Faith-Based Organisations and Social Exclusion in the Netherlands
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Faith-based Organisations and Social Exclusion in the Netherlands Maarten Davelaar Jessica van den Toorn Nynke de Witte Justin Beaumont Corien Kuiper Juni 2011 2 Faith-based Organisations and Social Exclusion in the Netherlands Maarten Davelaar (Verwey-Jonker Institute) Jessica van den Toorn (Verwey-Jonker Institute) Nynke de Witte (University of Groningen) Justin Beaumont (University of Groningen) Corien Kuiper (University of Groningen) FACIT – Faith-based Organisations and social exclusion in European Cities EU 7th Framework Research project 3 4 Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank all representatives of the national and local organisations and platforms for their kindness to cooperate in this research and the willingness to express their views. Many of them also contributed to the FACIT project during local stakeholder meetings and a cross national evaluation with researchers from other countries. The Dutch research team could also build on additional interviews with local policy makers. Hugo Swinnen, Trees Pels, Roos van Veen, Judith Zijm, Tara Jibodh, Gonnie Weijers, Linda Kruis, Marianne Christiansen, Maxine van Bommel and Kees Tinga contributed at different moments and stages during the research project. Without the support of representatives of the municipalities of Tilburg (Moniek IJzerman and Jacques Lemmen), Rotterdam (Aad van Diemen and Jolanda van Cooten) and Amsterdam (Joris Rijbroek) the local case studies would not have been possible in this way. The local case studies were co-financed by the municipalities of Rotterdam, Tilburg and Amsterdam. Mistakes of any kind in this report are the responsibility of the authors. The field of FBOs and social exclusion in the Netherlands is a dynamic one. Activities, organisations and names change quickly. Therefore, it is possible that some information (collected since 2008) has become outdated in the mean time. Since this is not the final publication on this subject, the authors welcome remarks and comments on the report. [email protected]. 5 6 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 9 1 Mapping Faith-based Organisations at the national level 13 1.1 Religious context 13 1.2 General overview of national Faith-based Organisations 17 1.3 Other private actors (NGOs) active for the most vulnerable groups 24 2 Welfare State Regime and its relation to Faith-based Organisations 25 2.1 Introduction: Faith-based Organisations filling the gap? 25 2.2 The Dutch Welfare Regime in international perspective 27 2.3 Social exclusion and activation, social exclusion and gender 28 2.4 Historical developments of Faith-based Organisations in the context of the welfare state 31 3 On the urban context 33 3.1 Introducing Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Tilburg 33 3.2 Geographies of Faith-based Organisations 37 4 On the role of Faith-based Organisations in the local welfare system 41 4.1 Activities of Faith-based Organisations: an overview 41 4.2 Local activities of Faith-based Organisations in social domains 44 4.3 Functions of Faith-based Organisations in the local welfare system 50 4.4 Discussion 56 5 On the religious dimension 59 5.1 Faith and motivation of professionals and volunteers 59 5.2 The role of faith in organisation and activities 61 5.3 Faith-based Organisations and the salience of religion 65 5.4 Discussion 66 6 On the organisational network 69 6.1 Vertical and horizontal cooperation 69 6.2 Types of horizontal cooperation 70 6.3 Discussion 73 7 Faith-based Organisations and questions of governance 75 7.1 The framework of state-religion relations 75 7.2 General tendencies in state-religion relations 77 7.3 Cooperation from the local government perspective 79 7.4 Cooperation from the Faith-based Organisations perspective 83 7.5 Discussion 85 7 8 Future perspectives of organisations and broader tendencies 87 8.1 The future from the perspective of the Faith-based Organisations 87 8.2 Challenges for FBO action on exclusion 89 8.3 Discussion 91 9 Conclusion 93 9.1 Activities and trends in FBO presence in cities 94 9.2 Typology of functions 95 9.3 Where’s the faith in faith-based organisations? 95 9.4 Urban networks 97 9.5 FBO – government relations 97 9.6 Added value 98 9.7 FBOs and the welfare system 99 9.8 Retrenchment hypothesis 99 9.9 Future 101 Bibliography 103 Appendices 1 Interviews conducted with representatives of national Faith-based Organisations 117 2 Interviews conducted with representatives of local Faith-based Organisations 119 3 List of interviewed policymakers 127 8 Verwey- Jonker Institute Introduction Claims are increasingly made these days within academic, political and media circles about the possibilities of religions and faiths in general and faith-based organisations (FBOs) in particular for tackling social issues. Around the same time as the appearance of Charles Taylor’s (2007) magnum opus, A Secular Age, the online journal Eurozine published a series of articles, including contributi- ons by Jürgen Habermas, José Casanova and Danièle Hervieu-Léger, on