Eclectic Grounds

Reminding individuals of a negative stereotype about their social group decreases their confidence, their performance, and ultimately creates a situation where the stereotype becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is suggested by Allen McConnell’s and Sian Beilock’s research, which they present in the video below.

While the research presented here focuses mainly on steretypes against women, the results also add to the debate on the educational achievements of other social groups. The German weekly Der Spiegel, for example, remarks in a report on a recent study on the educational attainments of immigrant groups in Germany that:

If your name is Ümit rather than Hans or Gülcan rather than Grete, you’re less likely to climb the career ladder. Some 30 percent of Turkish immigrants and their children don’t have a school leaving certificate, and only 14 percent do their Abitur, as the degree from Germany’s top-level high schools is called — that’s half the average of the German population.

The study draws a complex picture, yet “low prestige, negative stereotypes and lack of role models” are central features in the explanation of the results.

Negative stereotyping and its ugly consequences are not easily fought off. An example: last week, a prominent social democratic (!) politician stated that “a large number of Arabs and Turks in [Berlin] have no productive function except selling fruit and vegetables”. A sad state of affairs…

I recently saw a panel discussion involving Dutch sociologist and politician Paul Scheffer. In 2000, Scheffer published an influential article called “The Multicultural Drama“, in which he criticised the system of migration in the Netherlands and Europe in general. Indifferent ‘pillarisation’ of societies, he argued back then, leads to segregation and conflicts between migrants and settled society.

Now, Scheffer has published a book called “The Unsettled Land” which offers a comparison of the process of migration and its consequences in several countries of Europe and North America. He argues that, besides different systems and different responses in all these countries, the process of migration is quite similar. According to him, there are three steps that can be identified:

Step 1: Avoidance. Initially, the arrival of new immigrants causes “white flight” and segregation, until open conflict breaks out.

Step 2: Conflict. At this stage, the receiving society starts to question its own values and cultural identity to be able to cope with a reality that has outlived the society’s self-conception.

Step 3: Accomodation. Societies develop mechanism to cope with the new demographics. Examples of accomodation include symbolic politics and recognition (monuments, arts, etc) as well as more egalitarian social politics (such as role of religion in policy-making, etc).

What’s remarkable in my view is that Scheffer develops a very sober, almost mechanic, analysis that he deems to be generalizable. First, this perspective removes fear and hysteria from the debate. Migration is seen as a social change;  and while change naturally causes conflict which can be painful, it will eventually lead to a new social formation that is workable. On the other hand, it emphasises strongly our ability to manage this process by finding our ways to come to an accommodation, which, according to Scheffer, will necessarily happen.

In the process that he describes, conflict that migration causes will always lead to the receiving society questioning itself. If we want to integrate newcomers, we have to become clear into what they will be integrated. Migration can therefore also be seen as a reflection for a society

Scheffer’s book was criticised as banal in the discussion I witnessed, but I think it is useful as it sets a ‘frame’ to view the debates in that are fought daily in newspapers and discussions. Surely there are weaknesses, like overgeneralisation and a strong emphasis on the nation-state. Yet, it points to the importance of ‘management’ to be able to accommodate and emancipate newcomers within societies, and it gives a hint as to how societies benefit from it simply be reflecting upon its core values and by redefining what makes up the community that people live in.

 You can find Scheffer’s presentation of his thesis and the following panel discussion online. While the debate was in German, the presentation was in English. It starts at around 2:15. Since I still haven’t figured why I can’t embed external videos here within the blog, please click here for the video.

Contrary to the 2008 “Racism and Extremism Monitor” in the Netherlands which observed a hightening negative climate towards Muslims (see my post here), the latest quarterly survey by the Social Cultural Planing Office has revealed a changing attitude of the Dutch towards immigrants.

Over the last 3 months, the amount of people stating that the Netherlends would be better off if it had fewer immigrants sunk from 41 to 35%. The number of people who see a presence of different cultures as an asset increased  from 36 to 44%.

