“Those foreigners ruin everything here”: Interactional functions of ethnic labelling among pupils in the Netherlands

This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of ethnic labelling practices by examining their interactional functions among secondary school pupils in Venlo, the Netherlands. Pupils with migration backgrounds often labelled themselves and others “Turk,” “Moroccan,” or “foreigner,” and labelled others “Dutch.” The paper highlights that ethnic labelling can be understood not only as identity construction, but also as interactional work. I build on membership categorization analysis (MCA), complemented by conversation analysis (CA), to analyse how pupils’ use of ethnic labels evoked an expert role which altered interactants’ power positions; and how, often, pupils engaged in jocular mockery with ethnic labels and in that way mitigated the effects of exclusionary and stigmatizing discourses about people with migration backgrounds. Finally, I argue that pupils’ labelling practices had locally occasioned meanings and functions, but that they ultimately reflect wider‐spread systems of categorization and marginalization of people with migration backgrounds in the Netherlands.     

Belgium and the Netherlands: Two Different Ways of Coping with the Housing Crisis, 1945–70

ABSTRACT

Belgium and the Netherlands are very different in their spatial outlook and in the way housing is organized. In Belgium individual private dwellings predominate whereas in the Netherlands social housing and planned neighborhoods are much more common. This article aims at unraveling the histories and sensibilities that led to this situation. It argues that the well-known diverging histories of architecture and urbanism make up only one explanation, which needs to be complemented by understanding the different processes of mediation between producers and consumers adopted by both countries. In tackling the postwar housing crisis, Belgium chose to stimulate private initiative by providing tax incentives for home builders. The Netherlands, on the other, hand mitigated the housing crisis by planning new estates of social housing, using new techniques of prefabrication that led to standardized flats. In the Netherlands the process of mediation, oriented towards “correct living,” was dominated by a national organization, which resolutely advocated modernist design as the most rational way to organize the home. In Belgium the task of mediation was taken up by “pillarized” social organizations rather than by a national institution. This resulted in a much stronger bottom-up influence from ordinary dwellers, who convinced their organizations to soften the modernist approach in favor of more traditionally inspired homes and interiors. The Belgian way of organizing home cultures thus came to resemble much more an “American way of living” than its Dutch counterpart—contradicting the prevailing literature that tends to stress the Americanization of Dutch culture while ignoring such patterns in Belgium.     

Gender Stereotyping in the Dutch Asylum Procedure: “Independent” Men versus “Dependent” Women1

Attention for discrimination against women in asylum law has grown considerably during the last few decades. Yet it is male claimants who have had smaller success Rates in the asylum procedures of different countries. Using administrative data from the Dutch INS, we show this difference is caused by the traditionally gendered migration pattern of asylum seekers. Men have a smaller success rate than women because they are less likely than women to have a spouse or children, are less likely to follow their spouse to the country of destination, and are more likely to come from countries considered to be safe. This suggests that men are less successful in their attempts to seek asylum because they better fit the image of “bogus” refugees, while women more clearly match the image of “victim of patriarchal domination.”     

Examining the Global North Migration Policies: A “Push Out – Push Back” Approach to Forced Migration

In this paper we focus on adapting the concept of push – pull factors to forced migration by proposing a “push out – push back” approach that underlines two most crucial elements of forced migrants’ experience. On the one hand, it stresses the reasons for leaving countries of origin or of temporary refuge that are not dependant on the will of people who flew those places, thus the “push out” factors. On the other hand, it represents the refusal of the countries of the Global North to accept forced migrants and their use of various practices, amounting to “push back” factors, to prevent them from entering or leaving their territory if they manage to reach it. These factors can be divided into three groups: passive, active, and symbolic.     

Take Me “Home”: Return Migration among Germany's Older Immigrants

This paper examines the determinants of return migration as foreign‐born men approach old age in Germany. Return migration in later life engages a different set of conditions from return migration earlier on, including the framing of return as a possible retirement strategy. Using 23 years of longitudinal data from the German Socioeconomic Panel, this paper investigates how social and economic resources of immigrant men influence decisions to return “home.” Results suggest that immigrants from former guest worker recruitment countries within the European Union are more likely to return than non‐EU immigrants. In addition, return migrants are “negatively selected” so that those with the least education and weakest attachments to the labor force are more likely to emigrate. However, findings vary greatly depending on the immigrant's age and country of origin. Results from this paper highlight the heterogeneity of older immigrants and the factors that motivate their return “home”.     

