their homelands under duress are classified as ‘refugees’. The types of disadvantage non-titular residents of the newly independent states faced

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included lesser guarantees of basic rights like citizenship, inheritance, pensions, and credit for previous employment.3 The fact that some twentytwo million ethnic Russians have remained abroad has also continued to occasion political debates within the Russian Federation, concerning both protection of their rights in the new independent states where they reside, and the potential for the advancement of Russian Federation interests through their presence. It is also noteworthy that because there were so many Russians in what has now become a new ‘abroad’, over a million of these ethnic Russians vote in the Federation’s Duma elections. Some scholars have argued that to some extent the seeds for this negative tenor of the decolonization process were planted at the very inception of the Soviet Union, when related stipulations in the first Soviet constitution of 1918 made Russia the first country to create a federal system based on ethno-national units. It was in fact Lenin himself who insisted, curiously over the opposition of the Georgian Stalin, that the constitution of the new Soviet Union should officially recognize the right to secession. Even though no one ever took this provision seriously, or the Supreme Soviet’s Chamber of Nationalities where little of substance was ever discussed, the early Soviet policy of forming administrative units along ethnic lines and promoting ethnic cultures fostered ethnic distinctions and contradicted the Communist official proscription of nationalism.4 There was of course even less success in abolishing religion. As a result, despite sporadic efforts at Russification, non-Russian nationalities managed to gain sway in local political institutions and to preserve much of their ethnic culture. The non-Slavic elites had actually taken considerable control in Central Asia before the Soviet Union’s collapse. From the mid-1960s onwards, native talent met most labour market demands in education, culture and health, thanks to progress in education. For example, in Kyrgyzstan in 1989, Kyrgyz were the choice by a ratio of about 2:1 over Russians in the categories of professor, literature and the arts, physicians, and lawyers. It should not have been surprising that when the Soviet experiment failed the empire would split apart along ethnic lines. Citizens of newly declared countries suddenly found themselves divided into ‘our kind’ and ‘outsiders’.5 Independence proved to be a mixed blessing for the former Soviet republics, and at the same time was literally and figuratively an unsettling experience for the ethnic Russians as well. While both Slavic and native peoples emigrated from the non-Slavic republics, a high percentage of the ethnic Russians immigrating were on a higher education level than the general population of the Russian Federation. Their numbers included several thousand former employees from nuclear power stations from the Ukraine; and of the Russians applying in Uzbekistan in 1994 for reloca-

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tion, 38 per cent were engineers, technicians, and software programmers, with a further 28 per cent being teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, scientific researchers, artists, architects, and the like. This is surely valuable talent lost for newly independent states. Meanwhile, the ethnic Russians, in moving to Russia, have had to contend with a degree of culture shock in finding themselves the majority of applicants for asylum status.6 This somewhat anomalous social position derives in part from the concept held by some officials during the Soviet regime that Russians within the Russian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic somehow embodied preservation of ‘authentic’ Russian culture to a higher degree than those residing elsewhere in the USSR. For example, some academics at the Gorbachev Foundation were among those asserting that the mentality of the Russians migrating from outside the Russian Federation was inherently different from those within. At the same time, government efforts to direct the arriving Russians to rural areas to offset population losses in those regions and to prevent overcrowding in the large cities seemed to promote a sort of ghettoizing of these Russians rather than their integration.7 One Western study regarding this issue has questioned whether there was ever a distinctly Russian national identity developed under the Soviet Union, because of the absence of any truly national institutions besides the Communist Party. If it was thus never a nation-state, this could have led those in the outlying republics to have a ‘Union’ identity instead; consequently ‘returning’ to the Russian Federation is in no real sense a return ‘home’. In reality, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and largely rejected by the former republics, these Russians were simply immigrants to the Russian Federation, who were thinking of the places they were leaving as ‘home’.8 The awkwardness of the position of the ethnic Russians is accentuated by the fact that Russia has become a more attractive location than ever before for refugees and asylum seekers from the developing world. Most of these have had to enter on a tourist visa, with all but around 5 per cent thinking of Russia as only a transit stop en route to Western countries. However, the tightening of immigration rules further west coupled with the Geneva Convention prohibition of sending them back to the place from where they fled leaves the Russian Federation with countless unwelcome guests. This turn of events has brought further distress to the ethnic Russian immigrants because a new citizenship law of 2002, aimed at lowering the number of ‘transit’ migrants, unintentionally narrowed the distinction between them and most ethnic Russian immigrants when it tightened qualifications for ‘forced migrant’ status, now requiring a five-year wait for application.9 The regional distribution of migration within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) resulting from the Soviet collapse has followed

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predictable patterns related to location of economic prosperity and armed conflict. Thus the majority of migrants from the poorer CIS countries travelled to the middle-income CIS countries; but many also moved west in search of higher earnings in the EU and Turkey. These have been the main determinants of the attractiveness of the Russian Federation; and fluctuation in these factors has been mirrored in the migration flow. After the 1991 collapse, Russia received a net gain of 3.7 million in population from all the CIS and Baltic states, except for Belarus; while, by contrast, 15 per cent of the populations of Armenia, Albania, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan migrated permanently.10 The former republics were divided into two categories, those gaining and those losing people, with the division generally falling along ethnic lines: the Slavic republics gained people and the non-Slavic lost them. Central Asia has overwhelmingly contributed the largest share of immigrants, where the same correlation of movement with economic prosperity can be found: Armenia has received population from Georgia and Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan from Georgia, and Kazakhstan from all of Central Asia.11 One somewhat unexpected aspect of migration in the CIS is that the anxiety many Western states had that immigration resulting from the Soviet Union’s collapse might place pressure on their societies proved unwarranted. For various reasons, the uprooted peoples in the CIS have found it more congenial to remain in the CIS if possible. However, around two million did leave between 1989 and 1995, and a very significant proportion of them were highly skilled.12

The Situation of Non-Slavic Immigrants As has been noted, the great majority of the emigrants to the Russian Federation during the immediate decolonization were ethnic Russians with a high percentage of elite occupations. While falling into the category of immigrant along with their non-Slavic counterparts, and even if experiencing some uncertainty as to their true ‘homeland’, ethnic Russians nevertheless were inherently in a more privileged position because of that identity, as well as their generally higher socio-economic level. Limiting an examination of Russian decolonization to their story would thus provide less subject matter for comparison with the tensions surrounding conspicuous minority immigrant populations in other European societies. At the same time, it appears impossible to arrive at reliable population figures for the non-Russian and non-Slavic migrants, both because it is known that the majority reside in an illegal status, and because of the chaos in the administrative process.

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The most reliable picture available of the situation of this ‘other’ population is one that extrapolates backwards and forwards from around the year 2000, when more stability was achieved in record keeping and in focus on the subject. A recent study notes that at the start of the 2000s the migration of Tajiks, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks overshadowed the earlier predominant emigration of ethnic Russians from Central Asia to Russia. By 1996 the flow of ethnic Russians began to decrease; and in 2004 only seventy-four thousand emigrated to Russia from CIS countries, perhaps due to virtually exhausting the number of ethnic Russians still residing in CIS republics, and to improved stability in areas that had seen civil disturbances. While many of the non-Slavic immigrants from Central Asia are in some studies referred to as seasonal migrants, it might be better to characterize them simply as itinerant workers, given their lack of job security and degree of mobility in search of work. Most would prefer low-wage jobs in major cities, but are forced to engage in seasonal agriculture in less popular regions due to the scarcity of work in the cities. This on the whole does not seem to constitute an immigrant population working in predictable urban or rural cycles. In any case, research on a specific category such as seasonal labour is problematical due to the general lack of data on the numbers of emigrants departing from Central Asia as well as their entry into, and alleged departure from, Russia.13 Russian authorities estimate that by 2001 a million immigrants were residing in Moscow alone, and over 850,000 of those were illegal. Immigrants from the CIS are able to gain entry fairly easily, but obtaining work permits often proves impossible. They then mainly remain illegally, avoiding contact with the authorities or bribing them.14 For the Russian Federation as a whole, the estimates range as high as two million Azeris, one million Armenians, and half a million Georgians working illegally in Russia; and some estimates place the number of illegal Chinese workers as high as two million. Official estimates find that, mirroring Moscow, only around 10 per cent of foreign workers in Russia as a whole have proper documentation. Apart from the CIS immigrants, the other prominent economic immigrants are the Chinese and Vietnamese. In Russia, as in the rest of Europe, there are also other categories of refugees and asylum seekers, in this case mainly Afghans and Africans, including Somalians, Ethiopians and Angolans, some of whom first came as students and remained. Chinese, Vietnamese and Afghan migrants have tended to settle with their families, while Central Asians are mainly married males who come alone, although the number of women is increasing.15 Moscow is the centre of the region with the most illegal immigrants. Latent hostility towards Transcaucasian and Central Asian immigrants showed itself in the capital during the state of emergency declared during

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the 1993 uprising against the Duma, when Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov ordered a ‘cleansing’ of the city of suspected illegals and criminals. The rules of residence were in the process of change due to the recent collapse of the USSR; and fourteen thousand were arbitrarily detained, mainly people from Transcaucasia and Central Asia. Of those, five thousand to ten thousand were deported, prompting formal complaints of racism from human rights groups such as Helsinki Watch and liberals among the Russian public.16 It is mainly the fierce competition for space and jobs that forces some immigrants to locate in less desirable parts of Russia. Immigrants from Central Asia go mainly to the countryside and Siberia. For example, the Kyrgyz go to Yekaterinburg, and Uzbeks to Barnaul in the Altay territory due to a low skill level. On the other hand, half the Tajiks are in Moscow. Few Central Asians settle in the autonomous national republics in Russia, as they tend to shy away from agricultural work there, although providing 70 per cent of the agricultural labour in Astrakhan and Volgograd. Uzbeks and Kyrgyz do work in agriculture in Kazakstan. In Russia the Central Asian migrants are heavily represented in low-wage construction jobs and trade and transport, including what is considered ‘ethnic’ business: for example, produce from Central Asia, and goods, textiles and tools from China that pass through Central Asia. The majority of Central Asian migrants send most of their money back home. According to the International Monetary Fund, remittances home to Tajikistan from migrant workers in Russia are approaching one billion dollars, making it probably more dependent on this form of support than any other country in the world. This process is complicated by inadequate banking systems for transferring funds. Furthermore, after sending remittances the migrants are unable to afford decent housing or health care; they are exploited by labour traffickers and corrupt police and other officials, as well as by employers who at times refuse to pay as agreed, given the common absence of contracts. Some are unable to afford housing and sleep at the markets, finding a cheap flat only for winter. Illegals in Russia are exposed to many dangers. Prime targets of xenophobia and racism, they are forced to limit their time in public to travelling back and forth to work. The SOVA Center for sociological research on nationalism and racism, in its annual report for 2007, reported 520 racist attacks, 73 of those fatal. A veritable pogrom on 21 August 2006 in the market of Cherkizovo resulted in the death of twelve people, four of them Tajik.17 Surveys have revealed that the majority in Russian society denounce extreme violence against the immigrants, such as massive attacks that skinheads and soccer fans have made on immigrants’ city market stalls. However, this one positive sentiment cannot be taken to suggest the presence of a democratic civil society in today’s Russia with regard to immigration.

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On the contrary, Russia is clearly the least advanced of all European societies in this regard. For example, an article dated 20 January 2009 in which the Russian Information Agency ‘Novosti’ reports the European Union’s president denouncing the brazen, daylight murders in Moscow of a human rights lawyer aiding the Chechen cause and a young Russian woman reporter accompanying him, also notes the findings of the Parisbased NGO Reporters Without Borders that in the years 2000–2007 at least twenty-one journalists were murdered with impunity in Russia. The lawyer’s killing was apparently triggered by his recent protest against the early release of a Russian regimental tank commander who had received a rare conviction for raping and strangling a Chechen girl during one of the Russian campaigns in Chechnya – and the reporter simply for covering the story.18 The absence of serious investigation of such incidents sends a clear, ominous message throughout the governmental institutions and society at large concerning what is permissible to say or to teach about current developments. This also comes on the heels of a measure signed into law by the president at the end of 2008, eliminating trial by jury for certain offences deemed crimes against the state. As a result, what is discernible of public opinion and the media generally echoes the expressed opinion of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, that the immigrants are unwelcome guests; and an increasingly repressive Russian political regime makes life difficult for non-government organizations that might help immigrants.19 Some are forced into organized crime in order to survive, further contributing to the related negative stereotypes. The Federal Migration Service proved to be of little help, functioning primarily as a policing agency serving the state’s agenda in keeping out unwanted populations. It was virtually abolished in 2000, and incorporated into the Ministry of Federation Affairs, National and Migration Policy, thereby further emphasizing government emphasis on control and management over protection and assistance. Then, in 2001, the migration affairs passed to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), despite protests from human rights organizations; and its chief Andrei Chernenko announced that the ‘romantic period’ of migration was over.20 Russian leaders are aware that Russia is confronting demographic projections similar to the rest of Europe, with the non-Russian part of the CIS generally experiencing and expecting increasing population, and Russia and the Ukraine decreasing. This means there is a symbiotic relationship between Central Asia, the Transcaucasian region, and Russia, through labour paired with markets, rendering both movement and residency permits desirable. However, even though the government admits that Russia will have a net loss of about one million in population over the next twenty years, creating an economic demand for around three mil-

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lion, with possibly a third of Russian firms experiencing labour shortages lacking migration to fill low-paying jobs, political considerations seems to have primacy. The government’s apparent preference to promote heightened nationalism that allows the Putin regime to have its way results in an unwillingness to develop a clear immigration policy. Legislation in 2007 has simplified the difficult process for obtaining legal work status for those who cross the border legally; but nothing has been done to aid the plight of the millions already present illegally. Most bilateral agreements between the CIS states do not contain mechanisms to facilitate temporary or circular migration, which gives both legal and illegal immigrants an incentive to remain in Russia illegally, even if their preference might be to work there on a cyclical pattern like seasonal workers might.21 Admittedly, it is not only the Russian government that may be faulted for the difficult plight of these migrants; for example, Uzbekistan has not shown the foresight to even establish a related diplomatic agreement with Russia, as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have.22 The social chasm separating Russians and non-Slavic immigrants reflected in their mutual history and the current conditions just described explain why there is no significant issue of Russian identity among these groups, such as there is for immigrants in France, England, Portugal, and even Germany regarding local national identity. While there is a related issue with the ethnic Russian immigrants, it seems to be more of an issue of status than identity.

