Negotiating belonging beyond rootedness: unsettling the sedentary bias in the Dutch culturalist discourse

ABSTRACT

In the era of late or “liquid modernity”, we can observe the re-emergence of solid categories in the form of nationalistic sentiments and cultural contrasts. The growing culturalist discourse in most European societies is an example of the reification of cultural difference. Within this discourse, it is posited that the most “natural” link for migrants is to their countries of origin. This discourse suggests that generations of migrants living inside the nation are constructed as not belonging to it. This “sedentary bias” produces dichotomies of rootedness in the places of origin and uprootedness in countries where generations of migrants presently live. When normalized, this positioning limits differentiated, multi-layered, and multi-sited possibilities of belonging. By comparing two sets of empirical data on diverse women in the Netherlands, this article shows how the inclusion of interpretations and negotiations of everyday interactions can enable alternative forms of positioning and belonging.

KEYWORDS:

• Agency
• home and belonging
• diversity
• culturalist discourse
• sedentary bias
• rooted positioning

Introduction

Influential social scientists have identified the present time as the era of liquidity and mobility (Bauman 2000; Urry 2000). In the same era, in which solid categories such as tradition, culture, and religion are argued to be eroding, we observe the paradoxical re-emergence of old solids in the form of nationalistic sentiments and cultural contrasts. One of the most prominent manifestations of this process is what Anthias (2013) refers to as the “culturalization of social relations”, leading to the reification of difference. This cultural framing of difference has become dominant in the discourse on migration in Europe. Earlier, Stolcke (1995) referred to this culturalist discourse as “cultural fundamentalism”, which is based on a homogeneous, static, coherent, and rooted notion of culture. Duyvendak (2011) uses the term “culturalization of citizenship” to identify the dominance of cultural essentialist foundations within the Dutch discourse on migration.¹ Within this dominant culturalist discourse, the most “natural” link for migrants is to their countries of origin, meaning that the generations of migrants are “constructed as not belonging to the nation and yet living inside it” (Räthzel 1995, 165).

This article engages with the particularities of the everyday negotiations of individuals who are often considered as the other within the culturalist discursive space. By comparing two sets of empirical data on the narratives of mainly migrant and refugee women in the Netherlands, this article argues for the liberating effects of alternative narrations of positioning and belonging to go beyond the dominant rootedness frame within the Dutch culturalist discourse. By paying specific attention to the relational and intersubjective situatedness of individual narrations, this article shows the importance of “strong reflexivity” as an epistemological choice (Harding 1993, 70–71) to deconstruct taken-for-granted, static, and hierarchical categorical positioning and rootedness. Strong reflexivity is about seeing individuals (including the researcher) in relation to each other from their situatedness in particular histories and communities. This means awareness of the implications of the intersection of multiple locations and positionalities, which Anthias (2006) termed as “translocational positionality”, in the ways that certain normalized constructions of identity and belonging are reproduced or challenged.

Discursive positioning and agency

Every choice we make as individuals “always implicate[s] the positions from which we speak or write – the positions of enunciation” (Hall 1990, 222). These positions are located in particular discourses that are time and space specific. The power of discourse lies particularly in its tacit impact in terms of positioning through the often taken-for-granted disciplining of the actions and interactions of individuals. However, the power of discourse is not absolute, since positioning emerges through negotiations between “a number of intersecting discourses” (Hall 1991, 10). Individuals construct their narratives “within a given social framework” (Räthzel 1995, 82), which includes both the past and the present discourses. Thus, although the power of discursive practices affects everyone, the specificity of its impact depends on the intersection of discourses (past and present). For migrants and refugees, the tensions between the discourses of the past and present are often quite salient because of their possible contradictory aspects. This simultaneous existence of past and present discourses gives migrants the potential to use them selectively in response to the opportunities and challenges they face (Levitt 2009, 1226). Yet, the capacity to negotiate these intersecting discourses is quite different for various groups of migrants depending on their resources, possibilities, and inclusion in society. Societal inclusion and opportunities to deal with the challenges and tensions that result from intersecting discourses are crucial to the sense of belonging (Anthias 2006). Societal exclusion, on the other hand, increases the tension between the self-image and the attributed image (Wekker 1998), resulting in a decreased sense of emotional connectedness and belonging to a new society.

