Constructing Difference, Contesting Exclusive Citizenship in the Classroom
Resonances of Debates on Dutch Immigrant Integration and Multiculturalism in New Realist Times
By Maartje van der Zedde
MA Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. Department of Cultural Anthropology and Sociology of non-Western Societies, University of Amsterdam.
12 August 2013 Student number: 9759700 E-mail: [email protected] Supervisor: Dr. A. de Koning Second reader: Dr. V. de Rooij Third reader: Dr. F. Guadeloupe
Contents
Acknowledgements 3
CHAPTER ONE Introduction 4 Dutch debates on integration and multiculturalism 5 The framing approach 8 Allochtonen and autochtonen 9 The rise of new realism 10 The demise of multiculturalism 12 Setting: The Cartesius Lyceum in Amsterdam 15 Research population 19 Research methods 20 Chapter overview 23
CHAPTER TWO Constructing difference: ‘The problem with “Moroccan” boys’ 25 The problem with ‘Moroccan’ boys 30 The problems with ethnic labelling 37 Conclusion 40
CHAPTER THREE National language and its discontents 41 Language as commodity 41 Language as an exclusive practice 45 Language as deviant behaviour 47 Contesting national language 50 Conclusion 55
CHAPTER FOUR Performing difference in the classroom: Re-appropriating stigmatising labels 57 The difference between a ‘Turk’ and a ‘Moroccan’ 57 ‘I am a Moroccan!’ 59 ‘Do you hear what you are saying?’ 65 ‘He makes fun of everyone’ 66 Conclusion 68
CHAPTER FIVE Playing down differences in new realist times 70 ‘That’s disrimination, isn’t it?’ 71 Playing down differences in new realist times 75 Contesting exclusive citizenship 81 Conclusion 83
Conclusion 85
Bibliography 88
2
Acknowledgements
First of all I want to express my gratitude to the teachers, staff and pupils of the Cartesius Lyceum in Amsterdam for accepting me in their midst and making me feel part of everyday school life. Although the nature of my research did not allow for much participation I never felt a stranger and for that I am grateful. My special thanks go to Marit van Huystee, Sien-Lan Kam, Tom Schep, Simon Verhoef, Gianna Trojani, Malou Stoffels and Dave Susan for allowing me to sit in their classrooms and observe during their lessons, and for the many conversations that helped me gain a better understanding of the events that unfolded before me. I also wish to thank the pupils of 4H1 and 4H2 for having me sit among them during lessons, and for sharing their thoughts and experiences. I promised them anonymity, which is why I do not mention their real names. I am indebted to my parents without whom this project would not have been possible. I will be happy to thank them in person for always supporting me. The person I cannot thank enough is my supervisor Anouk de Koning who, time and again, provided me with new insights, guidance and inspiration. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to Gerd Baumann, who encourages his students to ‘study their own tribe’, and who inspired me to go out there and try and solve part of the multicultural riddle.
3
CHAPTER ONE Introduction
From 1 September 2010 to 13 January 2011 I conducted ethnographic research at the Cartesius Lyceum, an ‘ethnically mixed’ school in the Oud-West neighbourhood in Amsterdam offering education for the higher levels of secondary education (HAVO and VWO). The goal of my project was to contribute to an understanding of what Duyvendak et al. (2010) have labelled ‘culturalization of citizenship’. Over the past twenty years a major challenge facing Western European nation-states has been to ‘integrate ethnic minorities’ (Baumann 2004: 1), which has resulted in often heated debates about how much and what sort of cultural differences are to be allowed in the public domain (Duyvendak et al. 2010: 233). Since the new millennium the notion of culture in the Netherlands has become increasingly more important in defining citizenship and developing integration policy. Immigrants are obliged to follow ‘citizenship courses’ (inburgeringscursussen) through which they must learn Dutch language, culture and history in order to qualify for legal citizenship. They can become citizens, but on the condition that they culturally integrate (Geschiere 2009: 167). Being an anthropology student, my aim was to study how ‘people on the ground’ make sense of the complex social reality associated with issues of immigrant integration and multiculturalism. To scrutinise multicultural society, and more importantly the multicultural city – a site of cultural dialogue, of fission and fusion – we need to look closer at the spaces and places where collective identifications, moral orders and the ethics of everyday life are construed and contested (Keith 2005a: 19-59). We need to study the sites where the rules of the formal public sphere of political debate enter into dialogue with the ‘people on the ground’, who often have competing, and frequently contradictory, perceptions of the world around them. (Keith 2005b: 256). The nation-state school has proven to be an excellent
4 setting for such an effort. State-supervised schooling has long been recognised as the essential means by which nation-states turn children into citizens (Baumann 2004: 2). Schools are an instrument of the nation-state but also part of civil society. They operate on the cutting edge between, on the one hand, reproducing national structures and routines and, on the other, managing cultural differences and socio-cultural inequalities on a day-to-day basis (ibid: 1). By focussing on classroom interaction I was able to observe and document the multifarious ways in which pupils and teachers engaged in discussions that resonated with current and former public and political debates on Dutch immigrant integration and multiculturalism. This had led me to the following main question that I intend to answer in this thesis: How do debates on Dutch immigrant integration and multiculturalism resonate inside the classroom and how do they inform and regulate the ways in which ethno-cultural differences and belonging are construed and contested? Before I explain how I intend to answer this question, let me first give an overview of those debates that form the background to this thesis.
Dutch debates on integration and multiculturalism What has happened to the Netherlands? Over the years scholars, journalists, publicists, commentators, politicians and social scientists have spoken, wondered and written about how the Netherlands seemingly changed from a tolerant and open country – where immigrants were welcomed and enabled to make a living while retaining their own language and culture – into a country with one of the strictest immigration policies in the world that advocates a compulsory integration of immigrants with knowledge and respect for the principles of Dutch national culture. Peter Geschiere, for instance, writes how ‘in only two years’ the Netherlands ‘completely changed’ (Geschiere 2009: 133), and Christian Joppke, speaks of a ‘seismic shift’ (Joppke 2004: 249). Until well into the 1990s the Netherlands was considered one of the few European countries with an integration model that comes closest to the multicultural ideal wherein the government supports the principle of cultural diversity and actively defends the rights of different ethnic groups to retain their cultural identities (Vink 2007: 337). Apparently all this changed suddenly, raising the question how a country that has institutionalised the acceptance of difference can shift from multicultural policies to a coercive and assimilationist policy and public discourse (Vasta 2007: 714). An answer to this question is that the acceptance of difference was only partially institutionalised and that the ‘shift’ was far less sudden than is generally assumed.
5 In Dutch integration politics multiculturalism, or the ‘notion of providing space for new forms of diversity in Dutch society’ (Van Reekum and Duyvendak 2012: 465), was never accepted as fully as many have suggested. It is often assumed that Dutch integration policies were an extension of the historical tradition of ‘pillarisation’ (verzuiling) where, despite strong social segregation between Protestants, Catholics, liberals and socialists, all segments of society peacefully coexisted as a result of ‘a pacification strategy of group-based autonomy combined with consultation and compromise at the elite level’ (Vink 2007: 342). Maarten Vink (2007) has dubbed this assumption ‘the pillarisation myth’, that can be traced back to the objective of ‘integration while retaining one’s own culture’ (integratie met behoud van cultuur), which is often mentioned to emphasise the ‘multicultural’ intentions of integration policy in the Netherlands (ibid: 344). But although the Dutch approach to the integration of immigrant minorities developed in the 1980s resembles the emancipation of national minorities at the beginning of the twentieth century (through, for example, the establishment of specific schools and broadcast media), immigrant minorities never came close to the level of organisation that national minorities obtained in those days (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 272-273). More importantly, from the moment the Dutch government acknowledged that immigrants, the former ‘guest workers’, were here to stay, immigrant policy was much more focused on integration than on the institutionalization of cultural pluralism. Already in 1979 the influential Dutch scientific council for government policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, WRR) criticised the objective of immigrants ‘retaining their own culture’ that was motivated by an aspired return to the home country, because this would strengthen the isolated position of ethnic minorities and inhibit social and economic participation in Dutch society (WRR 1979: XX). The WRR voiced its concern with the problems that participation by ethnic minorities in Dutch society would generate:
The various cultures coming into confrontation with one another display some attitudes and behaviours that are not easily reconcilable, and that are regarded by both sides as fundamental achievements. Thus, for example, very important aspects of our Western culture, such as individual liberty and equality, will be contested by another culture, sometimes militantly. In those cases of confrontation where no practical compromise is possible there remains no choice but to defend the achievements of our culture against dissenting assertions (WRR 1979: XXII, translation: Uitermark 2010: 50-51).
6 From this account it becomes clear that the WRR not only deemed the ‘objective of retaining one’s own culture’ as undesirable, but it also considered the notion of culture as problematic in its own right. The council reified culture by framing it as something that can be opposed to another culture, bringing to mind the now infamous anthropological idea of cultures as building blocks consisting of essentialised cultures, which came to occupy a central place in the ways in which anti-immigration sentiments and policies were rationalised (Stolcke 1995: 2). To mention ‘our Western culture’ immediately evokes its counterpart, namely non- Western, an opposition that would become central to debates on immigrant integration and multiculturalism. The scientific council thus characterised subordinate groups, which it had labelled ‘ethnic minorities’, as problematically different and – as the words ‘militantly’, and ‘defend’ indicate – dangerous. The Dutch government also distanced itself from the objective of ‘integration while retaining one’s own culture’. It stated that:
… there are tensions between the culture of a certain minority group and, for example, dominant norms and values in Dutch society … From their own culture members of minority groups will need to adjust to Dutch society (Dutch Government 1980: 6)1.
The multicultural society that we in fact form contains an area of tension that the government wants to respond to positively. The benefit of this society does not lie in the first place in more multicolouredness but in a confrontation of norms and values, whereby mutual enrichment can take place (Dutch Government 1981: 19).
Although the government felt that the integration of minorities had to be accomplished by ‘mutual adaptation’ and not by ‘forcing them to adopt the Dutch cultural pattern and merely conform to our customs and practices’ (Dutch Government 1980: 5), it also stated that ‘it can be expected from members of minority groups that they respect the core values and norms of the surrounding society … and that they make an effort to adopt those social skills – including sufficient mastery of the Dutch language – needed to function in Dutch society (ibid 1981: 37-38). Although the government stressed that culture should not be seen as static but as something changing and dynamic, the notion of culture was thus already seen as an important impediment to integration, and cultural differences were viewed as a source of conflict, a challenge, something to overcome. Minority organisations criticised the proposed policy
1 From here on translations of policy texts are mine.
7 because they felt cultural differences were too quickly branded as the main obstacle to reducing marginalisation. The national umbrella organisation of foreign workers LSOBA (Landelijke Samenwerking van Organisaties van Buitenlandse Arbeiders) stated that the government considered culture as an isolated explanation without taking into account the specific societal circumstances in which culture develops. They felt that the government considered cultural differences a source of conflict (Fermin 1997: 174). So, although more recently several events such as 9/11 and the murder of filmmaker and iconoclast Theo van Gogh have been at the centre of often heated debates about Dutch integration policy, the crucial challenges to ‘multiculturalism’ took place long before 2001 (Vink 2007: 338), and especially ideas and notions about culture and cultural differences reveal a strong continuity in Dutch immigrant policy and discourse over the past three to four decades.
The framing approach Of course that is not to say that nothing has changed. Debates on integration policy and multiculturalism in the Netherlands have known several stages that differ in the ways that actors have framed the challenges to the multicultural question. Following Duyvendak and Scholten (2012) I use the framing approach because, contrary to the model-approach, it enables one to show how frames shift over time but do not replace each other. Ideas of ‘national models of integration’, that have gained great resonance in European migration research, start from an assumption of boundedness and resistance to change (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 267). The social and institutional construction of (cultural) difference, however, is a process that in principle has no beginning and no end and involves an endless iteration between identification and categorisation (Keith 2005b: 5). Models, although helpful in reducing complexity, tend to oversimplify integration policies and the debates surrounding them, and overstress their assumed coherence and consistency (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 268). Instead of stressing how national models structure public discourse and policy- making, the framing approach focuses on how social meaning is attached to immigrant integration and multiculturalism by actors within a specific setting (ibid: 268). A frame is ‘an interpretative schemata that signifies and condenses “the world out there” by selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and sequences in one’s present or past environments’ (Snow & Benford, cited in Uitermark 2010: 14). A frame is composed of ideas, notions and signs (Uitermark 2010: 14). ‘Ideas’ refer to more or less
8 explicit assumptions and causal reasoning; they stipulate how the world works and suggest certain ways to identify and explain patterns of social behaviour (ibid). ‘Notions’ refer to immediate conceptions or impressions. They often remain implicit but can be expressed as statements that immediately reveal the position of actors (ibid).
Allochtonen and autochtonen In 1989 the Dutch scientific council for government policy (WRR) published another report on immigrant policy called ‘Allochtonen policy’ (Allochtonenbeleid) in which it opted for a more socio-economically and individually focused policy approach. It pointed to the stigmatising effects of the focus on ethnic minority groups and the labelling of these groups in terms of an accumulation of socio-economic deprivation and socio-cultural differences (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 271). Instead of categorising immigrants on ethno-cultural traits, they were now categorised on an individual basis grounded on foreign descent under the label of allochtonen (ibid: 273), which was to become a common term for ‘all foreigners who live here, all ex-foreigners who are naturalised as Dutch citizens and all Dutch persons from the (former) Dutch colonies’, including their children and their children’s children, the so-called second and third generations (WRR 1989: 61). The reasons the council chose to include the immigrants’ children was that, although they are born in the Netherlands, ‘they often occupy a similar position as their parents and encounter similar barriers’ (ibid, my italics). The term ‘foreigner’ (vreemdeling) was discarded because it excluded those who already possessed (people from the [former] colonies) or had acquired Dutch nationality: ‘They are no longer foreigners but their integration into Dutch society can show deficits that have something to do with their immigration status’ (ibid, my italics). The words ‘barriers’ and ‘deficits’ imply that the board advised the government to direct its policy towards people who supposedly lack integration, even if they had already acquired Dutch citizenship. The primary policy goal became promoting ‘good’ or ‘active’ citizenship, stimulating immigrants to live up to their civic rights and duties and to become economically independent participants in society (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 273). The focus on the socio-economic position of immigrants did not mean that cultural differences were no longer seen as an obstacle to integration. The underlying idea was that socio-economic improvement would also enhance their social-cultural position (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 273) and that participation in Dutch society would lead to more ‘intensive contact’ between allochtonen and autochtonen – the latter a term that would increasingly be used for ‘native Dutch’ – and ‘mutual adaptation
9 and understanding between citizens of different ethnic origins’ (WRR 1989: 16 and 65). The council deemed this an important condition for ‘the forming of a culturally multiform but undivided society’ (ibid). The labelling of ethnic minorities as allochtonen, however, introduced an opposition between ‘native Dutch citizens’, the autochtonen, and ‘others’ who are seen to suffer from a lack of adjustment to Dutch culture. Many people who were in fact citizens in the formal sense, and often born on Dutch soil, were thus framed as the object of problematic ‘integration’ (Schinkel 2010: 271). These categories became central to official statistics and demographic prognoses (Geschiere 2009: 150) and allochtoon became a key term in the framing of issues of immigrant integration and multiculturalism over the next two decades.2 A problem was the confusing division in official statistics of allochtonen into ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’. This meant for example that people from Japan and Indonesia are seen as ‘Western’ while Turks are classified as non-Western. Also, the term was increasingly restricted to the largest ethnic minority ‘groups’ in the Netherlands that had earlier been called ‘guest workers’: the ‘Moroccans and Turks, which were also the two main Muslim groups’ (ibid: 150).
The rise of new realism In 1991, Frits Bolkestein, then leader of the liberal party VVD, published an article in Dutch leftist newspaper De Volkskrant that incited a news-mediated National Minorities Debate that drew the attention to the ostensible differences between ‘Western and Islamic civilizations’ and the integration problems associated with this ‘cultural mismatch’ (Bjornson 2007: 69-70). Bolkestein asserted that Muslims do not recognise the most important values of European civilization – the secular state, freedom of speech and the principle of non-discrimination – and that it should be made clear to Muslims living in the Netherlands that these ‘fundamentals of Western liberalism’ are not open to negotiation (De Volkskrant, 12 September 1991). He claimed that ‘guts’ and ‘creativity’ were needed to solve the problem of integration and that there was no room for ‘compromise’, ‘taboos’ or ‘noncommittal attitudes’ (vrijblijvendheid). Such statements are exemplary of what Baukje Prins (2002) has named the public discourse of ‘new realism’, that from the new millennium would become more and more dominant in the social and the political realm. Those who enter into this discourse present themselves as someone who dares to face the facts and who speaks ‘honestly’ about ‘truths’ that the leftist elite has supposedly covered up, and set themselves up as the spokesperson of the ordinary
2 For a comprehensive account of these developments I refer to Geschiere (2009).
10 people, the autochtonen that is, who deserve to be represented because they know from day- to-day experience what is ‘really’ going on and are not blinded by politically correct ideas (Prins 2002: 368-369). New realists suggest that realism is a characteristic feature of national Dutch identity: being Dutch means being honest, straightforward, and realistic (ibid: 369), and that it is time to break the power of the leftist elite with its politically correct sensibilities and relativistic approach towards multicultural society, racism and intolerance (ibid). Although Bolkestein was severely criticised by journalists, academics, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, who argued that he had been too blunt in his criticisms of minority cultures, they praised him for opening up the debate, and only marginal actors accused Bolkestein of stigmatising migrants and playing into the hands of the extreme right (Uitermark 2012: 64). This was most likely due to the fact that the idea that the world is divided into cultures, and that ‘our enlightened, liberal culture’ should be defended against the claims of minorities committed to illiberal religions and ideologies, had already been emerging in several discursive milieus (ibid). The discourse surrounding this idea that Uitermark calls ‘culturalism’, was elevated by Bolkestein into a prominent discourse in the core arenas of the civil sphere (ibid). In 1994 Minority Policy was officially renamed Integration Policy, and ‘citizenship’ was chosen as the ‘leading principle’ for an ‘activating’ and ‘mandatory’ policy of individual integration (Fermin 2009: 15). In the following years, social and political debates on ‘integration problems’ were more and more defined in terms of a ‘culture conflict’ with Islam as the main source of an assumed lack of social cohesion (ibid: 16). ‘Minority cultures’, and especially Muslims and Arabs, were increasingly problematised for their lack of adjustment to ‘the dominant Dutch culture’ (Schinkel 2010: 269). Pleas for a ‘mutual adaptation’ became less prevalent, and a one-sided integration into a pre-defined national/cultural whole on the part of allochtonen was increasingly framed as necessary to maintaining social cohesion. In spite of the integration measures taken throughout the 1990s – including the 1998 Newcomer Integration Law (Wet Inburgering Nieuwkomers, WIN), which obliged most non- EU newcomers to participate in a twelve-month integration course consisting of 600 hours of Dutch language instruction, civic education, and preparation for the labour market (Joppke 2007: 249) – another national debate about the lack of immigrant integration erupted in 2000. In an essay in the well-respected newspaper NRC Handelsblad, publicist and professor of urban problems Paul Scheffer denounced the Dutch for closing their eyes to the ‘multicultural drama’ that was taking place right in front of them (Prins 2002: 370). While the rates of
11 unemployment, criminality and school dropouts among ethnic minorities were extremely high, the Dutch mistakenly held on to their old strategies of deliberation and compromise (ibid). According to Scheffer the Dutch had ignored basic liberal democratic values in favour of the acceptance of diverse cultural identities, which would ultimately destroy social cohesion (Vasta 2007: 714). ‘Half of the minorities are Muslim’, Scheffer wrote ‘and soon a million Dutch citizens will be Muslim’ (NRC Handelsblad, 29 January 2000). Scheffer argued that Islam, for its refusal to accept the separation between church and state, could not be compared to modernised Christianity. Teaching Dutch language, culture and history should be taken much more seriously. Only then would immigrants and their children acquire a clear view of the basic values of Dutch society (Prins 2007: 370) During this Multicultural Tragedy debate most commentators welcomed his ‘tougher’ demands as a justified critique on multiculturalism and were pleased that it was finally possible to have an ‘honest’ and ‘candid’ conversation without ‘politically correct reflexes’ (ibid 2004: 370). Many took Scheffer’s essay as an opportunity to ring the alarm bells on what they thought to be the true drama: the influx of too many immigrants (ibid: 371).