Notes 1. Slater, ‘Le problème de l’immigration en Russia’, in Politique Etrangere, 750. It should also be noted that postcolonial immigration in Russia, both Slavic and non-Slavic, has still not been the subject of extensive research. Thus, observations presented here on such topics as identity formation and immigrant organizations should be viewed as tentative. 2. Pilkington, Migration, Displacement and Identity in Post-Soviet Russia, 4. 3. Zayonchkovskaya, ‘Recent Migration Trends in Russia’; Pilkington, Migration, 6. 4. Suny, The Soviet Experiment, 141–44; Yuri Slezkine, ‘The USSR as a Communal Apartment’, 203. 5. Zayonchkovskaya, ‘Migration Patterns in the Former Soviet Union’, 18–28. 6. Pilkington, Migration, 163. 7. Slater, ‘Le problème de l’immigration en Russia’, 751–53. 8. Flynn, Migrant Resettlement in the Russian Federation, 37. For a broader discussion of this issue, see Tolz, ‘Conflicting “Homeland Myths”’. 9. Flynn, Migrant Resettlement, 48–50. 10. Mansoor and Quillin (eds), Migration and Remittances, 5. 11. Zayonchkovskaya, ‘Migration Patterns in the Former Soviet Union’, 21–26. 12. Flynn, Migrant Resettlement, 12; Codagnone, ‘The New Migration in Russia in the 1990s’, 39–43. 13. Laruelle, ‘Central Asian Labor Migrants in Russia’, 101. Zayonchkovskaya, ‘Migration Patterns in the Former Soviet Union’, 33.

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14. Mereu, ‘Moscow Markets Present Troubled Tableau of Life of City’s Immigrants’. 15. Laruelle, ‘Central Asian Labor Migrants in Russia’, 103–6; Zayonchkovskaya, ‘Migration Patterns’, 35. 16. Slater, ‘Le problème de l’immigration en Russia’, 752. 17. Laruelle, ‘Central Asian Labor Migrants in Russia’, 108–12. See the SOVA Center 2007 annual report on xenophobia, freedom of conscience, and anti-extremism in Russia, at www.sova-center.ru/en. 18. ‘EU Expresses Concern over Top Lawyer’s Murder in Moscow’, RIA NOVOSTI, 25 January 2009. 19. The main human rights groups present are: the Civic Assistance Committee (CAC – the oldest, formed in 1990, provides some direct aid as well as lobbying); Memorial (promotes legal rights); Coordinating Council for Aid to Refugees and Forced Migrants (CCARFM – umbrella organization for coordinating 28 NGOs and 47 individuals); Forum of Migrant Associations (periodic gathering of representatives from 198 associations); Compatriots Fund (Russian Fund for Aid to Refugees – main attention on Russians). Reticence, especially of the undocumented immigrants, to become involved even with recognized aid organizations also complicates the efforts of NGOs. Ethnic Russians too appear to prefer to rely on family, personal, and migrant networks. See Flynn, Migrant Resettlement, 125–46 and 178–80. 20. Flynn, Migrant Resettlement, 47–48. 21. Mansoor and Quillin (eds), Migration and Remittances, 15. 22. Mereu, ‘Moscow Markets’; Laruelle, ‘Central Asian Labor Migrants in Russia’, 108–14; Zayonchkovskaya, ‘Migration Patterns in the Former Soviet Union’, 37; Pilkington, Migration, 201.

Chapter 7

The Puerto Rican Diaspora to the United States A Postcolonial Migration? Jorge Duany

In 1953, the General Assembly of the United Nations removed Puerto Rico from its list of ‘non-self-governing territories’. Officially, the island was no longer considered a ‘colony’ of the United States. Since then, the U.S. government has repeatedly claimed that the Puerto Rican people have exercised their right to self-determination, that they adopted their own constitution, that they have attained self-government and that they are freely associated with the United States.1 The leaders of Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party (PDP), who favour the current political status, insist that in 1952 the island entered into a ‘bilateral compact’ with the United States. That year, 81.9 per cent of the island’s electorate approved the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Estado Libre Asociado in Spanish, or ‘Associated Free State’). From this perspective, Puerto Rico may be deemed a ‘postcolonial’ state that has received the consent of the majority of the governed. This state is characterized by free elections, a competitive party system, respect for human rights and legal protection of civic liberties, as well as extensive welfare and social programmes. However, the exact nature of the ‘compact’ between Puerto Rico and the United States has been intensely disputed since the creation of the Commonwealth. Both independence supporters and proponents of the island’s incorporation as the fifty-first state of the American union have denounced the continuing ‘colonial’ relations between Puerto Rico and the United States. The island remains under the ‘plenary power’ of the U.S. Notes for this chapter begin on page 223.

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Congress, and residents of Puerto Rico do not enjoy all the constitutional rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship. In particular, the island’s residents cannot vote for the President and Vice-President of the United States or for their own congressional delegates, yet they depend greatly upon the actions of these elected officials. From this standpoint, the island is an ‘incomplete democracy’ with ‘partial citizenship’, subordinated to an external political entity that does not represent its own inhabitants.2 Puerto Ricans in the United States have been dubbed ‘colonial immigrants’ because they are U.S. citizens who can travel freely between the island and the mainland but are not fully covered by the American Constitution on the island.3 As Ramón Grosfoguel has argued,4 Puerto Ricans share much with other ‘colonial subjects’, such as the residents of other Caribbean dependent territories who have relocated in large numbers to their metropoles. For instance, the parallels between Puerto Ricans in the United States and Antilleans in France and the Netherlands are striking, including their subordinate position within metropolitan societies, largely as a consequence of colonial racism, despite conditions of legal equality.5 For other analysts, Puerto Rico resembles a ‘postcolonial colony’ because it combines elements of classical colonial rule with political autonomy, relative prosperity and a strong national culture.6 In any case, Puerto Rico occupies a marginal space within the U.S. academy and particularly within postcolonial debates, partly because it is not formally recognized as a colony. Recent studies of Puerto Ricans have revisited their colonial history, national identity and transnational migration from various standpoints, including postcolonial, transnational, postmodern, queer and cultural studies.7 Most scholars in the social sciences and the humanities no longer question whether Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. They often discuss, sometimes angrily, the precise form of U.S. colonialism on the island, the extent to which it has acquired certain ‘postcolonial’ traits such as linguistic and cultural autonomy, and the possibility of waging an effective decolonization process. The issue of national identity in Puerto Rico is still contested as intensely as ever. What is different about current scholarly discussions is that many intellectuals, especially those who align themselves with postmodernism, are highly critical of nationalist discourses. Other debates focus on the appropriate approach to population movements between the island and the U.S. mainland. For example, some outside observers insist that, technically speaking, the Puerto Rican exodus should be considered an internal, not international, migration, while others, including myself, refer to such a massive dispersal of people as transnational or diasporic. Much of this controversy centres on the significance of geographic, cultural, linguistic and even racial borders between the island and the U.S. mainland.

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Puerto Rico is one of the overseas territories acquired by the United States since the end of the nineteenth century, including Hawaii (1898– 1959), Cuba (1898–1902), the Philippines (1898–1946), Guam (1898), the Northern Mariana Islands (1898), American Samoa (1899), the Panama Canal Zone (1903–79) and the U.S. Virgin Islands (1917). The expansion of the continental United States into what has been called ‘the imperial archipelago’, in the Caribbean and the Pacific,8 quickly displaced the inhabitants of one territory to another during the first decades of the twentieth century, such as Puerto Ricans and Filipinos to Hawaii. Each of the ‘overseas possessions’, as they were officially called, eventually acquired a distinct political status: Hawaii became a state of the American union in 1959; Cuba was a ‘neo-colonial’ republic under the Platt Amendment in effect between 1902 and 1934, and developed into a socialist republic after the 1959 Revolution; the Philippines obtained its independence in 1946; the Northern Mariana Islands became a Commonwealth in political union with the United States in 1978; the Panama Canal Zone was incorporated by the Republic of Panama in 1979; and Guam, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands remain unincorporated territories of the United States. Perhaps the most relevant case for comparison with Puerto Rico is the Philippines; both territories were ceded by Spain to the United States after the War of 1898 and both have staged large-scale population flows to the U.S. mainland. The first migrations of Filipino workers were directed towards Hawaii and other U.S. territories in the Pacific. At the time, Filipinos were considered ‘nationals’ but not citizens of the United States, a spurious legal status that allowed them to move freely to the United States until 1934. That year, Congress established an immigration quota from the Philippines, and the number of Filipino immigrants decreased sharply.9 After the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished restrictions by national origin, Filipino migration increased greatly. Today, Filipinos are the second largest foreign-born group (with more than 1.7 million people) in the United States, after Mexicans. Puerto Rico is the leading source of migration from the overseas possessions of the United States. Table 7.1 provides recent estimates of the population originating in the major territories annexed by the United States (though, as noted before, Cuba and the Philippines are independent republics and Hawaii is a state of the union). The figures show that Puerto Rican immigrants and their descendants surpass by far all the other groups in the United States, including Filipinos, Cubans, Guamanians, Hawaiians, Samoans and U.S. Virgin Islanders. Except for American Samoa, Puerto Rico also has the highest share of its population residing abroad. Moreover, Puerto Ricans have migrated en masse to the U.S. mainland for

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more than six decades, the most sustained movement among all the territories acquired by the United States over the last century or so. Hence, focusing on the peculiarities of the Puerto Rican case seems well justified. Table 7.1. Population originating in the former or current U.S. Overseas Territories and now living in the Continental United States, 2007 Number of People Living in the Number of People Living in the United States Sending Territory Puerto Rico Philippines Cuba Guam Hawaii American Samoa U.S. Virgin Islands

4,120,205 2,412,446 1,611,478 79,947 72,643 69,615 13,055

3,958,128 96,061,680 11,423,952 175,877 1,283,388 64,827 109,840

Sources: Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook (2008); U.S. Census Bureau, American Factfinder (2008).

Brief Historical Overview Puerto Rico was one of Spain’s two remaining colonies in the Americas (the other was Cuba), until in 1898 it became an overseas possession of the United States as a result of the Spanish-Cuban-American War. On 25 July 1898, U.S. troops invaded the island and have retained a strong presence there ever since. In 1901, the U.S. Supreme Court paradoxically defined Puerto Rico as ‘foreign to the United States in a domestic sense’ because the island was neither a state of the union nor a sovereign republic. The court also ruled that Puerto Rico was an ‘unincorporated territory’ of the United States and that Congress would determine which parts of the American Constitution would ‘follow the flag’.10 In 1904, the court declared that Puerto Ricans were not ‘aliens’ in the United States for immigration purposes.11 In 1917, Congress granted statutory U.S. citizenship to all Puerto Ricans, but the island remained an ‘unincorporated territory’. In the 1930s, the federal government extended the New Deal through the Puerto Rican Emergency Relief Administration (PRERA) and the Puerto Rican Reconstruction Administration (PRRA). In 1947, President Harry S. Truman appointed the first Puerto Rican-born governor, Jesús T. Piñero. That same year, the Puerto Rican legislature approved the Industrial Incentives Act, which lured U.S. investments through tax exemptions for manufacturing enterprises. Thus was launched ‘Operation

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Bootstrap’ (Manos a la Obra, in Spanish), the government’s much-touted programme of ‘industrialization by invitation’. In 1948, Luis Muñoz Marín became the island’s first elected governor, a post to which he was re-elected three times. In 1952, Puerto Rico became a U.S. Commonwealth, with limited self-government in local matters such as taxation, education, health, housing, culture and language. However, the U.S. federal government retained jurisdiction in most state affairs, including citizenship, immigration, customs, defence, currency, transportation, communications, foreign trade and diplomacy. Beginning in the 1970s, the Puerto Rican model of development underwent a crisis, as many factories closed down and moved to more attractive locations, such as the Dominican Republic, Ireland and Singapore. In 1974, the federal government introduced the food stamp programme in Puerto Rico to alleviate increasing poverty. In 1996, Congress eliminated Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code, which since 1976 had allowed for the repatriation of untaxed profits from U.S. companies operating in Puerto Rico. Consequently, manufacturing employment in Puerto Rico declined by 45,600 jobs between 1998 and 2007.12 The island’s export-led manufacturing strategy has lost most of its steam.