Despite the negotiating capacity of individuals to engage with intersecting discourses, the particular impact of discursive power – especially of the discourses that are most salient at a given time and in a given space – is that it works through normalization. The power of discourse is such that it generally leads to unreflective positionalities reproducing normalized dichotomies of self and other. Contrasting these positionalities through intersubjective deliberations and narrations could serve as mirrors that challenge the normalization impact of dominant societal discourses. “[B]ecause there are competing discourses, socialization into any one discourse is never complete, and resistance to specific discursive regimes is thus possible” (Foucault in Clarke, Brown, and Hialy 2009, 325). Intersubjective deliberations of contrasting positionalities could unravel “the power effects of particular discursive formations”, which is referred to by Alvesson, Hardy, and Harley (2008) as “positioning practices” (Ybema et al. 2009). In this way, possibilities emerge to defer/differ from the dominant hierarchical categorizations of self and other. Différance (to differ without having the self as the norm), as proposed by Derrida, serves as a marker that upsets normalized positionalities within discursive spaces (Hall 1990, 229). “Strong reflexivity” (Harding 1993) as the result of intersubjective negotiations of contrasting positionalities enables a particular form of agency. Agency then refers to the “capacity [of individuals] to be reflexive about their situation – their ‘discursive consciousness’ – and to act on it to ‘make a difference’” (Zanoni and Janssens (2007, 1376).

In this article, I pay particular attention to “translocational positionalities (i.e. that positionalities are complexly tied to situation, meaning and the interplay of our social locations)” (Anthias 2006, 29). I include the research setting as one of many locations at play and discuss some of the conditions necessary to enable intersubjective reflexivity to unsettle the normalizing impact of the dominant discourses on one’s positioning. Before elaborating on the research data, I first provide an overview of the particularities of the Dutch context.

Dutch migration discourse: others and their roots

The Dutch discourse on migration has shifted several times in recent decades. Until 1980, state policy towards new migrants (as opposed to the migrations from Dutch ex-colonies) was based on the idea that they would one day return to their home countries. Historically, this was associated with the migration of “guest workers” at the end of the 1950s, when there was a great shortage in the labour market. With the migrants’ return in the backs of policy-makers’ minds, policy was aimed primarily at maintaining the cultural identity of migrants rather than integrating them into Dutch society. In the 1980s, the Dutch government shifted its policy regarding guest workers when it realized that migration, once viewed as temporary, had gained a more permanent character. The status of this group changed to “(im)migrant” (Lutz 1997), and the policy became increasingly focused on integration rather than accommodating the cultural identity of migrants.

In the 1980s, the cultural background of migrants was considered to be absolutely different from and even inferior to Dutch culture, but it was not considered a threat to Dutch society. From the 1990s onwards, however, a gradual shift in the debate could be observed leading to discussion positing the incompatibility of Islamic and Western values, suggesting that (un-integrated) Islamic immigrants were the main source of problems in Dutch society and could endanger Western achievements (Ghorashi 2010). By the turn of the century, there was an increase in extremely negative approaches towards the culture and religion of migrants (particularly Islamic migrants) in the public space. Prins (2002) refers to the emergence of these discourses as “the new realism”, meaning that “one must be allowed to say what one thinks”. The new realist was seen as someone with guts, who dares to “call a spade a spade”, who sets himself up as the mouthpiece of the common people and then puts up a vigorous fight against the so-called cultural relativism. A country with a long-standing self-image combining multicultural promise with openness and tolerance became increasingly caught up in the throes of fear and protective of its “national identity” (Duyvendak, Engelen, and de Haan 2008). This led to more restrictive policies towards migrants, a turn towards mandatory civic integration, and a shift towards assimilation (Vasta 2007).

