Chapter Three
Repairing the Failures of the Past: The Introduction of a Citizenship Test in the Netherlands
A formalised language and knowledge of society test was introduced into Dutch nationality law on 1 April 2003. This ‘naturalisation test’ replaced the integration interview that used to be conducted by local officials. Four years after its intro- duction, on 1 April 2007, the naturalisation test was replaced by the ‘integration examination’, the passing of which is also a condition for a permanent residence permit. The introduction of the naturalisation test into Dutch nationality law can be seen as the marker of a restrictive turn in Dutch citizenship policy, which until then had figured among the more open in Europe. The relatively easy naturalisation requirements together with the attribution to ethnic minorities of the right to maintain their cultural identities led Koopmans et al. to refer to the Netherlands as an “almost ideal typical example of a multicultural citizenship regime” (Koopmans et al. 2005: 8).1 The introduction of formalised tests, focusing on Dutch language skills and knowledge of Dutch norms and values however appears to indicate a rejection of multiculturalism. How can this turn in Dutch citizenship and integration policy be explained? And is it as radical as sometimes presumed, or has the introduction of a language and integration test only led to a marginal restriction in an otherwise still very open citizenship policy? This appears to be the conclusion of the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), in which, of the EU-15, the Netherlands occu- pies fourth place in a ranking of policies regarding access to citizenship.2 From an analysis of Dutch citizenship policy from the 1980s until 2008, Howard even concluded that the Netherlands is a country that can be categorised among those
1 We will however see that Dutch integration policies focused far less on preservation of ethnic minorities’ identities than often claimed. Whether these policies are as ‘multicultural’ as generally assumed is hence highly questionable. 2 With a score of 66, the Netherlands is less open than Belgium, Portugal and Sweden, but more open than the other states (except for Luxembourg, which also scores 66 points; MIPEX results of 2010, available at http://www.mipex.eu/play/bar.php?chart_type=bar&countries=9,10,15 ,17,18,19,20,22,23,27,29,32,36,37,39&objects=180&periods=2010&group_by=country, site accessed on 8 April 2013).
3.1. From Informal Interview to Formalised Test: Debates on Dutch Nationality Law from 1985 to 2006
3.1.1. The 1985 Dutch Nationality Act and the Minorities’ Policy
On 1 January 1985 a new Dutch Nationality Act (DNA) came into force, replacing the former 1892 Act.4 The text of the 1985 Act was heavily influenced by the integration policy which had been adopted shortly before its entry into force. This policy had been implemented after the publishing of the Scientific Council for Governmental Policy’s (WRR) report ‘Ethnic Minorities’ in 1979, in which the Council acknowledged that most ‘guest workers’ would settle in the Netherlands, instead of returning to their home countries.5 Until then, the presence of minori- ties in the Netherlands had been considered to be temporary, and the govern- ment had repeatedly firmly declared that the Netherlands was not an immigration country (De Heer 2004: 178, Lechner 2008: 152). This attitude constituted the basic ideology of a ‘thin’ minorities’ policy, which aimed at preserving the immigrant’s identities (De Heer 2004: 178). Hence, the strategy of ‘integration with preserva- tion of the own identity’ was a pragmatic one, aimed at preparing guest workers for their return (Vink 2007: 345). However, now it had become clear that most immigrants would not return to their countries of origin, the WRR argued that the disadvantages these permanent members of society were suffering were no longer acceptable (Heijs 1995: 179).
3 Even though Howard notes that the Netherlands “have been moving in a somewhat more restric- tive direction in the 2000s”, he concludes that, observing the time horizon spanning the 1980s to the end of 2008, “the Dutch story is still one of liberalising change” (Howard 2009: 83). 4 Act of 19 December 1984, Staatsblad 628. 5 Guest workers are labour migrants who, between approximately 1960 until 1973, the year of the oil crisis, had been recruited from Mediterranean countries such as Spain, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, and Morocco. In 1973, 129,500 labour migrants from the countries where recruit- ment had taken place lived in the Netherlands (Penninx, Martens & Smeets 1998: 1050–15).