State Policies towards Migration Since the first decades of the twentieth century, the colonial Puerto Rican government assumed an active role in promoting and managing migration to the United States.13 This public policy was based on the widespread perception that Puerto Rico was a small, poor and overpopulated country with few natural resources. As the American Governor Arthur Yager wrote in 1915, ‘the only really effective remedy [to the problem of overpopulation] is the transfer of large numbers of Porto Ricans [sic] to some other region’.14 Early efforts focused on recruiting agricultural workers from the island to sugar plantations in Hawaii, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and the U.S. Virgin Islands, especially St Croix.15 However, the Puerto Rican exodus gained impetus during the 1940s, when it was largely reoriented towards the U.S. mainland. Notwithstanding its lack of sovereignty, Puerto Rico’s government acted as a ‘transnational’ intermediary for its migrant citizens for most of the twentieth century.16 Thus, the island’s government established several agencies in the United States with different names: the Bureau of Employment and Identification (1930–48), the Office of Information for Puerto Rico (1945–49), the Bureau of Employment and Migration (1947–51), the Migration Division of the Department of Labour (1951–89) and the

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Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs in the United States (1989–93).17 Among other initiatives, these agencies supervised an extensive programme for contract farm workers; promoted employment opportunities for Puerto Ricans in the United States; lobbied for the rights of migrant workers; negotiated cheaper airfares between the island and the U.S. mainland; led public relations campaigns for Puerto Ricans in the United States; registered thousands of Puerto Rican voters; and helped to organize the Puerto Rican community in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere.18 The Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs in the United States was eliminated in 1993 because prostatehood leaders, then a majority in the island’s legislature, believed that the agency represented an unwarranted instance of applying public policy in another jurisdiction. Still, the Commonwealth government maintains a formal presence on the mainland through the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration. Nowadays, this agency has greatly reduced its budget and influence over the diaspora. The project of organizing and supervising migration from Puerto Rico was first elaborated by the American sociologist Clarence Senior, who later directed the Migration Division (1951–60). In an influential monograph, Senior (1947) advocated establishing an emigration office attached to the governor’s executive staff and working closely with the island’s Department of Labour. The main function of this office would be to recruit workers from Puerto Rico to the United States and Latin America, especially Venezuela. The office would provide migrant workers with information on job openings, training, transportation, settlement and insurance, as well as promote further emigration from the island. Although the plan to relocate Puerto Ricans in Latin America proved too expensive, the idea of finding jobs for them in the United States, primarily in New York City, later crystallized in the Migration Division. Senior’s blueprint for planned emigration was well received by Muñoz Marín, then President of the Puerto Rican Senate (1941–48) and later Governor (1949–64). Muñoz Marín agreed that it was ‘necessary to resort to emigration as a measure for the immediate relief to the problem posed by our surplus population, while we seek permanent solutions in the long run’.19 An economist working for the Office of Puerto Rico in Washington, DC, Donald J. O’Connor, also urged the resettlement of Puerto Ricans in the United States and other countries such as the Dominican Republic or Brazil. According to O’Connor,20 ‘migration can accomplish what economic programs on the island cannot do quickly’ – that is, create jobs and sources of income, while reducing population growth. High-ranking members of the ruling PDP, such as Antonio Fernós-Isern, Teodoro Moscoso and Rafael Picó, concurred with O’Connor’s optimistic

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assessment. Thus began a state-supported project of emigration – a ‘safety valve’ for Puerto Rico’s demographic and economic pressures. On 12 May 1947, the island’s legislature passed Public Law 25, creating the Bureau of Employment and Migration. From its inception, the bureau (and its heirs, the Migration Division and the Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs in the United States) sought ‘to follow its migrant citizens to facilitate their adjustment and adaptation in the communities in which they chose to live’. According to Public Law 25, ‘the Government of Puerto Rico does not stimulate or discourage the migration of Puerto Rican workers to the United States or any other foreign country; but it deems its duty to duly orient [them] regarding the occupational opportunities and adjustment problems in ethnologically strange settings’.21 The public policy of ‘following migrant citizens’ to the United States, while officially neither ‘stimulating nor discouraging’ their departure, paid off in the short run. The growth of the island’s labour force slowed down, while living standards rose substantially between the 1940s and 1960s. Population control was a key ideological tenet of the PDP’s development strategy throughout this period.22 Post-war Puerto Rican migration has ebbed and flowed according to various stages of Operation Bootstrap, as well as to the changing demands of the U.S. economy, particularly in the large urban centres of the northeast.23 Although Operation Bootstrap created thousands of factory jobs, it could not absorb many more thousands of unskilled workers displaced by a swift agricultural decline. In 1940, agriculture employed 44.9 per cent of the island’s labour force; by 1970, that sector only employed 9.9 per cent.24 During this period, Puerto Rico’s development strategy expelled a large share of its rural population, both on and off the island, primarily to mainland cities that required cheap labour, such as New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia. Afterwards, Puerto Ricans tended to resettle abroad when job opportunities were more attractive on the mainland, and returned when economic conditions improved on the island. Today, many people travel back and forth in search of higher wages and living standards, as well as to reunite with their families, study or retire on either the island or the mainland. U.S. citizenship, cheap air transportation and far-flung social networks facilitate such comings and goings.

Mapping Puerto Rican Migration The main destinations for Puerto Rican migrants towards the end of the nineteenth century were other Caribbean and Latin American countries, such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela and Panama. A small

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number of political exiles from the Spanish colonial regime also settled on the U.S. mainland, particularly in New York City, between 1868 and 1898. The first major migrant stream under U.S. rule was directed to Hawaii, another U.S. territory, in 1900 and 1901. Until 1920, Hawaii had the highest concentration of Puerto Rican migrants. Smaller enclaves existed in states like California and Arizona. The earliest and largest mainland Puerto Rican settlements emerged in New York City, the U.S. port with the best transportation links with San Juan since the nineteenth century. Until the 1940s, most migrants arrived on passenger steamboats such as the Marine Tiger, the Borinquen and the Coamo.25 Many Puerto Rican communities (or colonias, as they were called then) developed alongside African-American neighbourhoods such as Harlem in Manhattan and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. Over time, predominantly Puerto Rican barrios would become more mixed with other Hispanics, particularly Dominicans and Mexicans. From New York, Puerto Ricans spread out to New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, especially those employed in seasonal agriculture. A secondary Puerto Rican concentration developed in the Midwest during the 1950s, particularly Chicago, Cleveland, and smaller industrial cities such as Lorain, Ohio, and Gary, Indiana. A third nucleus emerged around Philadelphia, Camden, Lancaster and other cities along the Delaware River Valley.26 After the Second World War, most Puerto Ricans arrived in New York by plane, making them the first large-scale airborne migration in history. During the 1970s, Puerto Ricans began to move en masse to the south, especially Florida. As the diaspora has become more widely scattered, regional differences have intensified. Today, Puerto Rican communities in the south-east and south-west tend to be economically better off than in the north-east and Midwest.27 Moreover, Puerto Ricans are more likely to come into contact with Cubans in Miami and with Mexicans in Los Angeles than in New York City, where they are more prone to interact with African Americans and Dominicans. Partly in response to local conditions, stateside Puerto Ricans have developed varied cultural identities. For example, ‘ChicagoRicans’ embraced a pan-Latino label earlier than elsewhere, because they often mingled with Mexicans as co-workers, neighbours and marriage partners, and mobilized politically according to their common Hispanic origins. At the same time, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in Chicago and elsewhere racialize each other’s cultural and language practices and maintain their social distance, reinforced by distinct settlement patterns.28 Throughout the twentieth century, Puerto Ricans left their homeland primarily for economic reasons, such as chronic unemployment, poverty, low wages and a high cost of living. After the Second World War, Opera-

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tion Bootstrap displaced many rural workers to urban centres, especially San Juan, the capital. Lack of sufficient jobs on the island, combined with a growing demand for cheap labour on the mainland, produced the first massive exodus in the 1940s. Another reason for sustained high rates of emigration has been the wide discrepancy between wages in Puerto Rico and the United States. On average, island workers earn less than half than their U.S. counterparts. The gap is much higher in some occupations, such as the police force, construction workers, electricians, nurses and physicians.29 Recently, middle-class sectors have searched for a ‘better quality of life’ abroad, especially educational and health services. Some journalists have sounded the alarm of a ‘brain drain’ from the island. The Puerto Rican diaspora has undergone three main phases since the beginning of the twentieth century.30 The pioneering wave, between 1917 and 1944, clustered in a few neighbourhoods of New York City, such as East Harlem, Chelsea, Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Brooklyn’s Navy Yard. These early settlements were relatively small, were well integrated with other Spanish-speaking immigrants, especially Cubans and Spaniards, and were not stigmatized as ‘social problems’. Many were skilled workers, especially cigar makers. About ninety thousand Puerto Ricans moved to the mainland between 1898 and 1944.31 The second wave, often dubbed the ‘Great Migration’, took place between 1945 and 1965. Puerto Rican communities expanded into the South Bronx and Brooklyn, especially Williamsburg and Sunset Park. Puerto Ricans became the second largest minority in New York City, after African Americans; the second largest Hispanic population in the United States, after Mexicans; and one of the most disadvantaged groups. More than half a million Puerto Ricans moved abroad during this stage. Most were unskilled workers, with little education or knowledge of the English language, and were largely incorporated into the lower rungs of the U.S. labour market, such as light manufacturing, domestic service and seasonal agriculture. The third period, between 1966 and the present, has been characterized by a growing ‘revolving-door’ migration – the back-and-forth movement between the island and the U.S. mainland. The number of returnees began to surpass those leaving for the United States in the early 1970s, especially as a result of minimum wage hikes on the island and the fiscal crisis of New York City, the traditional core of the Puerto Rican diaspora.32 At the same time, large-scale emigration from the island has continued unabated. The island has also received a smaller but growing number of foreign immigrants, mostly from the Dominican Republic and Cuba. As I have argued elsewhere, Puerto Rico has become ‘a nation on the move’.33

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The Growing Dispersal of the Puerto Rican People A basic problem in documenting the Puerto Rican diaspora is the absence of reliable records on the number of people who move between the island and the U.S. mainland. In turn, this situation is due to Puerto Rico’s peculiar condition as an ‘unincorporated territory’ of the United States as well as the treatment of Puerto Ricans as non-‘aliens’ by U.S. immigration authorities. Although official statistics based on passenger traffic are notoriously unreliable, they provide a crude estimate of the net movement of people between Puerto Rico and the United States. These figures show that emigration became massive during the 1940s, expanded during the 1950s, contracted during the 1970s, and regained strength during the 1980s. According to these statistics, more than two million people have moved from the island to the U.S. mainland since the mid-twentieth century. The proportions of this exodus are even more staggering when one recalls that Puerto Rico’s population had not reached four million by the year 2007. Aside from nineteenth-century Ireland and twentieth-century Suriname, the magnitude of the Puerto Rican diaspora has few historical precedents or contemporary parallels. Census data confirm the spectacular growth of the diaspora after the Second World War (see Figure 7.1). The number of stateside Puerto Ricans was relatively small until about 1940, when it began to expand quickly. Since 1960, the population of Puerto Rican origin abroad has increased less rapidly, but at a more accelerated pace than on the island. By the year 2006, according to census estimates, the number of Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland had overtaken those on the island. In 2007, more than 4.1 million people of Puerto Rican descent were living in the United States, compared to 3.9 million residents of Puerto Rico.34 Until the mid-twentieth century, the Puerto Rican exodus was primarily directed towards New York City. Hence the term ‘Nuyorican’ was coined in the 1950s to refer to all persons of Puerto Rican descent living in the United States. Other metropolitan areas in the north-east and Midwest that received large numbers of people from the island included Chicago, Philadelphia, Newark and Hartford. Since the 1960s, the migrants have amply spread out (see Table 7.2). Although Puerto Ricans still concentrate in the state of New York, their proportion decreased from nearly three-quarters of the total in 1960 to slightly more than one-quarter in 2007. During the 1990s, New York was the only state that lost part of its Puerto Rican population (about 3.3 per cent). Still, New York City has the largest concentration of Puerto Rican residents in the world – 788,560 people in 2007.

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Number of Puerto Ricans (thousands)

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Year

Figure 7.1. Puerto Ricans in the United States and Population of Puerto Rico, 1899–2007 (in thousands) Sources: for 1900, Gibson and Lennon, Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850–1990 (1999); for 1899–1950, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Census of Population: 1950. Special Reports: Puerto Ricans in Continental United States (1953); for 1960–80, U.S. Census Bureau (U.S. Census of Population: 1960. Puerto Ricans in the United States, 1963; Persons of Spanish Origin by State: 1980, 1982); for 1990–2007, U.S. Census Bureau, American Factfinder (2008). Note: between 1910 and 1940, the available figures for the United States refer to persons of Puerto Rican birth only; after 1950, they include persons of Puerto Rican parentage and, after 1970, they include all persons of Puerto Rican origin.

Correspondingly, the proportion of stateside Puerto Ricans has increased elsewhere, notably in Florida, which displaced New Jersey as the state with the second largest Puerto Rican concentration in the United States. The ‘Flori-Rican’ population grew from a little more than 2 per cent of all stateside Puerto Ricans in 1960 to nearly 18 per cent in 2007. Puerto Ricans have also congregated in north-eastern states such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut. In 2007, nearly 640,000 Puerto Ricans lived in states that did not have the ten largest concentrations of immigrants from the island. Altogether, census data document the dispersal of Puerto Ricans outside their original niche in New York during the past five decades.35

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Table 7.2.  Geographic distribution of the population of Puerto Rican origin in the United States, by state, 1960–2007

California Connecticut Florida Illinois Massachusetts New Jersey New York Ohio Pennsylvania Texas Other states Total

1960

1980

2007

28,108 15,247 19,535 36,081 5,217 55,351 642,622 13,940 21,206 6,050 49,156 892,513

93,038 88,361 94,775 129,165 76,450 243,540 986,389 32,442 91,802 22,938 155,045 2,013,945

164,460 218,219 725,724 168,916 232,375 401,230 1,082,620 80,315 309,644 96,896 639,806 4,120,205

Sources: for 1960–80, U.S. Census Bureau (U.S. Census of Population: 1960. Puerto Ricans in the United States, 1963; Persons of Spanish Origin by State: 1980, 1982); for 1990–2007, U.S. Census Bureau, American Factfinder (2008).

