Celeste Correia

Celeste Correia (born 1948) is a naturalized Portuguese teacher and politician, originally from the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde. She represented the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) as a member of the Assembly of the Republic between 1995 and 2011 and, again, from 2014 to 2015.

Early life Maria Celeste Lopes da Silva Correia was born on 8 October 1948 to a middle-class family in Mindelo, São Vicente, Cape Verde. First studying at the Gil Eanes School in Cape Verde, she later graduated with a bachelor's degree in Romanic Philology, studying for a master's degree in Intercultural relations at the Universidade Aberta, Portugal's distance learning university, and in Descriptive Portuguese Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon. She then became a Portuguese teacher in a secondary school.

Political career Elected to the Portuguese parliament in 1995, Correia held various functions in the Socialist Party, including being a member of its Political Commission, and in the Assembly of the Republic, where she was responsible for the establishment of the High Commission for Intercultural Dialogue, currently the High Commission for Migration, the Law Against Racial Discrimination, and the Reform of the Nationality Law. She was reinstated in the PS list in 2014 and re-elected until 2015.

Social work Correia also works closely with the Lisbon immigrant community. She is a member of the Associação Caboverdiana de Lisboa (Cape Verde Association of Lisbon) and an NGO working with immigrants.