The demise of multiculturalism In the crisis-sphere following the events of 11 September 2001, cultural differences were associated with Islamic terrorism and with undermining social cohesion and national identity. Around this time flamboyant anti-immigrant and anti-Islam politician Pim Fortuyn appeared on the political stage. Fortuyn further radicalised the new realist discourse by claiming that freedom of opinion was more important than legal protection against discrimination (ibid: 371). In a notorious interview he claimed that the Netherlands was a ‘full country’, Islam a ‘backward culture’, and that it would be better to ‘abolish that weird article of the constitution: thou shall not discriminate’ (De Volkskrant, 9 February 2002). He said that people could rely on him because he was ‘a man who says what he thinks and does what he says’ (Prins 2004: 376). On 6 May 2002 polls showed that his party Lijst Pim Fortyun (LPF) would possibly become the biggest party in parliament. The same day he was shot by a radical environmentalist, followed by a massive public outburst of anger and grief. His followers blamed left-wing politicians and the leftist press for having demonised Fortuyn. Combined with judical charges and death threats, this resulted in an atmosphere of (self-)censorship, silencing any argument in favour of multiculturalism (Prins and Saharso 2010: 78). In the mainstream media, multiculturalism was framed as a hopelessly outdated
12 and politically disastrous ideology, and firm talk about the need to reanimate Dutch norms and values dominated the political and the media realms (ibid). In this period a parliamentary commission was appointed to evaluate the effects of three decades of integration policy. The report criticised past policy measures for lacking coherence and clear goals, and stated that ‘discrimination in the public sphere is a reality, unfortunately,’ and recommended that ‘fighting discrimination and prejudices by native Dutch and allochtonen become an active effort’ (Martineau 2006: 263). In response, the party chairman of the Christian Democratic Party (CDA) stated that ‘nowhere did the Commission dare to draw the conclusion that integration policy had failed’ and the liberal VVD characterised it as ‘unbelievably naïve’. Especially its conclusion that the integration project was partially successful met with disapproval among members of parliament. The general opinion among politicians was that integration had failed (Prins and Saharso 2010: 79). Conservative and populist groups called for cultural integration with a view to restoring an (imagined) homogeneous Dutch nation (Vasta 2007: 718) and strived to be tougher and more ‘realistic’ than each other (Martineau 2006: 265). Especially Muslim immigrants were portrayed as not having met their ‘responsibility to integrate’. The right-wing coalition that came to power after Fortuyn’s murder was keen on showing that it was tough on immigration and immigrants. In April 2004 the Cabinet accepted a new, more forceful, integration system that conferred on new and already-settled immigrants the responsibility ‘of their own integration’, risking a fine if ‘failing to integrate after five years’ (Vasta 2007: 718). There was a near total absence of politicians and prominent public intellectuals who critiqued policies and speeches as racist and politically opportunistic, and the ones who did step forward received little media attention (Martineau 2006: 265). Without public outcry against stigmatising language, the existence of daily discrimination and exclusion was no longer cast as unjust and anti-social (ibid). In this atmosphere, well-known filmmaker, columnist and talking head Theo van Gogh, who frequently made extremely provocative, discriminatory remarks could call Muslims ‘goat- fuckers’ and the then leader of the Social Democrats in Amsterdam Rob Oudkerk could laugh about using the term ‘kutmarokkanen’3 (‘fucking Moroccans’), all without much
3 In March of 2002, the leader of the Labour Party in Amsterdam, Rob Oudkerk, made headlines when he uttered the term ‘kutmarokkanen’ and was caught on television doing it. Oudkerk was chatting with Mayor Job Cohen after an election campaign event, and their conversation was broadcast on the programme (2Vandaag, or ‘Channel 2 Today’). Cohen asked Oudkerk whether he thought Pim Fortuyn, then a rising star in politics and recently having won many votes in Rotterdam, could have garnered as many votes in Amsterdam. Oudkerk replied affirmatively: ‘We have kutmarokkanen here too’. The incident was widely reported. In the aftermath, Oudkerk apologised, while also defending himself: ‘Without falling into stigmatising, it must be possible to say
13 condemnation from public figures (ibid). To criticise Rob Oudkerk for using the word ‘kutmarokkaan’ was to align oneself with political correctness because ‘realists’ know that many ‘Moroccan’ boys are a problem, they aren’t hampered in stating the truth (ibid: 245, my emphasis). In November 2004 Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street by a 26- year-old Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent who had left a letter on his body proclaiming that his act was committed in the name of Islam. After his death, Van Gogh was lionised as a ‘martyr for free speech’. A public memorial and demonstration was held on Dam Square in central Amsterdam, during which people banged on pots and pans to protest the ‘silencing’ of Van Gogh. In the name of free speech, it became more and more acceptable to make polarising, outrageous, and racist statements (ibid: 41-42). For example, in response to the murder of Van Gogh, one politician publicly called on the King of Morocco to ‘stop exporting murderers’, even though Van Gogh’s killer was born and raised in the Netherlands (ibid). Such statements would become the trademark of anti-Islam, anti-immigrant and self- proclaimed new-realist politician Geert Wilders who, from 2004, was gaining ever more support. Wilders, who received massive media attention, continuously coupled social problems to the presence of allochtonen who he directly connected to Islam and violence. He repeatedly spoke of the ‘Islamisation of the Netherlands’ and a ‘tsunami of Muslims’ and constantly framed Islam and Muslims as unequal, less civilised and dangerous. The demands from politicians and public intellectuals that ethnic minorities, and most notably Muslims, ‘integrate’ by pointing to the unbridgeable differences between Western and Islamic civilizations had only expanded the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (ibid: 266), and as Wilders came to dominate the debate, the question was no longer what integration is and how it should be achieved but whether it is at all possible for Muslims to become part of the Dutch civil community (Uitermark 2010: 287). In this climate it became almost impossible for leading politicians in the Netherlands to opt for a more inclusive approach towards Muslims. In July 2007 the minister for integration and housing, Ella Vogelaar, stated in an interview in Dutch newspaper Trouw that she wanted to ‘help Muslims feel at home here’, that ‘Islam and Muslims need to be able to take root here’ and that she could imagine that ‘one day, a few centuries from now, we will speak of the
that “srotten boys of Moroccan-Amsterdammer background” cause a lot of trouble on the streets’. In a later interview, Oudkerk claimed that he did not ‘slip’ in using the term: ‘The term kutmarokkanen was not just a slip of the tongue, it is everyday Amsterdam speech. It describes how people in this city think about a small group of people who pester the public (Martineau 2006: 232).
14 Netherlands being a country of Jewish-Christian-Islamic traditions’. In a parliamentary debate the then member of parliament for the VVD and current prime-minister Mark Rutte stated that he was ‘baffled’ by her statements and stressed that ‘the Netherlands does not have an Islamic tradition. You need to be clear about that. People who come to our country must underwrite our core values such as the equality of men and women and our democratic constitutional state.’ He also stated that if she spoke for the whole cabinet ‘then the cultural relativism of the eighties is back and that is surely a dangerous development’. Wilders called Vogelaar ‘raving mad’ (knettergek) (which was accompanied by laughter from several members of parliament, as was often the case when he made ‘outrageous’ statements), accused her of ‘betraying Dutch culture’ and filed a motion of non-confidence against her, which was only supported by his own party, the Party of Freedom (PVV).
Setting: The Cartesius Lyceum in Amsterdam I chose the classrooms of an ‘ethnically mixed’ school as my main research setting. The classroom, as I will show in this thesis, proved to be a stage, an arena, where everyday negotiations and contestations resonated with current and former public and political debates on Dutch immigrant integration and multiculturalism. I choose the city of Amsterdam as the larger setting to conduct my research. Although migrant minorities are not just found in the contemporary metropolitan city, it is there where markers of cultural difference and collective identifications are made visible (and invisible) through the interplay between processes of cultural glocalisation and the sociological formations of metropolitan institutions embedded in specific urban settings (Keith 2005a: 40-59). The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area4 is now home to over two million people from various backgrounds and different trajectories, with the city of Amsterdam currently housing 178 nationalities. To study this multicultural space one has to move beyond the focus on single ‘ethnic communities’. Although since the 1980s anthropologists have reached an essential point of consensus, namely that culture cannot be objectified and that it is purely an abstract and analytical notion (Baumann 1996: 11), a great deal of the research by anthropologists who study multicultural societies still tends to focus on members of a particular ethnic minority. So while they do not reify culture, these scholars do underwrite one of the underlying notions of public and political discourse, namely that the immigrants or members of ‘the second generation’ of a certain ‘immigrant community’ they
4 The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area is a name given to the metropolitan area around the Dutch capital Amsterdam and is comprised of several surrounding municipalities, including the cities of Purmerend, Almere, Amstelveen and Haarlemmermeer.
15 study share certain characteristics. Generalising from experiences and conversations with people in a community tends to flatten out differences among them (Abu-Lughod 1991: 152- 153) and disregard sameness with ‘others’ outside the ‘community’. These studies therefore run the risk of contributing to the fiction of essentially different others (ibid: 155). Following Baumann (1996) I seek to break with the tradition of studying a single ethnic community and conduct research that does not ‘exoticise’ the immigrant. Groups and communities are not a bounded entity. As Frederic Barth (1969) argued four decades ago, ethnicity is a social relationship. Ethnic boundaries are not created by the ‘cultural stuff’ enclosed by those boundaries; they are created through social interaction between people, at the contact zones of ‘cultures’ which stage everyday negotiations that resonate with the ways in which ethno- cultural differences have been framed by individuals and institutions in the past and the present. The Cartesius Lyceum is a school offering education for the higher levels (HAVO and VWO)5 of secondary education. At the time of my research, from September 2010 to January 2011, the official building of the school at the Frederik Hendrikplantsoen in the Westerpark neighbourhood was being renovated and the school was split over two temporary locations. The junior school, housing pupils in their first three years of secondary education, was located on the Stavangerweg in the more remote western harbour area (Westelijk Havengebied), a twenty-minute bike-ride away from the school building on the Elisabeth Wolffstraat in the Oud-West neighbourhood where I conducted my research. The latter was a temporary location for the last two or three years of secondary school, housing around 200 pupils from different parts of the city. In total the school provided education to around 600 pupils. Several teachers had to go back and forth between the two locations and although the small-scale of both sites had its advantages, most looked forward to the following school year, when, after
5 The Netherlands has a binary system of higher education, which means there are two types of programmes: research-oriented education (wetenschappelijk onderwijs, WO), traditionally offered by research universities, and professional higher education (hoger beroepsonderwijs, HBO), traditionally offered by universities of applied sciences (hogescholen). In this description, the Dutch abbreviations WO and HBO will be used.
Secondary education, which begins at the age of 12 and is compulsory until the age of 16, is offered at several levels. VMBO programmes (four years) combine general and vocational education, after which pupils can continue in senior secondary vocational education and training (MBO) lasting one to four years. The two general education programmes that grant admission to higher education are HAVO (five years) and VWO (six years). Pupils are enrolled according to their ability, and although VWO is more rigorous, both HAVO and VWO can be characterised as selective types of secondary education. The VWO curriculum prepares pupils for university, and only the VWO diploma grants access to WO. The HAVO diploma is the minimum requirement for access to HBO. (Source: http://www.kempel.nl/DeKempel/Documents/EducationSystemInTheNetherlands.pdf).
16 five years of being apart, both schools would be reunited in a completely renovated and modernised building. The Cartesius Lyceum has a history of being a so-called black school (‘zwarte school’), a term first used for a school in Rotterdam and later, in the 1980s, for schools in the Amsterdam neighbourhood ‘De Bijlmer’ where a lot of immigrants from Suriname settled after the Dutch colony became independent (Vink 2010: 40). Over the years the term was widely used in discussions about ethnic segregation in education in the Netherlands, and generally referred to schools with large numbers of ‘non-Western’ allochtonen, specifically children from Surinamese, Antillean, Moroccan and Turkish descent. From the mid 1990s more and more schools in Amsterdam (and other large cities) were becoming either predominantly ‘black’ or ‘white’, meaning they either housed poor, immigrant children, or white, middle-class children (ibid)6, and this is still largely the case. In Amsterdam it is especially uncommon for schools offering education for the higher levels HAVO and VWO to have large number of ‘non- Western allochtonen’ (Karsten et al. 2005: 69). Teachers and staff at the Cartesius Lyceum were proud to be teaching at a ‘mixed’ (gemengde) school. For ‘privacy-reasons’ neither the school nor the Amsterdam municipality would provide me with data concerning the background of the pupils, but the overall opinion was that the school ‘mirrored’ the population of Amsterdam, with pupils from various ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds and from different parts of the city. The school in the Elisabeth Wolffstraat where I conducted my research is located in the Oud-West neighbourhood, which is part of the 19th-century city expansion around the centre of Amsterdam. It is a small, densely built area that facilitates easy access by bike, bus or tram to other areas inside the city ring road. Central Station can be reached in fifteen minutes by bike. It is a lively neighbourhood housing almost 32,000 residents on 1.6 square kilometres. Most of Oud-West was built as a working-class area and consists mainly of small houses of around 60m2. It is mainly home to singles, childless couples and immigrant families, and within the area there are considerable differences between the residents and neighbourhoods concerning welfare and education (Pieters et al. 2009: 8). On 1 January 2009 municipal statistics counted a total of 126 nationalities in Oud-West. Forty percent of its residents were categorised as allochtoon, half of whom were ‘non- Western’, with ‘Moroccans’ (24 percent) and ‘Surinamese’ (21 percent) as the largest ‘groups’ within this category (Dienst Onderzoek en Statistiek Amsterdam). Fourteen percent
6 For a comprehensive account of these developments I refer to Anja Vink (2010).
17 of the residents are younger than twenty, 60 percent of whom are counted as ‘non-Western allochtoon’ (ibid). Oud-West has several busy streets with shops, markets, cafés, bars, restaurants and marijuana coffeeshops, but few green and public spaces. Over the last twenty years it has transformed from being labelled as a problem area with a lot of excessive nuisance (overlast) to a popular neighbourhood where many of the city’s residents would want to live (Pieters et al. 2009: 8). The temporary school building, which is now being converted into an apartment block, is just around the corner from the De Clerqstraat, one of the area’s busiest streets that pupils visited regularly during breaks and ‘in-between-hours’ (tussenuren) to buy food, go for a coffee or just a stroll. The Elisabeth Wolffstraat is a typical Oud-West street with reddish brick apartment buildings, four storeys high, with cars parked on both sides and no trees. The school, also a brick building three storeys tall, had large, high windows on each floor and one entrance on the front side consisting of two swing doors that led to a small hallway and another set of swing doors opening onto the main corridor. There was no fence or space in front of these doors, only a small flight of stone steps that led down to the pavement of the public street. It was a small school with twelve classrooms that was built in 1910 as a secondary school and used as such until the 1960s. The building had a worn-out feeling, with cracks in the walls, open joints between the bricks and paint peeling off the window frames. Once inside, you passed the school reception – a small space with two desks and a bar with a sliding window overlooking the main corridor. The corridor had swing doors on both ends that led to flights of stairs. Like the rest of the school, it had high ceilings and dirty looking linoleum flooring. A pin board with rules concerning absence and a list of absentees hung on the wall opposite the reception area. The two downstairs classrooms could be accessed through an entrance in the main corridor. The spacious canteen, adjacent to the reception area, was furnished with long wooden tables, plywood chairs, a soda- and a candy machine, lockers and a shop selling different kinds of bread rolls and drinks during breaks. The whole school felt a bit grimy with its dirty walls, old paint, aged furniture and curtains, and messy wiring. On each floor the walls of the corridors were covered with posters of universities and colleges promoting their courses and open days, and of museum exhibitions and cultural activities. In the second week of my research I was given a key that gave me access to the classrooms, staffroom, and the teachers’ computer room on the third floor. The atmosphere was that of a small-scale school where most pupils and teachers knew each other and where teachers were quite approachable for the pupils. Often they would knock on the door of the staffroom
18 looking for a teacher, which was mostly handled in a friendly way, and also in the school corridors teachers were obliging towards the pupils, unless they displayed behaviour that was considered improper or deviant. As in any school the timetable ruled much of the interaction at the Cartesius Lyceum. A school day started at 8.30 and ended at 16.30 and was divided in ten lessons of 45 minutes with one morning and one afternoon break of fifteen minutes. Other breaks depended on the pupils class schedule, which once or twice a day was interrupted by an ‘in between hour’ (tussenuur). Pupils moved from one classroom to the other according to their schedules. Each classroom radiated the subject being taught there through the materials that covered the walls such as maps, poems, newspaper articles and pictures. Before the start of the new school year all the pupils of the 4-HAVO and 5-VWO classes had chosen one of the four ‘profiles’ (profielen): ‘Culture and Society’, ‘Economy and Society’, ‘Nature and Health’ and ‘Nature and Technique’. Pupils who chose the same profile were put together in a class. Within each profile there were obligatory and optional subjects, so schedules between pupils in one class also differed.
Research population Although this research could be carried out at several levels of secondary education I was aware that the richness of my data would greatly depend on discussions that arose during lessons. Pupils in the last two or three years of the higher levels of secondary education have mastered many cognitive skills that makes spontaneous discussion in the classroom quite easy for them (Sunier 2004a: 213). Pupils at the lower level of VMBO will probably never master this degree of oral skill (ibid). This research could be conducted at VWO as well as HAVO level but I expected pupils at the highest level of VWO to be more likely to try and reproduce certain discourses and to give ‘the right’ answers instead of ‘honest’ ones, which was the case, when, for a master course assignment, I led a group discussion with six 4-VWO pupils. I therefore decided to study two 4-HAVO classes, both at the Cartesius Lyceum. 5-HAVO would be too occupied with preparing for the exams, which would limit the amount of time spent on teaching and discussing topics relevant to my research. Comparing two classes would allow me to identify similarities and differences through which I would gain a better understanding of what was happening inside the classroom. My research population thus consisted of the pupils and teachers of two 4-HAVO classes. The pupils were from different parts of the city, most from the Western neighbourhoods and
19 the centre, and a few from adjacent towns Purmerend and Monnickendam. Most of the pupils were aged 16 years; a smaller number were 15 and a few were 17 years old. The age differences were due to fact that quite some pupils had had to repeat a class in previous years. I choose to observe during social sciences (maatschappijwetenschappen), social studies (maatschappijleer), history, and Dutch language lessons because I anticipated that those subjects would most likely raise issues that would generate interactions, discussions and conflicts that resonated with debates on multiculturalism and immigrant integrations. The teachers whose lessons I observed were one (male) history teacher and one (male) student history teacher, one (male) social sciences and social studies teacher, one (female) student social sciences teacher, one (female) student social studies teacher, and two (female) Dutch language teachers. The two classes I observed were called 4H1 (profile ‘Culture and Society’) and 4H2 (profile ‘Economy and Society’). 4H1 consisted of 30 pupils, eighteen girls and twelve boys. 4H2 consisted of 27 pupils, nine girls and eighteen boys.
Research methods My main research method consisted of classroom observation. Over the course of four months I observed a total of 100 lessons of 45 minutes, divided among seven teachers and two 4-HAVO classes, consisting of 33 history, 31 social sciences, 24 social studies and twelve Dutch language lessons. During my observations I continuously took notes, listening and watching carefully, and after each observation session I worked out my field notes on my laptop as soon as possible (in the staffroom, the school library, a café nearby or at home which was only a ten-minute bike ride away). It was a very time-consuming task, as it took me several hours a day to work out my notes, filling in details and recalling events, but eventually this provided me with very detailed accounts of what was happening inside the classroom In the Netherlands there are two different ways of placing the tables in a classroom. One is the traditional way of arranging (three) rows of two tables next to each other. The other is a so-called ‘carré-form’ or U-form meaning that the tables are positioned so that two U’s are formed, one smaller one inside the other. I either sat on a chair behind a table next to other pupils, or, if all the seats were occupied, at the back of the classroom on an extra chair. Classroom observation does not allow for much participation but I never tried to keep myself aloof or maintain the stance of a completely distant, ‘objective’ observer (Fine 1993: 416). My aim was to interview the pupils who figured prominently in the cases that I expected to
20 use for my thesis. For them to speak freely with me I needed to be known and trusted by them. To get to know them and to let them know me I often sat among them and participated to the degree that, like them, I was listening to the teacher, laughing about jokes, reading from a text book, and talking to pupils in front, behind or next to me during the five-minute breaks and sometimes during the assignment- or homework time. This wasn’t considered good classroom behaviour, so I kept it to a minimum. This certainly helped to establish me as someone without authority, neither pupil nor teacher, judging by the acts of misbehaviour that were soon happening right before my eyes. During one of the first lessons I presented myself in front of both classes and explained that I was there for a research project of the University of Amsterdam studying ‘citizenship’, and that I would be observing them for three to four months and if they wanted to know more about it they could always ask me. I deliberately did not go into much detail because I felt that explaining the theoretical and political/social context of my research would give away too much of what I would be focussing on and possibly influence classroom interaction. When I initially introduced myself to the teachers I told them my subject was ‘culturalization of citizenship’, at that time an important aspect of my theoretical framework, but it proved too complex and abstract to explain, and I was occasionally thrown by their confused expressions. I decided to keep it simple and told teachers that I was studying how the broad ‘citizenship- agenda’ of the Ministry of Education was being implemented at the school and what kind of interactions this generated inside the classroom. This was quickly accepted as a satisfactory explanation and wasn’t too far from the truth. When asked by pupils about the meaning of my presence, I tried to stay close to their world and explained it in terms of having to ‘hand in’ a thesis to ‘get my diploma’, and told them about the last year of studying anthropology when you have to carry out your own research. I thus focused more on the practical side and this was accepted as a satisfactory answer. My continuous, in-class writing was obvious to all present and often pupils teased me saying I shouldn’t write down so much because this only meant more work (I had explained that I worked it all out on my computer later) and what was happening wasn’t interesting anyway. There were several pupils that I frequently chatted with, in and outside the classroom – about, for example, the weekend, parties they attended, teachers, tests, grades, future plans – but there were also quite a few who kept their distance. I was very lucky to be given two lists with the names of the pupils accompanied by their pictures, which allowed me to quickly memorise their names and faces so I could write down who was saying what in the classroom
21 during my observations. Although I did not participate actively in class discussions, I of course recognise that even by just being present in a setting you change it. How I changed it is hard to say. Teachers assured me that pupils didn’t behave differently in my presence but there is no way for me to be sure. Towards the end of my research I asked several pupils if I could interview them. Although some did not show up, I eventually interviewed ten pupils, in pairs, in the canteen after school or in a nearby cafe. I tried to keep the conversations as open and friendly as possible without using a pen and notebook so they would feel comfortable. The digital recorder on the table did seem to make them a bit uncomfortable at first but after a few minutes it did not seem to bother them anymore. I would open the conversation by mentioning something casual and then slowly direct the conversation towards the classroom and the things that I wanted to know more about. This worked pretty well, and although some pupils were a bit more distant than others, I was surprised by the level of openness between us, given how quickly they started gossiping about teachers and other pupils. At the end of a lesson I would often ‘stick around’ and chat with the teacher, which turned out to be a good way to hear the teachers impressions of the lesson and ask questions about what I had just observed. I also spent a great deal of time in the staffroom listening, eavesdropping and talking to teachers, and in the hallway, canteen and in front of the school talking to pupils and teachers and observing them. My relations with the pupils and teachers were open and friendly. Near the end of my research I held interviews with all seven teachers whose lessons I had been observing. I wanted to make the interviews more of a continuation of our mostly friendly and open conversations, with the benefit that now I had their full attention and could record the conversations digitally. I invited them to a café near the school and over a coffee or a beer most teachers seemed comfortable and were quite talkative. Two interviews with student-teachers took a more formal character and I had to make an effort to keep them talking. To get them started I began the interviews by asking about why they chose to become a teacher and then moved onto the difficulties they faced while teaching to see if they would refer to the things that I had observed, which often happened. If they didn’t mention those things themselves I would ask about them later in the interview. I interviewed two teachers whose lessons I did not attend but who had worked at the school for a long time, and asked them about the history of the school. I also interviewed the two section heads, one responsible for the HAVO and one for the VWO-department, and asked them about the
22 broader school policies, how they saw the school, and their views on the two classes that I was observing. I later transcribed (parts of) all the interviews. I always read the sections of the books that were given to the pupils as homework and were the subjects of the lessons and discussions that I observed. I collected all the text- and assignment books, readers and Powerpoint presentations that the teachers used during the lessons, so that while analysing my field notes I was be able to connect the content of the lesson, the readings, and the subsequent interactions and discussions. To map out the rules and regulations of the school I spent a day with the school janitor who, among other tasks, was responsible for keeping order in the hallways and the canteen, and for registering and sanctioning pupils who came in late or had been ordered to leave the classroom. After four months of classroom observation and hanging around the school I had gathered a lot of rich and detailed ethnographic data, which forms the basis of this thesis.