“Moroccan youngsters”: category politics in the Netherlands

The article analyses the categorization of “Moroccan youngsters” as a problem group in the Netherlands. Since the 1990s Dutch‐Moroccan boys and young men are set apart as a problematic group that presents a social and security threat and an emblem of the failure of multicultural society. We analyse the intersectional “category politics” of Dutch politicians to situate Moroccan‐Dutch youngsters as problematic outsiders. Our analysis makes clear how national origin, culture, class and gender intersect in the categorization of “Moroccan youngsters” constituting a national‐cultural category, which is also defined in terms of a disadvantaged socio‐economic position. This categorization has important implications for policy arrangements and proposed measures. Existing schooling and training measures are seen as inadequate to end incessant intergenerational patterns of dependence and poverty. Intervention in the sphere of the family and parenting are deemed necessary to transform “Moroccan youngsters” into “good citizens.”     

“Discrimination” versus “Unfair Treatment”: Measuring Differential Treatment and its Association with Health

There is consistent evidence of the health‐harming effects of discrimination. However, it remains unclear whether discrimination contributes to persistent racial and ethnic health disparities. One hindrance to documenting the association between discrimination and health disparities is ongoing methodological issues, particularly the role of question wording in assessing self‐reports of discrimination. Using two nationally representative surveys, we investigate whether the prevalence, distribution, and mental and physical health consequences of differential treatment vary by question wording—”discrimination” versus “unfair treatment.” We find that “unfair treatment” yields greater reports of everyday forms of differential treatment relative to reports of “discrimination,” while the latter yields greater reports of major forms of differential treatment. In addition, the negative effect of “unfair treatment” on mental health is stronger than that of “discrimination,” while the latter has a stronger negative effect on physical health. However, the effect of question wording on reports of differential treatment and its association with health is largely unique to non‐Hispanic whites. We conclude that unfair treatment and discrimination reflect distinct concepts that should not be used interchangeably.     

Returnees' Perspectives on Their Re‐migration Processes

The return of refugees and migrants back to their country of origin is an important topic on the agenda of Western European governments, as return is considered as the most “durable solution” for the “refugee problem”, and as an instrument with which to tackle “illegal” migration. However, these migration policies generally lack a clear evidence base, as little studies have focused on returnees' current living situations and on their perspectives on the re‐migration process. In this paper we therefore try to listen to returnees' voices, through in‐depth interviews with four Nepalese migrants both before (in Belgium) and after (in Nepal) their return, and with 16 returnees after their return to Nepal. The interviews show how most returnees start with a disadvantageous “point of departure” to realize a “successful” return: mostly, they do not really depart “voluntarily”, and they only have limited possibilities for preparing their return and setting realistic expectations. But also, back in the “home country”, most returnees judge their current economic, social and political living situation as bad, meeting little of the expectations that they set before they returned. The participants consider the support they received through the NGOs' return programmes as minimal, because they are mostly limited to a small amount of financial support, and thus of little significance in these returnees' efforts to rebuild their lives in their “home” country. If return programmes want to make a difference in returnees' lives, they should have two extensive components in the “home” and the “host” country, incorporating in both components an integral approach, including economic, political, social and psychological aspects. Viewing these findings, it is not surprising that most interviewees eventually evaluate their return as unsuccessful, and many returnees consider re‐emigration, all of which clearly questions the current basis of worldwide migration policies.     

What's in a Name? Causes and Consequences of Labelling Minorities as “National” or “Migrant”: Roma in Italy and Spain

This article analyses how Roma are represented in official policy narratives in Italy and Spain by comparing the four cycles of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in the two countries. By tracing the representations that the Italian and Spanish governments hold (and make) about the Roma, I sketch out the different categories that EU‐ropean countries recur to as organizing principles to “other” underprivileged minorities. Based on the tailored‐approaches in which both Italy and Spain engage in framing Roma as either a “national” minority or not, I suggest that constructing or “producing” a minority in our imagined communities as characterized by national, cultural, social or migrant characteristics relies more on political expediency than on objective analytical categories.     

