Digital Multiculturalism in the Netherlands: Religious, Ethnic, and Gender Positioning by Moroccan-Dutch Youth

Abstract

This article focuses on digital practices of Moroccan-Dutch adolescents in the Netherlands. The digital sphere is still rather understudied in the Netherlands. However, it offers a unique, entry to intersecting issues of religiosity, ethnicity and gender as well as to their implications for thinking about multiculturalism from new vantage points. What do digital practices such as online discussion board participation tell us about identity and multiculturalism? The three forms of position acquisition under discussion (gender, religion and ethnic positioning) show that neither religion, ethnicity, nor gender cease to exist in the digital realm but are constantly negotiated, reimagined and relocated. Drawing from the work of Modood, Gilroy and other critics of gender, media, multiculturalism and postcoloniality, we argue that online activities of the Moroccan-Dutch youth not only offer an important critique of mainstream media debates on multiculturalism, but also create space for alternative bottom-up interpretations of everyday practices of multiculturalism in the Netherlands.Leurs, Midden, Ponzanesi: Digital Multiculturalism

Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0. Diaspora, Gender and Youth Cultural Intersections

“…First, focusing how ethnicity is renegotiated I observe the dynamics of "digital multiculturalism" on forums (Leurs, Midden & Ponzanesi, 2012). Countering mainstream negative news framing, I map the powerful feelings informants experience while voicing their alternative opinions about the Moroccan-Dutch community.…”

“…In every offline and online setting, a particular configuration of material, representational and affective structures orders the available youth cultural, religious, ethnic, sexual and gendered subject positions. However, there is always room left for the stretching, negotiation and subversion of these allocated positions, through processes of bottom-up position acquisition on message boards (Leurs, Midden & Ponzanesi, 2012).…”

‘You shouldn't blame religion … but the person’ – the ethnic boundary work of young second-generation migrants in Rotterdam

“…In the public debate it is not only ethnicity that influences the boundary between minority and majority cultures: being seen as 'on the other side of the boundary' is often tied to being from a Muslim background. Opponents of the multicultural society argue that Islam is irreconcilably different from the Dutch culture and identity (Leurs, Midden, and Ponzanesi 2012), and as such brighten the boundaries between migrants and majority society.…”

“…The Islamization of migrants can be connected to factors like the rise of radical Islam in Muslim countries, the growing visibility of Islam in Europe and the increasing fear of terrorist attacks such as the recent ones in Paris (Leurs, Midden, and Ponzanesi 2012). These global events are experienced locally by migrant young people in a range of ways that are important to their senses of identity and social inclusion or exclusion.…”

“…For example, in the campaign led by right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders, and picked up by mainstream media, the children of migrants, especially those from a Moroccan background, are considered to be a problem and are often excluded from the Dutch national identity (Leurs, Midden, and Ponzanesi 2012). Muslim boys are increasingly depicted as 'street terrorists' or fundamentalists, while girls are constructed as unemancipated or oppressed (Akbarzadeh and Smith 2005;Leurs, Midden, and Ponzanesi 2012;Schønemann 2013). This idea of Muslims as terrorists is further strengthened by the rise of radical Islam in North Africa and the Middle East, as well as the terrorist attack at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, which took place at the time of the interviews.…”