‘New’ Dutch Civic Integration: learning ‘Spontaneous Compliance’ to address inherent difference

ABSTRACT

In January 2022 the new Dutch Civic Integration programme was launched together with promises of improvements it would bring in facilitating the ‘integration’ of newcomers to the Netherlands. This study presents a critical discourse analysis of texts intended for municipalities to take on their new coordinating role in this programme. The analysis aims to understand the discourse in the texts, which actors are mobilized by them, and the role these texts and these actors play in processes of governmental racialization. The analysis demonstrates shifting complex assemblages are brought into cascades of governance in which all actors are disciplined to accept the problem of integration as a problem of cultural difference and distance, and then furthermore disciplined to adopt new practices deemed necessary to identify and even ‘objectively’ measure the inherent traits contributing to this problematic. Lastly, the analysis displays that all actors are disciplined to accept the solution of ‘spontaneous compliance’; a series of practices and knowledges, which move the civic integration programme beyond an aim of responsibilization, into a programme of internalization, wherein newcomers are expected to own and address their problematic ‘nature’, making ‘modern’ values their own.

KEYWORDS:

• Civic integration
• critical discourse analysis
• modernity
• governmental racialization
• governmentality

Introduction

In July 2018 the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment published plans for the new civic integration programme in the Netherlands. Civic Integration (Inburgering), with its complex inclusion and exclusion criteria, claims to contribute to the successful integration and participation of migrants. The previous programme culminated with 6 exams covering language, knowledge of Dutch society, and an employment portfolio, all to be completed within 3 years. Additionally, individuals were required to sign a Participation Statement, stating they will adopt and respect Dutch core values. From the position of the ministry, a new civic integration programme was needed as the previous programme functioned too much in isolation from policies facilitating labour market participation (Kamerstukken II, 2020). Additionally, the system of privatized language courses, which newcomers were expected to navigate independently was described as too complex (Kamerstukken II, 2020). This complexity leading to inefficiencies that stifled achieving civic integration, causing the ministry to be concerned with extended reliance on government financial assistance, ‘an unacceptable outcome of the current civic integration system’ (Koolmees, 2018, p.1).

From this framing of the key problematics, the plans for the new civic integration programme were born.¹ The stated goal of the new programme aligns with the government’s concern with work, integration and efficiency, highlighted in the aim that everyone ‘can participate independently in the Dutch society as quickly as possible, ideally through paid work’ (Kamerstukken II, 2020). Specific solutions have been proposed which claim to ‘fix’ the government-defined problematics. Firstly, to address the issue of civic integration operating in isolation from policies aimed at participation, understood as work, civic integration is now linked at a policy level with the Participation Act (Participatiewet), a law which aims to ensure all citizens able to work, are supported and stimulated to do so (Rijksoverheid, n.d.). Secondly, whereas previously integrators were themselves responsible for navigating the privatized system, in the new programme, municipalities have been tasked with a coordinating role. Municipalities are responsible for purchasing and providing a civic integration programme for the newcomers in their area. To do this, municipalities can partner with private companies or civil society organizations. The central government remains responsible for the law and for monitoring and evaluation.

Solutions have also been implemented which claim to address the issue of integrators taking too long to complete their civic integration and as a result relying too long on government assistance (Koolmees, 2018). The language requirements have been raised from A2 to B1 level, seen as necessary to be successful in employment. Possibilities for extension or exemption have been restricted, and new practices are introduced to move people as efficiently as possible through civic integration and into the labour market. A Broad Intake and a Plan Inburgering (Civic Integration) and Participation (PIP) have been introduced to define an individual’s start position and their personal goals for how civic integration will be completed. A learnability test has been introduced to assist in this process. Three learning routes (B1 language level route, Education route and Z-Route) are also introduced. The Z-Route is a new programme which stands for zelfredzaamheid or in English, ‘self-sufficiency’ and is designed for people deemed unlikely to reach A2 level Dutch. Individuals within civic integration are still required to complete language and Dutch society exams and are required to sign the participation statement, but must now also participate in its newly introduced excursion-based training. Additionally, they must participate in the new Module Labour Market and Participation (MAP). Lastly, a new practice is applied specific to the category asylum migrants who receive welfare assistance on arrival. This practice is financial ontzorging which translates literally to ‘unburdening’ and entails that refugee migrants have all finances controlled by the municipality for a period of 6 months (with possibility for extension). Failure to comply with any portion of this programme can lead, depending on the category of migrant (described as asylum migrant, family migrant, or ‘other’ migrant), to various fines and failure to complete the civic integration programme in its entirety can have consequences for residency status and eventual naturalization.