Chapter overview In this chapter I provided an overview of three decades of public and political debates on Dutch immigrant integration and multiculturalism that form the background to this thesis. Over the course of my research I was able to observe and document the multifarious ways in which pupils and teachers engaged in discussions that resonated with these debates, and how they informed and regulated the ways in which ethno-cultural differences and belonging were construed and contested. In Chapter Two I take up a different approach towards ethnicity than is commonly found in social scientific research. I was able to record the dynamics of group-making on a very mundane level, and I will show that ethnicity is an active process of creating meaning in which debates about the failure of multiculturalism in the Netherlands play an important part. Chapter Three discusses the framing by teachers and pupils of the use of ‘Moroccan’ and ‘street language’ inside the school and in the classroom, and how this resonated with the ways in which cultural diversity and multilingualism have come to be seen as threats to social cohesion in the Netherlands. In Chapter Four I show how several pupils re-appropriated stigmatising labels through joking and name-calling, thereby contesting negative images of ‘Moroccans’ and attempting to renegotiate the negative value attributed to their ‘group’.
23 Finally, Chapter Five follows two classroom discussions on Geert Wilders that incited pupils to contest the ways that this anti-immigrant and anti-Islam politician excludes and discriminates against them. It shows how two discursive ways of dealing with issues connected to multicultural society and integration in the Netherlands prompted teachers to downplay, avoid and subvert issues concerning ethno-cultural difference, discrimination and stigma.
24
CHAPTER TWO Constructing difference: ‘The problem with “Moroccan” boys’
Ethnicity is often taken to be self-evident and treated as something concrete, bounded and enduring. In policy reports people are categorised according to their ‘ethnic’ background. Accompanied by data such as unemployment and crime rates, level of education and income, people are blithely presented as belonging to a certain ‘ethnic group’. In public debate the commonsense view of ethnicity as a personal characteristic acquired by birth has remained largely unchallenged (Baumann 1999: 59). ‘Ethnic groups’, however, are generated through framings of power and subjectivity (Keith 2005a: 252). Ethnicity is essentially an aspect of a social relationship; it is an event, something that ‘happens’ (E. P. Thompson, quoted in Brubaker 2002: 168). Ethnicity is constituted through social interaction (Eriksen 2002 [1993]: 12-13) and, as I will show in this chapter, it is an active process of creating meaning in which debates about the failure of multiculturalism in the Netherlands play an important part. When I sat down in the two classes for the first few lessons I did not know any of the pupils who I would be observing over the next four months. I did not ask them about their ‘ethnic’ background, or any other details except their age and which part of the city they came from. I put ‘ethnic’ in quotation marks here because it refers to an understanding of ethnicity as something fixed and stable. In this chapter I focus on the construction of ethnicity by my informants. I was able to record the dynamics of group-making on a very mundane level and as I will show, these dynamics were strongly connected to the larger debates in society on
25 immigrant integration and multiculturalism. It all started in the classroom at the beginning of the new school year, when a particular set of pupils showed behaviour that would become ethnicised (and racialised) in the weeks to come.
(4H2) [It’s 10.30. Imad walks into the classroom and hits Anouar against the back of his head.] Teacher: Hey man, what are you doing? Imad: It’s love sir, look. [Imad kisses Anouar on the cheek. They both laugh. The social sciences lesson today is about Goffman. The teacher talks about Goffman, his metaphor of life as a theatre and the roles that people play. The lesson starts quietly. They are all writing down notes and are paying attention to the teacher. Teacher: At this moment I am playing the role of... Anouar: Teacher. Teacher: Yes, and I take that role seriously … I try to carry across my enthusiasm. Imad: It’s just your job. Teacher: It’s my job but it’s also a role because when I get home later I’m no longer a teacher. Then I drop that role and assume the role of…. Imad [interrupting the teacher]: Housewife, houseman. [Several pupils giggle. Imad smiles with his hands folded against his chin and nods approvingly. For about 15 minutes the teacher explains Goffman’s work.] Teacher: I could play the role of a policeman here. Handing out fines, catching thieves. That would be weird, wouldn’t it? Or, instead of teaching I could tell you about the great adventure I had in a bar. That will be a bit strange. If I do that for one hour you will forgive me, but if I behave as if I was a pupil myself for weeks, then you would find me a weird, bad teacher. Ahmed: No way. Anouar: No way. Anouar shouts at Kubilay: Shut up! Teacher: You take it easy friend. Anouar: Sorry sir … [Manu asks if the sunblind can be lowered.] Teacher: It’s broken. [Manu pushes the button. Only one side of the sunblind lowers and then it’s stuck.] Anouar [laughing mockingly]: Why don’t you listen to the teacher, it’s broken. Anouar and Ahmed are talking. Imad turns around and says: ‘Hey guys’ and gives them a strict look imitating the teacher … Saida: But when do you play a role and when are you yourself?
26 Teacher: That’s a very good question. Imad [mockingly]: Clever (Scherp). Anouar: Yes, very clever. [Ahmed, Anouar, Imad and Kemal smile mockingly in her direction. Saida waves them away, but they keep making faces at her.] Teacher: Gentlemen, she’s just asked a good question. [To Saida:] Yes, because if you always play a role this implies that…. [They keep making faces at Saida.] Teacher: Guys!
In both 4H1 and 4H2 there were several pupils who usually sat close together, talked and laughed with one another, teased, pushed and hit each other, made jokes and often responded to the teachers’ questions and interrupted the teacher by shouting something or loudly commenting on the subject being taught or under discussion. These pupils quickly became notorious for being disruptive. Both classes had their own dynamic and naturally this influenced the behaviour of these pupils. 4H2 consisted of nine girls and eighteen boys and was boisterous, although the level of liveliness greatly depended on the teacher and composition. 4H1 consisted of twelve boys and eighteen girls and was lively as well, but easier to control. In both classes, however, there were specific traits in the behaviour of these pupils that, over the course of my research, I started to recognise. For example, when they were reprimanded to silence by the teacher or scolded after breaking a rule, they usually responded with ‘Yes, Sir/Miss’ (meester, juf), or ‘Sorry, Sir/Miss’, whereas other pupils mostly just looked at the teacher and didn’t say anything. On several occasions I observed this specific bunch of pupils jokingly calling each other to order, mimicking the teacher. When the teacher made a mistake, such as accidentally skipping a subject on the whiteboard, they were the first ones to point this out. Oftentimes, mostly in 4H2, when one of them answered a question correctly, or made an effort to pay attention the others mocked this, but they also tended to be proud of giving the right answer. They seemed to struggle with a tension between peer pressure to be deviant and a desire to do well in school. The pupils often showed active participation and were engaged in the lesson, but there was also almost constant activity between them such as talking, shouting, laughing, giving each other meaningful looks, joking, touching, pushing and hitting each other. The pupils jokingly and theatrically showed affection by kissing and hugging each other. Through observations and conversations I learned that these pupils knew each other well and several were good
27 friends. In 4H2 the pupils who engaged in this behaviour were Imad, Ahmed, Anouar, Kemal and Danilo; in 4H1 Farid, Omar, Erdem, Rachid and Iskender. In 4H1 the behaviour tended to be more physical and consisted more of joking and teasing each other, whereas in 4H1 it tended more towards deliberately provoking their teacher and contesting things, whether it were rules of absence or topics from the curriculum. The matter and frequency of such behaviour greatly depended on the teacher. Their history teacher for example held a firm grip and made it very clear this kind of behaviour was unacceptable. Their (student) social sciences teacher, on the other hand, had great difficulty keeping order, and, having done a psychology master and not being educated in the social sciences, struggled with the content of the lessons which made her insecure and thereby vulnerable. The example below is from one of her lessons.
(4H1) [It’s almost 8.30 and pupils are slowly entering the classroom. Omar and Iskender sit next to each other and Rachid sits in front of them. Erdem enters the classroom waving wildly with his arms as he walks towards Rachid. They start talking. Farid walks in, leans over to Rachid and gives him a hug. They both smile. Rachida enters and sits down next to Farid. Many pupils are talking.] Teacher: We’re going to start. Get your books, your things. [Erdem is still standing.] Teacher: Erdem, sit down. [He sits down, reluctantly, moving slowly. The teacher explains that if they haven’t done their homework three times, they’re sent out of the classroom.] Erdem [rather angry-looking]: Is that allowed? Teacher: Yes. Erdem: Is that in the PTA7? [The teacher looks at him as if she wants to say: ‘Please don’t do this to me’.] Erdem: If it’s not in the PTA it’s not allowed. Teacher: You just have to do your homework, OK? [The teacher starts the lesson but several pupils are talking. She turns to Farid and Rachida.] Teacher: Can’t you be quiet? Farid: I’m not the only one talking, others talk 23 times and I… Teacher: I hear you talking all the time. [Farid looks at her with an aggrieved expression. For a while the pupils are quiet, copying the texts on the slides projected on the whiteboard. Then, while the teacher is busy with the computer and
7 The PTA (Programma van Toetsing en Afsluiting) is the program that states all the requirements for passing school exams.
28 her back is turned to the class, Iskender and Omar start making a high-pitched sound, and continue talking and laughing. The teacher has warned them several times to be quiet and stop making that sound but they ignore her. When they make the sound again, she turns around.] Teacher: I want you to leave now! Omar: Why, I didn’t do it! [She tells them over and over again to leave the classroom but they refuse.] Omar reacts fiercely: You don’t know who did it so you cannot dismiss us! [Other pupils sigh and seem relieved when, after the teacher threatens to go and get the section head, they finally leave the classroom. After the break they’re allowed to come back and at the end of the lesson Iskender and Omar, with Farid and Rachid at their side, gather in front of the classroom and continue their argument that the teacher could not know who did it and has to pay better attention. Farid sits down on the teacher’s desk chair and gazes contently at the scene.]
In both 4H1 and 4H2 warnings by their teacher to stop disrupting classroom order were often ignored and sanctions contested. They seemed to respect some teachers more than others, generally the ones better at keeping order. Farid sometimes said ‘Thank you Sir/Miss’ at the end of a lesson, seemingly trying to make up for his disruptive behaviour during the class, but also with a smug and slightly provocative smile. Overall, these pupils were less secretive in their disruptive behaviour and often they openly provoked the teacher by loudly commenting on a subject or by contesting the reason for a reprimand. They were often the centre of attention and dominated most discussions, frequently talking out of turn. Although especially these pupils became notorious for being disruptive, the behaviour of other pupils was by no means exemplary. After the bell rang the classroom slowly filled with the energy and noise of 30 teenagers facing the prospect of spending 45 or 90 minutes sitting behind desks on unyielding plywood chairs with straight backs, but many managed to slump in their chairs for long periods of time. Nearly every lesson started with a repetition of some basic rules that had to be followed before a lesson could start: coats off, books on the table and bags off the table. Pupils often ignored the teacher and continued talking with their coats on and their bags on the tables, but after repeating the instructions and pointing out individual pupils, coats were slowly taken off and backpacks and fashion bags sluggishly emptied. After the lesson had started the teacher often had to ask individual pupils to get their notebooks out or take off their coat. In both 4H1 and 4H2 there were pupils who kept more to themselves, and there were times when all the pupils listened or worked in silence, but overall both classes were lively groups and there was usually some misbehaviour going on, the level and the
29 frequency of which greatly depended on, again, the teacher, the composition of the group, the table setting, and to a lesser extent the hour of the day. Except for water, pupils were not allowed to drink or eat during lessons, but pupils often secretly opened a can of soda below the table, shovel a sandwich into their mouth, open bags of crisps, and sometimes share candy by throwing it across the classroom. Warnings not to talk to their classmates were often ignored. Oftentimes the lesson would start quietly but after fifteen minutes many pupils were talking to each other and the teacher continuously had to ask for their attention. There were times when literally all the pupils were talking, laughing loudly and shouting and wouldn’t settle down despite numerous attempts by the teacher. On several occasions pupils refused to move to another seat or leave the classroom after multiple warnings, and when they finally did so it was often with theatrical reluctance pushing away the table or chair and angrily changing seats or leaving the classroom. To be removed from the classroom was a sanction pupils did not readily accept and often argued about. In 4H1 four girls often showed disinterest by sighing loudly or theatrically laying down their head on the table. They mostly sat close together and often turned their back to the teacher to talk, ignoring warnings, and sharing meaningful looks after having opposed the teacher. The girls often made sarcastic remarks, mocked the teacher and refused to answer questions posed by the teacher. In 4H2 several boys repeatedly disrupted classroom order by making high-pitched sounds or whistling, jokingly repeating what the teacher was saying with a high-pitched voice, armpit farting and throwing things, but most of the time this was done when the teacher wasn’t looking. These pupils could very well have been considered as groups, but teachers always referred to these pupils by their names. It was the specific set of pupils that I described above that was referred to and talked about as a group with particular traits and characteristics.
The problem with ‘Moroccan’ boys At the start of the school year several teachers had difficulties keeping order but they generally kept a positive attitude, explaining to me that the pupils had to get used to the new building, new rules, and to not ‘being taken by the hand all the time’, as they were the previous year when they were still junior pupils. There were some complaints, by teachers and pupils alike, that rules and regulations, like the rules of absence, weren’t followed as strictly in the junior school at the Stavangerweg, and that the pupils had to adapt to the new situation. Teachers also recognised that over the summer they had grown into adolescence and that this asked for a different, maybe stricter approach. It was not until a few weeks into my
30 research that several teachers told me they were experiencing difficulties when teaching 4H1 and 4H2, referring to the pupils they were having a hard time dealing with as ‘Moroccan boys’ or ‘Moroccan pupils’ and sometimes ‘allochtone pupils’. When I asked teachers what they meant by allochtoon, without exception the answer was ‘mostly’ or ‘dominantly Moroccan’ after which they also mentioned ‘Turkish’, and one also mentioned ‘Antillean’ and ‘Surinamese’, but it was clear that for these teachers allochtoon mainly stood for ‘Moroccan’. As I outlined in the introduction, from the 1990s, the category allochtoon became central in official statistics and demographic prognoses, and a key term in the framing of issues of immigrant integration and multiculturalism in the Netherlands (Geschiere 2009: 150). It became common practice to talk and write about allochtone youngsters who displayed maladjusted behaviour. In 1997 newspaper De Volkskrant, for example, wrote under the headline ‘Cabinet tougher on allochtone youngster’ that ‘The cabinet fears that a growing group youngsters of Moroccan, Turkish, Antillean and Surinamese descent miss affiliation with Dutch society’ (De Volkskrant, 4 November 1997). The term, without the additional ‘non-Western’, is equated here with these four ethnic minority ‘groups’. Over the years the term was used less and less for people from Suriname who in the 1980s and 1990s were strongly stereotyped as being potentially dangerous, but were increasingly seen as examples of successful integration (ibid). For over two decades, problems with young people from an ethnic minority background have been widely considered as being rooted in their ethnic difference, rather than in the dynamics and inequities of Dutch society. In this way, disregard for authority is often seen through an ethnic lens (Martineau 2006: 308). In the Netherlands ‘Moroccan’ boys have become a symbol for anti-social group behaviour (De Jong 2007: 19). Over the years a kind of meta-narrative has emerged about the ‘problems with Moroccan youth’ (Martineau 2006: 237) wherein their deviant and aggressive behaviour is considered to stem from their culture. Since the 1990s newspaper articles, commentators and politicians have spoken about the ‘terror’ of ‘Moroccan youth gangs’ and that as a consequence people no longer feel safe on the streets and in their own neighbourhoods. Everyday explanations for disruptive and delinquent group behaviour by ‘Moroccan’ boys in the media and the political debate are directly or indirectly derived from social-scientific research (De Jong 2007: 19) that departs from the assumption that the ‘community’ or ‘group’ they study is somehow homogeneous and bounded. Pels for example writes that these ‘Moroccan boys show stronger macho-
31 behaviour, have a big mouth and don’t show respect for authority bearers such as policemen and teachers’ (Pels 2003: 58). During an interview I asked the HAVO section head how he thought both classes that I was observing were doing:
MZ: You’re not their teacher but I guess you hear from other teachers what’s going on in those classes. How do you think they’re doing? HAVO section head: There are pupils in 4H2 and 4H1 who are disruptive inside and outside the classroom and this affects the behaviour of other pupils and the atmosphere; these are especially the Moroccan boys. And there are a number of difficult pupils, with a case of ADHD8 and, yes, a less than perfect situation at home that asks for attention.
Here, the section head relates the category ‘Moroccan boys’ to disruptive behaviour and makes a distinction between ‘Moroccan boys’, other pupils, and difficult pupils. Although he doesn’t actually mention that their behaviour stems from their ‘culture’, this line of thinking does seem implicit in his answer. For several pupils their behaviour is seen to stem from their ‘Moroccan-ness’, while for other pupils their problematic behaviour is seen to derive from a mental disorder or problems at home. There is an assumption that underlies both these suppositions: ‘ethnic others’ need to learn how to behave, while ‘Dutch people’ already know how (Martineau 2006: 309). In the Netherlands ‘Dutchness’ has become a neutral category and is thus seen as unproblematic, while all that is ethnic, and more specifically ‘Moroccan’, has come to be seen as inherently problematic (Schinkel 2010: 273-274). The HAVO section head makes a distinction between ‘Moroccan’ boys and difficult pupils such as ADHD cases, and pupils with a difficult home life. Since ‘the Dutch’ are regarded as culturally unproblematic the cause is seen to lie in a psychological defect or parental problems. The opposition was also clearly present when he spoke about the behaviour of pupils in the classroom:
HAVO section head: I think it’s a pity that my own idea of how a pupil can behave in the classroom doesn’t match with how an allochtone pupil behaves in the classroom. An allochtone pupil sees the teacher as an authority figure and he knows perfectly well that if he crosses the line he gets into trouble, while a Dutch boy enters more into discussions. Allochtone youths (jongeren) don’t do that at all; they don’t participate and just lean back in their chairs all the time. MZ: So you’re saying that you see this more with allochtone pupils, that they lean back and…
8 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
32 HAVO section head: Yes, they act like: ‘You tell me what I have to do now’, that sort of thing … It has something to do with their lack of interest and inspiration; they don’t have a drive to succeed in something. They need to be taken by the hand, and when it comes to creativity, I see it far less among them.
