Portugal’s transition from a colonial empire to a semi-peripheral democracy has presented the country with a number of questions regarding the social contract, especially about people linked with the European colonial empires, and the socially and individually traumatic situations generated by the abrupt shift. Populations to be studied in the CO3 project include: the formerly colonised populations, people who were born under the Portuguese empire but excluded from the Portuguese democratic social contract, and those who were born after the independence of their own countries but who aim to come to and stay in Portugal.