What the hell happened to the Netherlands? Public culture and minority integration in the country of (in)tolerance

Abstract

The Netherlands had the image of a tolerant nation that quite successfully dealt with the integration of minorities. In recent years, a series of events has shattered this image. The ascendancy and assassination of Pim Fortuyn as well as the assassination of Theo van Gogh seem to indicate that the experiment of tolerance has failed. In the wake of these events, xenophobia and intolerance seem to characterise the Netherlands at least as much as any other country. So now many people seem to believe that the Netherlands at present is the mirror image of what it used to be. We do not wish to deny that significant shifts have taken place but we do argue that these shifts have been ill understood by native and foreign commentators alike. The understandable reflex to normatively evaluate the dramatic developments - that the Netherlands has ‘gone crazy’ or that it has ‘finally realised’ that there is a limit to liberal policies - has unfortunately stood in the way of thorough analyses. In this session, we want to gather four papers that provide a deeper understanding of what happened in the Netherlands in recent years and about the processes that underpin these developments. We situate recent shifts in longer-term developments, demonstrating that even sudden and dramatic shifts can be theoretically understood by taking into account gradual and embryonic shifts of the last few decades. In doing so, we argue that the Netherlands has not become a different country. Rather a few contingent processes have allowed us to see the other side of the janus-face that the Netherlands has had for some time already.

Title	Details
Political authority in the 'multicultural drama'. Building bridges after the assassination of Van Gogh	View Paper Details
Past the multicultural paradise. How to understand the cultural factor in Dutch integration policies?	View Paper Details
Anti-multiculturalism and the reform of local governance in the Netherlands	View Paper Details