Despite the significant shifts in policy, the culturalist assumption within the Dutch discourse on migration has remained consistent. The persistence and continuity of the culturalist discourse has normalized the migrant’s positioning in terms of rootedness in the place of origin, even for generations born in their new countries. Malkki (1995) refers to this rooted assumption of belonging as “the sedentary bias”, meaning that the belonging of migrants to their cultural background and/or the geographic territory of their countries of origin is considered a natural and normal feature of their positioning. This view leads to the situation that migrants will feel out of place in their countries of settlement, because they in fact belong somewhere else and therefore can never be considered “real Dutch” (Essed and Trienekens 2008). The use of the two terms allochtonous/autochtonous is daunting proof of this distinction (Yanow and van der Haar 2013). According to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), an allochtonous person is someone with at least one parent who was born abroad, as opposed to native Dutch people, who are referred to as being autochtonous. Although the concept of allochtonous formally refers to all Dutch citizens who have origins elsewhere, in the public discourse it is mainly used for migrants of colour, distinguishing them from the “real”, native Dutch (Essed and Trienekens 2008). The essentialist foundation of this distinction makes it impossible to become a full member of Dutch society through achievement and/or choice (Geschiere 2009).

Two studies on women’s narrations

Most of the women who participated in the two studies presented in this article are highly educated and had been active professionals in the Netherlands for several years. Both studies employed the narrative approach, which allowed for personal storytelling of past and present experiences. This biographical approach provided space for understanding the everyday struggles and negotiations of these women.

The first set of data was gathered between 1995 and 2000. The research involved conducting life story interviews with Iranian women who had been leftist activists at the time of the 1979 Iranian revolution and had come to the Netherlands as refugees between 1981 and 1989. These women were active participants in the Iranian revolution and were subjected to ruthless suppression when the Islamist regime took absolute power in 1981 after heavy bloodshed. They all fled Iran because of the post-revolutionary violence. By the time of the interviews, they had lived in their new country long enough to talk about their new way of life. Most of the interviews, which lasted between two and seven hours, were conducted in one session. The life story method was used to create the necessary space and time for the emergence of the stories of women who had suffered a particularly painful past involving political suppression and now had a troubling present as refugees (Ghorashi 2008).

The second set of data was based on a particular form of narrative research in which interactive writing was combined with the life story method. For this project, which began in 2008 and took almost two years, women from different backgrounds (native Dutch, migrant, refugee) shared their life stories with each other and authored their own stories. A short description of the project was distributed in our network and women who applied and qualified as participants were included in the project. The major condition of participation was the willingness to share one’s life story within the group through one’s own writing. The women came from all over the Netherlands to Amsterdam, where the sessions took place. While in the first study there was a process of pre-selection with a specific focus on Iranian women sharing a political activist past, the second study had a very limited pre-selective identity component (only gender). The different choices in the second study (selection and setting) were crucial in enabling “strong reflexivity” through the intersection of multiple sites of engagement and intersubjective levels (Ghorashi 2014).

In addition to the above-mentioned difference between the two studies regarding the selection criteria, three other differences are important to mention: (1) in the first study, the narratives were told based on the narrator’s negotiations and considerations, which were not systematically challenged. This was quite different in the second study, in which the individual narratives were co-constructed through systematic (in different phases of writing) engagement with other participants. The diversity of backgrounds of the participants enabled intersubjective negotiation of contrasting positionalities on various levels. (2) There was a clear difference in terms of the time and space taken in both studies for the narration of stories. Whereas the first study was limited to a number of hours of conversation, the second study took two years, during which several intensive sessions were held. (3) The third difference concerns the notion of shared authorship. In contrast to the first study, the participants in the second study were the authors of their own narratives and the level of writing added a new layer to the notion of reflexivity.

