BY: W. Shadid, 12-1-2009

A week before 2008 came to its end the Executive Board of the Labour Party (PvdA) presented its note on integration entitled “Divided past, Shared future”. It apparently seems that Dutch political parties periodically feel a natural necessity to presnet a new, or renewed note on the integration of immigrants. It is striking that in these notes politicians increasingly use a harsher tone when to the position of immigrants in society is concerned, presenting integration as the most important social problem in the country.
The focus of the above mentioned note of the PvdA is that the integration process has failed completely, on the one hand because immigrants do not want to integrate, and on the other hand because Dutch society has up till now adopted an irresponsible degree of tolerance with respect to this ‘fremdkörper’ within its borders. Departing from this focus the note can be characterised as populist and presenting socially division as it lacks calculated analyses, worth mentioning figures, or concrete and justifiable objectives.

Paternalism and nationalism
First of all, the note clearly shows a socially dividing perspective. In the 18 pages of the note the authors uses the possessive pronouns ‘ our’ referring to ‘our country’, ‘our culture’ and ‘our juridical system’ no less than 108 times as opposed to ‘theirs’ which is used 61 times.
This indicates that the executive board of the PvdA up to now does not consider immigrants as an inextricable component of Dutch society and does not wish to consider Islam to be part of Dutch religions as well. The note does not focus mainly deal with to norms, confrontations and tolerance concerning both autochthons and immigrants and their deviant behaviours, but presents a new type of paternalistic nationalism focusing exclusively on the deviant behaviours of some Moslems such as burqa wearing ladies, those who refuse to shake hands with the opposite gender and noise makers and criminals implying that these types of behaviour are representative for the average stage of integration.
In this regard the Executive Board neglects two important aspects. First of all, it wrongly suggests that the integration process in general has failed. This is a dated vision on the matter which has been falsified by the Parliamentary Research Commission (the so-called Commission Blok) four years ago. At that time, many politicians were surprised that the commission came to the conclusion that in spite of the applied government policy the integration process has been generally successful and that success should be especially attributed to the efforts of immigrants themselves.
Moreover, by the extensive emphasis on deviant behaviour of some Dutch Moslems, the PvdA Ececutive Board is implying that deprived non-immigrant Dutch don’t contribute to the so-called conflict points in society such as committing crimes, discrimination, religious conservatism and radicalism. In this regard the note pays no attention what so ever to this type of autochthone people’s behaviour. However, in the quantitative sense this group of ‘not integrated’ individuals is much larger in compared to the so-called ‘not integrated’ immigrants, and can therefore form a greater danger to stability in society.

Culturalism and lack of realism
The shortcomings mentioned above could be expected due to the fact that behavioural deviations such as crime, the causing of surroundings annoyance in the living environment and wantonness, are generally approached from an ethnic and cultural perspective while not taking for instance the results of unemployment, discrimination and poverty into consideration. In this way, ethnicity and culture are used as an excuse for the poor insight of the note’s authors in the causes of the problems mentioned while equally disregarding ineffective performance of responsible authorities. Culturally biased policy makers, politicians and scientists imply that the concerned deviations are anchored in foreign cultures and that little can be undertaken to fight against it, at least in the short run. By placing such problems in a cultural context, policy makers dismiss themselves from the responsibility to combat them. In a sense this might be seen as a justification for their incompetence. This unbalanced focus on culture leads to the fact that some policy makers and politicians began to propagate and defend medieval ineffective policy tools such as humiliating and corporal punishments in order to correct behavioural deviations of the migrant youth.

The lack of migrants’ perspective
The Executive Board of the PvdA pleads furthermore for abolishing existing measures which enables migrants to obtain a Dutch passport while keeping their original one. This plea is aimed at reducing the influence of the governments of the immigrants’ countries of origin. Although with this view the note did uncouple the debate on the double nationality from the loyalty question, it is nevertheless indicative for the party’s short-sighted vision on reality. The short-sightedness lies in failing to recognize that if the governments concerned intend to continue their influence on their ex-citizens, this may be realized even when the formal link with the ex-citizens has been cut off entirely. This indicates clearly that the Executive Board of the PvdA fails to recognize the strength of the social and economic ties, which a many of ‘ new’ Dutch inevitably have with their (parents’) countries of origin. Family relations and economic links by means of for instance inherited and self-built real estates will continue to determine the dependence of these citizens on the governments of the countries of origin for even some generations. Governments, and this does not only apply to those of Morocco and Turkey, do have sufficient means to let their ex-citizens personally feel their dependency, such as refusing visas, slowing down finishing formal documents and even oppressing family members in the countries of origin. By its orientation on political populism the Executive Board of the PvdA has been blinded for the immigrant perspective and for what the new Dutch, think wish and feel.

Epilogue
With this note the PvdA nevertheless succeeded in joining the ‘hard-liners camp’ in society. Due to the hardened social climate it should to be expected that the list of hard liners will unfortunately become longer in the coming years. Expressing tough language concerning the integration of migrants and especially Moslems will not come to an end in the near future. Due to various factors immigrants of Muslim background also have no means to accelerate the ending of this process. Their ethnic, religious and social diversity and the lack of organisational structure make them ineffective in forcing political parties to take a more realistic direction. Moreover, opportunism of persons from immigrant origin who locally and nationally have acquired a certain status makes them politically winged to exert effective influence in this context. Immigrants who continue to identify themselves with this political party will sooner or later be disappointed. A socially divided society in the past, and an even wider social division in the future would have been a more suitable title for the integration note of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA).

Prof.dr. W. Shadid is professor of intercultural communication. For more info: see page “About”