Wie wordt er gekwetst als je zegt ‘beste aanwezigen’? #genderneutraal aanspreken is belangrijk en kent geen verliezers.
Geïnterviewd in NRC Handelsblad over onlangs door de gemeente Amsterdam gepubliceerde genderneutrale taalgids voor ambtenaren.
The “migrant with poor prospects”: racialized intersections of class and culture in Dutch civic integration debates
Saskia Bonjour & Jan Willem Duyvendak in Ethnic and Racial Studies (open access)
KEYWORDS: Civic integration, class, racialization, immigration policy, Netherlands, political discourse
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. READ
Understanding governmental activism
Imrat Verhoeven & Jan Willem Duyvendak in Social Movement Studies (open access)
This article seeks to understand an understudied phenomenon: governmental players joining forces with non-governmental players in contentious actions against policies they want to prevent or redress. This behaviour, which we call ‘governmental activism’, problematizes important assumptions in the social movement literature on state–SMO dichotomies and on seeing ‘the state’ as a homogeneous and unified actor that solely provides the context for SMO activities. Governmental activism also problematizes assumptions on cooperation and ‘new’ modes of coordination in the governance literature. To understand governmental activism, we build on the strategic interaction perspective from social movement studies and on third-phase institutionalism from political science. In our analysis, we show the particulars of governmental activism. Our arguments are illustrated by empirical material on a case of municipal amalgamation in the Netherlands. READ
Becoming (more) Dutch as medical recommendations: how understandings of national identity enter the medical practice of hymenoplasty consultations
Sherria Ayuandini & Jan Willem Duyvendak in Nations and Nationalism, doi: 10.1111/nana.12329.
This article looks at how Dutch national identity enters the practical setting of a medical consultation. Extending the growing scholarships of everyday nationalism and engaging with the notion of multivocalism, this article shows how Dutchness is understood in the form of desirable personal characteristics. These characteristics are promoted by physicians to patients of migrant ancestry looking for a surgery called hymenoplasty. This article presents unique scholarly observations of a case where a particular understanding of national identity is recommended as part of medical advice. Furthermore, by closely examining exchanges between doctors and patients, this article argues that Dutchness is in a state of flux where a person of migrant ancestry can simultaneously be seen by others as Dutch and non-Dutch.