First study: a single story of uprootedness

The analysis of the life stories of Iranian women in the first study revealed various elements.² Their efforts to be actively involved in their new society, for example by learning the language, enrolling in higher education, and finding suitable jobs, as well as engaging in tireless actions for justice and human rights, helped them to cope with the sense of loss and pain caused by being in exile. This longing to build a new life, to justify that they did not leave their homeland for no reason, helped these women become active participants in Dutch society in a relatively short period of time. In the meantime, many of them became Dutch citizens. Paradoxically, legal inclusion led to the painful realization of discursive exclusion. From that moment on, they realized that their wish to become part of the Dutch nation and feel a sense of belonging to the society was an illusion. Several passages in the interviews showed this feeling of discomfort and uneasiness (Ghorashi 2008). Despite their attempts to become part of this society and to learn the language quickly, the women expressed feelings of “uprootedness” in the latter phase of their stay. The disappointment began when their expectations of being accepted and treated as equals butted up against the realization that they continued to be treated as strangers. This experience of being excluded, of being made “the other”, was in many ways similar to that of other migrant women in the Netherlands (Essed 1995; Lutz and Moors 1989).

One of the most significant findings of this study was the prominence of the rootedness frame in the way the participants narrated their positioning in relation to the past and present and identified their sources of belonging. In their narrations, they were quite vocal about the sense of othering they experienced as “allochtons” in the Netherlands. This feeling influenced their sense of non-belonging and uprootedness in their new country. They referred to their country of origin, Iran, as the place where they belong. A selective reconstruction of the memories of the past provided the content for this imaginary home or “Iran of their mind”. In their search for a place of belonging they did not challenge the rootedness assumption within the Dutch discourse. Instead, they re-produced it. Their home was then a place where “they originally come from”. Yet, this imaginary and misplaced “home” outside the place where one lives carries many contradictions for this particular group of women. Although feeling nostalgic for the past and an imaginary sense of belonging to the place one left behind is quite common for migrants, it is not taken-for-granted in the case of refugees who were forced to leave their countries. “But if ‘home’ is where one feels most safe and at ease, instead of some essentialized point on the map, then it is far from clear that returning where one fled from is the same thing as ‘going home’” (Malkki 1995, 509).

To automatically consider the country of origin as “home” also assumes “‘that refugees’ attachment to their homeland and their desire to return to it are ‘natural’ givens” (Al-Rasheed 1994, 199). In addition, it was also quite surprising to hear a desire for an imagined home in Iran from this particular group of women who had been leftist activists and “internationalists” in Iran and had repeatedly told me that in Iran they had considered the “world as their homeland”. One would expect that these ideals of the past would still have informed the positioning of these women in relation to home and belonging. Yet, despite this background, their narratives were clearly influenced by the dominant rootedness frame of the Dutch discourse. Leila’s story shows this contradictory aspect beautifully. She started by distancing herself from nationalistic positioning:

I am not a nationalist person who puts emphasis on Iranian identity. I do not believe in nationalism. I think that I can live in this society as a person, not so much as an Iranian … I do not want to emphasize my Iranian side, and I do not want to show that I am not Iranian either. I am a person living in a society by chance; I am an Iranian living in Dutch society.

Despite her previous distance from a nationalistic stand, on another occasion she referred to Iran as her place/her roots:

The most important problem I have here is that as a migrant I have no certain future. You do not have the same rights in this country, you cannot find a job, and you cannot be sure about your future financially. […] You become tired of this situation. Even if I feel that I have adapted myself to the new situation here, I sometimes feel that I … how can I say it … I feel that my roots are there [Iran]. I think then that someday I will go back, because I prefer to live in my place [Iran]; everybody likes to live in their own country.

Sara expressed her view in a different way:

We [she and her partner] are always busy with plans for the future. I have many ideals, but they are changing all the time. I always want to go to Iran. I always wish to go back and live in Iran, but this is really a kind of dream, and I know it. [Why do you want to go back to Iran and live there?] I think that I belong there. Whatever I do, I remain a foreigner here. Maybe I thought five years ago like: “Ah, I will remain a foreigner all my life here; they will never let us inside their circles.” But now I do not want to become Dutch. Do you understand me? I am happy that I have become so conscious about myself. I realize now that I am a person who has travelled and migrated and has come here and stayed. But the main reason that I want to go to Iran is that I cannot forget about the past. Unfortunately, I cannot put it in a closet and lock it away. When I smell a flower, then tears rush into my eyes. I remember the past, but a past that does not exist anymore. I see that there is no yard, no flowerpot, no space to live, but I want to be there. My existence relates to there.

