Beyond the Dutch "Multicultural Model": The Coproduction of Integration Policy Frames in The Netherlands

The Netherlands has been internationally known for its multicultural approach to immigrant integration. The aim of this article is to delve into the "coproduction" by researchers and policy makers of this so-called Dutch "multicultural model". As this article shows, researchers and policy makers have in The Netherlands been joined in several discourse coalitions. Indeed, one of these discourse coalitions supported an integration paradigm with multicultural elements, but at least two other types of discourses can be identified in The Netherlands, one of more liberal-egalitarian nature and one more assimilationist. In spite of the persistent image of The Netherlands as a representative of the multicultural model, it is in fact this multiplicity of discourses that characterizes the Dutch case. Moreover, labeling Dutch integration p

New mobilities across the lifecourse: A framework for analysing demographically-linked drivers of migration

Date of acceptance: 17/02/2015Taking the life course as the central concern, the authors set out a conceptual framework and define some key research questions for a programme of research that explores how the linked lives of mobile people are situated in time–space within the economic, social, and cultural structures of contemporary society. Drawing on methodologically innovative techniques, these perspectives can offer new insights into the changing nature and meanings of migration across the life course.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Cosmopolitan Risk Community and China's Climate Governance

Ulrich Beck asserts that global risks, such as climate change, generate a form of ‘compulsory cosmopolitanism’, which ‘glues’ various actors into collective action. Through an analysis of emerging ‘cosmopolitan risk communities’ in Chinese climate governance, this paper points out a ‘blind spot’ in the theorisation of cosmopolitan belonging and an associated inadequacy in explaining shifting power-relations. The paper addresses this problem by engaging with the intersectionality of the cosmopolitan space. It is argued that cosmopolitan belonging is a form of performative identity. Its key characteristic lies in a ‘liberating prerogative’, which enables individuals to participate in the solution of common problems creatively. It is this liberating prerogative that coerces the state out of political monopoly and marks the cosmopolitan moment

Southern Europeans in France: Invisible Migrants?

France fared relatively well at the start of the current economic crisis, but has experienced low economic growth and high unemployment rates in the recent years. As a result it has been a less popular destination with Southern Europeans and EU migrants in general in search of economic opportunities. Although their numbers have increased and represent a growing proportion of recent flows to France, they remain low compared to numbers observed in Germany and the UK. Despite this statistical reality, EU mobility and more generally the role of the EU in economic and social policy have been at the forefront of debates in France since the start of the 2000s, thus well before the start of the crisis. These debates have focused on two populations – the Roma and posted workers – with both groups being portrayed as threats to the French welfare state. Although posted workers are not migrants, according to official EU definitions, their characteristics and experiences are similar to other groups of temporary migrant workers. Southern Europeans account for an increasing number of posted workers, and although they have not been the primary nationalities targeted in discussions concerning this issue, the debates and policy changes introduced in the recent years concern them as well. Moreover, we argue that the focusing of political debates on other populations in France has contributed to the relative invisibility of Southern European immigrants in this country

Political mobilisation by minorities in Britain: negative feedback of ‘race relations'?

This article uses a political opportunity approach to study the relationship of minority groups to the political community in Britain. The main argument is that the British race relations approach established in the 1960s had an important effect that still shapes the patterns of political contention by different minority groups today. Original data on political claims-making by minorities demonstrate that British 'racialised' cultural pluralism has structured an inequality of opportunities for the two main groups, African-Caribbeans and Indian subcontinent minorities. African-Caribbeans mobilise along racial lines, use a strongly assimilative 'black' identity, conventional action forms, and target state institutions with demands for justice that are framed within the recognised framework of race relations. Conversely, a high proportion of the Indian subcontinent minority mobilisation is by Muslim groups, a non-assimilative religious identity. These are autonomously organised, but largely make public demands for extending the principle of racial equality to their non-racial group. Within the Indian subcontinent minorities, the relative absence of mobilisation by Indian, Sikh and Hindu minorities, who have achieved much better levels of socio-economic success than Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims, suggests that there is also a strong socioeconomic basis for shared experiences and grievances as Muslims in Britain. This relativises the notion that Muslim mobilisation is Britain is purely an expression of the right for cultural difference per se, and sees it as a product of the paradoxes of British race relations

Aida Makoto: Notes from an Apathetic Continent

Following the huge success of Murakami Takashi’s (b. 1962) Superat movement, Japanese contemporary art since 2000 has been mostly represented internationally by Murakami and artists associated with his style, such as Nara Yoshitomo (b. 1959) (see Chapter 38). The dominant fame of Super-at art poses an issue about the rival claims of Aida Makoto (b. 1965) who, in Japan, is often mentioned as the most representative artist to emerge during the 1990s. Edgy, erratic, and extraordinarily diverse in his production, Aida is often seen by even his most fervent admirers as an artist for domestic consumption only, too complex in his self-referential Japaneseness (Yamashita 2012). Yet his oeuvre deserves close attention, as it taps into live-often quite unpalatable-aspects of Japanese popular culture, articulating ambiguous commentary on attitudes, events, and politics well beyond Superat’s more commercial and exportable style

The limits of liberalism, and the limits of critique

Book Review Symposium on Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Contro

Intégration: 12 propositions (Integration: 12 Proposals)

Developing the critique of notions of the “integration of immigrants”, twelve propositions are advanced to diagnose the methodological nationalism of mainstream approaches. The concept of “integration” contains assumptions about the nature and functioning of modern society which, in a post-industrial and post-colonial context, are falsely trapped within the normative bounds of thinking for the nation-state. An alternate empirical operationalisation is suggested that would render traditional types of assimilation and integration research obsolete

The fourth freedom: Theories of migration and mobilities in 'neo-liberal' Europe

The article challenges the orthodoxy of current critical readings of the European crisis that discuss the failings of the EU in terms of the triumph of ‘neo-liberalism’. Defending instead a liberal view on international migration, which stresses the potentially positive economic, political and cultural benefits of market-driven forces enabling movements across borders, it details the various ways in which European regional integration has enabled the withdrawal of state control and restriction on certain forms of external and internal migration. This implementation of liberal ideas on the freedom of movement of persons has largely been of benefit to migrants, and both receiving and sending societies alike. These ideas are now threatened by democratic retrenchment. It is Britain, often held up as a negative example of ‘neo-liberalism’, which has proven to be the member state that most fulfils the EU’s core adherence to principles of mobile, open, nondiscriminatory labour markets. On this question, and despite its current antiimmigration politics, it offers a positive example of how Europe as a whole could benefit from more not less liberalization

Integration: twelve propositions after Schinkel

By way of a commentary on Willem Schinkel’s ‘Against “immigrant integration”: For an end to neocolonial knowledge production’ in this volume, I propose twelve propositions in order to rethink the academic use of the concept “integration” in contemporary migration studies. The notion of “immigration integration” is deeply embedded in a methodological nationalism found throughout mainstream research and policy making on “immigration” that reproduces a colonial, nation-state centred vision of society sustained by global inequalities. The article broadly shares Schinkel’s arguments, while suggesting specific operationalisations which could advance a more autonomous social scientific understanding of how the categorisation of international migration and mobilities is used by nation-states to sustain particular orders and hierarchies of social power