Here he distinguishes between the behaviour of ‘allochtone’ pupils and ‘Dutch’ pupils. In his view there are pupils who are more prone to contest a teacher’s authority, and who are less engaged in discussions that are related to the curriculum. Moreover, they participate less, play a waiting game and are less creative. He labels these pupils as ‘allochtonen’ and contrasts them with ‘Dutch’ pupils whose behaviour he feels to be the opposite and views in a favourable light. By evoking the dichotomy he presupposes the existence of cultural cleavages that are determined by ethnicity. In his view there are two different ‘groups’ – one of which is considered neutral and therefore remains largely undefined and exists mainly as the invisible yardstick against which ‘other’ behaviour is measured – that share certain observable characteristics, and he frames the differences between these groups as being of an ethnic nature by labelling them ‘Dutch’ and ‘allochtoon’ or ‘Moroccan’, a term he used earlier in the interview. Although at some point most teachers I observed and interviewed referred to the pupils as ‘Moroccan’, the Dutch language teachers and the HAVO section head in particular tended to frame the behaviour of this group of ‘disruptive’ pupils as having to do with their ‘ethnic background’. The Dutch language teacher of 4H2, who had difficulties keeping order, showed a tendency to consider ‘Dutch’ pupils as basically decent and well-behaving and ‘Moroccan’ pupils as problematic and disruptive. During an interview I asked her if there were differences in levels between pupils:
Teacher: O yes, there are huge differences, yes of course. This has directly to do with the background of those children. I think there are children in this class who don’t even know, who don’t have any idea about art or literature as a concept, absolutely not … On the other hand you have Bas and Marten or Annemoon and Anouk, boys and girls from a very different milieu who learn much more at home about the language and Dutch culture, and hear about writers. Some pupils hardly ever have, maybe a few times at school. MZ: Which pupils do you mean? Teacher: Well, I’m not sure about all of them but for a large part they’re Moroccan pupils, but then there’s also someone like, um, well Joris and … yes Rik, I don’t know… sometimes that one is
33 also decent (netjes). About him you don’t really know. Bas is a very decent boy, so to speak … But he [Rik] is a small kid of course, they aren’t bad, not at all bad children. But those whom I find annoying and nasty are Anouar and … Imad and Ahmed.
The teacher directly connected the ‘background’ of the pupils to their academic level. To do well in school, she argued, and to know about ‘art and literature’, you have to come from a certain ‘milieu’ where you have learned about Dutch language and culture. She then identified the pupils who she thinks lack this upbringing. As I wrote earlier in this chapter, apart from the group of boys that was labelled ‘Moroccan’, there were several other boys who repeatedly disrupted classroom order. These were especially Joris, Rik and Bas. It is interesting to note how the teacher frames them as being more ‘decent’ and ‘not bad’ while the ‘Moroccan’ pupils are framed as ‘annoying’ and ‘nasty’. The Dutch language teacher of 4H1, who told me that her grandparents had migrated from China to Indonesia and her parents from Indonesia to the Netherlands where she was born, felt that ‘Moroccans’, unlike ‘Chinese’ and ‘Turkish’ people, ‘are not raised proudly, and are not proud of their own culture’:
Teacher: I think that Moroccan children rebel so often and show negative behaviour because they are not properly anchored in their own culture. They aren’t proud and aren’t made proud by their parents.
She sees culture as something that one can be more, or less, anchored in. This line of thinking resonates with the idea that was prevalent from the 1980s in the Netherlands, after the government had accepted that the presence of immigrants was permanent. Schools were encouraged to pay attention to the culture and language of the ‘cultural minorities’ they were teaching. The idea was that failing to recognise these would result in a negative self-image, which would lead to disinterest in school and a rejection of ‘Dutch culture’ (Bossers 2003: 210). Only when firmly rooted in its own culture would a child be able to build a positive self-image and be able to function and participate in Dutch society (ibid). The cultural baggage one carries can be heavy or light, and the heavier the weight the more grounded one is. From the late 1990s this idea was largely abandoned when demands for a one-sided integration into ‘Dutch culture’ became prevalent and ever more rigid. But also in this line of thinking ‘problematic behaviour’ is seen to derive from (a lack of) culture. She also explained
34 to me that in 4H1 she felt tensions between pupils and referred to it as ‘a conflict between a few Dutch girls and a few Moroccan boys’.
Teacher: They jeer at those girls, keeping them down. The girls feel very unsafe. There are even children who want to leave the school because they don’t feel safe … It’s a conflict: Moroccans against Dutch girls. It’s a gender problem (sekseprobleem) and a culture problem.
I had observed a girl Kim not wanting to sit next to Farid and his girlfriend Rachida, and also overheard Farid, Rachida, Mariska and Omar talk about Farid getting suspended. When I asked him what he got suspended for, he told me he was accused of harassing a girl in school, but that this wasn’t true. Apart from what was ‘really’ going on, it is interesting how the teacher chose to interpret and frame what she was witnessing, for this is remarkably in line with the ways in which ‘the problem with Moroccans’ is framed in society: there is behaviour that is considered maladapted and (potentially) dangerous, and explanations are sought along ethnic lines, that is that ‘the problem’ is seen to reside within the ‘ethnic minority’ itself rather than arising from interrelationships and interactions between people and between groups of people (Martineau 2006: 247). Ethnic difference is thus seen to be a problem in itself because the undesirable and deviant behaviour is thought to derive from the culture of the ethnic minority in question. Underlying this line of thinking is the notion of culture as something fixed, stable and unchangeable – a reified notion of culture – that has permeated public and political language around Europe, and has become the foundation of public and political discourse about ethnic minorities. This discourse portrays ethnic minorities as a collective entity bounded by, or definable in terms of, a set of characteristics that make up their culture (Handler 1984: 60). On the basis of this assumption of boundedness, they are considered to differ from the national majority. Culture, in its essentialised meaning, is thus used as a tool for making ‘others’, for the construction of difference. From the 1970s onwards, there has been a rise of ‘a rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion that emphasises the distinctiveness of cultural identity, traditions, and heritage among groups, and assumes the closure of culture by territory’ (Stolcke 1995: 2). In the Netherlands, as in other Western European societies, increasing importance has been attached to culture and morality in shaping citizenship and integration policy (Mepschen et al. 2010: 964). Proponents of this process of ‘culturalization of citizenship’ (Duyvendak et al. 2008) emphasise the problematic aspects of cultural diversity and the need to construct, defend and promote ‘Dutch’, i.e.,
35 ‘Western’, cultural heritage in response to ‘non-Western’ influences (Mepschen et al. 2010: 964), most notably Muslim immigrants with ‘Moroccan’ or ‘Turkish’ backgrounds, who have become the focus in the current discourse on ethnic minorities in the Netherlands (Van den Berg and Schinkel 2009: 394). This discourse focuses largely on gender-related issues, stressing the cultural and religious sources of patriarchy and the repression of women, and frames ‘Moroccan’, and now to a lesser extent ‘Turkish’ immigrants and their children as having a problematic social position (ibid), that is highlighted by issues such as masculine domination and homophobia (ibid). I noticed teachers engaged in this discourse on several occasions. When I asked two student-teachers if there were subjects they avoided – I had overheard that there were subjects that student-teachers hesitated to discuss because they feared a strong reaction from specific pupils – both mentioned homosexuality as something they felt ‘Moroccan’ boys had ‘difficulties’ with and did not readily accept. In the example above, the teacher directly connects the, in her eyes, suppressive behaviour of specific pupils towards ‘Dutch’ girls to their assumed ‘Moroccan-ness’. She hereby evokes the often- repeated stereotype about ‘Moroccan’ boys who display a lack of respect for others, especially women (Martineau 2006: 236), which is thought to derive from their traditional Islamic upbringing, which rejects equality for women (De Jong 2007: 236). 4H2’s Dutch language teacher described the behaviour of the ‘Moroccan boys’, and more specifically Anouar, Imad and Ahmed, as ‘intimidating’:
Teacher: I’m afraid of them. I’m actually afraid of them. Not that I think that they would do me physical harm, no, but I feel intimidated by them, as a woman. Yes, I don’t feel free in front of them.
I had observed several pupils, belonging to the group whose behaviour I described at the beginning of this chapter, make funny gestures behind her back as she walked past their tables, and noticed that she tried to ignore them, turning her attention to the other pupils. In her experience their behaviour had something to do with her being a woman and their refusal to accept her authority, and she perceived them as a threat, referring to them as ‘Moroccan boys’. Among these teachers there was thus a tendency to explain the behaviour of specific pupils primarily in terms of ethnic categories, interpreting their behaviour as ‘typically Moroccan’.
36 The problems with ethnic labelling One of the problems with ethnic labelling based on an essentialised idea of culture is that it tends to flatten out differences among the ‘group’ or ‘community’ one has labelled (Abu- Lughod 1991: 152-153), and disregard sameness with ‘others’ outside the ‘group’ or ‘community’. 4H1’s Dutch language teacher, for instance, after telling me about the ‘conflict between Dutch girls and Moroccan boys’, gave an interesting example of this ‘conflict’ when I asked her:
MZ: What do you do about this as a teacher? Teacher: Well, I try not to accept anything. When those boys start jeering, I immediately say: ‘Boys, stop it.’ Or when Erdem is bullying Kim about the window. Kim feels cold and Erdem wants to open a window, so I say: ‘Ok, you can open a window’. Then he starts to open all the windows. So I say: ‘No, you can open one window’. I turn around and he opens a second window. So Kim says she doesn’t like it. And then he does it on purpose. So I say loud and clear: ‘Erdem, when I say one window I mean one window and listen to me carefully. MZ: You say it’s a culture problem, what do you mean by that? Teacher: Well because those boys, that group of Rachid, Iskender, Omar and Farid, and Erdem, a Turk who strangely enough hangs around with Moroccans, start shouting during the class and I don’t want that … so I let them know that I’m the boss, not the boys. I scold them very clearly so those girls feel protected.
It is striking that she gave Erdem as an example of the ‘conflict’, since this is a boy with a ‘Turkish background’, that is, I had heard that his parents were ‘Turkish’, heard his peers refer to him as a ‘Turk’, and in his interactions in the classroom Erdem regularly demonstrated that he identified with his ‘Turkish background’, for example, by correcting his classmates for not pronouncing Turkish names correctly during a class reading. When I asked her why she thought it was a ‘culture problem’ she mentioned the ‘Moroccan’ pupils who were often disruptive during her lessons and apparently were the ones she felt were part of the ‘conflict’. I assume that she then realised that she had used Erdem as an example and was quick to point out that he is ‘a Turk’. The fact that she considered it strange that he ‘hangs around’ with Moroccans I assume had less to do with her finding it actually strange that they hung out with one another, and more to do with the fact that he displayed behaviour that didn’t fit her picture of a ‘Turkish’ boy, because later in the conversation she said that, contrary to Moroccans, ‘Turks are raised proudly, proud of their own culture.’
37 Erdem was part of the group of friends who became notorious for being disruptive. Like the others who were referred to as ‘Moroccan boys’ he had short, dark shaved hair, a darker complexion, and wore a dark coloured coat. His behaviour was very much in line with the way this group of pupils behaved. In this case, ethnic boundaries are thus drawn on the basis of behaviour and physical markers that are considered to be ‘typically Moroccan’. This is why one of the pupils who also belonged to this group of friends, Danilo, was never talked about in the same way as the others. Although he hung out with them and behaved in much the same way, as a ‘Dutch’ boy with white skin and blond hair he did not fit the image of a ‘Moroccan’ boy who causes trouble. His disruptive behaviour was seen to stem from a case of ADHD. The fact that these pupils were a group of friends, several of them growing up in the same neighbourhood, was not taken into account, and any reference to locality and social class was omitted. Ethnic difference was given as the only explanation. This is in line with the way ‘Moroccan’ youth are talked and written about in Dutch society. Over the years cultural explanations for the disturbing group behaviour of ‘Moroccan’ boys were continuously reproduced in the media and political debates, accompanied by photos and descriptions of boys with shaved dark hair, a darker complexion, wearing black coats with ‘fur’-collars, driving around on scooters, ‘hanging around’ in neighbourhoods creating a nuisance, and engaging in criminal behaviour. This has created a stereotypical image of a ‘Moroccan’ boy. Explanations for their behaviour are sought in their cultural background and upbringing, and in their interactions with people they are identified as ‘Moroccan’ on the basis of behaviour and physical markers. It seems that over the years an iconic subject has been created and everyone who fits the description must be a ‘Moroccan’ boy. Several weeks into my research, after the pupils had taken their first tests, the Dutch language teacher of 4H1 expressed her concern about the level of several pupils. Quite a few pupils had done badly on a test, and she mentioned that Imad had done ‘reasonably okay’ and Ahmed ‘worse than expected’. Then, on a happy tone, she said: ‘But Ismail had a 6.8, which is really high, well, considering the bad results. And he sits apart and really does his own thing when it comes to Moroccan boys’. She went on to explain that several ‘Dutch girls’ received good marks, but ‘not all of them’. Several weeks later, in the interview with her in which she stated that she felt ‘intimidated as a woman’ by Anouar, Imad and Ahmed, I asked:
38 MZ: And, can you explain what the cause of this is? Teacher: Well, it’s the harshness that they radiate, but also maybe have around them. I know that they are children, that they are very young, but I do miss a certain [pauses], like in 5-HAVO for example I also have a group of Moroccan and Turkish boys. They do show a soft side. While in my view these boys never show a soft or vulnerable side. At least I don’t see it, I don’t feel it … Also, they never smile, they only sneer. I’m really very negative. They have a hard time accepting that I have authority over them; they find that very hard. And I don’t know why. Other boys don’t. In my other class I also have Turkish and Moroccan boys but they are much more preoccupied with graduating. They have to be. These boys aren’t at all concerned with pursuing their own goals. I don’t know what their goals are, you see, because they sell themselves short … What do these boys want?
In the first part of the interview, which I discussed earlier, she connected the different levels of pupils to their background. She explained that pupils who grow up in an environment where they are exposed to Dutch language and literature and are socialised in the dominant culture, do better in her class, and mentioned that there are pupils who lack such a background and upbringing. When I asked her which pupils she was referring to she hesitated, which I assume to be uncertainty about the validity of a cultural explanation. Here she mentions ‘Moroccan pupils’ but is quick to point out that she is ‘not sure about all of them’ and that it applies to ‘a large part of the Moroccan pupils’. She is thus aware that what she is trying to account for does not quite fit the category ‘Moroccan pupil’ because of internal differences and similarities with pupils outside this category. There are ‘Moroccan’ pupils who do well in her class and ‘Dutch’ pupils who don’t do well. She also recognises that their ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish backgrounds’ do not explain what she sees as their anti-social behaviour when she compares them to other ‘Turkish’ and ‘Moroccan’ pupils who do not display this behaviour. She solves this dilemma by reasoning that ‘Dutch’ pupils generally show good behaviour and do well in class and that the ones who do not fit this picture are exceptions. ‘Moroccan’ pupils on the other hand generally show deviant behaviour and don’t do well in class, but there are exceptions, like Ismail. She thus shows a tendency to frame everything ‘Dutch’ as unproblematic, and ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish’ as problematic.
39 Conclusion Ethnicity is generally considered to be a characteristic that one acquires by birth, and it is treated as something fixed and unchanging. In this chapter however, I have shown how ethnicity is an active process of meaning making in social interaction. I have shown how an ethnic group was actively created based on behaviour and physical markers, and how this is connected to an integration discourse that is informed by cultural essentialism, taking cultural factors to be independent explanatory variables for ‘problems of integration’ (Van den Berg and Schinkel 2009: 398). Within the framework of Dutchness, which remains largely invisible because of its assumed neutrality, teachers attributed aberrant behaviour to ‘otherness’ – to acting ‘Moroccan’ – rather than to patterns of behaviour that are ‘Dutch’ or that encompass ‘Dutch’ people and others (Martineau 2006: 309). The behaviour of a particular group of pupils was framed as from ‘somewhere else’, as ‘non-Dutch’. Their disruptive behaviour in the classroom was thus racialised in the sense that it was explained primarily in terms of ethnic and racial categories of social perception (Poynting et al. 2004: 14). This kind of framing works to the disadvantage of certain pupils because their behaviour is interpreted via oppositions of us and them, good and bad, right and wrong, which are then understood in racialised terms (ibid). Not all teachers referred to the pupils as ‘Moroccan’. 4H1’s history teacher mostly spoke of adolescent behaviour that he deemed to be ‘of all times’ and he was very aware and weary of stereotypes and avoided these when talking about the pupils. 4H1’s social studies teacher who was also 4H2’s social sciences teacher never referred to pupils based on ethnic categories either. He was however, as we will see in the next chapter, very strict on the use of language, and did not allow for any ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ in his classroom.
40
CHAPTER THREE National language and its discontents
A few weeks into my research, several pupils were reprimanded after saying something in ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’. Several teachers and the section heads were very quick to and confident about dismissing the use of ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ as unacceptable within the school premises. The school did not have an official language policy but it was generally considered self-evident that pupils should speak Dutch.
VWO section head: It’s not an official policy but a basic principle that everyone follows because everybody finds it so normal. So I think that’s why it was never written down because it’s not under dispute.
Although not all teachers thought it to be as much of a problem as others, there seemed to be a general consensus that the use of ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ in school and in the classroom should not be allowed. In this chapter I will first show how several teachers and the section heads accounted for and framed the ‘Dutch-only rule’. Second, with examples of classroom interaction, I will show how several pupils contested it.
Language as commodity Underlying the idea that we all speak the same language and that this is normal and natural is the ‘one nation, one language’ ideology, which assumes linguistic purity within the boundaries of the nation-state. National, standardised language is one of the key ways through which nations continue to imagine themselves as a community (Anderson 1983) and its
41 speakers come to talk and think about language as if were concrete and sharply defined (Urciuoli 1996: 2). The nation-state school, tasked with integrating social and cultural differences into a pre-defined national whole (Baumann 2004: 1), is the primary site where national language is taught to future citizens. However, over the past two decades a new understanding of language has emerged in the Netherlands, ‘an understanding of language not as an index of identity in the service of building some kind of [national] collectivity, but rather as a commodity with exchange value in the marketplace’ (Heller 2003, quoted in Bjornson 2007: 67). This shift can be traced back to 1994 when, in a commissioned response to the 1989 WRR report ‘Allochtonen Policy’ (Allochtonenbeleid), Van der Zwan and Entzinger (1994) identified what they called a socio-cultural ‘mismatch’ between the needs of the ‘post-industrial’ labour market and the qualifications and cultural characteristics of the emergent ‘ethnic underclass’ (Bjornson 2007: 70). The report linked ethnic minorities’ low levels of education and Dutch language competence to a lack of motivation to work, and recommended the introduction of an ‘integration’ program that would specifically address the ‘language problems’ of newcomers (ibid). The Dutch government responded positively to the emphasis on the link between language skills and labour market participation, and the ‘language as commodity’ ideology created the basis for a broad political consensus on the issue of mandatory Dutch language instruction (ibid). This resulted in the 1998 ‘Newcomer Integration Law’ (Wet Inburgering Nieuwkomers, WIN), which obliged most non-EU newcomers to participate in a twelve-month integration course, consisting of 600 hours of Dutch language instruction, civic education, and preparation for the labour market (Joppke 2007: 250). In the following years citizens and citizens-to-be were subjected to interventions aimed at forced integration, such as workfare programs, parenting skills training and in the case of allochtonen, mandatory language lessons (ibid). The focus of minority policies shifted from issues of general disadvantage (achterstand) to what has become known as ‘language deficiency’ (taalachterstand). Where before the teaching of minority languages9 to children in schools was expected to facilitate the learning of Dutch and provide them with access to their home cultures, which would boost their self-confidence (Driessen 2000: 62; Bossers 2001: 209-210), it was now seen as the key source of the problem and all efforts should focus on teaching only Dutch in the national struggle against immigrants’ ‘language deficiency’ (Extra and Yagmur 2006: 55). Dutch language acquisition thus became the central pillar of Dutch
9 Part of the OETC-program (Onderwijs in Eigen Taal en Cultuur, Education in [one’s] Own Language and Culture)
42 integration policy and single language immersion the dominant didactic model in the Netherlands (Glastra and Schedler 2004: 52). Dutch language skills came to be seen as an absolute precondition for functioning in the Netherlands and a good command of Dutch has been framed as an undeniable basis for inclusion or integration into society (Ghorashi and Tilburg 2006: 67). It is thus not surprising that during an interview the VWO section head explained that he felt ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ does not belong inside the school.
VWO section head: When those boys start talking Moroccan or street language [I see that] as something that doesn’t belong here. You see, you try to foster something of an attitude that will help them to succeed in college, and later in the business world or wherever they will end up. So you try to teach them some professionalism … something about manners and the arts that will help them succeed in a professional context.
The ‘language as commodity’ ideology can be recognised in his explanation. Speaking ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ instead of Dutch, he argues, will impair the pupils’ chances in further education and on the labour market. It is interesting that the section heads, the teachers, and the pupils referred to the language as ‘Moroccan’. At that time I was not aware – myself being affected by the ‘one nation, one language’ ideology – that there are several languages spoken in Morocco10. I suspect that the pupils spoke derija to one another but I cannot be sure. This is the primary language of Morocco but it does not exist as ‘a language’ because derija refers to dialectical Arabic spoken across North Africa, encompassing broad regional variation (Wagner 2011: 34). However, the labelling of the language the pupils spoke as ‘Moroccan’ was never contested in my presence. ‘Street language’ is a type of register used by young people who borrow words and expressions from various languages that are spoken in the surrounding multilingual community (Schoonen and Appel 2005: 88). It is often considered a degenerated and poor variant of Dutch language that is seen as cause and symptom of the faltering integration of immigrants and their children (Cornips and De Rooij 2010: 34). During the interview I asked the VWO section head what he thought about the teachers being very strict on banning the use of ‘Moroccan’ and ‘street language’ inside the
10 The official language of Morocco is Modern Standard Arabic, a standardised language that is the main language of written education and is not a spoken language in social settings (Wagner 2011: 33-34). Spoken languages in Morocco include three grouped dialects of Amazigh (Berber) languages and Moroccan Arabic or derija, which is the primary language of Morocco (ibid: 34). Although it can be written with Arabic script, it has no standardised written form and does not exist as ‘a language’ because derija refers to dialectical Arabic spoken across North Africa, encompassing broad regional variations (ibid).
