Walking the Walk’ Rather Than ‘Talking the Talk’ of Superdiversity: Continuity and Change in the Development of Rotterdam’s Immigrant Integration Policies

Rianne Dekker,Ilona Van Breugel

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-96041-8_6

Abstract

AbstractRotterdam is commonly characterised as pioneering in immigrant integration governance, often functioning as a predecessor for national and local policies in other cities. Before the first national integration policies were drafted in the Netherlands, Rotterdam already developed integration policies to deal with the interethnic tensions in the ‘Afrikaanderwijk’-neighbourhood. Also more recently Rotterdam’s policies were marked as pioneering, setting an example for other national and local policies. The best known example is the national law ‘Wet Bijzondere Grootstedelijke Problematiek’, also known as the Rotterdam Act. This national law was developed in Rotterdam and offers large cities the discretion to develop measures for specific urban problems in their city. Ethnic segregation and inequalities were the main underlying reason for Rotterdam to develop this policy. A local motto – ‘deeds, not words’ (in Dutch ‘Geen woorden maar daden’) – expresses the hands-on attitude for which the city and its citizens are known. This maxim is reflected in the city’s integration policies as well.

Highlights

Rotterdam is commonly characterised as pioneering in immigrant integration governance, often functioning as a predecessor for national and local policies in other cities
Under a more right-wing government, local policies came to focus on targeted socio- cultural assimilation instead. This was followed by a generic targeting of all citizens of Rotterdam, when immigrant integration policies were replaced by an urban citizenship framework between 2006 and 2014
Our analysis is guided by the following two research questions: First, how has the city of Rotterdam targeted its ethnic diversity with integration policies over the past four decades? Second, we aim to gain a better understanding of how key moments of change in policy targeting can be explained

Summary

Introduction

Rotterdam is commonly characterised as pioneering in immigrant integration governance, often functioning as a predecessor for national and local policies in other cities. Under a more right-wing government, local policies came to focus on targeted socio- cultural assimilation instead This was followed by a generic targeting of all citizens of Rotterdam, when immigrant integration policies were replaced by an urban citizenship framework between 2006 and 2014. The notion of superdiversity is often applied to societies that, due to long histories of immigration, have become so diverse that their diversity has become one of their defining characteristics This development is argued to challenge existing models of integration as “the idea of assimilation or integration becomes at any rate more complex in a situation where there is no longer a clear majority group into which one is to assimilate” (Ibid.: 57; see Vertovec 2007; Alba and Nee 2003; Blommaert and Maly 2014; Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2009). According to Vertovec, the intersectionality and plurality of variables relating to diversity is not new, it is the “emergence of their scale, historical and policy-produced multiple configuration and mutual conditioning that calls for the conceptual distinction”

Walking the Walk’ Rather Than ‘Talking the Talk’ of Superdiversity

Policy Frames and the Social Construction of Target Groups

Data and Methodology

Tracing Continuity and Change in Rotterdam’s Integration Policies

Walking the Walk Rather Than Talking the Talk of Superdiversity

Findings

Conclusions