The Rise and Fall of the Farm Labour Programme A fascinating case study of how the Commonwealth government navigated the ‘colonial’ and ‘postcolonial’ intricacies of Puerto Rico’s political status is the Farm Labour Programme. Between 1947 and 1990, 420,980 Puerto Ricans were recruited to work on the U.S. mainland as part of the agricultural programme initiated by the island’s government.36 Most of the workers concentrated in north-eastern states, especially New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. The vast majority were young men with limited schooling and proficiency in the English language. Most had been landless rural labourers in the sugar, coffee and tobacco industries.37 Although they were popularly known as los tomateros (‘the tomato pickers’), Puerto Ricans also planted and cut shade tobacco in the Connecticut River Valley; picked apples in New England and Washington; strawberries and cabbages in New York; corn, blueberries and asparagus in the Delaware River Valley; peaches in South Carolina; avocados, potatoes and lettuce in South Florida; and other crops like cranberries, oranges and mushrooms elsewhere. Several diasporic communities originated as former contract workers resettled in cities such as

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Philadelphia, Lancaster, Camden, Buffalo, Hartford, Boston, Milwaukee, Detroit and Miami. The Farm Labour Programme of the Puerto Rican government was created by Public Law 87 in 1947, making the island’s Commissioner of Labour responsible for supervising the recruitment of agricultural workers in Puerto Rico. In 1951, the Wagner-Peyser Act, which established the Bureau of Employment Security within the U.S. Department of Labour, was extended to Puerto Rico. Thereafter, the island was formally recognized as part of the ‘domestic’ labour supply in the United States.38 In effect, Puerto Rico was treated as a state of the American union regarding seasonal agricultural workers. Hence, the island’s Farm Labour Programme processed thousands of ‘clearance orders’ from U.S. employers requesting Puerto Rican farm workers through the U.S. Department of Labour. The arrangement between the Commonwealth and federal governments worked reasonably well between the 1950s and 1970s. It produced the peculiar situation of a ‘colonial’ state representing its ‘migrant citizens’ within a complex metropolitan legal structure and labour market. Throughout this period, the Commonwealth government insisted that Puerto Rican farm workers were legally ‘domestic’, but culturally ‘foreign’ to the United States. The field representatives of Puerto Rico’s Farm Labour Programme had multiple duties. First, they supervised the transportation of agricultural workers from various recruiting stations on the island and often welcomed them at U.S. airports. Second, they oriented migrants about their rights and privileges as U.S. citizens. Third, they inspected housing and eating arrangements at labour camps to ensure their compliance with the Commonwealth’s contract with employers. Fourth, they investigated accident, salary and unemployment claims by disgruntled workers (and there were many). Fifth, they mediated labour disputes between workers and representatives of the growers’ associations. Finally, they coordinated the services offered by state, federal and private agencies, including insurance, health care, English language classes and recreational activities.39 A character in a promotional film commissioned by Puerto Rico’s Labour Department, Los beneficiarios (‘The Beneficiaries’, Viguié Films, undated), quips that the field representative of the Migration Division played the roles of ‘father confessor, nurse, psychologist, chauffeur, translator, teacher, defence lawyer – and everything for the worker’. Another character adds, ‘he’s a friend of the worker. Someone who fixes everything (arreglalotodo)’. Puerto Rico’s Farm Labour Programme declined steadily in the 1970s. To begin, the demand for seasonal agricultural workers in the north-east decreased because of the mechanization of several crops and the increasing

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availability of local labour. Furthermore, as U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans were generally paid higher wages and had better living and working conditions than other immigrants, such as Jamaicans or Mexicans. Puerto Rican farm workers also organized labour unions to defend their collective rights, which earned them the reputation of being ‘troublesome’ among employers.40 In 1968, the election of a New Progressive Party (NPP) government weakened the thrust for recruiting agricultural workers for mainland farms. By this time, Puerto Rico itself had become largely urbanized, and fewer Puerto Ricans sought work in agriculture. Lastly, two legal controversies undermined the manoeuvring capacity of the Migration Division to recruit farm labour from Puerto Rico to the United States. During the 1970s, Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Labour bitterly complained that U.S. apple growers preferred to hire West Indians over Puerto Ricans. In 1979, a class action suit, Ríos v. Marshall, alleged that temporary foreign workers, especially Jamaicans, were recruited in the annual New York apple harvest, without first guaranteeing jobs for Puerto Ricans and other ‘domestic’ workers. The U.S. Secretary of Labour at the time had certified that ‘no domestic workers were available’ because Public Law 87 eliminated Puerto Ricans from the labour supply. As the U.S. Under Secretary of Labour wrote to the chairman of the subcommittee on Agricultural Labour of the U.S. House of Representatives, ‘It is our hope that the regulations under Puerto Rican Public Law 87 can be adjusted to make these workers more effectively available for employment on the mainland’.41 In 1978, Public Law 87 was amended to allow exceptions to the Commonwealth’s contract, which many mainland growers were unwilling to accept, particularly the jurisdiction of Puerto Rican courts in any disputes. This decision hampered the island’s bargaining position vis-à-vis U.S. agricultural employers. Perhaps more damaging to the Farm Labour Programme was the protracted litigation surrounding Vazquez v. Ferre (1973). This lawsuit accused former Commonwealth Governor Luis Ferré, Secretary of Labour Julia Rivera Vincenty, National Director of the Migration Division Nick Lugo and other public authorities of allowing unsafe, unsanitary and unhealthy living conditions in the agricultural labour camps. The main plaintiff, David Vazquez, was a Puerto Rican farm worker from Arecibo, employed by the Glassboro Service Association in New Jersey. Among other grievances, Vazquez alleged that the camp where he toiled had inadequate living quarters, unhygienic cooking facilities, no heating, insufficient sleeping space and unclean bathing and toilet facilities. Attorneys employed by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed the suit on behalf of Vazquez and other migrant workers, charged that the farm’s housing conditions violated the Wagner-Peyser Act, Common-

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wealth laws and regulations, and the contract with the Glassboro Service Association. After years of negotiations, the Commonwealth government settled the case in 1977, agreeing to inspect farms before assigning them workers.42 By then, less than 4,200 Puerto Ricans from the island had been recruited by U.S. farms.43

The Emergence of Diasporic Politics Clearly, the Estado Libre Asociado did not eliminate Puerto Rico’s colonial dependence on the United States, although it did provide greater local autonomy. On the one hand, Commonwealth status allows – perhaps even requires – that the island’s public authorities intervene on behalf of contract workers on the U.S. mainland. On the other hand, the island’s government must comply with all applicable federal laws and regulations. In particular, the Commonwealth lacks the power to establish its own immigration policies. Currently, foreign immigration in Puerto Rico is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as in any other state of the union. Unlike a state, however, island residents have no voting representatives in Congress and cannot help to elect the leading executive officials of the United States. In this regard, Puerto Ricans resemble colonial migrants in their metropolitan countries.44 As colonial subjects, Puerto Ricans share some benefits of metropolitan citizenship, yet lack power in decisive spheres of the federal government. But, once they move to the mainland, Puerto Ricans acquire all the legal rights and obligations of U.S. citizens. Consequently, the Puerto Rican diaspora, through its legislative representatives and other elected officials, could substantially influence the relations between Puerto Rico and the United States. Despite (or perhaps because of) their ‘colonial’ condition, Puerto Rican migrants have preserved multiple political links with their country of origin. Today, Puerto Rican politics in the United States represent a mixture of island and mainland influences.45 On the one hand, many immigrants and their descendants are still concerned with whether Puerto Rico should remain a Commonwealth, join the American union as the fifty-first state, or gain independence. The ‘status issue’ continues to be the deepest political fissure among Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland and on the island. On the other hand, Puerto Rican leaders and organizations have often resorted to ‘identity politics’ to promote their collective mobilization, political incorporation and electoral representation in the United States. Thus, preserving the Spanish language, Puerto Rican culture and ties to the island have been top priorities for many community institutions. Over time,

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however, Puerto Ricans in the United States have tended to shift their main focus of political activism from the island to the mainland. For decades, the island’s political parties have had a formal presence in the United States. The pro-Commonwealth PDP, which controlled the island’s government between 1941 and 1968, crafted the Migration Division as an informal ‘consular’ office in several cities with large numbers of Puerto Rican immigrants.46 Moreover, official documents under the prolonged PDP administration explicitly connected Operation Bootstrap and sponsored migration. For instance, one annual report stated bluntly, ‘It is obvious that migration, although voluntary, is an integral part of the programme of economic and social development that is being carried on by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico’.47 When the pro-statehood NPP gained power in 1969 and again in 1977 and 1985, it attempted to restructure the Migration Division to further the island’s annexation into the United States. For their part, several left-wing groups have been active on the U.S. mainland, including the Young Lords, the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, the Armed Forces for National Liberation and the Puerto Rican Popular Army, better known as Los Macheteros (literally, ‘The Cane Cutters’).48 Puerto Ricans in the United States have attained a relatively high degree of political representation, although they remain underrepresented in proportion to their numbers.49 In 1999, there were 95 elected officials of Puerto Rican ancestry in the municipal, state and federal spheres of the U.S. government.50 By 2004, the figure had increased to 150.51 As of March 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives had three Puerto Rican members (Luis Gutiérrez, José Serrano and Nydia Velázquez), in addition to the island’s non-voting Resident Commissioner (Jaime Pierluisi). More particularly, New York City had 23 elected officials of Puerto Rican origin, including the Bronx Borough President, several city council members, state senators and assembly members.52 Much of the public behaviour of Puerto Rican politicians in the United States suggests that their electorates are located in the Caribbean as well as in North America. Puerto Rico’s status is a primary concern for ‘transnational’ politicians such as Gutiérrez, Serrano and Velázquez, together with other issues that affect Hispanics, such as bilingual education and immigration reform. For instance, several community leaders from New York, Chicago and other U.S. cities supported the ‘Peace for Vieques’ movement, which sought to end the U.S. Navy’s presence in Vieques, an offshore municipality of Puerto Rico. Among others, the three representatives of Puerto Rican origin were arrested during peaceful manifestations against military operations in Vieques. On 1 May 2003, due to public pressure on the island and abroad, the U.S. Navy terminated nearly sixty

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years of bombing exercises in Vieques. In various ways, the Puerto Rican diaspora has influenced U.S. policies towards the island. Perhaps the most controversial issue is how the diaspora can contribute to solving Puerto Rico’s ‘colonial’ status. Until now, all local elections, referenda and plebiscites have been restricted to U.S. citizens who reside on the island. Nonetheless, Puerto Ricans in the United States have reiterated their desire to participate in the definition of the political future of their country of origin.53 Judging from scattered evidence, the ideological preferences of stateside Puerto Ricans are similar to those of island residents. For example, a public poll, sponsored by the newspaper El Nuevo Día,54 found that 48 per cent of Puerto Ricans in Central Florida favoured the current Commonwealth status, while 42 per cent preferred the island’s annexation as a state of the American union, and 5 per cent supported independence. At the time of this writing (March 2009), a legislative project to celebrate a new plebiscite on Puerto Rico’s status had not been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives. The Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2007 (H.R. 900), sponsored by Serrano and Luis Fortuño, would have extended the right to vote to U.S. residents born on the island. It is unlikely that the diaspora’s participation would radically alter the plebiscite’s results in Puerto Rico.

A Transnational Nationalism One concern of statehood supporters is that many leaders of the Puerto Rican diaspora prefer the island’s independence.55 In particular, Puerto Ricans in Chicago have earned the reputation of being more nationalistic than their compatriots on the island and elsewhere in the United States. Anthropologist Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas56 has argued that the leaders of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community have often resorted to a nationalist discourse to further multiple ideological and material agendas, such as the immigrants’ class, race and gender interests. Nationalism has brought together numerous activists and residents of the Puerto Rican barrio near Humboldt Park, where immigrants from the island have clustered since the 1950s. That neighbourhood now boasts Paseo Boricua (Puerto Rican Promenade), an urban revitalization project extending over a mile along Division Street, marked by two enormous steel flags of Puerto Rico. There one finds bakeries, grocery stores, restaurants, cafeterias, barber shops, record stores, cultural centres, housing cooperatives, schools, churches and a casita (little house) in honour of the nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos. Every year, multitudinous public events are celebrated, such as Three Kings Day, Desfile del Pueblo (People’s Parade) and Fiesta Boricua

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(Puerto Rican Festivity). Paseo Boricua is one of the most successful community efforts of Puerto Ricans in the United States.57 According to Ramos-Zayas, Puerto Rican immigrants and their descendants have elaborated nationalist symbols (such as Albizu Campos’s mythical figure) as proofs of cultural authenticity. These symbols have been disseminated through local institutions such as the Roberto Clemente and Pedro Albizu Campos schools, the Juan Antonio Corretjer and Segundo Ruiz Belvis cultural centres, the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, and the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance. Unlike on the island, Puerto Rican nationalism in Chicago combines an anti-colonial ideology with cultural practices that do not rely exclusively on Hispanic traditions. Instead, it combats the public representation of a criminalized and marginalized community, by asserting its hybrid identity, including the use of rap music and ‘Spanglish’, the mixture of Spanish and English. Despite its reputation as a bastion of radicalism, the ‘Chicago-Rican’ population consists largely of immigrant workers unlikely to sympathize with Puerto Rico’s independence or left-wing politics. However, compared with other centres of the diaspora, Chicago’s community is better organized to resist ethnic prejudice, racial discrimination and residential displacement. Ramos-Zayas’s analysis confirms that the nationalist discourse enjoys more popularity in Chicago than in other Puerto Rican settlements in the United States (or on the island). In Philadelphia, for example, the main organizations of Puerto Rican immigrants participated actively in the civil rights movement spurred by African Americans since the 1950s.58 In most diasporic communities, the great majority of Puerto Rican voters have aligned themselves with the liberal ideology of the Democratic Party.