43 classroom. After stating that those languages do not ‘belong here’, he immediately mentioned ‘professionalism, attitude, manners, and the arts’. So in his view, the use of ‘Moroccan’ and ‘street language’ by certain pupils indicates a lack of these. Dutch language proficiency not only serves as a sign of integration into society but also as a standard by which attitudes in daily interaction are measured, and as such belongs to the sphere of cognitive skills and social competence (Sunier 2004b: 147). Pupils are expected to conform to dominant cultural notions of appropriate manners and civil conduct, signalled by their language use, which will afford them access to greater society and facilitate academic success.
VWO section head: This is important in the fourth grade. You really need to socialise them so that they understand that they’re in a setting that isn’t the street or their home. Something else is expected of them here and they need to understand that some patterns of behaviour are inappropriate here, and completely inappropriate later at college or university, or at work … Out of respect for your teachers and fellow pupils who don’t speak whatever it is that you speak, you all speak the language that we all speak, and that’s Dutch. So it’s strange if that needs to be expressed because it is so self-evident and if you don’t know it yet, our job is to make sure that you do. I think it’s correct that pupils are confronted with this.
The VWO section head expected the pupils to have mastered certain social skills needed to function in society; they should know how to treat others depending on the situation. In his view they should have internalised one of the main rules of the social game by now which is to ‘speak the language we all speak’. He agreed with the teachers’ strict approach, which meant that pupils could be sent out of the classroom for speaking in ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’. This strict approach was also based on the assumption that the ‘Moroccan’ pupils were not only competent Dutch speakers, but that Dutch was their mother tongue. There was no mention of the possibility of bilingualism. During an interview the 4H2 Dutch language teacher even denied that the ‘Moroccan’ pupils spoke ‘Moroccan’ among themselves:
Teacher: Well, why are they speaking Moroccan? That’s because they don’t want other people to understand what they’re saying. I really believe that the first language that comes to them is not Moroccan, but Dutch. They really do talk Dutch with each other normally. They don’t speak Moroccan to each other when there are no other people around.
44 Since the pupils are seen as capable and competent speakers of Dutch who are in control of their language, when they ‘suddenly’ switch to ‘another language’ they must have a reason for it. In the words of the social studies student-teacher of 4H2:
Student-teacher: I think they do it on purpose. Why else would they? I mean they also chat in Dutch with each other so why would they say something in Moroccan or Arabic all of a sudden? That must have a reason.
Language as an exclusive practice Often in the morning, the two section heads stood in front of the school, rushing pupils inside before the bell rang. For the pupils it meant that from that moment on their language was being monitored. Pupils who were sent out of the classroom for speaking ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’, which occasionally happened, were sent to the HAVO section head. He had not yet given out sanctions, such as ‘putting a pupil in detention for two hours’ but he was considering this ‘if the situation did not improve.’ During an interview, the HAVO section head told me:
HAVO section head: I have heard that pupils, apart from in the corridors, are also speaking Moroccan or Turkish or whatever inside the classrooms. If a teacher hears this and doesn’t want to – or is afraid – to tell them, then I want to know because this is about culture. They’re touching on something that used to be standard and now might be going in the wrong direction. MZ: What do you mean by ‘this is culture’? HAVO section head: Well, I think culture is how we deal with one another, and language is part of that, right? If we simply speak Dutch with each other inside the school, then that is what is done and then nothing else should happen. So I think that they can do it outside the school but inside the school other pupils find that very annoying and so do I, and I think that you should not accept it. They exclude themselves. And then it becomes us and them, and then I become very nasty because they just shouldn’t do that. Here you simply speak Dutch, gezellig, gezellig11 with each other, yes, that’s it. And they know it; ‘they’ are the Moroccan boys mostly, Turkish boys also do it sometimes. They know that when they speak another language, people think that they’re talking about a teacher or a pupil, so they shouldn’t do that here. MZ: I did see it during lessons and then they say it’s street language, that’s also forbidden?
11 A Dutch word known for its untranslatability to other languages that means something like being cosy and chatty together.
45 HAVO section head: If it bothers me in any way or if I don’t understand it, yes. That’s not how we associate with one another.
It was considered a new phenomenon that pupils were talking ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ inside the classroom. Teachers who had worked in the school for several years explained to me that in previous years it did occur in the school corridors, but not inside the classroom. Before there had been more pupils speaking ‘Turkish’ inside the school but at the time of my research there was hardly any mention of it, because, as I was told, there were less pupils with a ‘Turkish’ background. Like the VWO section head, the HAVO section head thought that pupils should abide by the rules of the social game and know how to treat one another. Speaking Dutch was one of them and should be enforced and punished if broken. He considered anything else unwise and thought this would lead to segregation. He created a strict boundary: when you don’t speak Dutch, you don’t belong to ‘us’ anymore. As a (school) community, he argued, ‘we’ all speak Dutch. If you don’t speak Dutch you are not ‘gezellig’ and you exclude yourself from the ‘community’. Other teachers also framed it as striving for exclusivity. 4H2’s social sciences teacher said he was ‘unwilling to accept that exclusive business of theirs’. 4H2’s Dutch language teacher said: ‘I’m surprised that HAVO boys do this. It’s stupid, I think. What do they want to accomplish with it? They want to isolate themselves, form a small group. They really try to shut me out.’ They thus considered speaking ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ inside the school to be a way of isolating themselves from other pupils and teachers, a way of excluding others. There was also concern about the potentially bad intentions of the pupils. For example, 4H2’s social studies student- teacher told me:
Student-teacher: Today I heard Imad and Farid speak Moroccan. I really don’t think it’s acceptable … I don’t understand what they’re saying. For all I know they’re saying something about me or about other pupils, or they’re trading insults. You just want to know what they’re saying because if they are calling somebody names I may decide to send them out. So I told them right away, first and last warning. During the lesson you speak Dutch. On the street you do what you want, but here in the classroom, it’s Dutch.
Speaking ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ inside the classroom was also seen to be problematic because they could be insulting someone without the teacher knowing it. I found it striking that the teachers and section heads were so strict about it and regarded it as such a
46 serious problem. It seemed to make the staff anxious. The general opinion among the teachers and section heads was that by speaking ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’, pupils were trying to be provocative and it was framed as a sign of bad intentions. I argue that this is connected to the ways in which cultural diversity and multilingualism have increasingly come to be seen as threats to social cohesion in Dutch society (Extra and Yagmur 2006: 55). What is true for Dutch society at large, also holds true for the classroom: what matters most is not the language itself but the negative images the language evokes.
Language as deviant behaviour
(4H2) [It’s 10.20. The lesson is Dutch literature. The teacher is calling the register. Peter is sitting next to me. He has opened a bag of crisps and secretly crams respectable amounts into his mouth. Many pupils are talking.] Teacher [raising her voice]: Bags of the table, coats off, get your things! [Imad, Ahmed and Anouar sit close together in the front of the classroom. I’m in the back so I can’t hear what they’re saying. They’re talking and laughing. The teacher walks past them. Teacher [sternly]: No Moroccan! Imad [rather angry looking]: It’s not Moroccan. It’s street language. Teacher: If I can’t understand it, it’s not Dutch. Imad [looking straight at her with his eyes wide open]: You’re not sure. You’re judging. You need to listen better. [The teacher ignores him and continues with her lesson.]
Graham et al. argue that when people fight about language they are really fighting about something else (2007: 32). As I wrote in Chapter Two, the Dutch language teacher of 4H2 had difficulties keeping order and Anouar, Imad, Ahmed, Kemal and Danilo often ignored her warnings, kept on talking and laughing and openly provoked her. After having missed part of the lesson because they had not been paying attention they often yelled at her, asking what number or page they were at. I suspect that because she found it difficult to control them, and sanction their disruptive behaviour, she took this as an opportunity to show her authority. As a Dutch language teacher she positions herself as a language-authority who decides what is and what is not considered Dutch: ‘If I can’t understand it, it’s not Dutch’. It is her job to teach pupils Dutch so she ‘defends herself’ by ‘knowing the rules’ for ‘correct Dutch’. The aim of the teacher is not simply to monitor the pupils’ language, but to restore order to the
47 classroom. By striving to maintain the language-boundary she attempts to discipline their ‘provocative’ behaviour. I had not observed the teacher become this angry with one of the pupils before. She hushed and warned them, and told them to stop when they were hitting and pushing each other, but she also often chose to ignore them, walking past without looking in their direction, her head turned the other way or standing with her back to them. The pupils, in turn, mostly ignored and occasionally mocked her. Yet, in this instance, she loudly and angrily scolded Imad for speaking ‘Moroccan’, and Imad, who generally kept his cool, seemed genuinely upset about the reprimand. The incident made quite an impression on me. After the lesson I walked to the staffroom with the teacher where she started talking about the incident:
Teacher: They’re not allowed to speak Moroccan in school. And then they say it’s not Moroccan. Of course it’s also some kind of street language with Dutch in it. This is a new problem. We were used to pupils speaking Moroccan in the hallway and then you say: ‘Hey, speak Dutch’, and that they say: “Sorry, Sir/Miss”. But this is new. It’s provocative, I’m sure of that. I just know it. But they’re going to change. Otherwise they’re not going to make it. This is unacceptable during Dutch language lessons. They need to understand that they can’t do this. If I see or hear it I want to respond right away.
Talking about the incident, the teacher noted that it could have been ‘street language’, but immediately went on talking about pupils speaking ‘Moroccan’ in the hallway, as if the difference did not really matter because it still proved her point. Other teachers also seemed to conflate the two and did not seem to care about the difference; pupils were just not allowed to speak either ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ inside the classroom and the school corridors. Street language is often considered a flawed kind of Dutch used by young people from ethnic minorities (Cornips and De Rooij 2003: 132). From the 1990s, when many politicians started to see Dutch language deficiency among minorities as the main cause of their unemployment and failure in education, ‘street language’ was considered the cause and symptom hereof (ibid 2010: 34). Snel has argued that when at the end of the 1990s the discourse on integration shifted from socio-economic inequality to cultural differences, low levels of education and being unemployed gradually came to be seen as deviant behaviour (quoted in Van den Berg and Schinkel 2009: 396). It could also be argued then, that ‘street language’ has become a sign of that deviant behaviour which is reinforced by the practice of attributing the negative connotations of ‘street language’ to its speakers. Mieke Zijlmans for
48 example, describes it as ‘a language with ‘dark’ and ‘unintelligible’ words that are loudly proclaimed and whose speakers are rough and make others feel unsafe in public (quoted in Cornips and De Rooij 2010: 35). As I have outlined in Chapter Two, over the years a kind of meta-narrative emerged in The Netherlands about ‘the problem with Moroccan youth’ that focuses on young male ‘Moroccan’ boys who are referred to as ‘Moroccan youth gangs’, ‘Moroccan street terrorists’ or ‘Moroccan street scum’. The image that is evoked is that of groups of ‘Moroccan’ boys who ‘terrorise’ the street and make people feel unsafe. Through these frameworks ‘street language’ and ‘Moroccan language’ have both become markers of deviant and dangerous group behaviour. Teachers thus experience ‘Moroccan’ and ‘street language’ inside the classroom as a sign of disorder and danger. The next day, when we were talking in the staffroom, I told 4H2’s Dutch language teacher that their social sciences teacher had sent Anouar out of the classroom for saying something in ‘Moroccan’. Her first response was:
Teacher: What are they fighting? I’m the school’s confidante and some of the pupils have complained. A girl Jamie asked me to tell Tarik that he needs to stop bothering her. He constantly approaches her and she finds that very unpleasant. So I told her to tell him but she already did, and then he says: ‘I’m just being nice’.
Here she connects the use of ‘Moroccan’ language by a certain pupil to a ‘conflict’ between two pupils from 4H3. In her view Tarik, who I never observed or talked to, apparently belonged to the same group of pupils whose behaviour was framed as typically ‘Moroccan’ and considered problematic. She felt intimidated by them as a woman. The Dutch teacher of 4H1 who told me about a ‘conflict between Dutch girls and Moroccan boys’ (see page 35) also told me that there had been a meeting about this issue and an e-mail had been sent to inform all the teachers. In the quote above the teacher thus connects the use of language to behaviour that was seen as problematic and was framed as ethnic behaviour. Language is generally considered one of the main ‘ethnic markers’ by which ethnic groups distinguish themselves or are distinguished by others (Sunier 2004: 147b). The use of ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ has thus become a sign of problematic ethnic behaviour.
49 Contesting national language Over the course of four weeks I observed pupils in 4H2 contest the ‘Dutch only’ rule laid down by their teachers. They most frequently contested the rule with their social sciences teacher who monitored them closely, which was not too difficult since only thirteen pupils from 4H2 took his class; the other pupils took Geography, French or German language. On Wednesday mornings they had social sciences from 10.15 till 11.45 and these ‘double hours’ (dubbeluren) had a short break after 45 minutes. 4H2’s social sciences teacher (who was also 4H1’s social studies teacher) never referred to pupils by ethnic category, but he was very strict about the use of language, and did not permit any, as he also referred to it, ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ in his classroom. Overall, this teacher was quite controlling: he made it clear that even the short breaks weren’t really ‘breaks’ but rather ‘no class’. As I described in Chapter Two, this meant that pupils were not allowed to eat or drink anything except water. They were allowed to go to the toilet, listen to music through their headphones and ‘talk about the weekend’ but not too loudly and when the atmosphere became too boisterous for his taste he told them to quiet down. In an interview the teacher explained that he felt that by speaking ‘street language’ or ‘Moroccan’ the pupils ‘brought their macho behaviour inside the classroom’, that ‘you shouldn’t tolerate it at all’ and that he was ‘unwilling to accept that exclusive business of theirs’. He maintained quite a firm grip by being consistent and continuously asking pupils to stop talking or disrupting classroom order in any other way. If this didn’t work he moved one of the pupils to another seat. He rarely resorted to sending pupils out of the classroom. Whenever the teacher heard a word or phrase he thought to be ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ he would scold the pupil he thought had said it, mostly Imad and Anouar. Even during ‘breaks’ or after the lesson had ended and the pupils were waiting for the bell to ring, saying a ‘wrong’ word could mean they were sent to the HAVO section head who gave out sanctions and warnings. Not all teachers were as watchful of the pupil’s language, also because it didn’t stand out as much in a classroom filled with 27 or 30 pupils. When this teacher taught social studies to 4H1, I observed Farid and Omar having an entire conversation in ‘Moroccan’ that he didn’t notice. In 4H2 however, it resulted in rather lengthy negotiations that stretched over the course of four weeks. The following example is from a Wednesday morning social sciences lesson:
50 [Anouar, Imad, Ahmed, Saida and Kemal are constantly talking and laughing, teasing each other and giving each other meaningful looks. The teacher has told them to be quiet and pay attention several times. Then, when one of them (I didn’t notice who) says something…] Teacher: Hey! Again, that’s not Dutch, my friends. Ahmed: It’s her nickname. Teacher: I want to know what you’re saying. Otherwise I don’t know if it’s nice or unfriendly. Ahmed: It’s never unfriendly. Teacher: I don’t need to know everything, but I want to be able to know. It’s not polite towards me and the other pupils. Next time I’m sending you out. Imad: But English isn’t Dutch either. Teacher: I don’t understand any Turkish or Moroccan. I just want you to speak Dutch. Imad: It’s street language.
Many Dutch people borrow words from English language and use them in daily interaction. English is compulsory at all levels of Dutch secondary education. Among other things, it is the language of academic courses and studies, of popular culture, of movies and television series, and it is an important means of communication between different language speakers. It has become so widespread that it is no longer considered non-Dutch. Also, as the teacher points out here, he ‘understands’ English, but he doesn’t ‘understand Turkish or Moroccan’. At that point Imad claims that it was ‘street language’, like he did during the Dutch language lesson in the extract discussed earlier. I suppose he thought that this may be more acceptable since ‘street language’, as Imad, Ahmed and Saida explained to me one day in the canteen, is ‘not really a language, it’s more picked from other languages and spoken by youngsters from different backgrounds: Moroccan, Dutch, Turkish, everything’. They also claimed that ‘sometimes a word just slipped out by accident’:
Imad: It’s just automatic. MZ: What kind of words? Imad: For example ‘ewa’ or ‘fena’. MZ: And that means? Ahmed: It’s just like ‘hi’ (hé)? Imad: Yeah, that’s it. Saida: Yes. MZ: Okay.
51 Imad: It doesn’t mean much but yeah, you do risk being sent out. The other day I was talking to my classmates and I said something like that and then [the HAVO section head] told me: ‘If I hear that again you have a big problem’. MZ: In class? Imad: No, just in school. MZ: So it’s also not allowed in school? Ahmed: But you know, because we’ve been speaking it for so long, it’s like when you say ‘shit’ in English, that’s also automatic, it’s not deliberately aggravating someone or anything. It’s an automatism. MZ: So you think it’s not completely fair? Imad: No, it’s not completely fair and I think that they just made up the rule that you cannot speak that. MZ: Can you give an example? What kind of rules do they make? Imad: Well, what I just told you, that he tells me that I would get into trouble, while he has to understand that I find it hard to simply speak really normal Dutch, because at home I have a situation where I need to speak Moroccan, and here I have to speak Dutch. Ahmed: But if you’re from England and you’re here in the Netherlands, you’ll automatically speak English, right? MZ: Yes. Ahmed: So that’s how it is, while here they say: only Dutch in class. So in English class you have to speak English but then you also tend to say Dutch words because that’s how you’ve grown up.
I suspect that at times saying a ‘wrong’ word was meant to be provocative, especially since it became such an issue and thus became a way of ‘crossing the line’, which at that age can be quite exciting and earns you respect from your peers, as I remember it from my own years in secondary school. But, overall, it felt as if it was part of their way of interacting with one another as a group of friends. I never heard pupils speak ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ directly to the teacher. The pupils thought that not being allowed to speak ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ was unfair. They did not do it on purpose, was their defence: ‘It’s an automatism’. While sitting in the canteen I asked Imad, Ahmed and Saida what language they spoke at home and with friends:
Saida: At home it’s a mix of Dutch and Moroccan. MZ: A mix?
52 Ahmed: You speak Dutch with you brother and your sister. And with your parents you mostly speak Moroccan, and on the street you just speak Dutch with your friends. Imad: Yeah, that’s it. It’s a bit of a mix. Like with Ahmed – when I talk to him in the classroom I see him as a fellow pupil but also just as a friend. So I also use street language with him and besides that he’s also Moroccan, so I also speak Moroccan with him. Yes, and he’s a fellow pupil so you have to speak Dutch every now and then. That’s it, so I combine them.
The pupils showed that they were aware of the context-bound uses of language but also that the choice of language is not so much dependent on the place of interaction as on the situation and the conversational partner (Schoonen and Appel 2005: 102). Imad speaks ‘street language’ with Ahmed because he is his friend. They also speak ‘Moroccan’ with each other because they are both ‘Moroccan’, and this can also be in the classroom during informal interaction, separate from the didactic discourse managed by the teacher (ibid). This, however, was not allowed because it was considered deviant behaviour. During a social sciences lesson some time later Anouar said something for which he was sent out of the classroom:
Anouar: …. bashklit …. [this is the only word I hear clearly, the rest I can’t make out] Teacher: I want you to leave. Anouar: Why? Teacher: I don’t want Arabic or Moroccan in the classroom. Anouar: It was an accident. Imad: It’s street language. Saida [smiling]: Sir, its just ‘bicycle’. Imad: It’s fiets, ‘bicycle’ [pronouncing the word in English], that’s how you should look at it. Teacher: I just want to be able to understand everything. Imad: It’s hard for us sir, nature, nurture. Ahmed: You have to show some understanding for people with a different culture. Teacher: Think about those roles, remember Goffman, here you behave as a pupil. Ahmed: Do I have to put on a mask or something? It doesn’t make any sense. You say ‘shit’ or ‘bullshit’. That’s not Dutch either. Teacher: I don’t feel like having this discussion. Imad: You also say ‘shit’. Teacher: I’m not having this discussion. [He continues the lesson]
53 When walking down the stairs after the lesson I asked Anouar what the word meant, which, not being familiar with the word, I had made out as something sounding like ‘bashklien’. He told me it meant bike, which is ‘bashklit’ in ‘Moroccan’. I wanted to ask him more about the context in which he had used it but he already walked away from me towards his friends. Without knowing the context in which he used the word, it did seem that the pupils tried to convince the teacher of the harmlessness of it, also by pointing out it’s similarity to the English equivalent that would not have landed him in trouble if he had said it. Imad makes a reference to an earlier lesson when they were taught the difference between nature and nurture, nurture being the equivalent of upbringing as the teacher explained it. He thus uses the content of the curriculum to argue against the language rule laid down by the teacher. Ahmed points to ‘a cultural difference’ between them, after which the teacher refers to Goffman and the role of the ideal pupil who is socialised into ‘doing everything right’, as he had put it a few weeks earlier. During a class on socialization and internalization he explained that:
Socialization is the process through which new members of a society adopt the rules, norms and values of that society … Internalization is when someone automatically complies with [those] ‘rules, norms and values’ (regels, normen en waarden) … ‘Automatically’ means that without control from the outside – your parents in raising you, the police on the street, or the teacher in front of the classroom – you automatically get your things quietly, lay your books on the table, remove your bag from the table and wait quietly until the teacher starts his lesson … When you have internalised it, then you are socialised, you are a full member of that society, you automatically do it right and you can even start socialising others, for example, by telling someone who never gets his book from his bag: ‘Man, just do it already’.
