Raising the question: articulating the Dutch identity crisis through public debate

Abstract

In place of a 'tolerant no more' narrative, this article proposes a different conception of nationalism's re-articulation in the Dutch context. The salience of nationhood in public and political life, particularly concerning issues of immigration, religion and diversity, is not reconstructed as a backlash against a purported multiculturalism. Instead, attention is given to a re-articulation of the very notion of nationhood. A long-term historical move away from characterology is assessed and applied in understanding the emergence of a national-identity discourse. This discourse not merely embellishes talk of Dutchness with new terms, but indicates -so the articles aim to demonstrate -a different conception of nationhood all together. Apart from what the nation is -about which very little disagreement took place -discussions formed about how Dutchness was imagined and to what extent people themselves were able to form a national image. The emergence of national-identity discourse is empirically reconstructed. Not only is it made clear how a logic of popularity begins to be reiterated across a variety of positionings, but public debate and dissensus acquire a new significance and performativity in the process.

Peeling an onion: the “refugee crisis” from a historical perspective

“…After all, the average human capital of refugees varied considerably from that of former guest workers, leading migrants and their descendants along different integration paths (Maliepaard, Witkamp, and Jennissen 2017). By the start of the twenty-first century, political sentiment towards Muslims had culminated in a broadly supported consensus that immigration was economically, socially and culturally harmful to nation states (Lucassen and Lucassen 2015;Van Reekum 2016). Immigrants -defined as unskilled and mainly non-European -were portrayed as welfare parasites unwilling to adopt modern, liberal cum national values.…”

How happenings do (not) turn into events: A typology and an application to the case of 9/11 in the American and Dutch public spheres

“…19–21). Instead, they undergird work that claims that the development of these debates has been much more gradual and that the public problematization of the relationship between Islam and Dutch society had already started during the 1980s and 1990s (for instance, Uitermark, 2012 ; van Reekum, 2016 ). Thus, my analysis indicates that 9/11 was a focus event regarding the issue of Islam; it has intensified the “salience” of the immigration/integration‐cleavage within the Dutch public sphere (Kriesi et al., 2008 , pp 154–182).…”

A discourse of displacement: super-diversity, urban citizenship, and the politics of autochthony in Amsterdam

“…Beekers 2015;Balkenhol, Mepschen, and Duyvendak 2016;Duyvendak, Geschiere, and Tonkens 2016;Mepschen, 2016a;Modest and Koning 2016;Van Reekum 2016;Vollebergh 2016). The latter concept gives name to the ascent of a discursive genre, an interpretive frame, that carves up societies in distinct, internally homogeneous and delimited cultures, and that represents native cultures as threatened entities that must be protected against the allegedly deviant mores and moralities of minoritized and racialized outsiders.…”