The Coloniality of Postimperial Reparative Citizenship: Chagossians, Hong Kongers, and the Windrush Generation in Britain

In recent years, calls for reparations for the historical wrongs of European colonialism have steadily multiplied within popular, political, and scholarly discourse. Such calls generally focus on the redistribution of material resources from the Global North to the Global South, with increasing attention also being paid to the granting of transnational mobility rights to formerly colonised populations. This paper explores a further, underexamined component of the colonial reparations ‘package’, namely remedial access to citizenship of former imperial powers. I begin by outlining a normative theory of ‘postimperial reparative citizenship’, arguing that the moral justifications developed in support of other forms of citizenship reparations also broadly apply in respect of former colonial subjects. I then turn to the actual practice of postimperial reparative citizenship, focusing on existing fast-track pathways to British citizenship for three formerly colonised groups: the Chagossians, Hong Kongers, and members of the Windrush generation. Taken together, these examples demonstrate that postimperial states can be willing to expand access to their citizenship as a form of colonial reparations. On the other hand, their restrictive and selective character suggest that this practice is also unavoidably constrained by the exclusionary dynamics of coloniality. Overall, I conclude that postimperial citizenship can thus play no more than a very limited role in the broader project of colonial reparations.