The language of newcomers: developments in Dutch citizenship education

A new citizenship policy in the Netherlands is intended to provide ethnic minority newcomers with self‐management competencies for their daily lives, further education and employment. The advocates of the compulsory language training that is the main ingredient of this policy argue that it will foster newcomers' chances of getting jobs, accessing education and being incorporated into the mainstream of Dutch society. According to the Scientific Council for Government Policy, no country in Europe has gone as far as the Netherlands in terms of its citizenship policy. In this paper, we evaluate the backgrounds and the consequences of this policy, and we take a critical look at the attempt to present command of the Dutch language as the main road to integration for ethnic minority newcomers.