Eline Westra
Postdoc
- Name
- E. Westra
- Telephone
- 071 5271293
- e.westra@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Eline Westra is a postdoctoral researcher in the NWA-funded project "Dilemmas of Doing Diversity", which examines how diversity policies are shaped and put into practice. Eline obtained her PhD in political science at the University of Amsterdam. Her dissertation explores five decades of political debates over the rights and belonging of Surinamese-Dutch citizens in the Netherlands (1970-2024). She is interested in citizenship politics in postcolonial Europe, focusing both on dominant (state) discourses and on activist political claims-making.
Fields of interest
- Citizenship
- Migration
- Colonialism
- Diversity politics
- Social movements
Selected publications
Westra, E. (2025). Claiming and contesting postcolonial citizenship: Political struggles over the rights and belonging of Surinamese-Dutch citizens. [Thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam]. https://hdl.handle.net/11245.1/7ca30464-e658-4069-ad9a-f833b703c845
Westra, E., & van Hooren, F. (2024). Social rights in a post-colonial welfare state: Revisiting ‘universality’ and ‘inclusivity’. Journal of European Social Policy. Prepublished November 13, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1177/09589287241297540
Westra, E. (2024). Multiple barriers to the Dutch welfare state: Black Feminists’ intersectional claims to social citizenship in the 1980s. Critical Social Policy, 44(3), 403-424. https://doi.org/10.1177/02610183231215232
Westra, E., Bonjour, S. A., & Vermeulen, F. F. (2023). Claiming a postcolonial differential citizenship: Contestation of family migration rights in the Netherlands in the wake of Suriname’s independence. Migration Studies, 11(3), 431-451. https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnad013
Westra, E. (2024). Perspectieven op postkoloniaal burgerschap. Politieke claims van Surinaams-Nederlandse organisaties na de onafhankelijkheid van Suriname (1975). In: Fatah-Black, K. and Lauret, L. (eds) Koloniaal Burgerschap: Geschiedenis En Erfenis, pp. 227-240. Amsterdam: Boom. https://www.boomportaal.nl/boek/9789024462445
Postdoc
- Faculty of Humanities
- Institute for History
- Economic and Social History