The “migrant with poor prospects”: racialized intersections of class and culture in Dutch civic integration debates

Abstract

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.

Social Class, Migration Policy and Migrant Strategies: An Introduction

“…In this issue, Roggeband and van der Haar () find that in Dutch parliamentary discourse, “Moroccan youngsters” are constituted as “a national‐cultural category, which is also defined in terms of a disadvantaged socio‐economic position”. Building on Yuval‐Davis’ () conception of intersectionality, Bonjour and Duyvendak (: 897) argue that “class and culture intersect in Dutch political discourse in the sense that they are ‘mutually constitutive’ […]. Poor socio‐economic prospects are assumed to coincide with national origin (non‐Western) and religion (Muslim).…”

“…Logically, collective deservingness for some groups means collective undeservingness for others, who can be blamed as group members for their alleged bad behaviour or lack of integration prospects. Class is thus part of processes of racialization where such group characteristics are represented as “fixed and unmalleable” (Bonjour and Duyvendak, : 888) or even “intergenerationally transmitted” (Roggeband and van der Haar [2018] in this issue).…”

Managing the National Status Group: Immigration Policy in Germany

“…Bonjour and Block, 2016). As Bonjour and Duyvendak (2017) show in reference to political discourse in the Netherlands, we illustrate that perceived group-level exclusions operate at the intersection of ethnicity, gender and social class. German immigration policy disproportionately allocates more disadvantageous positions in the field of international migration to non-EU and non-OECD countries, which tend to be majority non-White.…”

“…In terms of policy, Western liberal‐democratic states need to consider what it means to grow and shape their populations according to middle‐class ideals, in a way that places the burden of achieving and demonstrating this status on individuals. Both Bonjour and Duyvendak () and Chauvin et al. () situate the prioritization of social class in immigration and integration policies in the context of the rise of neoliberalism since the 1990s.…”

“…In return, the superior social, ethnic, cultural or national status of one group can foster this group's appropriation of economic advantages (see Winter, on ethnicity, race, religion and class in relation to status groups). Drawing on a discourse analysis of Dutch parliamentary debates, Bonjour and Duyvendak (: 15) show that the racialized and classed social construct of “migrants with poor prospects” is leveraged in policy debates to justify restrictive policies toward “non‐Western” immigrants and Dutch citizens attributed with “deficient socioeconomic skills and cultural deviance.” We build on their contribution by outlining a theoretical framework that makes visible the interaction between identity and economics in immigration policy itself and points to how this interaction structures immigrant inclusion/exclusion not just at the group level, but at the individual level as well.…”