The different forms of colonial rule had a major impact on the way in which access to citizenship was regulated before and after decolonisation.
The Portuguese empire’s assimilationist policy created an official categorisation of the population into three major groups: European born Portuguese citizens (full citizens, subject to metropolitan law); assimilados (with the right to be treated on the same legal basis as whites); and the remaining indigenous populations (with no political rights and administered by the customary laws of each territory). In the 1960s, in an effort to appear before its critics as a “single and indivisible” State with no colonies, just overseas provinces, Portugal offered full citizenship to all its colonial subjects. Dutch colonialism, in its differential approach between non-European natives and European settlers, is comparable to the Portuguese experience, including the post-war extension of full citizenship to the colonial subjects. Due to early decolonization, however, this extension would never reach the largest part of the previous subjects: the native Indonesian population.
Portugal was the last of the European empires to surrender its colonies and its postcolonial reconstruction clearly resonates of colonial nostalgia. The fact that all former colonies kept Portuguese as official language allowed Portugal to reposition itself as the centre of a linguistic community and to adopt as a fundamental principle in international relations the maintenance of special ties with all lusophone countries. These special ties are enshrined in the Portuguese Constitution and have justified, among other things, more lenient immigration rules and more favourable conditions for access to Portuguese nationality (at least until 2006), as well as the constitutional conferral of a quasi citizenship status to the lusophone foreigners who are legally resident in the country. Such privileged status has no parallel in Dutch law, which, since 1951, endorses a uniform conception of citizenship and which is, in principle, adverse to dual nationality. People from the Dutch overseas territories (Netherlands Antilles and Aruba) are Dutch citizens, enjoying full political rights (including electoral rights for EP elections) and the right to travel within the Kingdom. People originating from Indonesia, New Guinea or Surinam, are mere foreigners, with no special rights of access to the Dutch territory or nationality, and enjoy only the political rights that may be awarded to all foreigners (e.g. the right to vote in local elections after 5 years of residence).
Patrícia Jerónimo is Assistant Professor at the Law School of the University of Minho, Portugal. She holds a PhD in Law from the European University Institute in Florence (2008) and has been at the University of Minho since 1995. Patrícia Jerónimo is also a member of the Scientific Committee for the Law Degree at the National University of East-Timor and she has taught Constitutional and International Law in East-Timor since 2006.