For these women, the territorial rooted point of reference in terms of belonging served as a single frame to describe their positionality. This shows the power of the dominant rootedness discourse in the Netherlands, normalizing the positioning of women who one would expect to express a different kind of positioning because of their leftist background with its attendant imagination of the world as homeland (see also Ghorashi 1997, 2003).

Second study: beyond a single story of rootedness

One of the most significant results of the second study was that although othering and exclusion were explicitly and even dominantly mentioned in the initial phase of sharing narratives, the national territorial rootedness frame did not remain as a single story of reference when the participants narrated their feelings and sources of positioning and belonging. I would argue that the setting (intensive interactive writing experiment) and the selection (not limited to any axes of identity other than gender) were crucial in creating space for different forms of intersubjectivity (among participants and with the researchers), as well as more room for mundane experiences of belonging. To support this argument it is necessary to elaborate more on the conditions of the second project before presenting the narratives.

“Strong reflexivity”

In 2008, my colleague and I initiated an interactive project on life stories and organized several intensive writing group sessions in which seventeen women from different countries (Iraq, Suriname, Iran, Morocco, Turkey, Netherlands, and Germany) wrote and shared life stories step by step with each other (Ghorashi and Brinkgreve 2010). The participants had professional experience in various fields (art, social work, education, and consulting). Their ages ranged from thirty to sixty-five and they had diverse religious and class backgrounds. Most were married and had children; some were divorced. The sessions and stories were all in Dutch. Whereas some of the participants already knew each other, many did not, making the creation of a safe space crucial. The participants were asked to write their own life stories, based on two leading questions: (1) who are you and what were the most profound moments or people in your life that made you the person you are now? (2) Can you describe moments when you have felt at home or homeless? We asked the participants to write their stories step by step while sharing them with the rest of the group and receiving suggestions for clarification and improvement. The written stories became longer with time and were extensively discussed during the sessions.

With this project we wanted to offer possibilities for reflexivity. The participants’ different backgrounds, in terms of culture and class, migration (i.e. migrants, refugees, and natives), and life trajectories (generational, educational, or political differences), provided a great diversity of intersecting discourses that were produced through the sharing of life stories. The fact that the women wrote their stories beforehand and that there was time and space for several sessions to discuss them, provided the opportunity for intense deliberations. It was through the sharing of stories and the discussions that patterns of sameness (the feeling of being excluded based on gender, ethnic, race, and class) and of difference emerged. For example, the stories of the refugee women were so impressive that, at some points, others stated that they felt their own stories were not good enough to share. However, once they were encouraged to share, it became obvious that their stories were intriguing as well. Through this balancing act between sameness and difference, the unreflective discursive positionalities were challenged with patience and respect (for more detail, see Ghorashi 2014).

Translocational belongings

As stated, enabling positioning from the point of difference means disrupting the normalized effect of dominant discourses through reflection. Janssens and Steyaert (2001) suggest a tactic, following Serres, to achieve this, namely “to step aside”, meaning stepping into the margins of discursive power in order to create space for voices from a position of difference, rather than being defined through the frame of the dominant norm. The safe condition of this space enables connections among different positionalities, including cultural ones, that are not completely subjected to the conditions and assumptions imposed by the power of dominant discourses. By being constantly aware of the implicit working of power, the created safe space within this second project made it possible to listen to the narratives in a manner that is as open as possible. The experience of African-American third-wave feminists served as an inspiring example for us. These feminists chose to create safe spaces in the margins of the centre of action (as opposed to black civil rights activists of the time) to focus on the production of narratives through self-definitions rather than reproductions based on reactive positioning in relation to the dominant discourses (Janssens and Steyaert 2001). Creating safe space as resistance (Collins 1991) introduces a distance from “the centre” through which individuals have the opportunity to detach from the normalizing impact of the centre in order to be able to reflect. It also enables placing the reflection into the act by producing alternative narratives that make a difference. This tradition inspired us to create a safe space to enable the production of multiple relational narratives from the position of difference.

