Contested Citizenship: Immigration Politics and Grassroots Migrants’ Organizations in Post-Colonial Portugal
Ana Paula Beja Horta
2004

Contested Citizenship sets out to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between the state and immigrant integration processes in post-colonial Portuguese society. More specifically, it seeks to show the role of state policies and discourses in shaping immigrants’ political participation patterns. Methodologically, this book is based on empirical research, specifically on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the migrant squatter settlement of Alto da Cova da Moura, Amadora in the periphery of Lisbon, in the period between 1995-1996 and 1997-1999. In conclusion, it is argued that immigration policies (at the time of writing) can hardly be dissociated from a politics of identity in which “postnational” and national models of citizenship are, ultimately, played out at the local-level of everyday life.