Super-diversity has become the conceptual touchstone for a large body of research on immigration in European societies. Evolving from the ideas sketched by Steven Vertovec in his famous 2007 essay, ...the concept as deployed in research has become a successor to multiculturalism. The super-diversity lens has trained attention on horizontal processes of "living together" in very diverse settings, like some urban neighbourhoods where no group holds the majority status. However, we argue here that for a fuller understanding of integration, we need the vertical dimension of social power. This dimension is manifest through the mainstream, which permeates many institutions (including local ones such as schools) and becomes visible in the cultural adjustments made by members of immigrant-origin minorities, particularly among those who aspire to social mobility. The power axis represented by the mainstream is not strictly dependent on the demographic distribution of ethnic groups, given that white natives remain very powerful even when they are a numerical minority. At the same time, the character of the mainstream may be altered to some extent by the entry of individuals with non-white minority origins. To illustrate these ideas, we offer the examples of the "culturalization of citizenship" in the Netherlands and the social locations of young people of mixed background in the US.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Although kinship has long since been established as a topic in migration research, migration scholars often lacked an analytical concept of kinship and relied on their own ethnocentric understandings ...and legal definitions. Reconciling insights from the anthropology of kinship and migration studies, we outline how a new theorization of kinship could be suitable and helpful for the study of migration and mobility. First, we need a conceptualization that accounts for kinship’s flexible and dynamic character in changing settings. Second, it is imperative to pay close attention to the intricate ways kinship interrelates with state politics. Lastly, an analytical notion of kinship should take into account that kinship relations can also have negative implications for the persons concerned. Articles in this Special Issue are attentive to these caveats and approach through the prism of kinship different issues of migration and mobility.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NMLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The recent trend towards selective immigration policies is based on the racialization of certain categories of migrants into irretrievably unassimilable Others. In Europe, this trend has materialized ...largely through the application of integration requirements to the immigration of foreigners, the so-called "civic integration turn". Based on an analysis of parliamentary debates about civic integration policies in the Netherlands, this paper asks which migrants are considered likely or unlikely to integrate based on which presumed characteristics. We find that Dutch civic integration policies aim at barring "migrants with poor prospects". In sharp contrast with a long history of Dutch social policies, politicians deny state responsibility for migrants' emancipation based on a discursive racialization of these migrants as unassimilable. While class has hitherto been largely ignored in the literature on migration and the politics of belonging, we show that class, intersecting with culture and gender, is key in this process of racialization.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper discusses the relevance of American literature on 'revanchist urbanism' for understanding the policies of the populist government that ruled Rotterdam between 2002 and 2006. It is ...suggested that revanchist urbanism in the European context in general and in the case of Rotterdam in particular takes on a different form from that in the US. Moreover, a wholesale displacement of social-democratic policies by revanchist policies is not observed. Many policy measures which formed part-and-parcel of a social-democratic urban project— anti-segregation policies and policies to promote social cohesion— are redefined and reconfigured by populist parties so that they can be incorporated into more revanchist strategies. In this sense, the differences between social democratic and revanchist governance are large with respect to symbolism but small and gradual when it comes to actual policy measures.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The emergence of gentrification as a ‘global urban strategy’ (Smith, 2002, “New globalism, new urbanism: gentrification as a global urban strategy” Antipode 34 427–451) is clearly visible in the ...peripheral boroughs of Dutch cities. We suggest, however, that the driving force of gentrification in these areas is not the local government's need to strengthen its tax base or developers' pursuit of profit. Gentrification is also not a response to the housing demands of a new middle class. Instead, we conceive of state-led gentrification in the Netherlands, and perhaps elsewhere as well, as an attempt by a coalition of state actors and housing associations at generating social order in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Gentrification is used to pacify tensions and to reduce concentrations that pose a problem for authorities. In many cases, residents support this strategy, either actively or passively. But, at the same time, interaction between low-income and higher-income households, and between renters and homeowners, in restructured neighbourhoods are often superficial at best and hostile at worst. Thus, gentrification undermines social cohesion and thereby reduces the chance that residents will find solutions for tensions in the neighbourhood.
Full text
Available for:
NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This article analyses the various uses of history within contemporary Dutch debates on national identity and immigration. These different ways of dealing with the past are telling in and of ...themselves but this article also points to what the various uses of the past - four historical repertoires- have in common: politicians and scholars reason from a nativist position.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
There has been an increase of academic publications that argue in favor of ‘majority rights,’ ‘majority precedence,’ or ‘white identity,’ claiming that the (cultural) interests of majorities in ...liberal-democratic countries have been ignored due to ‘asymmetrical multiculturalism.’ This article critically examines this academic trend. In particular, we question the claim that liberal-democratic and multicultural theories to date have ignored the importance of the majority (culture). We observe that liberal-democratic and multicultural theory in fact strongly promote and privilege the majority culture, although in ways that do not violate core individual rights and accommodate minorities. In addition, we explore several more empirical issues regarding the claim that the interests of majorities are under threat in liberal-democratic countries today. Among other things, we observe that pro-majority theories tend to work with specific understandings of who embodies the majority. These theories rest on the idea that immigrants and their descendants (may) ‘dilute’ majorities, as they are (culturally) ‘not native.’ As a result, majority rights theorists ‘freeze’ the majority culture claimed to be worth protecting in ways that it, first, neglects ongoing processes of integration and, second, disregards possibilities for social and political change and emancipation, particularly if triggered by immigrant groups. Finally, we wonder why majority rights theories currently seem to resonate. We discuss the possibility that certain pro-diversity voices, such as those who claim that Europe has become superdiverse or who defend multiculturalism, might have (unintentionally) enabled alarmist defenses of majority rights.
For some youth, thinking about the future - let alone expressing aspirations for the future - is a daunting task. This incapacity to aspire is problematic in itself, but particularly as neoliberal ...societies widely expect young people from adolescence onwards to have a plan for their own future. In our research among disadvantaged youth in Europe, we observed such dreamless predicaments countless times, prompting us to wonder: how and when do aspirations emerge? Why do they flourish or wither away over time? Why do youth from similar backgrounds, facing comparable levels of adversity, relate so differently to their future potential? Although the capacity to aspire is largely conditioned by one's social, economic and cultural background, it is not a given: its development depends on how individual life trajectories and the accumulated experience of social interactions become resources to explore the future in a productive way. Examining the micro-sociological processes through which the capacity to aspire unfolds is critical for understanding how young people learn to aspire and act on their aspirations in the long run. Building on insights from Appadurai, Bourdieu and research in continental Europe, this article proposes a conceptual framework for understanding how aspirations develop and wither.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
In this important book, Jan Willem Duyvendak and James M. Jasper bring together an internationally acclaimed group of contributors to demonstrate the complexities of the social and political spheres ...in various areas of public policy. By breaking down the state into the players who really make decisions and pursue coherent strategies, these essays provide new perspectives on the interactions between political protestors and the many parts of the state—from courts, political parties, and legislators to police, armies, and intelligence services. By analyzing politics as the interplay of various players within structured arenas, Breaking Down the State provides an innovative look at law and order versus opposition movements in countries across the globe.
PDF