To guide municipalities in coordination of this programme and its newly introduced practices, several texts have been produced, translating policy aims to practical advice for implementation. These texts are drafted by the government themselves or by organizations contracted by the government to collaborate on the implementation of the new programme. In this study, these texts, and the discourses within them are understood to be technologies of governance (Rose, 1999a), and the organizations producing them are understood as actors who are discursively mobilized within the new civic integration assemblage. As a form of social practice, the texts, along with the integration practices they promote, participate in subjectification, or put more simply, in constructing and creating the to-be integrated subject. Analysing these texts makes normalized discursive emphases and techniques embedded in the solutions visible (Brady, 2011) and facilitates the tracing of what makes it even possible to propose them. It allows for the critical examination of practices, identifying their potential effects. It facilitates the finding of connections or disjuncture’s between current discourses and discourses of previous programmes, as well as with broader discursive trends, highlighting the development of who is discursively mobilized and to what effect. Lastly, it allows for the opening of possibilities to consider alternative representations.

Theoretical framework: colonial governmentality

Viewing texts as technologies of governance stems from a theoretical perspective of governmentality (Foucault, 1972). Governmentality is understood as the governance of the ‘conduct-of-conduct’, ‘a strategic activity that aims to shape, guide or affect the conduct of persons and communities, including the government of the state, of the self and others’ (Hesse, 2005, p. 98). The ‘shaping of conduct’ is accomplished through applying multiple techniques ranging from ‘technologies-of-self’ to ‘technologies-of-discipline’. with ‘technologies-of-self’ (Dean, 1999; D’Aoust, 2013) aiming to ensure individuals manage their own conduct in desirable ways. When these technologies are structured through neoliberal logics, they are presented alongside discourses of ‘choice’, ‘freedom’ and ‘individualization’ (Korteweg, 2017; Scott, 1995), while still placing pressures to conform to a desired ideal, a concept called ‘governing through freedom’ (Rose, 1999b). Technologies-of-discipline are directed to, ‘those who are unable or unwilling to enterprise their lives or manage their own risk, incapable of exercising responsible self-government’ (Rose, 1999b, p. 259). A governmentality approach to studying migration and integration has been applied by many authors (Darling, 2011; D’Aoust, 2013; Hadj Abdou, 2019; Korteweg, 2017; Lippert, 1999; Ocak, 2021; Suvarierol & Kirk, 2015; Walters, 2015) (not an exhaustive list), as it provides researchers a tool which focuses not on problematizing the integrators themselves but instead directing focus on the systems in which they exist and how these systems articulate ideas on integration and the to-be integrated subject (Hadj Abdou, 2019).

Building on this governmentality perspective, the theoretical approach of this research acknowledges that the processes, practices and subjects of this governance are racialized. With this perspective we align ourselves with multiple authors in the field of migration and integration (Bhambra, 2017; D’Aoust, 2018; Grosfoguel et al., 2015; Korteweg & Triadafilopoulos, 2013; Lentin, 2014; Mayblin, 2017; Mayblin & Turner, 2021; Ocak, 2021; Schinkel, 2018; Suvarierol & Kirk, 2015; Tudor, 2018) (not an exhaustive list), in that we argue that the focus of governance in civic integration is unproblematically linked to notions of modernity (Mignolo, 2007; Quijano, 2007) and a ‘modern way-of-life’ and that, as stated by Hesse: ‘Modernity is racial’ (2007, p. 643). With the notion of ‘race’ deemed unscientific, with no biological foundation (Duffield, 2006; Erel et al., 2016; Hall, 2017), racialization as a concept recognizes the continuation of colonial logics of race through the production of racialized groups (Korteweg, 2017), or rather the marking of bodies (De Genova, 2018; de Koning, 2020; Grosfoguel et al., 2015), based on naturalized and essentialized notions of culture and modernity. This cultural racialization has two important characteristics. Firstly, it embraces a notion of inherence: cultures have inherent characteristics which are understood as being at varying degrees of distance from the acclaimed European ‘modern’ culture, attributing a state of Otherness (Duffield, 2006; Hall, 2017; Hesse, 2005; 2007; Korteweg, 2017; Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 2018; Schinkel, 2018). These traits are understood to be inherent to individuals coming from these cultures and act thus as a marker of their difference. Secondly, the inherent cultural characteristics are seen as problematic for the overall goal of integration (de Koning, 2020; Schinkel, 2018) especially when the aim of integration is the achievement of a state of modernity, embodied in an economically self-sufficient and productive citizen (Bonjour & Duyvendak, 2017; Ocak, 2021; Schinkel & Van Houdt, 2010). Distinctions of modernity are reflected in the categorizations of ‘Western’ vs. ‘non-Western’ and other place-based modes of differentiation (Hall, 2017; Yanow & Van Der Haar, 2013), and allow for the assumed problematic traits inherent to ‘unmodern cultures’ to be extended to generations born within the nation state, who though never having migrated themselves, still are seen as belonging to a certain, at ‘distance-from-Dutch’ culture (de Koning, 2020; Grosfoguel et al., 2015; Schinkel, 2018).

