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