Economic Integration, Residential Segregation and Intermarriage The incorporation of most Puerto Ricans into the U.S. labour and housing markets has been problematic from the start. Traditionally, Puerto Ricans in the United States concentrated in lower-status occupations such as garment workers, dish washers, waiters, porters, domestic employees and laundry workers.59 In the 1940s and 1950s, most of the immigrants lacked the educational credentials, occupational experience or English language skills required for higher-wage white-collar jobs. Nowadays, compared to other ethnic and racial groups, Puerto Ricans are still more likely to be blue-collar and service workers, except for private household

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workers. Conversely, the proportion of managers and professionals (26.6 per cent in 2007) is much lower for Puerto Ricans than for most other groups, except Mexicans, Dominicans and other Hispanics. Today, Puerto Ricans remain one of the most underprivileged groups in the United States. Most socioeconomic indicators place Puerto Ricans in the lowest rungs of the U.S. social structure, below African Americans and other Hispanics such as Cubans and Colombians. According to the 2007 American Community Survey, Puerto Ricans are more likely to be unemployed and poor, live in female-headed households and have lower levels of income, educational attainment and occupational status than the other major ethnic and racial groups, except all Hispanics (see Table 7.3). Other census data confirm the economic disadvantages of stateside Puerto Ricans. In 2002, Puerto Ricans owned less than 7 per cent of all Hispanic businesses in the United States, even though they represented nearly 9 per cent of the Hispanic population.60 These figures document the continuing material deprivation of Puerto Ricans on the mainland, especially in New York City, six decades after the take-off of mass migration. The deteriorated living conditions of Puerto Ricans in the United States are basically due to the economic restructuring of New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and other industrial centres, as well as the increasing polarization between well-paid skilled jobs and poorly-paid unskilled jobs, particularly in the service sector. The automation, computerization, suburbanization, overseas relocation, and decline of entire manufacturing sectors like the garment industry displaced many Puerto Rican workers, who were heavily concentrated in such sectors.61 During New York City’s economic restructuring in the 1970s, Puerto Ricans fared even worse than African Americans, who had a higher share of their labour force in public administration.62 A disturbing sign of the disadvantaged situation of stateside Puerto Ricans is their persistent residential segregation. In the year 2000, three out of five Puerto Ricans in the United States lived in major cities.63 In these urban areas, Puerto Ricans are more likely than other Hispanics (except perhaps Dominicans) to live in overcrowded and dilapidated housing quarters. In 2007, Puerto Ricans had the lowest rate (40.3 per cent) of home ownership among the major ethnic and racial groups in the United States (Table 7.3). This characteristic is related to high levels of poverty, unemployment and concentration in inner cities. Newer Puerto Rican communities in Los Angeles and Tampa are more likely to be in suburban middle-class neighbourhoods than older communities are in Chicago or Hartford. Residential segregation from non-Hispanic whites, blacks and other Hispanics is much higher in places like Philadelphia than in Orlando.64

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Table 7.3.  Selected socioeconomic characteristics of Puerto Ricans and other major ethnic and racial groups in the United States, 2007

Female-headed households (%) Bachelor’s degree (%) Graduate or professional degree (%) Unemployment rate (%) Managers and professionals (%) Service workers (%) Self-employed workers (%) Median household income (US$) Per capita income (US$) Poverty rate (%) Owner-occupied housing units (%)

Puerto Ricans

Whites

Blacks

Asians

All Hispanics

25.4

9.5

29.2

9.1

18.5

10.7 4.8

18.3 10.7

11.4 5.8

29.8 19.6

8.7 3.9

9.9 26.6

5.3 36.6

12.0 26.9

5.0 46.9

7.3 17.7

21.9 3.4 38,047

15.0 7.3 53,714

24.1 3.7 34,001

13.2 6.2 66,935

24.3 6.1 40,766

17,747 24.3 40.3

29,503 10.2 72.2

17,550 24.7 46.5

29,466 10.6 60.7

15,502 20.7 49.9

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Factfinder (2008).

Another indicator of social integration (or lack thereof) is the rate of intermarriage between immigrants and other groups. During the 1990s, Puerto Ricans in New York City still tended to marry within their own community or with other Hispanics, especially Dominicans.65 The relatively low outmarriage rate of New York Puerto Rican immigrants and their descendants reflects their spatial segregation, low educational attainment and relative economic deprivation. It also suggests that most ‘Nuyoricans’ are racialized as ‘non-white’ Hispanics. Nationwide, Puerto Ricans had a higher outmarriage rate than most ethnic and racial groups.66 By the year 2000, Puerto Ricans were the Hispanic group most likely to intermarry (with 21 per cent of all couples) in the United States.67

Organizing the Puerto Rican Community in the United States A pervasive myth about the Puerto Rican diaspora is that it is not as well organized as previous waves of immigrants. On the contrary, since the late nineteenth century, Puerto Ricans have established numerous voluntary associations in the United States. Immigrants often adapted island-based

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traditions such as labour unions, mutual aid societies, hometown clubs, religious congregations, Masonic lodges, political parties and athletic leagues. Between 1920 and 1945, they founded at least three dozen organizations in New York City.68 One of their earliest voluntary associations was the Alianza Obrera Puertorriqueña (Puerto Rican Workers Alliance), founded in 1923 and affiliated with the Puerto Rican Socialist Party. This group sought ‘to establish a better intelligence and cooperation among all of us Puerto Ricans living in New York City, principally among the men and women who militate in the ranks of labour’. That same year, the Porto Rican League was established in New Jersey to ‘unite in links of fraternity and mutual protection all Puerto Ricans residing in the United States and those who visit this country’.69 The league was associated with the Democratic Party in the United States but not with any political party in Puerto Rico. Another early Puerto Rican organization in New York City was Los Jíbaros (The Peasants), a social, cultural and sports club founded around 1928. Organized sports were especially appealing to Puerto Rican migrants. In the early twentieth century, baseball became the most popular pastime among Puerto Ricans in New York as well as on the island. In 1924, for example, a Puerto Rican baseball team from New York’s East Side – ‘the unbeatable San Juan Baseball Club’ – played against the Porto Rican Stars from the island.70 Since the 1930s, stateside Puerto Ricans have shown increasing enthusiasm for prize fighting, especially after several of their compatriots became world boxing champions. Although athletic activities have not received much scholarly attention in Puerto Rican studies, sports played a key role in forging a sense of community and solidarity among migrants. As New York’s Puerto Rican population swelled, so did its community organizations after the Second World War. In 1940, at least forty Puerto Rican associations were operating in the city.71 During the 1950s, grassroots groups increasingly focused on the educational, economic and political advancement of Puerto Ricans in the United States rather than on the island. By 1960, around three hundred community organizations were active in New York City.72 During the 1960s, second-generation immigrants began to claim a separate ethnic identity, both from the island and from the American mainstream, combining cultural nationalism with the civil rights movement. In 1961, ASPIRA became the first Puerto Rican community agency in New York City to receive outside funds to develop young Puerto Rican leaders through educational counselling and occupational training. The radical wing of the Puerto Rican community, which supported the island’s independence, established eight core groups in the United States.73 Today, dozens of groups represent various sectors of the diaspora – from professionals and scholars to merchants and civil

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servants. More than four hundred organizations are affiliated with the National Puerto Rican Coalition, a policy-oriented lobbying group based in Washington, DC. Some of the earliest community organizations founded by Puerto Ricans in New York and New Jersey in the 1920s were Democratic voting clubs.74 As the party that has traditionally favoured immigrants and ethnic minorities, the Democratic Party attracted the largest number of Puerto Rican followers. In New York and other north-eastern states, Puerto Ricans now play a major role in that party. Elsewhere, as in Florida, they are more inclined to vote for Republican candidates. However, most Puerto Rican elected officials are Democrats.75 Nationwide, Puerto Ricans constitute one of the most solid blocs of Democratic voters, along with African Americans and Mexicans. The most common voluntary association among Puerto Rican migrants – particularly in New York City – has been the hometown club, a small clique of relatives and friends from the same island locality. Most of these groups have called themselves ausentes (the absent ones) or hijos (sons and daughters) of a town back home. The prototype of the hometown club was the Caborrojeños Ausentes, founded in New York in 1922. This group organized excursions and collaborated with other voluntary associations and government agencies in the south-western municipality of Cabo Rojo. Most clubs sponsored social and cultural activities such as dances, raffles, sports, beauty contests and parades.76 All provided help with shelter, employment, financial aid, recreation and other benefits to their members. After the Second World War, hometown clubs proliferated in the diaspora. In 1956, Gilberto Gerena-Valentín founded El Congreso del Pueblo (‘The People’s Congress’ or Council of Hometown Clubs) as an umbrella organization in New York. By 1961, all of the island’s seventy-eight municipalities were represented among the city’s clubs.77 Annual celebrations in honour of los ausentes are still held in many island towns, especially during patron saints’ festivals. The perseverance of hometown clubs suggests that Puerto Ricans identify strongly with their locality of origin as well as with a broader conception of their nation. For the Migration Division, hometown clubs represented the backbone of the Puerto Rican community in the United States. Muñoz Marín78 himself recognized the resilience of the migrants’ birthplaces in a speech addressed to Puerto Ricans in New York City. Labour unions have played a prominent role in the organizing of the Puerto Rican community in the United States. Since the late nineteenth century, Puerto Rican cigar workers have led the struggle to protect their labour and civil rights through trade unions such as La Internacional and

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La Resistencia.79 During the 1930s and 1940s, many women employed by New York’s garment and apparel industry joined unions, especially the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. In the 1950s, Puerto Rican migrants were concentrated in labour-intensive manufacturing industries, and many of them belonged to the labour movement. However, since the 1970s, the transformation of the U.S. economy, especially in New York City, from manufacturing to service industries, has produced a declining participation of Puerto Rican and other workers in labour unions, with the exception of those employed in the public sector.80 In short, Puerto Ricans organized themselves to promote their social, cultural, economic and political interests within the United States. They often extended island modes of association based on working-class solidarities and hometown origins. Local, regional and national allegiances were swiftly reconstructed in the diaspora. Like earlier European immigrants, Puerto Rican immigrants bonded together according to common origin, class background, political ideology, and shared interests through dozens of self-help groups that catered to a growing immigrant population, especially in New York City and other centres of the diaspora.

Cultural Manifestations of Puerto Rican Identity The Language Issue After more than a century of U.S. rule, Spanish remains the primary means of communication and a core symbol of national identity in Puerto Rico. Official efforts to impose the English language on the island during the first half of the twentieth century largely failed. Since 1948, public school instruction, as well as college education, has been offered primarily in Spanish. Bilingualism is limited to a small minority of the island’s population, mostly the middle and upper classes, and returnees and immigrants from the United States. On the mainland, many Puerto Ricans – especially those born and raised abroad – have adopted English as their dominant language.81 Clearly, the Puerto Rican diaspora subverts many of the traditional premises of the nationalist discourse, particularly the equation between the vernacular language and national identity. According to the 2007 American Community Survey, 32 per cent of Puerto Ricans in the United States spoke only English at home, compared with a mere 4.7 per cent in Puerto Rico. Moreover, 81.5 per cent of the island’s residents spoke English ‘less than very well’, compared with only 20.4 per cent of Puerto Ricans in the United States.82 Such statistics suggest a growing language

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gap between Puerto Ricans on the island and those on the mainland, which overlaps with other cultural differences, such as dress styles, physical appearance and musical preferences. On the island, the better-educated and higher-income groups tend to be bilingual. Their speech patterns approximate standard dialects of Spanish and English as taught in local schools and universities. In the United States, Spanish dominance is rapidly receding among second- and third-generation immigrants. However, many stateside Puerto Ricans are fluent in Spanish and English, and often alternate between the two languages. Thus, Puerto Ricans display a broad repertoire of language practices – ranging from Spanish monolingualism (primarily on the island) to English monolingualism (primarily on the mainland), including various degrees of bilingualism. The combination of Spanish and English, commonly derided as ‘Spanglish’, is widespread among Puerto Ricans in the United States. Initially, many scholars thought that this practice impoverished and contaminated both languages. However, an increasing number of studies have re-assessed how Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics switch between Spanish and English.83 Accomplished writers often employ ‘code switching’ to recreate daily life in the barrios. Rhyming in English and Spanish, as in some popular rap songs, requires great verbal ability.84 Rather than reflecting an intellectual or linguistic deficit, Spanglish may be considered a cultural asset, especially among second-generation immigrants, who often straddle American and Puerto Rican cultures.

