Conclusion — Inheriting the State: Contextualizing the Future of Postcolonial and Ethnic Migration and Political Inclusion

Abstract

As the velocity and intensity of migrations increase around the world, legal citizenship and ethnicity are becoming two of the most contested issues facing the modern state. Debates flare around who should be granted rights of entry and exit, extended legal citizenship or political rights, and whether those membership rights should be privileged or entitled to those of a particular ethnicity with claims to the origins of the state. As discussed in previous chapters, both the Dutch Caribbean postcolonial groups in the Netherlands and the Japanese co-ethnic groups in Japan are legal immigrants who have inherited the state. This happens as a ‘postcolonial bonus’ (Oostindie, 2011) or ethnic bonus that grants host state access to legal residence and employment via Dutch citizenship or Japanese co-sanguinity. These chapters have revealed immigrant political incorporation to be a difficult process even for those equipped with the privileges of a ‘postcolonial bonus’ or an ethnic bonus. As such, postcolonial and ethnic migrants can shed a great deal of light on barriers to inclusion for all. This book has focused on the relation-ship and interaction between the forces that propel migration, immigration policy, political incorporation, and political transnationalism. This concluding chapter comparatively analyses the key propositions and insights of this study on globalization and the political incorporation and political transnationalism of Dutch Antilleans in the Netherlands and Latin American Nikkeijin in Japan.