Responding to the Dutch asylum crisis: implications for collaborative work between civil society and governmental organizations

Between 2015 and 2016, the Netherlands experienced an asylum crisis, one that directly affected organizations working with refugee reception and integration. Besides civil society and governmental organizations (CSOs and GOs), the period also saw individuals coming together to form emergent CSOs (ECSOs). We look at these organizations to determine whether their work brought a shift in Dutch practice and policy with regarding refugee reception. We also examine literature concerning crisis governance, participatory spaces, and refugee reception governance. Finally, we investigate the views and experiences of individuals from selected organizations that played an active role during the crisis. This explorative research is based upon a qualitative and interpretative study involving panel discussions, document analysis, and interviews, conducted between 2017 and 2018 by the Refugee Academy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. We show circumstantial and interorganizational elements that enhanced and hampered interactions between ECSOs, CSOs, and GOs. We argue that shared activities during the crisis may have created possibilities for durable forms of collaboration and for the inclusion of civil society groups in a debate mostly dominated by GOs

Book Review: Europe and the Refugee Crisis. By Frances Trix, London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2018, pp. 266.

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The Winding Road to Meaningful Integration: A Ten-Year Multi-Perspective Approach to Unraveling Refugee Reception and Integration in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands, refugees face the impossibility of taking root in circumstances of exclusion and the possibility to thrive in more favorable settings. Drawing from organization studies, critical diversity, refugee studies, public administration, and political geography, this dissertation seeks to understand the role social actors play in the processes of refugee reception and integration. The concept of bordering is used to encapsulate (in)visible exclusionary practices that deter refugees from meaningful integration: one that makes sense to refugees because it aligns with their life worlds and considers their possibilities and ambitions. In his dissertation, Robert Larruina addresses these issues by asking: How have governmental organizations, civil society, and volunteers engaged with bordering practices in the reception and meaningful integration of refugees in the Netherlands between 2011 and 2021, and what role do refugees have in these processes? The chapters show a ten-year journey that starts with research at an asylum seeker center (AZC) and ends with research done at a social enterprise dedicated to the socio-economic integration of refugees. The first three chapters emphasize the organizational dynamics between civil society, government, and volunteers and their contexts. The last two give more space to refugee perspectives. This dissertation shows that visible bordering is identifiable in the accommodation of refugees in AZCs, the asylum procedure, and sequential steps towards integration. Invisible bordering takes the form of essentialized categorization and normalization, presenting refugees as dangerous or as victims. Invisible bordering becomes enhanced when civil society unwillingly normalizes and reproduces it. All in all, governmental and civil society actors lack the necessary reflexivity to overcome invisible bordering. Despite the seeming impossibility of bordering, Robert’s dissertation shows opportunities to transform it. Change could be possible through sustainable forms of collaboration, which are needed to reach the conditions for meaningful integration. For this, civil society and governmental organizations, as the most prominent actors in the field, need to recognize their complementarity, commit to working together, and include and fully consider the vital refugee perspective in their practices