Religious and Civic Manifestations of Identity For nearly four centuries, Catholicism was the only faith permitted by the Spanish colonial regime in Puerto Rico. Today, Catholic customs permeate Puerto Rican traditional culture. The annual calendar of feasts in honour of the saints and other Church-sponsored celebrations such as Christmas and Easter structure the island’s spiritual life. Puerto Rican Catholics traditionally emphasize communal rituals such as baptism, the cult of the saints, processions and festivals. Many popular customs persist in the diaspora, such as making the sign of the cross; invoking the name of God and the Virgin Mary; lighting candles, making promises and asking for favours from the saints; blessing one’s children and pouring holy water over babies to protect them from evil; treating godparents as part of one’s immediate family; and having crucifixes, shrines and images of the Virgin and the saints in one’s home.85 Nonetheless, Puerto Ricans are less likely than most other Hispanics in the United States to attend church regularly.86

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At the same time, Puerto Rico has one of the highest proportions (hovering around 30 per cent) of Protestants in Latin America. This is perhaps unsurprising given the island’s intensive exposure to U.S. evangelical missionaries for more than a century. Similarly, the share of Protestants among stateside Puerto Ricans is the highest among all Hispanics in the United States.87 One of the earliest Puerto Rican institutions in East Harlem was La Hermosa church, affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, founded in 1937. By the early 1960s, at least 284 Protestant congregations catered predominantly to Puerto Ricans in New York City.88 In 1968, Pentecostals had established as many as thirty storefront churches (Asambleas de Dios) in East Harlem.89 Other popular practices include espiritismo (Spiritualism) and santería (originally an Afro-Cuban religion). In New York City, at least one-third of all Puerto Ricans have consulted a spiritual medium.90 Many believe that spiritual disturbances can cause disease; that the spirits of the dead may manifest themselves directly in the daily lives of their close relatives; and that the two can communicate with each other. Spiritualist rituals, combined with folk remedies, are commonly used to heal both physical and psychological ailments.91 For many Puerto Ricans in the United States, Spiritualism reduces feelings of anxiety and depression, and strengthens their cultural identity and community belonging.92 Puerto Ricans in the diaspora celebrate numerous collective rituals, including parades, festivals, beauty pageants, religious processions and family-oriented ceremonies. One of the most important holidays is the extended Christmas season, officially beginning on the eve of 24 December, with a special emphasis on Three Kings Day or the Feast of the Epiphany (6 January), and ending informally eight days afterwards (las octavitas). Puerto Ricans usually commemorate Christmas with abundant food, preferably lechón asao (roasted pig), pasteles (green banana and meat patties) and arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas); drink, especially coquito (a rum-based coconut eggnog); and music and dancing, including aguinaldos (Christmas carols), salsa and merengue. Since 1953, New York Puerto Ricans have observed the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, the patron of the city of San Juan. The feast was first celebrated in Spanish Harlem’s La Milagrosa parish and sponsored by New York’s Catholic Archdiocese. By 1964, about sixty thousand Puerto Ricans attended an outdoor celebration on Randall’s Island. Typically, the feast begins with a procession and mass on 24 June, the day of Saint John the Baptist, followed by performances by choirs, bands, dance groups and orchestras. The midnight before, following island traditions, some Puerto Ricans seek good fortune by immersing themselves in the waters of Central Park lake or Coney Island beach. The gathering has become the most

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important public festivity for New York’s Puerto Rican Catholics, and is comparable to Saint Patrick’s Day for Irish Americans. Today, the National Puerto Rican Day Parade (Desfile Puertorriqueño) is the most visible display of Puerto Rican pride and power in the United States. The parade was first held in New York City in 1958 as an offshoot of the short-lived Desfile Hispano, organized in 1956 as an all-Hispanic affair. By the early 1960s, half a million Puerto Ricans watched their compatriots marching down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. In 2007, more than two million people attended the event. Most of the major community organizations now support the annual parade, many sponsoring carrozas (floats) with Puerto Rican motifs, such as the flag, folk music and a beauty queen. Many Puerto Rican municipalities, as well as the Commonwealth government, participate in the event. In addition to New York, Puerto Ricans have held parades in numerous cities, including Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Lorain, Rochester, Buffalo, Camden, Newark, Tampa and Orlando.

The Literature of the Diaspora Puerto Rican literature in the United States has developed in five main stages.93 The first phase, beginning in the last third of the nineteenth century, involved a small group of political exiles in New York City, such as Eugenio María de Hostos, Ramón Emeterio Betances, Lola Rodríguez de Tió, Sotero Figueroa and Arturo Schomburg. During this stage, many Puerto Rican émigrés were committed to the island’s independence from Spain. They tended to write patriotic pamphlets, and essays in Spanishlanguage periodicals. A second moment in the literary history of New York Puerto Ricans was the arrival of thousands of skilled workers, especially cigar makers (tabaqueros), during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Labour leaders Bernardo Vega and Jesús Colón authored two of the most important memoirs of that period. Anarchist and feminist Luisa Capetillo also wrote about her life in New York during the 1910s.94 Puerto Rican literature was then primarily journalistic and autobiographical, documenting the migrants’ problems and aspirations, such as learning English, organizing the community and combating racial discrimination. The third stage took place during the Great Migration (1945−65). Island-born authors began to reflect upon the massive exodus to New York, including René Marqués, José Luis González, Emilio Díaz Valcárcel, Enrique Laguerre and Julia de Burgos. Some of them personally experienced the migration process, but most remained tied to the island’s literary canon. Many considered emigration as a serious threat to Puerto

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Rican identity, particularly as a result of the loss of the Spanish language. Most did not write from the migrants’ standpoint and failed to capture the texture of their bilingual and bicultural communities.95 Pedro Juan Soto, an island-born novelist who moved to the United States and later returned to Puerto Rico, is an exception to this trend. The fourth stage began in the mid-1960s with Miguel Piñero and Miguel Algarín, who founded the Nuyorican Poets Café in 1974 in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Other authors identified with the movement include Piri Thomas, Pedro Pietri, Tato Laviera and Sandra María Esteves. Their writing was characterized by the recurrence of English and Spanglish, street slang, realism, subversive politics and rupture with the island’s literary models. Nuyorican writers often articulated a mythical image of Puerto Rico and its African and indigenous roots.96 They shared much with other minority writers, especially African Americans and Chicanos, in their protest against racial and class oppression, ethnic affirmation, non-standard language and search for new forms of expression. The fifth stage, beginning in the 1980s, has been dubbed ‘post-Nuyorican’ or ‘diasporican’.97 Some authors, such as Edward Rivera, Judith Ortiz Coffer and Esmeralda Santiago, continue to rely on autobiographical narratives. Others, such as Nicholasa Mohr, Abraham Rodríguez and Ed Vega, write short stories and novels about Puerto Ricans in the United States. Santiago, Ortiz Coffer and Aurora Levins Morales have moved away from the Nuyorican movement’s emphasis on urban blight, violence, colloquialism and radicalism. Some of the recent changes in Puerto Rican writing in the United States are part of the ‘mainstreaming’ of ethnic literature, as well as a small boom in Latino literature since the 1990s. Unfortunately, most Puerto Rican writers living in the United States are not well known or appreciated in Puerto Rico.

Popular Music During the first half of the twentieth century, many Puerto Rican musicians migrated to New York City, including the famous composers and bandleaders Rafael Hernández and Pedro Flores, and singers Manuel ‘Canario’ Jiménez and Mirtha Silva. These musicians helped to articulate the cultural identity of their diasporic communities as well as their homeland. It was in Spanish Harlem that Hernández wrote Puerto Rico’s unofficial anthem, Lamento borincano (Puerto Rican Lament), in 1929. It was also in New York that ‘Canario’ recorded the first plenas (a folk genre) for RCA Victor in the 1920s. Although Afro-Cuban genres – from rumba and conga to mambo and cha-cha – became synonymous with Latin mu-

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sic until the 1950s, Puerto Ricans often performed in Latin orchestras and bands. However, the musical contribution of Puerto Ricans remained virtually invisible – or better still, inaudible – for most of the U.S. public until the 1960s. In the 1970s, salsa emerged as the most important musical expression of Puerto Ricans on the mainland and on the island. According to some experts, salsa originated in the musical circuit linking Puerto Ricans between New York and San Juan since the beginning of the twentieth century. According to others, salsa was merely a convenient way to market traditional Cuban music after the U.S. embargo of Cuba since 1962. The question of the Puerto Rican, Cuban or Nuyorican origins of this genre is difficult to settle and is perhaps sterile from an ethnomusicological viewpoint. Be that as it may, salsa’s leading performers and consumers have been Puerto Ricans from the island and the mainland, followed by Dominicans and Cubans, as well as Panamanians, Colombians and Venezuelans. Today, salsa is an icon of a broad Latino identity throughout the Americas, Europe and elsewhere.98 During the early 1970s, young Puerto Ricans contributed to the rise of a hip hop subculture in the south Bronx, including rap, graffiti and break dancing. Although rap music was later labelled as ‘black’, Puerto Ricans retain a strong presence in the ‘hip hop zone’.99 The contemporary boom of reggaetón illustrates the incessant musical exchange between Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora with African Americans and other Afro-Caribbean peoples, including Dominicans, Panamanians and Jamaicans.100

Identity Politics in a Multicultural Setting Diasporic communities remain tied to the island by a steady circulation of people, capital, goods and information. New cultural identities, such as Nuyorican or ‘diasporican’, and musical practices, such as salsa and reggaetón, attest to the enduring connections between the island and the mainland. Another expression of these ‘transnational’ links is the money that migrants send back home. Although much smaller in volume than in neighbouring countries like the Dominican Republic and Cuba, private remittances to Puerto Rico increased more than tenfold from approximately US$47 million in 1960 to US$491 million in 2007.101 Furthermore, ‘cultural remittances’ include a broad range of customs, ideologies, artistic expressions and identities sent back from the diaspora to the homeland.102 Many Puerto Ricans have developed two or more ‘home bases’, each with its extended networks of relatives and friends on and off the Island.103

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Such multiple residences allow migrants to combine various sources of income, housing and assistance. Some people shuttle between these households to expand their livelihood strategies and nurture their family ties. In particular, Puerto Rican women often organize and participate in ritual gatherings – especially baptisms, weddings, anniversaries and funerals – both in Puerto Rico and the United States. Moreover, many travel back and forth to take care of elderly parents, pregnant daughters and small children.104 Circular migration is one of the reasons why Puerto Rican culture continues to thrive abroad. Many Puerto Ricans have not completely ‘assimilated’ into mainstream American culture, if the measure of assimilation is discarding Spanish and replacing it with the English language, becoming a hyphenated minority or abandoning their emotional attachment to the island. This assertion of their national origins is partly due to the migrants’ resistance against Americanization, both on the island and abroad. However, the mixture between Puerto Rican, Latino and American cultures has advanced swiftly, especially among second- and third-generation immigrants in the United States. Even they often invoke romanticized images of their Puerto Rican homeland.105 Another factor that has retarded the ‘assimilation’ of stateside Puerto Ricans has been their treatment as a ‘non-white’ racial minority. Since the 1940s, many Puerto Ricans – especially in New York City – have been publicly depicted as a ‘social problem’ because of their dark skin colour, foreign language and culture, rural background, low educational status and lack of occupational skills. Consequently, Puerto Ricans have been stigmatized as lazy, ignorant, violent, sexually obsessed, physically unfit, culturally inassimilable and dark-skinned aliens (even though they are U.S. citizens). Such stereotypes have been popularized through Broadway musicals and Hollywood movies such as West Side Story, as well as television programmes, journalistic reports, and academic monographs such as Oscar Lewis’s La Vida. This negative media portrayal is common among colonial migrants and racial minorities in the United States and elsewhere. Puerto Ricans and African Americans share a parallel history of racial exclusion and marginalization, especially in New York City.106 Both groups have clustered in contiguous or mixed residential areas, especially in barrios and ghettoes. Both were largely incorporated into the lower rungs of the labour market. Both have been lumped together as part of the ‘urban underclass’, because of their extreme concentration in inner-city neighbourhoods, chronic unemployment, and socioeconomic problems ranging from high rates of female-headed households and welfare dependence to school dropouts and drug addicts. Linguistic and cultural differences have sometimes distanced Puerto Ricans from African Americans.

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However, no other immigrant group has developed a closer physical and social proximity to African Americans than Puerto Ricans.107 Since the 1960s, Puerto Ricans have increasingly interacted with Dominicans, especially in New York City and in Puerto Rico itself. Cooperation, as well as underlying tension, has marked the relations between the two groups. As the city’s largest Hispanic populations, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans often compete for scarce resources – from economic niches such as small grocery stores (bodegas), to elected positions in municipal and state assemblies, and funding for academic programmes in local universities. Nonetheless, linguistic, cultural and religious affinities foster friendship and intermarriage between Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.

Conclusion The Puerto Rican case suggests that diasporic identities can prosper over long periods in a foreign country. Since the late nineteenth century, Puerto Ricans in the United States have retained close links to their homeland. Diasporic organizations have selectively appropriated the discourses and practices traditionally associated with being Puerto Rican, yet they continue to portray themselves as part of the Puerto Rican ‘nation’. Nuyoricans have redefined Puerto Rican identity away from a sole reliance on the Spanish language to incorporate monolingual English speakers with family ties to the island.108 Thus, the Puerto Rican diaspora has nurtured long-distance nationalism, the persistent claim to a national identity by people residing away from their homeland, even for several generations. Today, speaking Spanish and living on the island are no longer exclusive markers of Puerto Ricanness. In short, the diaspora has broadened the linguistic and territorial boundaries of the nation. In the end, should Puerto Rican migration be considered ‘colonial’ or ‘postcolonial’? The question can only be settled by clearly defining Puerto Rico’s status vis-à-vis the United States – a formidable task for scholars as well as politicians. Recent writing confirms that the United States continues to dominate the island politically and economically. The emotionally laden term ‘colonialism’ to describe the current situation has become widely accepted among Puerto Ricans of various ideological persuasions, including advocates of an ‘enhanced’ Commonwealth. At the same time, Puerto Ricans display a vibrant sense of cultural identity that is usually associated with postcolonial nations.109 Despite their U.S. citizenship, most Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora assert that their nationality is Puerto Rican, rather than American. Even the hyphenated term ‘Puerto Rican-American’ is rarely used, either in Puerto Rico or the United States.

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As José L. Torres-Padilla and Carmen Haydée Rivera suggest,110 Puerto Ricans in both places live ‘off the hyphen’. Furthermore, the Commonwealth government has acquired many of the symbolic trappings of contemporary nations, such as a flag, anthem, coat of arms, Olympic sports representation, participation in beauty contests and so on. Yet the island lacks the most basic requirement of a nation-state: sovereignty. Hence, the Puerto Rican diaspora occupies an ambiguous space between ‘colonial’ and ‘postcolonial’ population movements. This ambiguity is the longterm historical consequence of the oxymoronic legal doctrine declaring that Puerto Rico ‘belongs to but is not a part of the United States’.