The Political Economy of “Food Security” and Trade: Uneven and Combined Dependency

This article critiques the notion of food security through trade promoted by suprastate organizations like the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. We use and refine the food‐regime perspective to contest this unwritten rule of the neoliberal food regime. Rather than “mutual dependency” in food between “North” and “South,” as argued by Philip McMichael, however, we show that food dependency has been stronger on basic foods in developing countries, while advanced capitalist countries' dependency has been mostly on luxury foods. Also, the more that developing countries become dependent on food imports and exports, the more they will be importing the “world food price” for the relevant commodities. Food‐price inflation will more adversely affect their working classes, which spend larger shares of their household budgets on food. Our empirical focus is on food dependency in emerging nations—Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Turkey—in comparison with long‐standing agricultural exporting powerhouses, the United States and Canada. Using longitudinal data from FAOSTAT, we show that food security in the neoliberal food regime can best be characterized as “uneven and combined dependency.”     

Repelling the “Rutter”: Social Differentiation Among Rural Teenagers

This paper examines low‐income white rural teenagers' management of race and class‐based inequality. It analyzes how these teenagers constructed boundaries to distinguish themselves from outsiders, but also to distinguish themselves from the local abject category of “rutter.” The findings reveal hidden interconnections between race and class in interactional practice, and highlight local processes of differentiation through which actors attempt to deflect stigma and attain credibility. The paper discusses how interactional mechanisms such as “internal othering” and “stigma‐theory” bolster race and class credibility, but reproduce inequality.     

Unions and unequal pay: The establishment of the “family wage”

Equal pay laws in many OECD countries establish the right of men and women to equal pay for work of equal value. Nevertheless, during the first half of the 20th century, before the enactment of equal pay laws, employers and unions in several countries promoted unequal pay through “family wage” arrangements. This article seeks to improve understanding of the historical and sociological origins of “family wage” arrangements through both comparative research and in‐depth historical archival research on family wage arrangements in Israel. It shows that unions played a complex role in promoting family wage arrangements. While their action refected their patriarchal understanding of society, they were also guided by socialist principles.     

Between Tradition and Modernity: “Leftover” Women in Shanghai

In recent years, single, educated women who are not yet married by their late 20s in China's major cities have been increasingly castigated as “leftover” women. After more than 3 decades of rapid socioeconomic development, marriage remains near universal and early in China. In the meantime, there has been a resurgence of patriarchal traditions. Using semistructured interviews, in this qualitative research the author sought to understand the motivations of these women and their efforts to negotiate the contradictions regarding marriage formation and career development. Six themes emerged from the women's narratives: (a) parental pressure, (b) a gender double standard of aging, (c) forced socioeconomic hypergamy, (d) the importance of compatible family backgrounds, (e) efforts to balance women's independence with support for family and men, and (f) conflicting gender ideologies. The author contextualizes these themes by analyzing how women weave traditional expectations with modern life in a transitioning China, where tradition and modernity alternately clash and converge to constitute a somewhat uneasy mosaic society.     

Healthcare Reforms and the Creation of Ex‐/Included Categories of Patients — “Irregular Migrants” and the “Undesirable” in the French Healthcare System

This article reconstructs the socio‐historical processes that have led to the formal inclusion and marginalization of “irregular migrants” in the French public health insurance system and the parallel legal production of exclusion of a share of this group. It interrogates the binary inclusion/exclusion in the field of healthcare linking it to the logic of sovereignty and governmentality in a stratified society. It shows how these processes have led to unequal health practices and increased obstacles to accessing health insurance and healthcare providers, and, consequently, has resulted in the exclusion of a share of this group from the regular healthcare system. These two levels of discrimination are illustrated using empirical research on departments in French public hospitals that have been designed to enable access to care for individuals without insurance (Permanence d'accès aux soins de santé, or PASS: health care access units).     

The Second Generation in Germany: Between School and Labor Market1

The German “mode of integration” after World War II has been to include migrants and their offspring into general societal institutions. This can be stated despite differences between federal states in some aspects of migrant integration (e.g., the educational sector). Migrant children normally attend the same schools and classes as their German age peers, they participate in the dual system of vocational training, and there are only a few limitations in labor market access. The second generation in Germany consists mainly of children of the “guestworkers” recruited in southern and southeastern European countries from the 1950s onwards. It is not easy to obtain information about their numbers and their socioeconomic position, as most statistical data distinguish only between foreigners and Germans. The achieved integration status of the second generation varies between areas: obvious problems in the educational system go along with considerable progress in the vocational training system and in the labor market. Children of Turkish migrants are the most disadvantaged group among the second generation.     