On several occasions the teacher connected the content of the lesson to the level of discipline he was asking from them in his continuous attempts to settle them down, have them pay attention and not disrupt classroom order. But this example also explicitly illustrates how the classroom is a place where pupils are groomed into becoming citizens and that the behaviour that is expected from them necessarily reflects dominant cultural notions of appropriate manners and civil conduct. Once you have internalised them you are a ‘full member of society’. ‘Street language’ and ‘Moroccan’ are markers of deviant and disruptive – antisocial – behaviour, so the monitoring of their language is largely an attempt to control their behaviour. This is why he did not enter further into a discussion about their language: they
54 should simply know how to behave properly. For him it is largely about restoring order to the classroom. Ahmed cleverly connects the teacher’s reference to Goffman’s metaphor of the mask that the teacher had explained the week before: ‘You always play a role. Everybody always wears a mask. You are never yourself.’ So Ahmed implicitly says that he feels that the teacher is asking him to not be himself. The pupils are aware of the negative images of ‘Moroccans’, as Imad once put it with a smile on his face: ‘We’re not covered very positively in the news these days’. The fact that he said ‘I am Moroccan’ indicates that he strongly identifies with what that word means to him. In the next chapter I will show how ‘Moroccan’ pupils perform difference by re-appropriating negative labels, changing them from something hurtful to something empowering. During another lesson Imad was almost sent out of the classroom for saying the word ‘matties’ which is slang for mates/friends:
Teacher: You’re sent out if that wasn’t Dutch, Imad? Anouar: Matties is Dutch. Saida: Matties, teacher. [As if she wants to remind him that it is a common word] Anouar: Ask the other pupils. Imad: Everybody here knows what ‘matties’ means. Teacher: I don’t think ‘matties’ is a problem, but I don’t want to hear any other language than Dutch.
The pupils here try to have the word ‘matties’ accepted as a Dutch word, or at least as a word they are allowed to use because ‘everybody knows what “matties” means’. This is a typically Dutch way of arguing for or against an option (Schiffauer et al. 2004). By including everyone they reach a unifying consensus carried by all (Baumann 2004: 4). Also, of course, the word resemblance the Dutch word maat, which means ‘mate’ or ‘friend’. The teacher grants them permission to use this word in the classroom. On a small scale this shows how words that may formerly have been cast as ‘different’ become part of the dominant, middle-class lexicon.
Conclusion In this chapter I have shown how the teachers and section heads framed the use of ‘Moroccan’ and ‘street language’ in school and in the classroom as impairing the pupils’ chances in further education and on the labour market. In their view pupils should conform to dominant
55 cultural notions of appropriate manners and civil conduct, which is also signalled by their language use, because this will afford them access to greater society and facilitate academic success. The teachers and section heads also framed the use of ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ by pupils as provocative and a sign of bad intentions. It seemed to create anxiety. I have argued that this resonates with the ways in which cultural diversity and multilingualism have come to be seen as threats to social cohesion in the Netherlands (Extra and Yagmur 2006: 55). As in Dutch society, the use of ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ in school and in the classroom evokes images of negative behaviour, such as that of groups of ‘Moroccan’ boys who ‘terrorise’ the street and make people feel unsafe. ‘Moroccan’ and ‘street language’ have both become markers of deviant and dangerous group behaviour. Like society, the classroom is an arena in which the linguistic disorder on the part of the dominant cultural group is rendered invisible and normative, while the linguistic behaviour of members of certain minorities is highly visible and the object of constant monitoring (Hill 1999: 684). What the teachers and section heads did not take into account is that by excluding ‘Moroccan’, ‘Turkish’ and ‘street language’ from the school and the classroom they denied ‘the underlying lived social realities of the pupils from which meanings evolve and words are spoken’ (Walsh 1991: 68). Words are acquired in the social world. Their meanings are constructed, borrowed, and accommodated through interactions with other people. They provide us with a means to articulate what we observe, perceive and experience (ibid). Once the pupils enter the school they are expected to ‘leave behind’ the language and behaviour they engage in at ‘home and on the street’. So it’s not only their language that is excluded from the school premises, it is also their experience. Their linguistic and social experience, and therefore their reality, are seen to be bad and are invalidated in the school environment. A different reality is portrayed there – one that negates rather than supports earlier socializations (ibid: 58). One hereby runs the risk that pupils come to view both ‘realities’ as two opposing worlds.
56
CHAPTER FOUR Performing difference in the classroom: Re-appropriating stigmatising labels
In both 4H1 and 4H2 I regularly overheard ‘Turkish’ and ‘Moroccan’ pupils calling each other names and joking with ethnic slurs. Teachers generally perceived and treated this as bad behaviour, scolding the pupil(s) involved. Subjects concerning ethno-cultural differences, stereotypes and prejudice were only discussed when they were part of the curriculum or when the teacher had prepared or thought of something beforehand. In those instances I closely observed several pupils, and especially Farid, re-appropriate stigmatising labels through joking and name-calling. I understand re-appropriation as ‘the phenomenon whereby a stigmatised group re-values an externally imposed negative label by self-consciously referring to itself in terms of that label’ (Galinsky et al. 2003: 221). In this chapter I will show how pupils contested negative images of ‘Moroccans’ through re-appropriation, and how teachers dealt with and framed these instances.
The difference between a ‘Turk’ and a ‘Moroccan’ Over the course of my research I noticed that there seemed to be an ongoing struggle between several ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish’ pupils about defining differences between ‘Turks’ and ‘Moroccans’. Several times I overheard Imad, Ahmed, Saida and Kemal in 4H2, and Farid, Erdem, Iskender and Omar in 4H1 having a discussion about ‘Turks’ and ‘Moroccans’, the content of which passed me by because I was sitting too far away. In the Netherlands, ‘Turks’ and ‘Moroccans’, are often mentioned in one breath. Even though the places they migrated
57 from are totally different regions, and the countries more than 5000 kilometres apart, from the mid-1960s when Turkish and Moroccan migrants were entering the labour market, both ‘groups’ came to represent the Dutch image of ‘guest workers’. From the 1990s onward, when the category allochtonen (see page 9) had taken root, the term was increasingly restricted to ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish’ migrants and their children, which were also the two main Muslim ‘groups’ (Geschiere 2009: 150). Social scientists often lump together ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish’ populations to highlight the lower socio-economic and educational status of these categories in comparison to their ‘native Dutch’ counterparts, but the ‘ethnic boundary’ between both ‘groups’ is rarely explored; it is just perceived to be ‘out there’. As adolescents trying to figure out who they are and where they belong, the group of ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish’ pupils in 4H1 and 4H2 seemed quite occupied with this boundary. In one of the first history lessons I observed, the teacher, standing beside a daily tear-off calendar, started explaining about the Festival of Breaking the Fast (Suikerfeest). He asked which pupils had celebrated Suikerfeest and this sparked a heated discussion between ‘Turkish’ and ‘Moroccan’ pupils about whether ‘Turks’ or ‘Moroccans’ celebrate this festival on the right day. Other pupils had obviously witnessed these kinds of discussions more often since several looked wearisome and two girls next to me sighed repeatedly, and one complained: ‘O Jesus, here they go again’. When I later asked her whether they had these discussions more often, she replied: ‘Turks and Moroccans always have discussions.’ One boy interrupted the teacher by finishing his sentence:
Teacher: I always find it kind of funny that you get discussions between… Boy: Turks and Moroccans.
During this ‘discussion’ on Suikerfeest the teacher did most of the talking even though Farid, Omar, Iskender and Erdem all looked excited, sitting straight up in their chairs, with their eyes wide open, loudly interrupting each other when they were allowed to speak. The teacher called for them to calm down and said that they needed to ‘learn that their arguments do not become stronger if they start shouting’, trying to teach them the dominant Dutch way of engaging in a discussion: keeping your cool, waiting your turn and allowing others to speak. The discussion had only just started when the teacher already decided they had said enough about it and that he wanted to turn to the subject at hand, which was an apparent let-down for the pupils who were all too eager to continue.
58 I suspect that the fact that teachers did not give much room to explore issues concerning ethno-cultural differences, stereotypes and prejudice, had a great deal to do with how quickly the atmosphere became boisterous. Especially ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish’ pupils would quickly and loudly go back and forth responding to each other’s comments, shouting and laughing loudly, and thereby disrupting classroom order. The avoidance of such subjects is also related to a typically Dutch way to discursively deal with ethno-cultural differences: to downplay them. I will return to this later. The absence of room to discuss these matters may very well be why Omar, Farid, Erdem, and to a lesser extent Iskender and Rachid, were so eager to participate. These pupils seemed eager to perform difference inside the classroom. While acknowledging the extensive literature and theorising on ‘performativity’ I use the concept simply to refer to the use of speech and gestures to perform identifications. There was one specific way of performing difference that I first observed when one of the teachers decided to give ample room for a class discussion on stereotypes and prejudice.
‘I am a Moroccan!’ In the second week of my research the Dutch language teacher of 4H1 started the lesson by reading parts of the prologue of the book ‘Alleen maar nette mensen’ by Dutch writer Robert Vuijsje (2010). The book is about a young Jewish man called David from an upper class family living in Amsterdam Zuid – an upmarket neighbourhood in southern Amsterdam. David, who has recently finished secondary school, is often taken for a ‘Moroccan’ because of his dark hair and darker complexion. Among other things, he struggles with the way he is perceived by others. Under the header ‘The multicultural society’ Vuijsje sums up a list of stereotypes and prejudices that people in the Netherlands supposedly share about each other. Before the lesson started, I talked to the teacher in the staffroom where she explained that she was going to read from the book because she wanted to make the pupils aware that it is a ‘satire’ (bespotting) and that ‘everybody has prejudices about other people’. The week before, when I was not present, she had also read a small extract from the book and had felt that the pupils tended to confirm the ‘prejudices’ the author sums up. Teacher: ‘In the classroom the children say: “That’s true, Miss”, and then I say: “No, it’s satire”. I want them to understand that.’
(4H1) [It’s 12.30. The lesson is Dutch literature. After settling the pupils down the teacher starts reading parts from the prologue of the book.]
59 Teacher: Dutch people don’t see the difference between an Antillean and a Surinamer, or between a Turk and a Moroccan. Turks are angry with Moroccans because they give them a bad name. [There is scattered laughing and giggles and pupils noticeably shift in their seats. Omar, Farid and Erdem sit up straight in their chair, full of anticipation of what is about to come.] Teacher [continuing to read from the book]: For the same reason Suriname negers are angry with Antilleans. Also, Antilleans wear too much gold, don’t speak Dutch and are stupid. City negers say that bosnegers are retarded inboorlingen. Israelis think that Dutch Jews are sissies. Dutch people from the Randstad know that Brabanders and Limburgers always lie. It’s not only Turks – all people they call allochtonen are angry with Moroccans because they give them a bad name. Moroccans are angry with everybody. [At this point the classroom is tumultuous. Omar, Farid and Erdem all look like they want to say something. The teacher can barely make herself heard through the noise.] Teacher: But my question to you is! My question is: do you think David is right? Omar: Yes. Farid: Yes. Erdem: Yes. Farid [laughing, sitting straight up, his eyes shining]: Especially about Moroccans, ha ha! Erdem: That piece about Moroccans, he’s completely right. Seriously, completely. Farid: Ha ha ha! [laughs loudly but also nervously with a tension in his voice] Teacher: Moroccans are angry with everyone. Erdem, you’re a Moroccan? [Her question sounds rhetorical] Erdem [jumps up from his chair, acts aggrieved, eyes wide open, slaps both hands against his chest]: Me?! [Omar, Rachid, Iskender, Farid and Erdem burst out laughing] Farid: Oi, oi, he’s a stinking Turk. Erdem: That’s an insult to me. That’s an insult. That’s an insult, Miss! Teacher: Okay. Sorry, sorry, okay guys. Farid [sitting straight up, proudly]: I am a Moroccan!
In my experience the pupils were well aware of the fact that it is satire. They were all laughing and the overall feeling was that they were joking and not necessarily considering those things to be true. Over the course of my research I heard Omar and Farid call themselves ‘kutmocros’ (‘fucking Moroccans’12), and other pupils also told me that they used this term to refer to themselves. Also, I observed Erdem call Farid a ‘kutmarokkaan’, while
12 The literal translation of ‘kut’ is ‘cunt’; ‘mocro’ is a short popular term/slur for ‘Moroccan’.
60 Farid called Erdem a ‘stinkturk’. The term ‘kutmarokkaan’ is used by Dutch people to invoke the stereotypical image of a Moroccan boy who causes trouble: the ‘Moroccan street terrorists’ as they are often called in the media and by anti-immigrant politicians. The slur ‘stinkturk’ (‘stinking Turk’) probably came to be used by Dutch people when Turkish labour migrants first moved to The Netherlands from the 1960s. The Dutch likely found their habits repulsive, such as the ritual slaughtering of animals (Kuipers 2000: 169). Their low socio- economic status was probably even more important in stereotyping the Turks as dirty since dirt is often associated with a lower class background (ibid). It seems that these pupils do what other members of stigmatised ‘groups’ have done with slurs aimed at shaming or discrediting them: they attempt to positively value the terms by using them jokingly and even proudly, and to mock themselves and their peers. Social stigma exists when people are believed to belong to a ‘group’ whose ‘members’ possess some negatively valued attribute or characteristic (Galinksy et al. 2003: 224). There are myriad ‘groups’ that are stigmatised: ethnic minorities, persons with physical or mental (dis)abilities, gays, obese people. To be stigmatised often means to be economically disadvantaged, to be the target of negative stereotypes, and to be rejected interpersonally (ibid: 226). A variety of responses and strategies can help in defending one’s self esteem from the sting of stigma (ibid). Through the creative use of categorizations and social comparisons, ‘groups’ can attempt to positively revalue attributes that are considered negative (ibid: 227- 228). This revaluing process, Galinksy et al. (2003) argue, is at the core of the re- appropriation of a stigmatising ‘group’ label. By taking a negatively evaluated label, and revaluing it positively, a group can change the value of the label and thus, the value of the ‘group’ (ibid: 228). Several pupils displayed a certain pride in identifying with Morocco or Turkey. Erdem always responded to subjects somehow connected to Turkey and displayed his identification with the country, for example by correcting his classmates’ pronunciation of Turkish names during a class reading of a book about the disappearance of a Turkish girl.13 When Farid held a presentation about his ‘favourite items’, he presented the website www.marokko.nl as his favourite book, accompanied by a smug smile. His peers received this with loud laughter as if it was meant to be provocative. So it seems that even simply identifying with Morocco could be a way to contest negative images. This did not seem to be the case for Erdem in identifying with Turkey, which can very well be due to the fact that ‘Turks’ in the Netherlands are now
13 De Turkenflat, a detective novel by Henk Apotheker (2001).
61 less stigmatised than ‘Moroccans’. After Erdem had loudly proclaimed that it was an insult that the teacher had ‘mistaken’ him for a ‘Moroccan’ the teacher asked him why he felt this way:
Teacher: Now everyone, listen to Erdem, why is it an insult? Erdem: They steal, Miss, and Turks don’t. They give us a bad name. [Omar, Farid and Iskender laugh loudly. There is a lot of noise. Many pupils are talking.] Teacher: Another question: do you think David can say these things? Several pupils: Yes! Iskender: Especially about Moroccans! Teacher: He says a lot of things about Turks as well. Iskender: No, that’s not allowed. Farid: Go on, go on, carry on! [Indicating that he would like the teacher to read from the book] Teacher: What does he say about Turkish pupils? Farid: They stink. Teacher [looking in the book]: Let’s see what he says. Turks are angry with Moroccans because they give them a bad name. Erdem: You see. [He leans back in his chair, jokingly gesturing that this was all he needed to hear] [Hubbub, laughter] Teacher: Is that true? Erdem: It’s true, Miss. [Farid mumbles something and fidgets, agitated.]
In 4H1 Erdem would joke about his ‘Moroccan’ peers wanting to steal something from his bag, theatrically hiding it or asking one of his classmates to keep it safe when he left the classroom to go to the bathroom. In 4H2 ‘Turkish’ boy Kemal repeatedly teased his ‘Moroccan’ friends by saying that he ‘also’ felt that ‘Moroccans should leave the country’. At the time of my research anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders was well known for making statement about how ‘Moroccans’ who engage in criminal behaviour should leave the country. Since these kinds of statements are not made about ‘Turks’ in the wider societal debates about how to deal with the ‘problems of multicultural society’, the ‘Moroccan’ pupils were often left empty-handed after such a remark. Erdem on the other hand often did not look all pleased after being called a ‘stinkturk’, since this was not considered an honorary nickname, while ‘kutmarokkaan’ apparently was in this context. In the Netherlands the word
62 ‘Moroccan’ has gained strong stigmatising connotations of deviance and criminality that invoke negative emotions and attitudes. By reclaiming names formerly soaked in derision, [these pupils] exerted their agency and proclaimed their rejection of the presumed moral order (ibid: 232). As Bruce A. Jacobs describes, the ‘defiant use of “nigga” [nigger] as self- reference by young black people in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s:
… captured, more than any other act, the desperate dilemma of black identity: self-hatred coupled with a stubborn resolve for self-determination. To proclaim oneself a nigger was to declare to the disapproving mainstream: ‘You can’t fire me. I quit.’ … To growl that one was a ‘nigger’ was a seductive gesture of self-caricature – and one that may have felt bitterly empowering. … it was also an assertive way of getting in the face of a society in which nervous suburbanites crossed the street to avoid them and locked their car doors against them (Jacobs 2011 [1999]: 152-153).
By loudly proclaiming ‘I am a Moroccan!’ Farid self-consciously invokes the stereotype of a ‘Moroccan’ boy who engages in deviant behaviour. By self-labelling he contests the negative image and increases a sense of agency and control, thereby increasing self-esteem. If the classroom discussion touched on criminality, several ‘Moroccan’ pupils tended to be very alert, shift in their seats, make comments on the subject and share meaningful looks. Farid did not explicitly say it, but each time the subject turned to criminality, such as the purpose of registering stolen bikes, he would give the feeling that he somehow knew more about it by behaving a bit suspiciously, loudly commenting on the subject and behaving as if ‘he knew best’. I learned that some teachers and other pupils suspected him engaging in criminal behaviour. Whether or not this was true, he did seem to wear this reputation as a badge of pride. I once overheard Omar, Rachid, Imad and Iskender talk about wild scooter rides that they had taken over the weekend. Also, other pupils told me that ‘Moroccan’ pupils never attended school parties because they had ‘business’ to attend to. Especially Farid had a tendency to be condescending about the more banal aspects of life in the Netherlands, for example when the whole class watched an episode of ‘De rijdende rechter’ (The Travelling Judge), in which two neighbours were fighting over 8.4m2 of land. Several pupils laughed about it, but Farid became agitated, as if he wanted others to know how ridiculous he thought it was that these people were fighting about something so insignificant, and that these ‘Dutch’ people were acting childishly and should ‘toughen up’. This performance might be connected to what Connell has termed ‘protest masculinity’. In her empirical study among young men in
63 Australia and New Zealand, Connell (1995) describes how the impoverished environment and a taste for risk among young, working-class urban men produces ‘protest masculinity’. This is defined in contrast to the hegemonic or dominant version of masculinity that is more highly valued in industrial society (McDowell 2002: 102). In the chapter Live Fast and Die Young Connell writes:
Among these young men there is a response to powerlessness, a claim to the gendered position of power, a pressured exaggeration (bashing gays, wild riding) of masculine conventions … Through interaction in this milieu, the growing boy puts together a tense, freaky façade, making a claim to power where there are no real resources for power (Connell 2006 [1995]: 111).
These pupils, and especially Farid, proudly act in terms of the stereotype, positively distinguishing themselves as tough and cunning ‘kutmocros’ and condemning the dominant ‘Dutch’ way of behaviour. As I wrote in Chapter Two I observed several of these pupils jokingly and theatrically showing affection by kissing and hugging each other. During a history lesson, when the teacher explained that ‘Dutch is a Germanic language’, Amin asked what kind of language ‘Moroccan’ is. When the teacher answered ‘Moroccan is an Arabic language’ Amin jumped up proudly, slammed his fist against his chest, and loudly said: ‘Yes, we are special!’ (‘Wij zijn apart’). To view their ‘group’ in a positive light, they try to positively differentiate their ‘group’ from the dominant ‘group’ in an attempt to enhance their distinctiveness. ‘This form of bolstering, called positive distinctiveness, can be maintained through exaggerated affection for the in-group or condemnations of out-groups’ (Galinsky et al. 2003: 224). There are thus several things at play here that seem to reinforce each other. These pupils, on the one hand, refuse to conform to the moral, classroom order and seem to perform some kind of ‘protest masculinity’ that increases a feeling of cohesion. Cohesiveness leads persons to focus on salient characteristics and use them to define the group (ibid: 239). In their attempt to renegotiate the negative value attributed to their ‘group’, they poke fun at the kinds of representations that circulate about ‘Moroccans’, and re-appropriate stigmatising labels, to view their ‘group membership’ in a positive light. For these pupils the classroom becomes a stage, an arena – with the authority of the teacher who in important ways represents the dominant, middle-class order – where they contest the way they are represented by
64 politicians, the media and society at large. In their attempts to be positively valued, which also means to be included, they perform difference.