At the same time, a student initiative made headlines that handed out 5,000 headscarfs in orange, the Dutch national colour, for the Queen’s Day celebrations on April 30. Their goal was “to allow Muslim women to express loyalty to their faith as well as to the queen.

Source: Radio Netherlands [1] [2], via Crossroads.

A recent NRC article warned that “English takes over at Dutch universities“. I, a German citizen who completed his undergraduate studies in an English-speaking programme in the Netherlands, of course found this very interesting.

The article describes the internationalisation of the Dutch university system. Today, more than half of the graduate programmes at Dutch universities are taught in English.

Internationalisation is the magic word everywhere. Education has become an export product and a university’s competitiveness is measured, particularly by the executive boards, by the number of foreign students it hosts. At many faculties, deans are charged with tasks like organising partnerships and student and faculty exchange programmes with universities around the world.

“It is part of globalisation,” says Gerry Wakker, deputy dean of education and internationalisation in Groningen. “More and more people are working abroad for a long or short time or they are studying there for a year. We prepare them for that by creating groups of students that are as mixed as possible.” 

The focus of the article is on the growing discontent that this internationalisation created. One professor is quoted lamenting that Dutch becomes a “second-class language”, another professor sees the quality of education in decline: 

In his inaugural lecture in 2005, [Groningen professor] Draaisma already argued that the switch to English hinders rather than helps the cosmopolitan academic. “You can travel where you like, but if all universities teach in English and prescribe English literature, then everywhere is going to start to look the same,” he says. A great deal of science can also be lost, he says. Prominent figures from history who wrote in German or French could disappear from the curriculum just like that. “Moreover, the Dutch were always an intermediary between English, German and French. We are now losing this role.”

I studied at Maastricht University (the official name changed recently from the Dutch “Universiteit Maastricht” to the English version), depicted by the author as the “leader of the pack” when it comes to internationalisation. It always felt a little odd living and studying there. All my tuition was in English and, naturally, we would also speak English, not Dutch, on campus. Hardly any foreigner made the effort to gain fluency in Dutch (I didn’t either, I must shamefully admit).

This led to quite some problems, especially since the university – located at the Germany border – recruited a high number of German students. The university newspapar last year had a focus on the conflicts between Dutch and international German students allegedly living in different worlds and even reported on a task force to be set up because Dutch students feel increasingly uncomfortable at the university. 

The whole problem with English tuition / internationalisation points to a general problem with intercultural exchange. If it merely means speaking English and taking over anglo-saxon systems (such as literature, education system), one could argue with Prof. Draaisma in that it indeed means the opposite of intercultural exchange. Instead, a global uniformity takes place by which cultural particularities tend to get lost.

It’s a tricky question. A universal language like English helps people to communicate who otherwise could not (I decided, as a German speaker, to run this blog in English so I could extend my audience and get feedback from people in different countries). Anglicisation also doesn’t necessarily mean taking over local cultures – in every culture at any given time there have been outside influences that these cultures adapt to. Yet, there seems to be a tendency for English to become globally accepted as “bridging culture” for elites and therefore becoming a hindrance for cultural exchange outside the anglo-saxon world.

Darkmatter recenty had an excellent post on a topic that has interested me for a while: it is about how sexual tolerance is becoming a tool that is used to present immigrant groups in Germany as inferior.

Darkmatter picks up a report from the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung on a report on the issue: 

According to Süddeutsche, the study showed that ‘migrant kids in particular strongly rejected homosexuality’, and that German kids were more likely to be weltoffen, that is, open minded or cosmopolitan. While on the one hand all migrant subjects are hereby constituted as a single category – that is, not German and hence not weltoffen – there is at the same time a hierarchy constructed within the migrant community through the problematization of religion.

and examines the report against the backgrop of the “integration discourse”

The question of open-mindedness (Weltoffenheit) is directly linked to the question of ‘integration’: those marked out by a religious identity are considered unable or unwilling to integrate. German values (symbolized, of course, by ‘cosmopolitan’ Berlin, the nation’s moral as well as political capital) are accordingly placed under threat by Islamic migrants. 

