Retro-colonising citizenship: race, rights, and nationality in the Portuguese Empire

Carvalho-Loureiro, Marcelo ORCID: 0000-0002-5791-2452 (2023). Retro-colonising citizenship: race, rights, and nationality in the Portuguese Empire. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis is a critical investigation of the surviving coloniality and racism in the way nationality is thought and practiced. It provides a critical redescription of nationality, citizenship, and rights through a socio-legal analysis of the Portuguese imperial case. With that, the work attempts to demonstrate that from a legal analysis focused on understanding law-as-oppression, and via the narratives of oppressed people it is possible to comprehend untold constitutional narratives about nationality, citizenship, and rights. This focus on the oppressive side of law and on the narratives of oppressed people as a means to understand and theorise the socio-legal phenomena is what I call retro-coloniality. Thus, this thesis theoretical analysis departs not from the bestowing and recognition of rights but from its utter denial.

The central claim of this thesis is that current nationality law is built on white constitutional matter which prevents colonial others from organically attaining citizenship and its rights. This thesis proves, by using original and primary documentation, that nationality and the possibility of rights are still based on colonial principles. By recognising this face of nationality and citizenship, it becomes possible to understand rights, their theory, and practice from a place of inclusion rather than segregation.

The duty to include the colonial other in the analysis of rights is only possible through a systematic and coherent redescription. For that, I aimed to construct a continuous transitional examination of the different legal forms taken by colonial-racial oppression. The first analytical stop is slavery. This naturally pointed to legal indigeneity, assimilation laws, post-imperial denationalisation, and diasporic nationality as transitions of colour-coded oppression. In constructing a retro-colonial theory of rights, this thesis hopes to assist in unsilencing the ones who can speak but are not heard.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):