The Postcolonial Present:everyday geographies of the Indo-European diaspora

This research centres around the Indo-European or Indische community in the Netherlands, which encompasses descendants of relations between European men (mainly Dutch) and Indonesian women that occurred in the 350 years of Dutch colonial presence in Indonesia. This community is the largest ‘ethnic minority’ group that has settled in the Netherlands to date. This thesis intends to understand how colonial family histories shape the everyday geographies of three Indo-European generations in the Netherlands, and how these family histories are transmitted intergenerationally. Life story interviews were conducted to gain insight into the ways personal and familial experiences on a micro level are intertwined with colonial histories on a macro level. Through the notion of everyday geographies, different aspects of mundane life were scrutinized. These ‘microhistories’ revealed how experiences of war violence, racialized violence and displacement remain influential across generations. Thus, influencing different aspects of everyday life, such as conscious and unconscious transmissions of memories; senses of belonging; places and related practices, relations and encounters. This thesis intends to contribute to contemporary debates on colonial legacies by providing a critical understanding of how contemporary personal and familial ways of being, doing and thinking remain intertwined with colonial pasts across Dutch contexts. Ultimately, critical engagements within and outside the Indo-European community about colonial pasts, its legacies and its place in current society continue to be needed by listening to and representing different voices within Dutch society. These are discussions we need to continue having, even after more than 400 years of colonization

‘The past should not affect the children’:intergenerational hauntings in the homes of Indo-European families

This article examines how the traumatic experiences of pre- vious Indo-European or Indische generations shape future generations’ intergenerational family dynamics and practices within home environments. By analysing life story interviews with Indo-Europeans from the first, second and third gen- eration within twenty-one families, we illustrate how inter- generational hauntings are embodied, expressed and negotiated among various generations within home envi- ronments. The Indo-European diaspora has multi-generational ‘mixed’ Dutch-Indonesian ancestry and collective memories of the colonial Dutch East Indies, the Japanese occupation of Indonesia during the Second World War, the Indonesian National Revolution, and families’ subsequent repatriation to the Netherlands. Shaped by their alleged success in hav- ing silently assimilated in the Netherlands, public narratives often neglect Indo-Europeans’ daily realities and histories. We argue that personal and collective histories of war vio- lence, racialized violence and displacement are deeply ingrained in Indo-European intergenerational and gendered family dynamics and practices in home environments. These intergenerational hauntings are imbued in both presence and absence in the various atmospheres and social and physical spaces of home

Negotiating claims of ‘whiteness’:Indo-European everyday experiences and ‘mixed-race’ identities in the Netherlands

This paper examines identity formations and negotiations among Indo-Europeans, and senses of ‘race’ in the postcolonial Netherlands. We do so by analysing daily practices of ‘being’, ‘feeling’ and ‘doing’ identities by second- and third-generation Indo-Europeans in the North-Eastern Netherlands. The paper contributes to ‘mixed-race’ literature by highlighting new, underexplored contexts in which ‘mixed-race’ identities are negotiated. We focus on practices, relations and transmissions across two generations and changing contexts within the Netherlands. Drawing on life story interviews, the narratives reveal how participants’ identities are politically and historically contingent, shaped by larger structures of racialized violence Indo-Europeans experienced in both the Dutch East Indies and the Netherlands. Identities are navigated in various ways with divergences and negotiations between self-identification, social imposition and familial and biological narrative