‘Do you hear what you are saying?’ During an interview Farid told me about one time when, he and a friend asked an old lady directions to a supermarket, ‘just for fun’, to startle her a bit. Farid: ‘She looked really frightened and started saying “No, no, no, don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me” and moved away from us as if we were animals or something.’ Although the incident was meant to be funny the overall feeling Farid gave me was that he didn’t find the response of the lady funny at all. Once confronted with this woman’s fear of him, he experienced a feeling of injustice, of not being treated right. In the same interview Farid told me about a similar incident, a year previously at junior school, when one of the teachers passed him in the hallway:
The teacher told me: ‘I don’t like your kind’. I had a hood on and he just pulled my sleeve and said: ‘I don’t like your kind’. So I asked him: ‘Why?’ and he said: ‘You are a typical Moroccan, I would like you out of this school.’ So I’m thinking, what are you talking about? I’m just walking through the school. You do your thing and I do my thing. … Another time I walked a girl from my class home. Her father passed us with his car and he texted her. As she looked at her phone I also read what he had written and it said: ‘What are you doing with that kutmarokkaan, get away from him and come home’. So I’m thinking, what’s that supposed to mean? And in the media … its all Moroccans do this, Moroccans do that … they commit terrorist attacks. And just today in the library I had a discussion with a girl from my class, I’d rather not say her name, about a Tunisian girl who had stabbed someone, but she kept saying ‘Moroccan, that Moroccan girl’. So I told her: ‘She’s not Moroccan, she’s Tunisian.’ And then she said: It’s all the same, isn’t it?’ So I told her: ‘Do you hear what you’re saying?’
This account clearly shows that the meanings of labels are situational and contextually sensitive. In these contexts Farid does not have control over the use of the label and the only way to contest its negative connotations is to object to them by pointing to the prejudice people have towards ‘Moroccans’ and that this has a negative effect on the way people treat him. There is thus a big difference between being called a ‘kutmarokkaan’ – or even just a ‘Moroccan’ – by parents, teachers or strangers and being called a ‘kutmarokkaan’ by your peers, as became clear when I told Farid in response that I also heard him say ‘vieze stinkturk’ (‘dirty stinking Turk’) to Erdem. He was very quick to tell me:
65
Well, maybe you also hear Erdem say: ‘That kutmarokkaan’. He also says that, right? That’s just among us. Erdem and I are really good friends. It’s just a private joke. He is a stinkturk and I am a kutmarokkaan. I know he doesn’t mean it. It’s different if you don’t know each other. I’ve known Erdem a long time. We live in the same neighbourhood.’
So among themselves they claim that jokes and name-calling are symbols of affection and affiliation instead of antagonism or rejection (Roberts et al. 2008: 348).
‘He makes fun of everyone’ Towards the end of the discussion of the book by Robert Vuijsje the Dutch language teacher slowly started guiding the pupils to the message that she wanted to convey to the pupils:
Teacher: [In the book] he also says black men cheat on their women every day. Dutch men don’t cheat; they visit prostitutes. Farid: That’s true. Erdem: That’s true. [They both laugh.] Teacher: Is that funny? Who wants to say something about it? Do you think it’s a strange joke? Farid: They’re the facts. Teacher: Are those the facts? All men, so you say ‘all Dutch men’? Farid: Not all of them. Teacher [confirming]: Aha. Farid: He talks about everyone, but it’s just a small part, right? Omar: A small part. Farid: All Moroccans steal. Does your father steal, Omar? Omar: Sometimes… No. Farid: Sometimes! Ha ha! Teacher: Well, so does it make sense? … He makes fun of everybody.
Erdem and Farid were clearly joking, continuing to confirm the stereotypes the teacher was summing up. When they had determined that it’s not about ‘all of them’, it became remarkably quiet and there was a sense of ease, as if they had reached a point of consensus. The teacher went on to explain how the book was ‘taken literally’ by Surinamese women
66 from Amsterdam Zuidoost who were very angry about the way the author portrayed them in his book and accused him of discrimination.
Iskender: Why? Teacher: They said you paint a funny picture of us. Sjoerd: He doesn’t only make fun of Surinamers, he makes fun of everyone. Teacher: Exactly, he makes fun of everyone. Omar: That’s it. If you make fun of one person that’s bad, but if you make fun of everyone… Like South Park.
The teacher was visibly content with the fact that she had reached her goal. The pupils were ‘aware’ that the book is satire and that the writer makes fun of everyone, so nobody should feel discriminated. In their comparative research carried out in the late 1990s in four secondary schools in Berlin, London, Paris and Rotterdam, Schiffauer et al. (2004) argue that reaching this kind of consensus is a typically Dutch way of dealing with ethno-cultural differences. The researchers found that the Dutch view of a participatory democracy implies a particular way of dealing with differences: relations with immigrant ‘communities’ were defined by playing down differences through ongoing processes of negotiations in order to establish a common ground (Mannitz and Schiffauer 2004: 70). In other words, as long as one does not make an issue of differences but plays them low-key, one avoids the possibility that they become so important that they threaten the reaching of consensus (ibid). Among other things, this meant attempting to view immigrant cultures just like any other sub-cultures. In this case it meant viewing prejudices and stereotypes as something that all people share about each other. The teacher strives for neutrality, a common ground on which people perceive each other in equally distorted ways. She thereby equates all prejudice and stereotyping.
Teacher: Why do people from Amsterdam-Zuid, where the author comes from, why don’t they like what he writes about them? Thomas: They’re just kakkers (pompous bastards). Teacher: Kakkers? Several pupils: Yes. Mariska: Because he makes fun of them as well. Teacher: Because he makes fun of that group as well.
67 Farid: He makes fun of everyone. Teacher: Yes, because when you read that they throw these big champagne parties. They only drink champagne. They don’t even drink water from the tap; they only drink champagne. Teacher: I just want to say ladies and gentlemen, we all suffer from prejudice. This book is about prejudice and it’s very funny because of that.
While most of the stereotypes that were quoted from the book earlier were of an ethnic nature, the stereotype that is presented here is about the upper class from Amsterdam Zuid. The lesson of the teacher that ‘we all suffer from prejudice’ results in equating the stereotype of ‘a wealthy class that only drinks champagne’ with ‘Moroccans who steal’ and ‘Antilleans who don’t speak Dutch and are stupid’. She thereby disregards the existence of social inequities and power relations that allow dominant ‘groups’ to marginalise certain ethnic minorities through stereotyping and stigmatising language and labelling.
Conclusion Language is an ongoing process of negotiation, a power struggle over the connotative meanings of symbolic referents (Galinsky et al. 2003: 232). For these pupils the classroom became a stage, an arena, where they contested the way they are represented by politicians, the media and society at large, and attempted to renegotiate the negative value attributed to their ‘group’ by performing difference. In their attempts to view their ‘group’ in a positive light there were several things at play that seemed to reinforce each other. Several ‘Moroccan’ pupils appeared to engage in what Connell (1995) has termed ‘protest masculinity’, that is set against the dominant, middle-class order and increases feelings of cohesion. Cohesiveness leads them to focus on salient characteristics and use them to define the group (ibid: 239). The characteristics that are ascribed to them by society are, however, highly stigmatising and hurtful. They then rejected those damaging meanings by re-appropriating the stigmatising labels and acted in terms of the stereotype of a deviant and criminal ‘Moroccan’ boy. Isn’t it ironic: in their attempts to be positively valued, and thus also to be included in society, they performed difference, but the difference that they performed is negatively valued by society. In discussing a book that is largely a satire on multicultural society the teacher strived for consensus in her classroom, in this case a common ground on which people perceive each other in equally distorted ways, but by equating all prejudice and stereotyping she disregarded
68 the existence of social inequities and power relations that enable dominant ‘groups’ to marginalise ethnic minorities through stereotyping, stigmatising language and labelling. In this instance the pupils accepted the teacher’s explanation that everyone suffers from prejudices as a satisfactory conclusion to the discussion. However, as we will see in the next chapter, there was a topic where arguing inclusively had become almost impossible: anti- immigrant politician Geert Wilders.
69
CHAPTER FIVE Playing down differences in new realist times
‘We’re going to make the Netherlands more Dutch’ (‘We gaan Nederland Nederlandser maken’), proclaimed Dutch politician Geert Wilders in a public statement on 29 September 2010. It was right after the negotiations that would lead to the first Dutch minority government with the support in Parliament, the so-called ‘tolerance support’ (gedoogsteun), from Wilders’ one-man14 political party, the Party of Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV). Coming from Wilders, who is well known for his unvarnished anti-Islam and anti-immigrant rhetoric, the sentence may have seemed provocative, but it actually summarises the core of Dutch integration policies since the late 1990s, when a one-sided integration into a pre- defined national/cultural whole on the part of allochtonen was increasingly framed as a necessity for maintaining social cohesion. As I set out in my introduction, in the years following 9/11 and the murder of anti-Islam politician Pim Fortuyn, multiculturalism was framed as a politically disastrous ideology, cultural differences were associated with Islamic terrorism, and the existence of daily discrimination and exclusion was no longer cast as unjust and anti-social. This paved the way for Geert Wilders who continuously framed Islam, Muslims and ‘Moroccans’ as unequal, less civilised and dangerous. Under the flag of ‘freedom of speech’ it had become acceptable to say basically anything in the public and political debate, with Geert Wilders as the frontrunner
14 It is not possible to become a member of the PVV. Geert Wilders is the sole member of his party.
70 of exercising this ‘right’. On numerous occasions, Wilders made comparisons between Islam and Nazism and fascism, and stated, among other things, that he wanted to close the borders to Muslims, tear down Islamic schools and remove ‘problem-causing Muslims from the country, with family and all’ (HP/De Tijd, 12 December 2007). Attempts to prosecute Wilders under Dutch anti-hate speech laws in June 2008 failed. The public prosecutor’s office stated that Wilders’ comments contributed to the debate on Islam in Dutch society and that they had been made outside parliament. The office released a statement saying: ‘The fact that comments are hurtful and offensive to a large number of Muslims does not mean that they are punishable. Freedom of expression fulfils an essential role in public debates in a democratic society, which means that offensive comments can be made in a political debate’ (NRC Handelsblad, 30 June 2008). In January 2009 the Amsterdam court decided that the attorney general had to prosecute Geert Wilders for ‘inciting hatred and discrimination’, countering all the reasons the prosecutor’s office had given not to indict him. The lawsuit against Wilders began on 4 October 2010, concurrent with my research for this thesis. In the national elections a few months previously, Wilders’ party’s seats in parliament had risen from nine to 24. In his election campaign Wilders had found a way to connect two agendas: the economic crisis and integration problems. He asked the Nyfer economic research institute to determine how much the immigration of non-Western allochtonen costs Dutch society. The answer, 7,2 billion euros a year, once again garnered him massive media attention. In 4H1 the topic of Geert Wilders created heated discussions. In this chapter I will show how teachers dealt with these discussions and framed the subject, and how pupils contested these practices and framings.
‘That’s discrimination, isn’t it?’ Throughout my research Geert Wilders was a topic several ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish’ pupils regularly brought up, for example, when asked what the pupils thought people in the Netherlands worry about. On several occasions teachers avoided the topic by raising another subject, or by stating that it had already been discussed enough for the time being. Other pupils often sighed, as if they had grown tired of the subject. Especially the social sciences student-teacher tended to avoid discussing Geert Wilders. During a conversation she told me that she felt pupils were ‘too emotional’ about it and were unable to ‘think rationally and relate it to the curriculum’. However, during two lessons that I observed, one social studies and one history lesson, the teacher chose to give the subject ample treatment.
71 During the social studies lesson, the subject being the constitutional state, the teacher showed a video extract from an interview with Geert Wilders. At that time the parties VVD (liberals) and CDA (Christian democrats) were still in the process of forming a minority cabinet with ‘tolerance-support’ from the PVV. The second largest party after the VVD, the social-democratic PvdA, led by former Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen, did not participate in the coalition. The moment the teacher projected Wilders’ image on the screen, animated conversations sprang up between pupils and the classroom seemed to be buzzing.
Teacher: Wilders, there he is again, our friend [‘friend’ here is meant to be ironic; the teacher was well aware that several pupils were ‘against’ Wilders] Iskender [loud and laughing]: Our big friend! Teacher: We’ve talked about him before, especially because he is very topical at the moment. [Several pupils are still talking; the teacher hushes them to silence] Teacher: At this moment he is busy with, er, forming a government with his gedoogsteun. I have a small video that was shot during the campaign. Cohen had just said some things about Wilders. Wilders was not amused, as you will see. Omar: Cohen is the boss! Teacher: We’ll go through the questions afterwards.
4H1’s social studies teacher was also 4H2’s social sciences teacher. As I wrote in Chapter Three (see page 50) he maintained a firm grip by being very consistent and continuously asking the pupils for attention and not to disrupt classroom order. Apparently they had also discussed Wilders during the first lesson of the new school year when I was not present because the teacher had asked me to wait with my observations until the second lesson. It was probably a slip of the tongue but the fact that he said: ‘he is busy with’ is exemplary of the excessive attention that this politician has received in the media. Also, many people felt that because in this arrangement Wilders could exert influence over government policy but could not be held responsible for it, he was given too much power. The video showed Wilders in a news item for a national broadcaster. He was asked about an interview in sensationalistic newspaper De Telegraaf wherein he expressed his dissatisfaction with Job Cohen’s statements. In the video Wilders attacks Cohen for ‘stating that he personally, and not the PVV, is a danger to society and the constitutional state’.
72 Wilders [video]: We have learned from the past that people can get dangerous ideas when they hear something like that, and I blame him for that. [Farid: Oh, boo hoo! Teacher: Ladies and gentlemen, no comments please] For me it’s not Job Cohen but the PvdA that is a danger to the constitutional state. Mr Cohen has said that he understands Muslims who discriminate their wives. Criminals only need to be dispossessed of their sneakers. They are in favour of squatting. I could go on and on … You never know when a lunatic thinks of doing something terrible. You have to be careful. You can attack the PVV. You can attack our ideas. Again, the PvdA itself is a party with a general pardon [for asylum seekers]. They allow discrimination of Muslim women by Muslim men. I was with Ruud de Wild this morning and we all know what happened there in the past. Teacher [pauses the video]: Okay, he has said the same thing three or four times. Omar and Farid: Yeah! Several pupils start talking to each other, the teacher hushes them to silence. Teacher: Think about it quietly and write down your answers. We’ll discuss them in a few minutes.
The questions they were asked to answer were: What incident at Ruud De Wild (a Dutch music radio-show) is Wilders referring to? What does Wilders blame Cohen for? Why do you think Cohen has called Wilders a ‘danger to the constitutional state’? Why does Wilders think the PvdA poses a threat? Do you think Cohen went too far? After a few minutes Farid is asked to answer the first question:
Farid: What does Wilders accuse Cohen of doing? That he calls him a danger to society. That he doesn’t criticize the group but Wilders himself. Teacher: Yes, he blames him for not addressing the PVV but Wilders himself. Not everyone seems to know the next one, yes, Wouter. Wouter: Pim Fortuyn was shot on the parking lot. Teacher: Exactly, very good, on the parking lot right after an interview on Radio 3 where Ruud de Wild was a presenter. Er, Pim Fortuyn was shot in 2001. Ruud de Wild was a witness. He saw it happen. The murderer, Volkert van der Graaf, was an animal right activist, so the murder had nothing to do with multicultural society, Muslims, Muslim terrorism or something else. Someone who was an animal right activist thought Fortuyn had to die. He thought that the fact that he was alive was a bad thing, and he took a gun and shot him.
It is striking that the teacher stressed that the murder ‘had nothing to do with multicultural society, Muslims, Muslim terrorism or something else’. As I wrote in the introduction, Fortuyn was famous for his pronouncements that the Netherlands was a ‘full country’, Islam a
73 ‘backward culture’, and that it would be better to ‘abolish that weird article of the constitution: thou shall not discriminate’. Fortuyn’s murder incited heated discussions on the unfeasibility of ‘multiculturalism’. His murderer, Volkert van der Graaf, an environmental and animal rights activist, declared in a statement that he killed Fortuyn because he considered him ‘a growing danger to vulnerable groups in society due to his stigmatising political ideas, the polarising way he expressed his views, and the great political power he was about to acquire15’. After his death there was a general relief that his murderer had not been a Muslim, ‘Moroccan’ or ‘Turk’, as that would have inflamed the ethnic tensions already sparked by Fortuyn’s campaign (Martineau 2006: 253), but stating that Fortuyn’s murder had nothing to do with multiculturalism is far from the truth and does not clarify anything for the pupils. Why does Geert Wilders bring up Fortuyn’s murder? What is their connection? Both politicians were anti-Islamic, both proposed abolishing the anti-discrimination law, Article 1 of the constitution, the text of which was reproduced on a poster in the classroom: ‘All persons in the Netherlands shall be treated equally in all circumstances. Discrimination on the grounds of religion, belief, political opinion, race or sex or any other grounds whatsoever shall not be permitted.’ As the teacher moved on to the next question both Farid and Omar became increasingly agitated.
Teacher: Why do you think Cohen considers Geert Wilders a danger to society? Omar: Inciting hatred. Farid: Because he incites hatred in society. Teacher: Inciting hatred, yes, what else? [His tone indicates it is not the answer he is looking for] Farid: Discriminating. Teacher: Discriminating, yes. [His tone again suggests it is not the answer he is looking for] Thomas: Setting groups of people up against each other. Farid: Inciting hatred. Teacher: Yes, and more importantly, not only setting people up against each other but something that is precisely what the constitutional state… [doesn’t finish his sentence] Wouter: Setting up society against the state. Teacher: Well, I’m not sure exactly what Wilders is referring to, but I suspect that Cohen accuses Wilders of making a distinction between one group and another. And this is, of course, forbidden by Article 1.
15 Openbaar Ministerie, Verklaring Volkert van der G., 23 November 2002: http://www.om.nl/organisatie/landelijke/parket-generaal/nieuwsberichten/@124435/verklaring_volkert/
74 Omar: That’s discrimination, isn’t it? He [pointing at the teacher] is making it really difficult. Noortje: Yeah. Omar: That’s discrimination, isn’t it? Farid laughs insulted: Just now you said discriminating and now you’re saying… [mumbling and not finishing his sentence] Teacher: Discrimination. Yes.
When the teacher finally confirmed that discrimination was the correct answer, he did so reluctantly and his tone seemed derogatory. Why was the teacher so reluctant to call it discrimination? I argue that this is connected to two discursive ways of dealing with issues connected to multicultural society and integration in the Netherlands: playing down cultural differences to avoid conflict (Schiffauer et al. 2004), and the ‘new-realist’ approach wherein ‘political incorrectness’, i.e., anti-immigrant/Muslim rhetoric, is considered acceptable (Prins 2002).
Playing down differences in new realist times On 5 October 2010 I observed a history lesson of 4H1. It was the day after the lawsuit against Geert Wilders began and the same day that the members of the Christian-democratic CDA were going to vote for or against the new, PVV-supported minority government. The teacher started the discussion about the new government by asking if pupils could ‘name something good from the coalition agreement, from the plans of this new cabinet?’ Farid, who has been sitting straight up in his chair paying close attention to the teacher, loudly answered ‘No!’ The teacher ignored him and asked another pupil for an answer. Most of the time Farid was very engaged in the lesson, especially during social studies and history. He usually sat in the front beside his girlfriend Rachida and close to his peers: Omar, Iskender, Rachid and Erdem, who was exempted from the social sciences class16. Farid, who mostly sat straight up in his chair, often responded to what was being taught without raising his hand. Whenever he spoke he filled the room with his deep, loud voice, focusing attention on himself. 4H1’s social studies teacher frequently engaged with Farid, facing him directly when responding to his comments, and often asking him to answer questions. 4H1’s history teacher usually asked him to raise his
16 In the Netherlands Social Studies is a mandatory course that is given in the fourth grade of the HAVO. Once pupils have passed the course, those who do not pass their exams and have to repeat the fourth grade do not need to take it again. This is why Fevzi and a few others were not present during these hours.
75 hand first and often told him to ‘take it easy’. This teacher held a very firm grip by immediately scolding pupils who disrupted the lesson, forbidding them from speaking unless they raised their hand, and repeatedly pointing out that ‘taking part in the lesson and doing homework was their own responsibility’. If they refused to participate, they could only blame themselves for the consequences. This combined with a talent for witty punch lines and storytelling enabled him to keep the pupils engaged during most of his lessons. After briefly discussing ‘good things from the coalition agreement’, the teacher moved on to the next question:
Teacher: And who can mention things they think are negative? Let me see your hands. [Teacher points to Erdem] Erdem: Geert Wilders. Girl: I knew it. [Several pupils sigh] Erdem: With his ideas about Islam. Farid: Plans, his plans! Erdem: Against Islamification right? He wants to make laws or something. Farid [laughs loudly]: ‘Turks don’t have anything to say in this country, ha ha. Teacher: I don’t think you can phrase it like that. You know there are probably a lot of Turkish entrepreneurs (ondernemers) who say that they are in favour of this cabinet. This is going to be a cabinet for entrepreneurs, for rich people. There are a lot of Turks and Moroccans who say: of course we are against Wilders but we’re happy with the policy that’s coming our way. So in that sense it doesn’t have anything to do with origin (afkomst). Yes, Eefje [she has had her hand raising for quite a while]. Eefje: Well, what Erdem says about, er, Wilders. He says all Muslims are bad. He wants to treat them all as one group. Teacher: Yes, well at the moment there is also a lawsuit against Wilders.