Notes I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños at Hunter College, which offered me a research grant through the CUNY-Caribbean Exchange Programme during the summer of 2008. This essay expands and updates three of my previous analyses of the Puerto Rican diaspora (J. Duany, ‘Between the Nation and the Diaspora: Migration to and from Puerto Rico’, in: M.I. Toro-Morn and M. Alicea (eds), Migration and Immigration: A Global View, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004, 177–98; J. Duany, ‘Puerto Ricans in the United States’, in: M. Ember, C.R. Ember and I. Skoggard (eds), Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures around the World, Vol. 2, New York: Kluwer/Plenum, 2004, 1055–68; J. Duany, ‘La nación en la diáspora: Las múltiples repercusiones de la emigración puertorriqueña a Estados Unidos’, Revista de Ciencias Sociales 2007, 17 (New Series): 118–53. 1. Mekdad, Special Committee Decision of 22 June 2001 Concerning Puerto Rico. 2. For more details on Puerto Rico’s enduring ‘colonial dilemma’, see Duany and PantojasGarcía, ‘Fifty Years of Commonwealth’; Ramos and Rivera, Islands at the Crossroads; Rivera Ramos, The Legal Construction of Identity. 3. Grosfoguel, Colonial Subjects; Rodríguez, Puerto Ricans. 4. Ramón Grosfoguel, ‘Caribbean Migration to Metropolitan Centers’. 5. See also de Jong, ‘The Kingdom of the Netherlands’; Giraud, ‘Racisme colonial’; MiliaMarie-Luce, ‘De l’Outre-mer au continent’; Milia-Marie-Luce, ‘La grande migration des Antillais en France’; Oostindie and Klinkers, Decolonising the Caribbean. 6. Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move; Flores, From Bomba to Hip Hop; Flores, The Diaspora Strikes Back. 7. See Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move; Grosfoguel, Colonial Subjects; MartínezSan Miguel, Caribe Two Ways; Negrón-Muntaner, Boricua Pop; Pabón, Nación postmortem; Pérez, The Near Northwest Side Story; Ramos-Zayas, National Performances. 8. Thompson, ‘Representation and Rule in the Imperial Archipelago’. 9. Asis, ‘The Philippines’ Culture of Migration’. 10. Burnett and Marshall, Foreign in a Domestic Sense. 11. Erman, ‘Meanings of Citizenship in the U.S. Empire’. 12. Junta de Planificación de Puerto Rico, Apéndice estadístico. 13. Lapp, ‘Managing Migration’. 14. Cited in Whalen and Vázquez-Hernández, The Puerto Rican Diaspora, 8. 15. History Task Force, Labor Migration under Capitalism; Mustelier Ayala, Ecos boricuas en el Oriente cubano; Rosario Natal, Éxodo puertorriqueño. 16. Meléndez, ‘La política transnacional puertorriqueña’.

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17. Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move. 18. García-Colón, ‘Claiming Equality’; Lapp, ‘Managing Migration’; Stinson Fernández, ‘Hacia una antropología de la emigración planificada’. 19. Muñoz Marín, ‘Foro público sobre el problema poblacional de Puerto Rico’, my translations throughout. 20. O’Connor, ‘Mainland Labor Force Needs in 1948–49’. 21. Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico 1972–73: 1; 1977–78: 6. 22. Pantojas-García, Development Strategies as Ideology. 23. Rivera-Batiz and Santiago, Island Paradox: Puerto Rico in the 1990s; Rodríguez, Puerto Ricans: Born in the U.S.A.; Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia. 24. Junta de Planificación de Puerto Rico, Estadísticas socioeconómicas. 25. Matos-Rodríguez and Hernández, Pioneros. 26. Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia. 27. Acosta-Belén and Santiago, Puerto Ricans in the United States. 28. De Genova and Ramos-Zayas, Latino Crossings. 29. Sotomayor, ‘Análisis comparado de las estructuras de salarios’. 30. Rodríguez, Puerto Ricans; Sánchez Korrol, From Colonia to Community. 31. Vázquez Calzada, ‘Demographic Aspects of Migration’. 32. Meléndez, Los que se van, los que regresan. 33. Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move. 34. For recent demographic portraits of the stateside Puerto Rican population, see AcostaBelén and Santiago, Puerto Ricans in the United States; Falcón, Atlas of Stateside Puerto Ricans; Meléndez, ‘Changes in the Characteristics of Puerto Rican Migrants’. 35. For more details on the changing settlement patterns of Puerto Ricans in the United States, see Vargas-Ramos, Settlement Patterns and Residential Segregation; for excellent studies of various diasporic Puerto Rican communities, see Whalen and Vázquez-Hernández, The Puerto Rican Diaspora; for the case of Florida, see Duany and Matos-Rodríguez, Puerto Ricans in Orlando and Central Florida. 36. Monserrat, ‘The Development, Growth and Decline of the Puerto Rican Migrant Farmworkers’. 37. Cruz, Identity and Power; García-Colón, ‘Claiming Equality’; History Task Force, Labor Migration under Capitalism; Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia. 38. Monserrat, ‘The Development, Growth and Decline of the Puerto Rican Migrant Farmworkers’. 39. Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico 1966–1967, ‘Informe anual. Programa de Servicios a Trabajadores Agrícolas Migrantes’. 40. Bonilla-Silva, Organizing Puerto Rican Migrant Farmworkers. 41. Aders, ‘Letter to William D. Ford’. 42. Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, various dates, ‘Vazquez v. Ferre’. 43. Monserrat, ‘The Development, Growth and Decline of the Puerto Rican Migrant Farmworkers’. 44. Grosfoguel, Colonial Subjects. 45. Cruz, Identity and Power. 46. Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move; Lapp, ‘Managing Migration’. 47. Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico 1966–67, ‘Informe anual. Programa de Servicios a Trabajadores Agrícolas Migrantes’, 8–9. 48. Torres and Velázquez, The Puerto Rican Movement. 49. Cruz, Identity and Power; Cruz, ‘Nosotros, puertorriqueños’. 50. National Puerto Rican Coalition, Directory of Puerto Rican Elected Officials – 1999. 51. Puerto Rico Herald, ‘Inscripción de boricuas aumenta funcionarios electos’. 52. Falcón, ‘De’tras Pa’ Lante’. 53. Falcón, ‘A Divided Nation’; Falcón, ‘The Diaspora Factor’.

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54. El Nuevo Día, ‘Sobre el estatus de Puerto Rico’. 55. Falcón, ‘The Diaspora Factor’. 56. Ramos-Zayas, National Performances. 57. See Flores-González, ‘Paseo Boricua’; Pérez, The Near Northwest Side Story; Rinaldo, ‘Space of Resistance’. 58. Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia. 59. Chenault, The Puerto Rican Migrant in New York City; Sánchez Korrol, From Colonia to Community. 60. U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanic-Owned Firms. 61. Rodríguez, Puerto Ricans. 62. Torres, Between Melting Pot and Mosaic. 63. U.S. Census Bureau, American Factfinder. 64. Rivera-Batiz and Santiago, Puerto Ricans in the United States; Vargas-Ramos, Settlement Patterns and Residential Segregation. 65. Gilbertson, Fitzpatrick and Yang, ‘Hispanic Intermarriage in New York City’. 66. Aquino, ‘Puerto Rican Identity in the United States’. 67. Lee and Edmonston, ‘New Marriages, New Families’. 68. Estades, Patterns of Political Participation of Puerto Ricans, 36. 69. Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move, 187. 70. Ibid., 189. 71. Vega, Memorias de Bernardo Vega, 242. 72. Senior, The Puerto Ricans, 105. 73. Torres and Velázquez, The Puerto Rican Movement. 74. Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move. 75. Cruz, ‘Nosotros, puertorriqueños’. 76. Estades, Patterns of Political Participation of Puerto Ricans; Herbstein, ‘Rituals and Politics of the Puerto Rican “Community” in New York City’. 77. Senior, The Puerto Ricans. 78. Muñoz Marín, ‘Discurso a los puertorriqueños en Nueva York’. 79. Sánchez Korrol, From Colonia to Community. 80. Figueroa, ‘Puerto Rican Workers: A Profile’. 81. Zentella, Growing Up Bilingual. 82. U.S. Census Bureau, American Factfinder. 83. Urciuoli, Exposing Prejudice; Zentella, Growing Up Bilingual; Zentella ‘Returned Migration, Language, and Identity’. 84. Rivera, New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone. 85. González and La Velle, The Hispanic Catholic in the United States. 86. Pew Hispanic Center, Changing Faiths. 87. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Changing Faiths, 31 per cent are evangelical converts. 88. Senior, ‘Los puertorriqueños en Nueva York’, 234. 89. Herbstein, ‘Rituals and Politics of the Puerto Rican “Community” in New York City’, 83. 90. Lewis-Fernández and Núñez, ‘Hacia una interpretación psico-antropológica del espiritismo puertorriqueño’. 91. Romberg, Witchcraft and Welfare. 92. Harwood, Rx: Spiritist as Needed. 93. Flores, Divided Borders. 94. Sánchez González, Boricua Literature. 95. Flores, Divided Borders. 96. Barradas, Partes de un todo; Hernández, Puerto Rican Voices in English. 97. Flores, From Bomba to Hip Hop; Torres-Padilla and Rivera, Writing Off the Hyphen. 98. Aparicio, Listening to Salsa. 99. Flores, From Bomba to Hip Hop; Rivera, New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone.

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Notes on Contributors

Allison Blakely is Professor of European and Comparative History at Boston University, and the author of Blacks in the Dutch World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern Society (Indiana University Press, 1994); Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought (Howard University Press, 1986) – a winner of an American Book Award in 1988; several articles on Russian populism; and others on European dimensions of the African Diaspora. A past President of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, he was appointed in 2010 by President Obama to a six-year term on the National Council on the Humanities. Ulbe Bosma is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. His research focuses on plantation societies, colonial migrations and commodity production. His publications include several articles on colonial migrations, for instance in the International Migration Review (2007), Journal of Global History (2009) and the Journal of International Migration and Integration (2011). James Cohen is a professor of American Studies at the Université de Paris 3-Sorbonne-Nouvelle, and a lecturer at Sciences Po-Paris and the Institute of Advanced Studies of Latin America (IHEAL, Paris). He is the author of Spanglish America. Les enjeux de la latinisation des Etats-Unis (Le Félin, 2005), and co-editor, with Andrew Diamond and Philippe Vervaecke, of L’Atlantique multiracial (Karthala, 2011), a collective volume on the politics of race and ethnicity in France, the United States and the United Kingdom. His current research centres on the contemporary crisis of immigration policy in the United States.

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Nicole Leah Cohen was awarded her Ph.D. in East Asian History from Columbia University. Her focus is Japanese and Korean history, primarily the history of empire. She also holds an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia. She teaches East Asian studies and history at New York University. Jorge Duany is Acting Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), Río Piedras. He previously served as Director of UPR’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and was Director of the journal Revista de Ciencias Sociales. He has held visiting teaching and research appointments at several U.S. universities, including Harvard, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and the City University of New York. His latest books are Blurred Borders: Transnational Migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States (2011), and La nación en vaivén: Identidad, migración y cultura popular en Puerto Rico (2010). Jan Lucassen is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, and Professor at the Free University in Amsterdam. Among his many publications on global labour and migration are (with Rinus Penninx) Newcomers. Immigrants and their Descendants in the Netherlands 1550–1995 (1997), (with Leo Lucassen) Migration, Migration History, History (1997) and (also with Leo Lucassen) Migration History in World History (2011). M. Margarida Marques is a sociologist and professor at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Her research interests during the past fifteen years have been focused on migration, and in particular on postcolonial migration. She has recently edited Estado-nação e migrações internacionais (2010), and is the co-author of Schooling and Migration in Portugal. Lusophone Migration and Institutional Capacity Building in Portuguese Schools (2011), and Migrações e participação social (2008). She is also a member of the European network of excellence, IMISCOE, since 2004. Gert Oostindie is Director of the KITLV/Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology in Leiden, and Professor of Caribbean History at Leiden University. His publications include Postcolonial Netherlands; Sixty-five Years of Forgetting, Commemorating, Silencing (2011), Dutch Colonialism, Migration and Cultural Heritage (ed., 2008), Paradise Overseas: The Dutch Caribbean – Colonialism and its Transatlantic Legacies (2005), Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch Policies in a Comparative Perspective (with Inge Klinkers).

Notes on Contributors

253

Shinder S. Thandi is currently Head of Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting at Coventry University. He has published widely on South Asian, particularly Punjabi Sikh, migration and settlement in Europe, and on different dimensions of Indian and Punjabi diasporahomeland relations. He is founder editor of the Journal of Punjab Studies and has co-edited two books: Punjabi Identity in a Global Context (with Pritam Singh, 1999) and People on the Move: Punjabi Colonial and Post Colonial Migration (with Ian Talbot, 2004). He is co-author (with Michael Fisher and Shompa Lahiri) of A South Asian History of Britain: Four Centuries of Peoples from the Indian Sub-Continent (2007). He is currently working on a book on ‘The Sikh Diaspora: From Struggles to Celebration’, to be published in 2012.