During the intensive sessions of this second study, the participants shared drafts of their life stories with each other. The stories showed a range of feelings from uprootedness to alternative forms of belonging. Yet, the early drafts shared during the sessions on home and belonging were dominated by the sense of uprootedness. An example is the story of Irish, who came to the Netherlands from Surinam as a child and became a successful social worker. She began her story with this passage:

When I saw how one of my co-travellers – an elderly woman – was sniffed and jumped at by a big sheepdog after leaving the airplane, I realized that I had to go through all the phases of one-hundred per cent control that is meant for all the planes from Paramaribo. My estimation was right. I was also treated like a potential criminal and had to show my passport and tell them about the things I did in Surinam and to show them my ticket. I refused to do the last one. I told them that I did not need a ticket to leave an airplane but to board one. […] That experience at Schiphol made it clear to me that the Netherlands is not my home, and it will never become one. Maybe I had experienced the Netherlands as home far in the past, but that has changed. I live here and have built a life for myself. I got chances in life by being brought up here, but this is not my home. I feel at home with my family, my friends and my country mates, and at certain points with some of my colleagues and in my house. But this country is not my home.

Irish’s story shows how particular incidents led to the manifestation of her sense of non-belonging in Dutch society. It is tied to the fact that the discourse in the Netherlands has become more exclusive as well as more insulting to its residents with non-Western migration backgrounds, who are visibly different. The reference to the past sense of a possible belonging to the Netherlands shows how this feeling is connected to and influenced by the growing discourses of exclusion (see also Ghorashi and Vieten 2012).

Another example is Kiki (a native Dutch woman of around sixty-five), who related her sense of home to the description that Parwin (an Iranian refugee woman of around sixty) had given of her life during her stay in an asylum seekers’ centre in the Netherlands. Kiki wrote:

During one of the sessions, the story of one of the participants who came as a refugee to the Netherlands touched me deeply. She wrote about all the things she left behind, all the things she struggled and suffered for, and all the family and friends who died for those causes. All of that for freedom and democracy, something that one would expect to find here. She wrote: “In all those asylum seeker centres you think to yourself: is this it?” This line cuts though my soul. In my own country I have not felt at home over the last couple of years.

It was surprising that a native Dutch woman (whose roots presumably lie in the Netherlands) refers to not feeling at home in the Netherlands. This became even more unsettling for the rootedness discourse when Parwin shared her story of belonging. Parwin’s story of the asylum seekers’ centre became a reference for Kiki to explain her lack of belonging in what she refers to as her own country. Parwin herself wrote that she feels at home in the Netherlands:

Two years ago we got a video from my family in Iran, in which there were recordings of several family gatherings. We watched the video with the whole family. They looked so wealthy: expensive cars, beautiful houses. My sons reacted positively: “What a classy interior” and “Nice cars”. I heard all those comments and felt uncomfortable. When we were done with the video, I said to my sons: “If we had stayed in Iran, we would have all of that as well.” When I received no reaction, I added: “Would you have preferred us to stay in Iran?” They both reacted surprised: “No, of course not. The freedom we have here is much more valuable than the material wealth.” That was the moment when I really felt at home here.

The excerpts from the stories of Kiki and Parwin were presented in the same session. Their somewhat contradictory positions in relation to the Netherlands as home led to the group discussing the notion of the nation state as a source of belonging and home, unseating it as the sole source of rootedness. Later, it became clear that this discussion was crucial in opening up space for more differentiated forms of belonging, in addition to the rooted sources of belonging. The story of Jutta (a German-Dutch woman of around sixty) was one of the narratives that created the dynamic of questioning the rootedness source of belonging as a single source. Jutta wrote:

While visiting Mother Theresa’s children’s home in Calcutta, I asked her about the place of her belonging because she had these homes in many places. She put her hand on my head and looked deep into my eyes and said: “The world is my home.” I was deeply touched by her simple and sincere answer and by her pure presence. In that way I learned to see that I could be at home in many places and that feeling at home for me is deeply connected to being authentic and true to myself: by daring to be in my abnormal otherness. […] Now I feel at home when I am true to myself, when I say what I think, even if it is a deviant voice. I choose not to blur my diversity.