When Farid made an ethnic joke, something he and other ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish’ pupils regularly did among each other as I set out in Chapter Four, the teacher treated it as a serious argument and countered it by trying to argue inclusively: there are also ‘Turks’ and ‘Moroccans’ who do not reject the coalition agreement and are ‘happy’ with it. According to him this indicates that ‘it’ has ‘nothing to do with origin’. What he meant by ‘it’ is not entirely clear, but like the social sciences teacher, who stated that Pim Fortuyn’s murder ‘had
76 nothing to do with multicultural society’, he seemed eager to exclude arguments of an ethnic nature from the discussion. When Eefje, in her own words, pointed out that Wilders statements stigmatise Muslims, the teacher did not enter into a discussion with her, but immediately referred to the lawsuit. As I mentioned earlier, a Dutch way of dealing with issues surrounding ethno-cultural differences is to downplay them through ongoing processes of negotiations in order to establish common ground (Mannitz and Schiffauer 2004: 70). In their comparative research carried out in the late 1990s in four secondary schools in Berlin, London, Paris and Rotterdam, Schiffauer et al. (2004) found that the school in Rotterdam was very keen on breaking down any ethnic patterning and following a low-key approach to everything connected to ethnic and religious diversity. This attitude was in line with Dutch civic culture at that time, which opted for an inclusive moral community and was characterised by consensus seeking and conflict-avoidance (Sunier 2004b: 155). In the classroom it was considered the task of the teacher to prevent pupils from uttering provocative statements that emphasised rather than relativised cultural boundaries (Sunier 2004a: 228). The pupils were praised for reaching a consensus that ‘we should be careful not to be too rigid in opposing cultures’. The message was that cultural differences should be relativised in order to reach a sufficient level of communication, most preferably by arguing inclusively. Teachers adopted an active role in ensuring an implicit consensus was arrived at by looking for commonalities (ibid: 227-228). A pupil who reflected on the differences she felt when visiting Turkey, said that ‘I see how much I have changed here, how much I have become Dutchified ... I am Dutchified. I have overcome the cultural differences’ (ibid: 227). In those days the dominant view on the ‘problems’ of multicultural society was that they could be solved by ‘integration’ on the part of allochtonen, meaning that they should follow an integration course in which, besides Dutch language, they would learn about Dutch culture and history, and, at least partly, ‘become Dutch’. However, the demand that ethnic minorities, most notably Muslims, ‘integrate’ by pointing to the unbridgeable differences between Western and Islamic civilizations only expanded the gap between the ‘Dutch’ and Muslims and the ‘groups’ associated with this religion (Martineau 2006: 266). As Wilders came to dominate the debate, the question was no longer what integration is and how it should be achieved, but if it was at all possible for Muslims to become part of the Dutch civil community (Uitermark 2010: 287). In this climate it became nearby impossible for politicians
77 in the Netherlands to opt for a more inclusive approach in debates on integration and multiculturalism. As I wrote in the Introduction, in 2007, Minister of Integration and Housing, Ella Vogelaar, was severely criticised for speaking about the Netherlands becoming a country of ‘Jewish-Christian-Islamic traditions’ (see page 14-15). Eventually, in November 2008, after several other controversies surrounding her actions and decisions focusing especially on the effectiveness of her approach to integration, her own party the social-democratic PvdA withdrew its confidence in her as a Minister (Van Reekum and Duyvendak 2012: 459). For years the party – that had been challenged from all sides of the political spectrum on the issue of integration and had become almost synonymous with failed policies on the matter – was fiercely divided internally on how to position itself within the new emerging discourses (ibid: 458). After it had regained its position in a governing coalition, the PvdA released a white paper in 2009 outlining the party’s views on integration, wherein it explicitly accepted blame for not having recognised the serious problems associated with multicultural society (ibid: 459). It explicitly stated that an end should be brought to circumventing the problems created by ‘culturally deviant migrants and their children’, notably ‘Moroccan-Dutch and Antillean- Dutch rascals (rotjochies)’ (ibid: 460). The white paper was based on the notion that, in the past, politicians concealed the negative effects of immigration (ibid). In it, the rule of law and the constitution were now presented as the common ground on which confrontations about cultural differences and undesirable behaviour should take place (ibid). Only through the constitutional protection of individual freedoms, the PvdA argued, can people attain full citizenship, and these freedoms should provide the ground rules for public order and constitute the national self-image. The PvdA stated that it wanted, among other things, a nation where ‘everyone may say what he or she wants within the bounds of law’ (ibid). The response of the teacher, then, resonates with the dilemma facing Dutch society: the Dutch are no longer able to rely on the sensitivity and responsibility of individuals and institutions to refrain from what is unacceptable speech, and when these qualities are missing, to rely on public debate and censure to provide standards and restraints (Modood 2006: 4). To reach a consensus the law is framed as an objective common ground that equally protects all people’s freedoms and that will provide the constraints to freedom of expression. By immediately referring to the lawsuit the teacher subverts Eefje’s argument that Wilders stigmatises Muslims. This does not mean that the teacher agreed with letting the law decide in
78 Wilders’ case. On the contrary, he told the pupils that he thought that ‘they should never have started the lawsuit because it is going to be very difficult to convict the man’.
Farid: ‘But they should talk about it! They should open the lawsuit! Otherwise there will never be an end to it and he will become ever more loud-mouthed (dan krijgt hij een steeds grotere mond). Teacher: Take it easy, maybe we should think about this for a moment. Perhaps that’s a discussion that shouldn’t take place in a courtroom. Farid: Then where?! Teacher: In the political arena. You know why? Because to prove where you can draw a line between freedom of speech and racism or inciting hatred is very difficult. And legally it’s very difficult to prove. I’m not a Wilders fan, but also not a hater or something, but it’s just objective you know, for me to think that maybe it’s not a good idea to pursue this case even though it’s understandable. Omar: It’s only possible there, in a court, because he doesn’t want to enter into debates. They’ve invited him many times but he refuses, so it’s the only way.
The teacher appropriated the discussion by asking a new question, and left the answers to his first question – what pupils thought were negative ‘things’ from the coalition agreement – undiscussed. He then quickly answered his own question by stating his opinion: the things Wilders can or cannot say should be sorted out in parliament. He did not, however, enter into a discussion about whether what Wilders says is acceptable or not. The teacher tried to keep things ‘neutral’ by saying he is not a Wilders fan, but also not a hater’ and that his opinion is ‘just objective’. Farid did not accept this as a satisfactory answer.
Farid: I don’t understand. What isn’t clear about what Wilders is doing? I think he incites hatred and discriminates. Teacher: You know, there is a difference, a difference, pay attention, between what is morally wrong and what can be proven legally. Because the point is, and this is the last remark and then we’re moving on to something else… The moment Wilders is convicted for his statements and is prosecuted and punished, many people will feel that is justice at last. But, there is a but… The next time someone exercises his right to say something that is also a little serious, then they will say: but in that case Wilders was also convicted. So then we may not be allowed to say a lot of things anymore. You need to make a distinction between having the right to an opinion, and where we draw the line for offensive speech. And that’s an area of tension. Those people didn’t study to be judges for nothing. If they knew the answer already all this wouldn’t be necessary.
79 The teacher downplayed Wilders’ statements for which he was prosecuted by referring to them as ‘a little serious’. The common ground that the teacher was aiming to create here seems to be an unresolved issue, an ongoing search for possible ways to view the situation, without the intention of arriving at any particular conclusion because any outcome is a potential source of conflict. He preferred to play things down to prevent conflicts emerging from hardened positions and profound contrasts (Mannitz 2004: 269). In the words of the social sciences teacher when we talked about the Geert Wilders discussion in his classroom: ‘I don’t look for sharp contrasts in discussions. I don’t strongly distinguish between the different opinions pupils have. I avoid that.’ When I spoke to the social sciences teacher after the lesson he told me that:
In this school the anti-Wilders people [referring to pupils] seem to have the upper hand, at least they make the most noise. Normally Wilders is the big Satan for every Islamic pupil in the class, but I have to be careful because I’m sure there are also pupils who have sympathy for Wilders, or whose parents vote for Wilders. I don’t want them to feel that the school disapproves of their choice and that they’re not welcome here. I don’t want to embarrass them. So I’m very careful not to conclude that Wilders is the bad guy and that what he says is ridiculous and leave it at that. … There may also be pupils who think that people who are guests here and who break the law should leave the country. But they think twice before saying that because boys like Farid and Omar just love to shout them down. … Farid, and Omar, but especially Farid tends to shout just about everything he thinks. He can yell very loudly and holds very strong opinions, which prevents others from joining in or being heard, but this is social studies and not a cafe where you can just yell something.
At the time that I observed these discussions the PVV had become a political party to be reckoned with, based on the number of seats in parliament the party had won, and a many of Wilders’ stigmatising ideas had already become acceptable in the Netherlands. In the, now dominant, discourse of new realism it is acceptable to voice one’s discontent with the presence of certain ethnic ‘groups’ and frame them as maladjusted, inherently different from the ‘dominant culture’, and potentially dangerous. Cultural differences are no longer played down in the public and the political realm, and civil society no longer favours the Dutch ‘harmony model’ of conflict-avoidance when it comes to assumed ethnic and cultural differences. They are no longer treated as something to overcome but considered insurmountable. It seems that in this teacher’s view, confirming that Wilders discriminates is
80 a potential source of conflict because it means excluding pupils whose parents vote for Wilders or may themselves sympathise with his ideas. Pupils are entitled to either agree or disagree with Wilders, and as a teacher he feels he can neither accept nor reject Wilders’ ideas because both options would mean rejecting several of his pupils. He feels that pupils who sympathise with Wilders need to be protected from ‘boys like Farid and Omar who just love to shout them down’. He wants to ‘avoid sharp contrasts in discussions’ by not calling it discrimination and by trying to formulate it in a more ‘neutral’ but somewhat evasive way: ‘I suspect that Cohen accuses Wilders of making a distinction between one group and another, and that this is of course forbidden by Article 1’. The teacher thus seemed to try to play things low-key. Like the history teacher, this teacher never referred to the pupils on the basis of their ethnicity. They called them by name, and did not refer to them as ‘Moroccan’ or ‘Turkish’ like several other teachers, which also attests to their tendency to play down ethno-cultural differences.
Contesting exclusive citizenship When the social sciences teacher started discussing the last question about the video that the pupils had watched, it became increasingly clear that Omar and Farid did not agree with the teacher’s attempts to keep things ‘neutral’.
Teacher: Finally, the last one. Who thinks… regardless of whether you think Wilders is a nice man, or you would vote for him if you were eighteen… Who thinks Cohen went too far? [Both Farid and Omar laugh loudly and a bit nervously] Farid: Far from it! He was much too gentle! Omar: Geert Wilders can say anything but Cohen? No! Farid: Hasn’t Geert Wilders also said that when Moroccans play football against the Dutch the police should be able to fire bullets at their legs when they walk across the pitch? Multiple students: What?! Huh?! [expressing disbelief and dismay] Farid: Isn’t that bad enough?!
Here Farid referred to an incident in 2007 when riots broke out during a football match between the junior Dutch and Moroccan teams in the city of Tilburg. Wilders responded to the incident by stating that the police should be able to use live ammunition when serious riots break out, and that they should preferably aim for the rioters’ legs (Nu.nl, 29 May 2007).
81 The teacher did not ask Farid to explain what he was referring to but kept on trying to keep things ‘neutral’.
Teacher: It’s not about whether it’s bad [Omar tries to say something], wait a minute. It’s not about how bad what he says is, or how much people, er, feel discriminated by Wilders or Cohen. It’s about this: do you think Cohen went too far [Farid yells ‘No!’] by stating that Wilders himself is a danger to society. Omar: No, definitely not. Several other pupils: No. Farid: No. Teacher: Or is Cohen allowed to say that? Farid [loud and angry]: He was far too polite in my opinion! Rachida: I think he’s allowed to say that because Wilders also says a lot of things about, for example, Moroccans and so on, but when Cohen addresses him personally he feels offended. Well, then how are we supposed to feel? Teacher: Okay, so you’re saying: it’s your own fault (eigen schuld, dikke bult). If you do that, others should be able to do it too. Wouter: But that’s a bit childish. Its not like ‘he’s saying this so I can say that; if he hits me I can hit back’. Teacher: Yes, okay, I’ll have you write down your homework. Omar [to Farid and Rachida]: He [referring to the teacher] doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he’s just saying stuff.
The teacher discouraged Omar, Farid and Rachida from morally objecting to Wilders’ statements. It is not about whether what Geert Wilders says is ‘bad’, or whether people ‘feel’ discriminated – again the teacher hesitated before using the word – it is about whether Cohen is ‘allowed’ to state that Wilders, the person, is a danger to the constitutional state. It seems that he tried to establish a more curricular perspective on the discussion, the subject of that term’s curriculum being law and the constitutional state, but he did not clarify anything for the pupils – why shouldn’t Cohen be allowed to say that? – and leaves the discussion largely unresolved. Like the history teacher, the common ground this teacher aimed to create seems to be an ongoing process of negotiation, the outcome being an unresolved discussion: we all agree to disagree. It was one of the few times I heard Rachida voice her opinion. The 16-year old girl who wore a dark coloured hijab mostly sat quietly next to her boyfriend Farid. She hardly ever
82 laughed and sat in a stately posture with her back straight against the back of the chair and her head in an upward position facing the teacher. During a conversation some time later I learned that she and Farid were both quite serious about being Muslim and abided by the tenets of Islam, telling to me that ‘You have to be a good person, good to society and good to your fellow man’. They explained to me, taking turns and finishing each other’s sentences, that:
… there are different kinds of Muslims and that there is a small group who make us look bad, who carry out bomb attacks and say that they had to it because Allah told them, like Mohammed B, the killer of Theo van Gogh. But only God can determine who lives and dies. In the Quran it says that you’re not allowed to kill anyone. So if you decide to kill someone you’re playing God and you’re not God. You shouldn’t take the Quran too literally, and if you don’t understand something you ask your Imam to explain it to you.
Farid and Rachida argued against the stigma that is attached to Muslims and Islam. As I have explained throughout this thesis, several ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish’ pupils were well aware and critical of the way Muslims, ‘Moroccans’ and ‘Turks’ are framed with negative, demeaning, and reductive images that saturate the media and political dialogue. In the classroom they rejected the teacher’s attempts to keep things ‘neutral’ and contested the ways they are excluded by society, especially Geert Wilders. In discussions they continuously pointed to inequities and unfairness, and to the injustices of living in a society that discriminates against them. In the words of Rachida and Farid:
Rachida: I’ve got the feeling that the same thing is happening to Muslims that happened to black people in the past, because they were also separated and didn’t have a say. It’s like a racial distinction (rassenscheiding). Farid: Yes, like saying: ‘No, this one doesn’t belong here, this is a different boy’ because of how he looks.
Conclusion In the now dominant discourse of new realism it is acceptable to voice ones discontent with the presence of certain ethnic ‘groups’ and frame them as maladjusted, inherently different from the ‘dominant culture’, and potentially dangerous. Cultural differences are no longer played down in the public and the political realm, and civil society no longer favours the Dutch ‘harmony model’ of conflict-avoidance when it comes to assumed ethnic and cultural
83 differences. At the time of my research the party of Dutch anti-immigrant politician, Geert Wilders, had become part of the political establishment. In classroom discussions about Wilders, 4H1’s history and social sciences teachers were motivated by consensus seeking and conflict-avoidance. In the view of these teachers, pupils were entitled to either agree or disagree with Wilders, and they could neither accept nor reject Wilders’ ideas because both options were a potential source of conflict in the classroom. To fix this dilemma they then attempted to keep things ‘neutral’ by playing down, avoiding and subverting issues concerning ethno-cultural difference, discrimination and stigma, and by leaving discussions largely unresolved. Several pupils rejected the teacher’s attempts to keep things ‘neutral’ and continuously pointed to inequities and unfairness, and to the injustice of living in a society that discriminates against them, hereby contesting their exclusion from society. I argue that by excluding this critical ‘content’ from the discussions, these teachers were engaged in ‘silencing’ – ‘the process by which contradictory evidence, ideologies, and experiences find themselves buried, camouflaged and discredited’ (Fine 1987: 157) – and obscured the social, economic, and therefore experiential conditions of pupils’ daily lives (ibid).
84
Conclusion
In this thesis I have shown how the classroom of an ‘ethnically mixed’ nation-state school (among many other things) is a social space and arena where pupils and teachers engage in discussions that resonate with current and former public and political debates on Dutch immigrant integration and multiculturalism. The classroom has proven to be a setting where the rules of the formal public sphere of political debate enter into dialogue with the ‘people on the ground’, who often have competing, and frequently contradictory, perceptions of the world around them (Keith 2005b: 256). Schools, and more importantly teachers, are expected to carry out the twofold task of, on the one hand, reproducing national structures and routines and, on the other, managing cultural differences and socio-cultural inequalities on a day-to- day basis (Baumann 2004: 1). This task has become increasingly difficult in these new realist times in which it is acceptable to voice one’s discontent with the presence of certain ethnic ‘groups’ and frame them as maladjusted, inherently different from the ‘dominant culture’, and potentially dangerous (Van den Berg and Schinkel 2009: 398). As I have shown, teachers – resonating with integration discourses informed by cultural essentialism – constructed difference by discursively creating an ‘ethnic’ group based on behaviour and physical markers. Teachers attributed aberrant behaviour of particular pupils to ‘otherness’ – to acting ‘Moroccan’. Their disruptive behaviour was thus racialised in the sense that it was explained primarily in terms of ethnic and racial categories of social perception (Poynting et al. 2004: 14). In the Netherlands ‘Dutchness’ has become a neutral category and is thus seen as unproblematic, while all that is ethnic, and more specifically ‘Moroccan’, has come to be seen as inherently problematic (Schinkel 2010: 273-274). This kind of framing
85 works to the disadvantage of certain pupils because their behaviour is interpreted via oppositions of us and them, good and bad, right and wrong, which are then understood in racialised terms (ibid). Pupils were expected to conform to dominant cultural notions of appropriate manners and civil conduct, which was also signalled by their language use. Teachers and staff framed the use of ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ by pupils as provocative and a sign of bad intentions, which resonated with the ways in which cultural diversity and multilingualism have come to be seen as threats to social cohesion in the Netherlands (Extra and Yagmur 2006: 55). As in Dutch society, the use of ‘Moroccan’ or ‘street language’ in school and in the classroom evokes images of negative behaviour, such as that of groups of ‘Moroccan’ boys who ‘terrorise’ the street and make people feel unsafe. ‘Moroccan’ and ‘street language’ have thus both become markers of deviant and dangerous group behaviour. In the classroom several ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish’ pupils attempted to renegotiate the negative value attributed to their ‘group’ through the rejection of damaging meanings by re- appropriating the stigmatising labels and acting in terms of the stereotype of a deviant and criminal ‘Moroccan’ boy. So in their attempts to be positively valued and thus also to be included in society they performed difference, but ironically the difference that they performed is negatively valued by society. Anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders was a topic that several ‘Moroccan’ and ‘Turkish’ pupils regularly brought up and that ignited heated discussions in the classroom. For several pupils he seemed to have become a subject through which they could contest their exclusion from society. For these pupils the classroom became a stage, an arena – with the authority of the teacher who in important ways represents the dominant, middle-class order – where they contested the way they are represented by politicians, the media and society. Teachers on the other hand, in discussing these issues, tried to avoid conflicts and keep things ‘neutral’. I have argued that this is connected to two discursive ways of dealing with issues linked to multicultural society and integration in the Netherlands: downplaying cultural differences to avoid conflict (Schiffauer et al. 2004), and the ‘new-realist’ approach in which voicing anti-immigrant/Muslim rhetoric is considered acceptable (Prins 2002). To address the dilemma brought about by engaging in both these discourses teachers played down, avoided or subverted issues concerning ethno-cultural difference, discrimination and stigma. By expelling critical ‘talk’ from the discussions, I argue, these teachers engaged in ‘silencing’ – or ‘the process by which contradictory evidence, ideologies, and experiences find themselves
86 buried, camouflaged and discredited’ (Fine 1987: 157) – and obscured the experiential conditions of pupils’ daily lives (ibid). Clearly, the current social climate has made it very difficult for teachers to dismantle the distorted and damaging frameworks that operate explicitly and implicitly in classrooms, but it is still their task to help students develop a rich, nuanced understanding of the world in which they live. This cannot be brought about when pupils’ social and linguistic experience, and therefore their reality, are seen to be bad behaviour and are invalidated in the school environment. By negating pupils’ earlier socialisations and expecting them to adapt to an imposed ‘standard’ that represents a reality that contradicts their lived experience, one runs the risk that pupils come to view both ‘realities’ as two opposing worlds, resulting in frustration and alienation (Walsh 1991: 68). It is important for schools, and more importantly teachers, to critically examine the deeply rooted meanings of concepts that stem from social and political debates on integration and multiculturalism and that have become part of the way that they perceive and live their lives. Teachers should be prepared and willing to follow pupils’ leads by listening, using their terminology, building on their ideas, and trying to understand their statements in the context of their experiences (Chang and Conrad 2008: 34). Only then can conversations and discussions become a dialogue that will help pupils make sense of the complicated world that they are part of.
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