European post secularism1 and The Economist published a special report devoted to religion and public life across the globe.2 Combined with recent governments in the US and the UK revalorizing FBOs in matters of social policy, urban regeneration and social cohesion in state-regulated urban policies, the European public sphere is dense with unresolved questions about the ways religion and faiths are imbricated in the social and political concerns of the day. What is, for example, the position of FBOs in combating poverty and other forms of social distress in cities? How has this role changed over time and how do these activities contribute to combating social exclusion and promoting social cohesion? And: what are the implications for policies and the governance of European cities? From both scientific and policy perspectives, there is a great need for better empirical and comparative data on what is going on in European cities in matters of poverty and exclusion policies and, in particular, the contribution of FBOs in the reduction (or deepening) of the problems. FBOs have direct entrance to the ‘poor side’ of cities because of (1) their activities in deprived urban neighbourhoods and among excluded groups and (2) as in the case of many FBOs with a non-western background, because their members often belong to these deprived and excluded groups themselves. The European research project FACIT on Faith-based organisations (FBOs) and social exclusion in Cities addressed these question about the changing and present role of FBOs in matters of poverty and other forms of social exclusion (such as social isolation, homelessness or undocumented persons) in 21 cities across 7 countries. Participating countries are: Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, UK, Turkey, Spain and Sweden. This report provides an integrated overview of the Dutch case-studies conducted within this project exploring faith-based activities in Tilburg, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. It also contains elements of the national context report on Faith-based organisations and social exclusion (Davelaar et al. 2009) published in a volume of seven national context reports (Dierckx et al, eds. 2009). 1 The articles address postsecular tendencies and religion in the new Europe, asking about public and private realms of religion, European Islam and European identities and solidarities in the context of transnational migration and religious diversity (see: www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-10-19-leggewie-en.html, accessed 21 May 2008). 2 The Economist, 01 November 2007, Faith and Politics: new wars of religion (see: www.economist.com/ opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10063829, accessed 21 May 2008). 9 Whereas that report concentrated on presenting a state of the art of national FBO activity in combating social exclusion in the Netherlands, this report offers deeper insight on FBOs operating at the local level in the framework of the national context. The data from the case studies provides valuable information on more than 60 FBOs in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Tilburg. This report is based primarily on this data in conjunction with the earlier national mapping of FBOs, including interviews of 20 FBOs present at the national level. Background of the FACIT project This research has involved national and urban level fieldwork in the seven countries based on interviews and desk-research and includes an innovative cross-evaluation methodology. The cause for this European project is situated in the following developments: ● The consolidation of situations of poverty and social exclusion in society and the importance social organisations and authorities attach to combating this. ● The relative ignorance of a lot of social activities of FBOs. ● The enduring role of religion in the public domain. ● An increasing appeal on civil society; volunteering and private initiatives in combating social exclusion, enhancing social cohesion and strengthening social capital of individuals and groups (and between groups). ● The need for clarification about the changing role of the government in the welfare state; the central assumption is that FBOs tend to fill the gap left after the supposed withdrawal of the welfare state in several domains of public life, particularly in social welfare and in social protec- tion. The four specific objectives of the FACIT project are: (1) to assess the significance of FBOs from a variety of faiths in the policy and practice of urban social policies in general, combating social exclusion and promoting social cohesion in particular; (2) to assess the institutional and political conditions under which FBOs have become increasingly present in urban social policies; (3) the extent to which FBOs have been informed and are operating in a context of a shadow state formed by the retrenchment of welfare states; and (4) to assess the relations that FBOs have developed, formally and informally, with other NGOs and with national and local public authorities. These objectives lead to the following research questions: 1.