The conclusion is that

Homophobia is thus simultaneously nationalized and racialized. In an act of audacious historical revisionism, Germany becomes equated with gay rights (as an expression of its general regard for ‘human rights’), while Islam is constituted as homophobic (and thus outside a discourse of ‘human rights’). Gay rights are thus mobilized in anti-immigration discourse as a key signifier of European cultural superiority, as (white) gay Germans assert their membership of the national community through the construction of the figure of the homophobic Muslim.

[...] 

As gay rights become articulated to the nation and used as markers of European, Western or ‘civilizational’ superiority, they are simultaneously becoming detached from their historical relation to a left-wing politics. Borders and battle lines that were once thought set and certain in our wars of position are suddenly revealed to be in flux, as political antagonisms are more than ever before ‘being formulated in terms of moral categories’, and the seductive lexicon of liberation struggles is mined by a variety of dubious social actors intent on providing for themselves a veneer of ethical legitimacy. As sexuality has come to play a major role in shaping dominant Western attitudes towards cultural difference, scholars and activists the world over are becoming starkly aware of the normative racial bias in hegemonic forms of sexual politics.

Darkmatter adds an extensive overview of the connection between postcolonialism and sexuality in the context of counterterrorism and national assertion against multiculturalism. It reveals the ‘whiteness’ of theories on sexuality and the implicit racism that comes with it. It worth reading.

It notable in this context that anti-immigrant discourses from the right seem to be quite pragmatic in incorporating rather leftist political issues and constituencies for the purpose of creating a national identity against immigrants or cultural difference – not only when it comes to sexuality. Another example is the  the sudden embracement of animal rights against halal Muslim practices of slaughtering, or also the conservative flirt with women’s rights and laicism used to alienate Muslims  - by a party that calls itself “Christian Democrats” (see Jytte Klausen’s excellent book about it).

According to a recent article by Tanja Brøndsted Sejersen in the International Migration Review, dual citizenship has been on the rise over the last 20 years. While in 1990, only 20% of states had legislation providing for dual citizenship, today it is more than 50% of the world’s countries.

This is for two reasons: an increasing focus on individual rights in state legislation, and the social challenge of inclusion and exclusion that many countries experience. While many countries have been opposed to the concept of dual citizenship for a long time as they feared for loss of national cohesion, Sejersen argues the world is seeing a change in attitude:

Dual citizenship highlights specific problems with the citizenship concept, especially the foreigner–citizen dichotomy and the assumed congruence between the demos, the nation, and the state. Many states exist with a multitude of nations living within them, but the democratic incorporation of citizens, denizens, foreign residents, and citizens abroad poses new questions when faced with the reality of dual citizenship. The move toward acceptance of dual citizenship highlights the blurred foundation for national identity as a tool of exclusion. [...] A more relative understanding of the state and the citizenry may be necessary for allowing dual citizenship.

Via Contexts Discoveries

The Dutch government seems to have adopted a new terminology for ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. The term “bicultural” is now used in official communication rather than “allochtoon” for people of non-Dutch (or rather non-white) ethnicities. In February, the organisation Innovation for Integration will start a media campaign to promote the term.

The word bicultural is a positive counterpart for the word allochtoon,” Yesim Candam, the Turkish founder of IVI, said last year. “We used to say ‘guest labourer’, ‘new Dutch’ or ‘allochtoon’. ‘Bicultural’ is the first term that expresses the fact that two cultures are more than one!”

"I am Antoon" - "I am Allochtoon"

The term “allochtoon” has become widely used in the Netherlands for people of non-Dutch descent. In popular use, the term is only applied to non-whites, such as people with Turkish or Moroccan ancestry. The Dutch bureau of statistics makes a differentiation between “western” and “non-western” allochtoons in their census categories. While the state agency refers to “allochtoons” only to first- and second-generation immigrants, in everyday usage all non-white people are seen as “allochtoon”.