Index

A Abu’l-Khair, 183 Agualusa, 146 Al Qaeda, 87–94 Albizu Campos, Pedro, 209–10 Algarín, Miguel, 219 Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), 9 Algerian National Movement, 28 Alianza Obrera Puertorriqueña (Puerto Rican Workers Alliance), 213 Alien Registration Law, 161 Almeida, Miguel Vale de, 146 Almeida, Pedro Tavares de, 130 Al-Muhajiroun, 87 Amara, Fadela, 44 American Community Survey, 211–15 American Constitution, 194, 196 Amin, Idi, 76 Anti-Nazi League, 78 Armed Forces for National Liberation, 208 Asambleas de Dios, 217 Asian Youth Movement, 78, 80 Asô, Tarô, 176 ASPIRA (first Puerto Rican community agency in New York City) 213 Association to Support Compatriots in Manchuria and Mongolia, 163 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal, 17 Augusto, H.T., 146 B Bagley, Christopher, 106, 111 Batoto Yetu Portugal (BYP), viii, 145, 153 Begg, Moazzam, 87, 94 Belvis, Segundo Ruiz, 210 Benguigui, Yamina, 34 Benninghoff, Merrell, 160 Betances, Ramón Emeterio, 218 Bhatti, Gurpreet Kaur, 83–4, 94

Blakely, Allison, 3, 16 Blanc-Chaléard, Marie-Claude, 26, 30 Bollywood, 13, 89 Boubakeur, Dalil, 46 Bouchareb, Rachid, 27 British Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), viii, 42, 79, 88 Bureau of Employment and Identification (1930–1948), 197 Bureau of Employment and Migration (1947–51), 197, 199 Bureau of Employment Security, 205 Bureau of Repatriate Welfare (Hikigae engo kyoku), 162 Bureau of Social Welfare (Shakai engo kyoku), 162 Burgos, Julia de, 218 C Cabo Rojo, 214 Calhoun, Craig, 12 Capetillo, Luisa, 218 Carrère-d’Encausse, Hélène, 35 Carvalho, Francisco, 144, 149 Castel, Robert, 32 Castelo, Cláudia, 129, 148 Cavalli, Roberto, 85 Charter of the Kingdom (of the Netherlands), 99 Chernenko, Andrei, 190 Chie, Nakane, 172 Chinese Nationalist Party, 159 Chirac, Jaques, 27, 58 Clemente, Roberto, 210 Club de l’Horloge, 37 Cohen, Nicole, 3, 5, 12, 18 Cohen, Robin, 13

256

Cohesion and Faith Unit of the Department for Communities and Local Government, 84 Colón, Jesús, 218 Commission for Equality and Against Social Discrimination (CEASD), viii, 139 Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) See British Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), viii, 186 Communist Party of the Netherlands, 98 Community Cohesion Units, 88 Community of the Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP), 127, 151 Connecting British Hindus Research Programme, 84 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Estado Libre Asociado), 193 Consultative Council for Immigration Issues (CCII), viii, 139 Corretjer, Juan Antonio, 210 Costa, F.L., 145 D Democratic Party (US), 210, 213–4 Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs in the United States (1989–93), 198–9 Dewitte, Philippe, 283 Disciples of Christ, 217 Domingos, N., 138, 148 Domingues, Nuno, 144 Drees, Willem, 112 Durkheim, Emile, 31 E Effendi, Rostam, 98 El Congreso del Pueblo (‘The People’s Congress’ or Council of Hometown Clubs), 214 El Nuevo Día, 209 Emilio Díaz Valcárcel, 218 espiritismo (spiritualism), 217 Estado Libre Asociado (de Puerto Rico), 193, 207 Esteves, Sandra María, 219 European Union, 36, 61, 79, 147, 190 Evian (peace agreements), 26, 28–9 F Federal Migration Service, 184, 190 Fernós-Isern, Antonio, 198 Ferré, Luis, 206

Index

Field, Norma, 174 Figueroa, Sotero, 218 Flores, Pedro, 219 Former Soviet Union (FSU), viii, 17, 181, 184 Forsythia Club, 169 Fortune Dynamic (company), 85 Fortuño, Luis, 209 French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), viii, 40, 46 Freyre, Gilberto, 148–9 Friendship, Co-operation and Consultation Treaty, 138 Front national (FN), viii, 36–9, 57 G Geisser, Vincent, 43, 46, 48, 58 General Agreement for Cooperation and Friendship, 138 General Assembly of the United Nations, 193 General Electric Company, 70 Geneva Convention, 184, 186 Gerena-Valentín, Gilberto, 214 Gilroy, Paul, 15, 71, 93 Gisaburô, Yamaguchi, 157 Glassboro Service Association, 206–7 Godinho, Vitorino Magalhães, 137 Gogh, Theo van, 81 González, José Luis, 218 Gorbachev Foundation, 186 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 184 Great Migration, 210, 218 Grosfoguel, Ramón, 194 Guantanamo Bay, 87 Guénif, Nacira, 44–5, 58 Gutiérrez, Luis, 208 H Hadj, Messali, 28 Halbwachs, Maurice, 170 Hall, Stuart, 15 Harbi, Mohamed, 28 Hargreaves, Alec, 38 Hatta, Mohammed, 98 Herberts, Alfred, 70 Hernández, Rafael, 219 Het Indisch Huis, 120 High authority for the struggle against discriminations and for equality (HALDE), 41–2, 58 High Commission for Immigration and Intercultural Dialogue, 141 High Commission for Immigration and Ethnic Minorities (HCIEM), ix, 139, 141, 150

Index

Hindu Forum of Britain, 84–6 Hindu Human Rights (organization) 85–6 Hispano, Desfile, 218 Hizb-ut-Tahrir, 87 Hodge, John R, 157, 161 Hortefeux, Brice, 38 Hostos, Eugenio María de, 218 Human Development Report 2009, 141 Husain, Maqbool Fida, 85 I Industrial Incentives Act, 196 Institut Montaigne, 42 Institute for the Welfare of Repatriates (Hikiage engo in), 162 Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, 210 Institute of Race Relations, ix, 78, 93 Internal Revenue Code, 197 International Institute of Social History, 118 International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, 215 International Monetary Fund, 189 Ishihara, Shintarô, 175 Island’s Department of Labour, 197–8 Island’s Farm Labour Programme, 204–6 J Japan Veterans’Association (1955), 168 Japan War-Bereaved Association, 168 Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare, 158, 161, 168 Jerónimo, M.B., 137, 148 Jiménez, Manuel ‘Canario’, 219 K Kazue, Morisaki, 172 Khan, Sheila, 145 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 81 Kim Hi-ro affair, 172 Kom, Anton de, 98 Kozuki, Yoshio, 157 L La Hermosa church, 217 La Internacional, 214 La Milagrosa parish, 217 La Resistencia, 215 Laguerre, Enrique, 218 Laviera, Tato, 219 Le Pen, Jean-Marie, 36–7 Leeuwen, Lizzy van, 119–20 Lenin, 185 Levins Morales, Aurora, 219 Lewis, Oscar, 221

257

Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ix, 168 Lord Desai, 85 Lord Ram, 85 Los Jíbaros (The Peasants), 213 Lottery and Heritage Funds, 88 Lozès, Patrick, 52 Lugo, Nick, 206 Luso-American Foundation, 145 Lusophony, 19, 20, 137–8, 142, 144, 146 Luzhkov, Yuri, 189–90 M MacArthur, Douglas, 159 Maizuru Regional Repatriation Center, 162, 168 Major, John, 89–90 Mao Zedong, 159 Margarido, A., 137 Marín, Muñoz, 197–8, 214 Marques, Margarida, 8, 14 Mauco, Georges, 27 Mbala-Mbala, Dieudonné, 50 McCarran-Walter Act, 71 Mégret, Bruno, 48 Méhaignerie, Laurence, 42 Memmi Albert, 44 Metropolitan Police, 78 Migration Division, ix Migration Division and the Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs, 181, 205–6, 208, 214 Migration Division of the Department of Labour (1951–1989), 197 Ministry of Federation Affairs, National and Migration Policy, 190 Minnelli (firm), 85 Mohr, Nicholasa, 219 Moinho da Juventude (the ‘Youth Mill’), 144 Moscoso, Teodoro, 198 Mothers of Bragança, 136 Mouvement des Indigènes de la République MIR), ix, 49, 53 Mouvement républicain populaire, 40 Movement of Love, 163 Murayama Statement, 175–6 N National Assembly, 36, 43, 48, 50 National Council of Representative Black Associations of France (CRAN)/Conseil representative des associations noires de France), viii, 51

Index

258

National Federation of Repatriate Groups (Hikiagesha Dantai Zenkoku Rengôkai), 168 National Front 78, 92–3 National Health Service, 69 National Liberation Front (FLN), 9, 28 National Manpower Mobilization Act of 1939, 161 Ndiaye, Pap, 30, 50, 52 New Deal, 196 New Progressive Party (NPP) ix, 206 New York’s Catholic Archdiocese, 217 NGO Reporters Without Borders, 190 Nish, Ian, 167 Nobuyuki, Abe, 157 Noiriel, Gérard, 38 Nuyorican Poets Café, 219

Puerto Rican Emergency Relief Administration (PRERA), ix, 196 Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, 206 Puerto Rican Popular Army Los Macheteros, 208 Puerto Rican Reconstruction Administration (PRRA), ix, 196 Puerto Rican Socialist Party, 208, 213 Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, 198 Puerto Rico’s Farm Labour Programme, 204–6 Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party (PDP), 193

O O’Connor, Donald J., 198 Obama, Barack, 43 Office for the Welfare of Repatriates (Hikiage engo chô), 162 Office of Information for Puerto Rico (1945–49), 197 Ondjaki, 146 Oostindie, Gert, 7 Operation Bootstrap, 199, 208 Ortiz Coffer, Judith, 219

R Race Equality Councils, 88 Ramos-Zayas, Ana Y., 209–10 RCA Victor, 219 Relief Association for the Compatriots Overseas, 163 Relief Society of Compatriots Repatriated from Korea, 163 Repatriate Benefits Allowance Law (1957), 168 Repatriate Memorial Park, 168 Representative Council of Jewish Organizations of France (CRIF), 40 Rivera, Carmen Haydée, 223 Rivera, Edward, 219 Rivera Vincenty, Julia, 206 Rodríguez, Abraham, 219 Rodríguez de Tio, Lola, 218 Runnymede Trust, 84 Rushdie, Salman, 81 Russian America Trading Company, 182 Russian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic, 186 Russian Information Agency Novosti, 190 Russian legislature (Duma), 184 Ryûtarô, Hashimoto, 176

P Papon, Maurice, 22, 28 Pasqua, Charles, 37, 57 Peace for Vieques (movement), 208 Peach, Blair, 64, 78 Peattie, Mark, 156 Peter the Great, 182 Pétré-Grenouilleau, Olivier, 50 Phillips, Trevor, 88 Picó, Rafael, 198 Pierluisi, Jaime, 208 Pietri, Pedro, 219 Piñero, Jesús T., 196 Piñero, Miguel, 219 Pinto, António Costa, 130 Pitti, Laure, 29 Plan for the Integration of Immigrants (Portugal 2007), 141 Porto Rican League, 213 Porto Rican Stars from the Island, 213 Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945, 158 Prince Harry, 85 Puerto Rican Arts Alliance, 210

Q Quijano, Anibal, 56

S Sabeg, Yazid, 42 Sabura project, 144–5, 152 San Francisco Treaty of 1952, 161 San Juan Baseball Club, 213 santería (originally an Afro-Cuban religion), 217 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 33, 37–8, 42–4, 46 Schomburg, Arturo, 218

Index

259

Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), ix, 115 Self Defense Forces, 175 Self-Help Association for Former Agrarian Colonists in Manchuria, 163 Sellers, Peter, 78 Senior, Clarence, 198 Serrano, José, 208 Sharma, Kamalesh, 85 Shelby, Tommie, 52 Sherawali, Mata, 85 Shrine, Yasukuni, 168, 176 Silva, Mirtha, 219 Smith, Andrea L., 2 Sobral, José, 146 SOS-Racisme, 38, 58 Soto, Pedro Juan, 219 Soum, El Yamine, 43 SOVA Center, 189 Spanglish, 210, 216, 219 Special Agreement between the Portuguese and the Cape-Verdean Republics, 138 Special Agreement between the Portuguese and the Guinea-Bissauan Republics, 138 Special Patrol Group (SPG), ix, 78 Spire, Alexis, 29 Stalin, 185 Sterling Metals, 70, 93 Stora, Benjamin, 28, 37 Subcommittee on Agricultural Labour of the U.S. House of Representatives, 206 Sukarno, 98 Supreme Soviet’s Chamber of Nationalities, 185

The Race Relations Act 1976 (Amendment) Regulations 2003, 79 The Shôrro Elementary Alumni Association, 170 Thomas, Piri, 219 Thomas, Oscar, 149 Tiesler, Nina, 130 Tin, Louis-Georges, 52 Tinker, Hugh, 13 Tokyo Nanzan alumni organization, 169 Tomiichi, Murayama, 175 Torres, Mario, 138 Torres-Padilla, José L., 223 Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji in 1774, 182 Truman, Harry S., 196 Turner, Tina, 85

T Takeshi, Muramatsu, 166 Taubira, Christiane, 50 Tavares de Almeida, Pedro, 130 Thandi, Shinder, 10 The 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act, 79 The Act of Annexation in 1910, 161 The Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs, 198–9 The Farm Labour Programme, 204–6 The Misaka Elementary School Association, 169 The Nanzan Elementary Alumni Association, 169–70 The Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2007, 209 The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, 79

W Wacquant, Loïc, 32 Wagner-Peyser Act, 205–6 Werbner, Pnina, 81–2

U Union Movement, 78, 92 United Nations High Commission on Refugees, 184 U.S. Commonwealth, 197 U.S. House of Representatives, 204, 208–9 U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, 195 V Vazquez v. Ferre, 206 Vazquez, David, 206 Vega, Bernardo, 218 Vega, Ed, 219 Velázquez, Nydia, 208 Vertovec, Steven, 13 Villiers, Philippe de, 48

Y Yade, Rama, 44 Yager, Arthur, 197 Yalta Conference, 159 Yeltsin, Boris, 184 Z Zemouri, Aziz, 46 Zenren, 168