Embracing what Jutta refers to as her “abnormal otherness” and her “deviant voice” is a kind of difference that unsettles the normalization of othering. Accepting something that is considered deviant and referring to it as an authentic part of the self means deconstructing the hierarchical notion of otherness in which the other is considered inferior to the self. Most importantly, this passage created a new angle to unsettle the rootedness notion of belonging referring to many homes in many places. When options were presented for differentiated sources of home and belonging, it was as though a door was opened and many beautiful and poetic narratives of belonging came forward. Mina wrote:

What in the passing years has remained the same is what I received from my parents, combined with Eastern culture and a love of nature. Early mornings when I am lying in bed and hear birds sing, then I feel at home. When I am walking in the beautiful Dutch scenery, looking at the marvellous Dutch clouds, I melt and feel at home. When it rains, and I smell with my deep breath the scent of the wet earth, I feel at home. Then I see myself behind the window of my room in Tehran and remember when a butterfly danced in the rain and tasted the drops of water. The concept of home has lost its physical aspect for me. Just by hearing the rustling of leaves on trees I feel at home. At the same time, I cherish my memories of freedom from the time just after the Iranian revolution. That moment has caught me in its shell: I belong there forever.

These narratives show that with room for negotiation of positions, space for reflection was created, enabling some women to go beyond the dominant, territorial rooted notion of belonging and present differentiated narratives. In these narratives, places overlap and different scenarios bring past and present together, creating narrations of belonging beyond the rootedness frame. In this study, the creation of safe spaces for dialogues of positionalities – especially when contrasts became visible (as in the example of Parwin and Kiki) – enabled the participants to reflect and re-evaluate their positioning and broaden their frames of belonging. Once the dynamic was created to depart from broader scopes of connected locations and experiences, the participants allowed their differentiated positionalities to develop in the narrations of their feelings of belonging and home.

The situational and interactive approach of this research enabled the participants to negotiate their everyday experiences of their past and present by telling, writing, and rewriting their life stories. By doing this, priorities shifted, new recollections emerged, and most importantly, narratives began to surface from positions different from the taken-for-granted single stories of rootedness. In this way, intersubjective intense dialogues and negotiations with others created strong sources of reflexivity. The mirroring effect of this strong reflexivity enabled a broader frame of belonging that included deviant voices, which are often marginalized because of the normalized hierarchical categorizations of self and other ingrained within the dominant Dutch culturalist discourse.

Discussion and conclusion

In this article, I argued that the dominant culturalist discourse in the Netherlands is informed by a territorial rooted notion of identity and belonging that is based on what Malkki (1995) calls “the sedentary bias”. Although our era is defined as one of fluidity and mobility (Bauman 2000; Urry 2000), the dominant discourses on identity and belonging in the Netherlands (as well as in most of Europe) are primarily informed by “the national order of things” in which “rootedness” in a culture or a geographic territory is considered a natural and normal feature of humanity (Malkki 1995, 509). In this sense, home is directly related to a territorial space and equated with the borders of a nation state.

Various studies have shown the negative impact of this culturalist discourse in many European countries and its impact on the sense of non-belonging of migrants and refugees (Essed and Trienekens 2008; Räthzel 1995; Vasta 2007; Yuval-Davis 2006) and migrants’ children who are born and raised in their new countries (de Jong 2011; Eijberts 2013; Omlo 2011). Some studies have identified a paradox between the dominance of Dutch exclusive national discourse, and the growing obligation imposed on migrants to belong to and prove their loyalty to Dutch society (Reekum and Duyvendak 2012; Verkaaik 2010). Buitelaar and Stock (2010) refer to the conflicting demands that Muslim migrants are confronted with (mandating assimilation yet referring to them solely as Muslims) as a “double bind”. Slootman (2014) shows the “reinvention” of ethnic (Moroccan or Turkish) identification in early adulthood by children of migrants who had downplayed their ethnicity during childhood and youth. In the same vein, others show the growing importance of Islam as a source of positive identification and transnational belonging for many children of migrants (Buijs, Demant, and Hamdy 2006; de Jong 2011; Ghorashi 2016; Meer and Modood 2013).