Historian Ian Buruma described the term “allochtoon” as “an ugly, and relatively new, bureaucratic term for people of alien, but more specifially non-European, origin”. It’s an example of how citizenship in Europe is often defined racially. Like in most European countries, citizenship law in the Netherlands is based on the “jus sanguinis” principle (literally: right of blood”). It confers citizenship rights based on the belonging to the national community of the Dutch, whatever that might look like. 

The introduction of the term “biculturalism” is another step toward recognising that citizenship should be based on political principles rather than ethnic and racial fault lines. 

Source: Crossroads Magazine

One of the biggest media frenzies in Germany last year was created by the populist re-election campaign of conservative state governor Roland Koch. Back then, Koch said Germany was facing the problem of too many “criminal young foreigners.” He made his central campaign statement that “foreigners who don’t stick to our rules don’t belong here.”  

In the campaign, Koch tapped into longstanding xenophobic sentiments in Germany. He used latently racist language, using the word “Ausländer” (foreigner) as term generally referring to immigrants, and he argued that ethnic minorities need to accept and assimilate into the country’s predominant “Christian-Occidental culture.” (find an overview of the debate here)

While Koch was not successful with his campaign because he put off moderate conservatives with his overly right-wing tone, he did achieve one thing: for months, the issue of “violent young foreigners” made headlines and it became a truism in the public debate that “foreigner” or immigrant youths are more criminal than non-immigrant youths.

In a recent interview with the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Bernd Holzhausen from the German Youth Institute puts the debate into wider perspective, not only looking at the immediately visible aspect of race/ethnicity, but also taking gender and social class into account.

Holzhausen rejects the racial distinction between white non-immigrant youth and “foreigners” as useless. In a more differentiated analysis of ethnic background, male youths with a Turkish background are more prone to be involved in violent acts than others. This, according to Holzhausen, is due to masculine gender roles in Turkish immigrant families that legitimize violence.

Yet: The predominant finding is that most perpetrators have a low level of education and come from low-income families. Taking this factor into account, the level of violent offences levels out between “Germans” and “foreigners.”

This is not to deny that there is youth criminality and violence (on a steady level; not rising dramatically as suggested by the popular media in Germany). But looking at it from a wider angle relativises the “ethnic content” of the issue, and it fundamentally questions conclusions that demand cultural assertion, such as ‘being tough on immigration’, ‘asserting Christian-Orthodox German values’ or ‘deporting perpetrators’ (whereto anyway?). 

Instead it points to issues such as spatial segregation, social status of immigrants and the three-tiered school system that reinforces these divisions.

Interview with Holzhausen in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (in German)
Website of the German Youth Institute (in English)

In early December the Anne Frank Foundation and Leiden University issued the annual ‘Racism and Extremism Monitor’ for the Netherlands. Its key conclusion:

The problem of ‘Islamophobia’ in the Netherlands has worsened significantly in recent years.  Not only is there a negative climate of opinion towards Muslims, violence against this community has increased and there is greater tolerance of anti-Muslim offences. This is one of the most striking findings of the Racism and Extremism Monitor.

Violence against Muslims rising in an increasingly anti-Muslim climate:

The number of violent incidents against Muslims has grown significantly while overall incidents of racist violence were decreasing, the report states. The violence is accompanied by a general anti-Muslim climate which tends to facilitate the violent attacks. The appearance of the anti-Islam party PVV (by ‘Fitna’ author and populist Geert Wilders) has made Islam-bashing politically tolerable. The party is become part of the reason why right-wing extremisms seems to be more acceptable again to a larger part of the population.

The government targets Islamic radicalism, while letting neo-Nazis grow:

The government’s activities against political radicalism seem to worsen islamophobia rather than create a realistic picture of the origin of radical ideology. The government monitors political Islam rigidly while leaving right-wing extremism virtually unchecked, despite the growth of neo-Nazi activities from 40 to 400 in the last four years. 

The report cites the annual school inspection report saying that: “Schools are much more likely to face “white” extremism (…) and clashes between native Dutch students and students from an immigrant background than religious extremism.” More than half of the no-Muslim youth between 14 and 16 years, according to a poll, have negative attitudes toward Muslims.

The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports in English on the publication of the Racism and Extremism Monitor here and here.