What Is New about Dutch Populism? Dutch Colonialism, Hierarchical Citizenship and Contemporary Populist Debates and Policies in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

This article discusses how Dutch politics of citizenship in the (colonial) past and the present create distinctions, distribute status, rights, opportunities, securities and wealth and how they evoke agency. This process is analysed first by exploring the politics of citizenship in colonial times; second, the implications of political decolonisation for citizenship are discussed; third, present day dynamics around Dutch populism and how they connect to autochthony and Islamophobia are discussed; fourth, a present-day example of the phenomenon termed ‘citizenship alienism’ will be analysed. These historical and contemporary discourses demonstrate how through the years, Dutch majoritarian politicians have constructed a distinction between ‘conditional’ versus ‘unconditional’ citizens through references to a mythical core Dutch nation. The politics of inequality under populism are in that sense not new, but, rather, present-day expressions of a much older Dutch political phenomenon.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• citizenship
• colonialism
• populism
• Islamophobia

Acknowledgements

This chapter is written in loving memory of Angèle Kerster. Through the years, I have discussed the subject of this paper – and a variety of other (related) subjects – extensively with Angèle, who, in her unmatched honesty, originality and intelligence, always hit the nail right on the head with her critique on drafts and thoughts, and who encouraged me to formulate ideas in a direct style as well as to think outside the existing frames and concepts. I thank the editors of this special issue, Ulrike Vieten and Scott Poynting, for asking me to contribute. I especially thank Dr Ulrike Vieten for ‘keeping me on board’, for her encouragement to finish this article and her insightful comments and suggestions on the first draft. I am grateful to Dr Carolyn Nakamura for her acute and precise comments, for emphasising the need to flesh out the linkages between colonial and present-day formations and for her English text editing. Lastly, I thank the anonymous readers for the insightful comments on the text and the valuable suggestion on structure.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Guno Jones is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Institute for History (Faculty of Humanities, Economic and Social History) at Leiden University and Affiliated Researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. At Leiden University, he currently prepares a research project on World War II, (post) colonial citizens and the nation in the Netherlands and Great Britain. At the Vrije Universiteit, as member of the Identities, Diversity, and Inclusion research group, his main focus is on citizenship.

Notes

1. These sentences refer to the felt experiences of the author in this particular moment in time: I do not pretend them to be factual statements about ‘reality’ to be verified or falsified.

2. These are the main colonies; the Netherlands once controlled other territories in a variety of places.

3. The Netherlands held sovereign power over the local representative bodies.

4. On 22 March 2016, after years of criticism that pointed to the exclusionary nature of the autochthone allochthone binary, a narrow majority of the Dutch parliament has requested the Dutch government to abstain from using this terminology in future policy documents. Kamerstuk (Parliamentary Paper) 32824, nr. 125, 17 March 2016; Handelingen (Proceedings of Parliament) 2015–2016, nr. 67, item 21, 22 March 2016.

5. Kamerstuk 33325, nr. 12, 17 May 2016 (Parliamentary Papers).