'a Generation of Sexual Robots': Student Migration, Decolonization and Sexual Revolution in the Dutch Atlantic, 1960s-1970s

In the 1960s and 1970s, unprecedented numbers of Antillean students travelled to the former Dutch metropole to pursue university education. This paper revisits this period of student migration and views it against the backdrop of global discussions on decolonization, Black liberation and the relaxation of sexual mores after World War II. Using the publications of radical Antillean student groups in the Netherlands, I argue that student movements did not view as discrete the goals of anti-colonialism, sexual revolution and Black power. Rather, student groups insisted on the interdependency of these issues, claiming that the struggle for total independence and racial justice would, to quote one activist, “take place in the bedroom.” In this way, activists re-framed postcolonial citizenship in new terms that emphasized the importance of sexual and gender inclusivity to self-determination and racial justice. Without this broad-ranging view of mental, social and political liberation, one author warned, young Antilleans would become “a generation of sexual robots.” This paper thus challenges popular understandings of the sexual revolution as a distinctly European accomplishment by locating radical critiques of sex and gender norms in a trans-Atlantic and postcolonial context. That Antillean students placed racial equality and sexual freedoms at the heart of their conception of citizenship raises useful questions about the only ostensible division between Europe’s “postwar” and “postcolonial” history.