“It's Only Sport”—The Symbolic Neutralization of “Violence”

Within the commodified world of professional ice hockey, athletes sell their bodily performances in return for a salary. A central feature of this transaction is the very real risk of physical injury—a risk inherent within most contact sports, but particularly so within those that feature seemingly “violent” confrontations between competitors, as ice hockey is widely reputed to do. Yet, within the spectacle of sport, where physicality can be constructed as playful and unserious, it is possible for the consequences of such action to be concealed behind a symbolic, ludic veneer. Within this article, we explore this process with a particular focus on ice hockey spectators, for whom notions of sport violence as in some important way “mimetic” of the “real” enabled their propensity to both enjoy, and find moral validation through, potentially deleterious behaviors among athletes.     

Theories on Modernization of Japan Today

Abstract When examining the issues related to the theories on modernization of Japan up until now, we can distinguish three extremely important trends of thought. I would like to refer to those three trends as the “Post War Theories” (P.T.), the “American Theories” (A.T.), and the “Beyond Western Theories” (B.T.). “P.T.” emphasize the importance of modernization as democratization, meanwhile the “A.T.” emphasize the importance of modernization as industrialization. In the “B.T.”, post-modern debate is included. In the context of Japan, modernization should be defined as a process which has two equally important elements: democratization and industrialization. It is a process that originated in the West, but was accepted by non Western countries mixing with their own traditions transforming and organizing the “World System”. Theoretical reconsideration on the subject of “acceptance” has crucial importance in this case. We need also to start from the pre-modern period as the initial condition for modernization. Concerning the Japanese pre-modern era, we need to analyze the “Ie” (household) system as a social structure, and worldly attitudes as a spiritual or value structure, and finally the bureaucratic system as the intermediate element of the above two structures. Edo (pre-modern) society was a compound of “Ie” and a bureaucratic system. Because the bureaucratic structure functioned by the very law of the period. the bushi warriors were expected to promote their abilities in judicature, administration, policy planning and decisions, and then they tended to become like modern bureaucrats in their characters. Peasant society also had a similar system as mentioned above. Japan's “Ie” existed as a certain social unit called “Ie-Kabu”. From that, Japanese “Ie” came to have a structure where families were bound within public control apparatus instruments. Thus the control mechanisms of the government effectively functioned down to the common people's level through this apparatus.     

Rooted Cosmopolitans: Israelis with a European Passport – History,Property, Identity

Over the past decade, a new and intriguing phenomenon developed in Israel: close to 60,000 Israelis applied for citizenship in the Central and Eastern European countries from which their families immigrated. Typically, these new dual citizens have no plans to “return” to Germany or Poland, nor do they feel any identification with their countries of origin. Instead, they are mainly interested in obtaining a “European Union passport” and in gaining potential access to the European common market. The paper presents statistics on this unconventional case of dual citizenship, surveys the historical and legal circumstances that produced it and uses material from interviews to explore the meanings and uses that European‐Israeli dual citizens attribute to their European passports. Dual citizenship, the findings show, is used by Israelis in various and sometimes unexpected ways: as enhancer of economic opportunities, “insurance policy,” intergenerational gift, and even as an elitist status symbol. This modality of state belonging can be termed “passport citizenship”: Non‐resident citizenship here is stripped of its national meaning and treated as an individual piece of property, which is embodied by the passport and obtained for pragmatic reasons.     

“This Should Not Be Happening in This Country”: Private‐Life Violence and Immigration Intersections in a U.S. Gateway City

In the United States, the rise in ethnic diversity due to immigration in recent decades has been most visible in new “gateway” cities and towns, such as the Baltimore–Washington, D.C. corridor, now the fourth‐largest gateway for new immigration. Among the more grave issues that immigrant women face in these gateways and elsewhere is the experience of intimate partner violence. This article reports on a study using qualitative methods to document the problem, approaches, and challenges in the rapidly diversifying city of Baltimore, Maryland. We report on individual and focus‐group interviews with professionals in 10 agencies who work directly with the Baltimore populations. Drawing on intersectionality theory, we propose a conceptual framework that disaggregates the location of “immigration” into four components: contexts of exit, contexts of reception, racial and class hierarchies, and culture. The study's results problematize cultural essentialist models and raise questions about current U.S. legal systems regarding immigration.