Sociale boulimia en ‘de Marokkaan van hier’: de invloed van insluiting en uitsluiting op sociale identiteit en thuisgevoel van ‘Marokkanen’ in Nederland

Abstract

Dutch people with a Moroccan migration background in the Netherlands have to deal with social exclusion, due to a ‘moral panic’ about Moroccans, and social inclusion, due to an existing ‘integration discourse’, at the same time. These two co-existing social processes (social bulimia) influence the social identity and the sense of home of Dutch people with a Moroccan migration background in the Netherlands. This article first examines this impact on social identity and a sense of home, and secondly, to what extent the exclusionary process of a moral panic disrupts the inclusionary process of 'integration' as desired and propagated by Dutch government and society, on an individual level. These questions were answered with 38 qualitative interviews with, and (offline and online) participant observations among young men with a Moroccan migration background aged 15 to 35 in the Netherlands. This research shows that these processes lead to five types of responses with regard to social identity: explicitly disidentifying as Dutch and explicitly identifying as Moroccan, claiming identification as Dutch, constructing a specific bricolage identity, and allowing other identifications to prevail to reduce uncertainty regarding identity. In addition, it shows that despite the experienced social exclusion, these young men feel strongly connected with the Dutch and the Netherlands in all kinds of ways and perceive and experience the Netherlands as their 'home'. Finally, it becomes clear that the social inclusion desired by the Dutch government and society at large is disturbed by the social exclusion of ‘Moroccans’ in public discourse and in daily interactions, and that their sense of home counterbalances this disruption, but not enough to give them the feeling that they are part of Dutch society.