By analysing the narratives of different generations of migrants, these studies show the normalizing impact of the culturalist rootedness discourse on the positioning of this group. The findings of the first study presented in this paper are generally in line with most of these studies. Yet, the interactive setting of the second study provided innovative possibilities for “strong reflexivity”. This in turn enabled the emergence of a variety of narratives that went beyond the normalized frame of rootedness as a single story, narrated dominantly in the first study. In addition, the largely self-selected condition of the second study (as opposed to the pre-selection of the first study) created the possibility to focus on the everydayness of negotiating a sense of belonging instead of the politically or nationally informed narratives of identity and belonging. These conditions facilitated intersubjective reflections on various levels (as friends, political activists, researchers, professionals, mothers, and citizens), which in turn stimulated various non-sedentary approaches to home and belonging as alternatives to the dominant sedentary rootedness frame. In these narratives,

space is imagined (but not imaginary) as a way to explore the mechanisms through which such conceptual processes of place making meet the changing global economic and political conditions of lived spaces – the relation, we could say, between place and space. (Gupta and Ferguson 1997, 39–40)

In these translocational belongings, different spaces and places overlap and meanings attributed to these locations are diverse, multi-layered, and dynamic (Appadurai 1997; Brah 1996; Gilroy 1997; Malkki 1995).

Sharing narratives in a created and owned safe space facilitated an ongoing balancing act between the same and the other in a manner whereby the dynamic (dialectic) connection between the narratives did not a priori depart from a hierarchical relation. By adopting contiguity (Oseen 1997, 55) as a tactic, the power relations were constantly challenged in the process. Contiguity implies the conscious and continuous use of a non-hierarchical view of difference: “difference side by side, without sameness as the norm or the anchor by which difference is constituted” (Oseen 1997). A clear example of this is Jutta’s narrative, in which she embraces her “abnormal otherness” or “deviant voice”. By providing an appreciative description of what is referred to as abnormal and deviant in dominant culturalist discourse, Jutta unsettles the normalized hierarchical notion of othering in that discourse.

In terms of the timeframe, the second study took place when the negative othering component of the Dutch culturalist discourse was much stronger and more visible than it was during the timeframe of the first study. Although the impact of this negative shift was present in many narratives in terms of uprootedness (and was most outspoken in Irish’s narrative), it surprisingly did not become the single frame of reference for the participants. The space for negotiating experiences and positionalities in the second study stimulated the production of differentiated, layered, contrasted, and contested sources of belonging that are evolving in many overlapping spaces. By presenting their multiple voices – for some, the explicit voice of deviance and the embrace of their otherness as different from, but not less than, the norm – the participants in the second study challenged the hierarchical and exclusive foundation of the Dutch dominant discourse of othering. In their relationally produced narratives, these women negotiated differentiated positionalities of everydayness in relation to spaces and locations, and by doing so engaged with the multiplicity of the discourses available to them. This in turn broadened the oft-used rootedness as the single frame of reference related to home and belonging.

Our challenge as researchers is to find the ways through which a more layered and differentiated positioning from a point of difference can become more visible. These differentiated narratives illuminate various routes of belonging that is not the denial of the importance of place in relation to identity and belonging, but a response to the sedentary foundation of the dominance of culturalist discourse, which blinds us to “the multiplicity of attachments that people form to places through living in, remembering, and imagining them” (Malkki 1997, 72).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Earlier, I referred to this essentialist foundation of cultural othering in relation to women’s emancipation as the “culturalization of emancipation” (Ghorashi 2006).

2. This title is inspired by the TED talk given by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The danger of a single story”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg, last visited 17 August 2016.