Reading the Aftermath of Portuguese Colonialism: The Retorno in the Written Media of the 21st Century

The purpose of this work is to undertake an exploratory pilot study on the multiplicity of texts that strive to write or analyse the memories of the displaced individuals from the former Portuguese African colonies during the 1975–1976 forced migration to Portugal who came to be labelled retornados (returnees), rethink history and eliminate silences, to pave the way for postmemory and controlled affective ties through reparative readings and nostalgia. We undertook bibliographical research to determine the eligibility criteria and used nonprobability convenience sampling to select the texts to carry out a content analysis. An interdisciplinary approach is used to present and discuss the results. Although decades have passed since the retorno , the stigma of being a retornado still remains in the memory of Portuguese society as interest in the topic and the time distance allows for more rigorous studies. In the analysed texts, the results achieved establish that the relationship of the Portuguese people with the contemporary memory and history of the colonial era is comprised of silences and nonmemories that still have to be deconstructed to forge a positive future for the generation of postmemory.