Culture has thus become a new form of racism, becoming ‘the normalized way of reflecting on difference’ (Jones, 2015, p. 327). In relation to migration, cultural racialization thus ‘marks a shift in racial discourse from a colonial preoccupation with “biological-type in location” to a contemporary concern with “cultural types in circulation”’. The immigrant – the embodiment of culture difference in motion – became its first iconic figure’ (Duffield, 2006, p. 71). This shift in racialization acknowledges the legacy of colonial methods of categorizations, as well as colonial laws which were put in place with the primary goal of restricting the movement of colonized populations (De Genova, 2018; Grosfoguel et al., 2015; Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 2018; Vries & Spijkerboer, 2021; Walters, 2004). To think that processes of marking and ordering bodies essential to colonialism disappeared in a post-colonial world is a common feature of discussion on integration in Europe today, to the point that race, and colonial history, is made invisible or actively denied (Goldburg, 2009). Racialized hierarchies continue to exist in the discourse within previous civic integration programmes, expanded on with various intersecting markers related to gender, language, religion, amongst others (Bonjour & Duyvendak, 2017; Erel et al., 2016; Grosfoguel et al., 2015; Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 2018), which are further problematized in relation to integration. Throughout all these racializing processes is the assumed norm to which the to-be integrated subject is compared, a norm ‘profoundly implicated in relationality’ (Hesse, 2007, p. 646). A hegemony of white culture (Hesse, 2005; Schinkel, 2018), an imaginary of European belonging (De Genova, 2018; Goldburg, 2009), ‘modernity’ (Hindess, 2007) and the normalization of non-migration (Tudor, 2018) is thus imagined based on a distancing and separation from an ‘unmodern Other’.

Acknowledging these processes of racialization and how they relate to practices of governance, we draw on Hesse’s definition of governmental racialization:

 … the social routinization and institutionalization of regulatory, administrative power (e.g. laws, rules, policies, discipline, precepts) exercised by Europeanized (‘white’) assemblages over non-Europeanized (‘non-white’) assemblages as if this was a normal, inviolable or natural social arrangement of races. It is governmental because it is concerned with regulatory and administrative rationales: assessing, determining, and controlling criteria of admission to ‘European’ conceptions of humanity, while shoring up colonially perceived deficiencies in ‘non-European’ others symbolized by their so-called impositionally attributed racial difference. (Hesse, 2007, pp. 656–657)

As displayed in the definition above, the governance of the racialized, to-be integrated subject, requires an assemblage, involving multiple private and public actors, all granted the power and authority to manage conduct. Authors have explored this assemblage in relation to the civic integration and citizenship programmes in the Netherlands referring to it as a ‘responsibilization regime’ (Suvarierol & Kirk, 2015) involved in ‘repressive responsibilization’ (focused on the moral education of those marked as risk) and ‘facilitative responsibilization’ (focused on the population at large with the aim to mobilize an attachment to norms and values concerning individual responsibility) (Schinkel & Van Houdt, 2010). Authors describe that the regime works in the following way: ‘The government thus disciplines the municipalities, who discipline the course providers, who then in turn, together with the municipalities, discipline migrants’ (Suvarierol & Kirk, 2015, p. 254), resulting in a situation where the state is able to retreat and govern from a distance.

With this theoretical background we aim to apply a critical lens to texts being used to shape what is being presented as a new civic integration programme. These theories make it possible to critically question if and how racialization is taking place and who is discursively mobilized in the assemblage. This provides a valuable approach to situate the findings of this research in a historical context, making them relevant to other post-colonial settings and other programmes designed to facilitate ‘integration’.

Methodology

As previously stated, this study analyses ‘translation texts’, texts written by the central government, or by organizations contracted by the government, to prepare municipalities to take on their coordinating role in civic integration. To do this, a critical discourse analysis was conducted informed by Foucault’s understanding of discourse as contributing to the creation of ‘objects for thought’ (Foucault, 1972).

To capture the discourse operating within the complex assemblage of civic integration today, a wide range of texts from multiple resources was needed to get a complete discursive picture. Recognizing this, texts were selected from multiple actors including; the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment (responsible for civic integration), organizations such as Divosa (the national association of directors in social services), and the VNG (the association of Dutch municipalities) who are tasked by the government with assisting municipalities to organize their civic integration programmes. As well, texts were selected from private research institutions tasked in conducting evaluations and in presenting best-practices of pilot programmes, as well as texts from civil society organizations. The selection of texts was done to ensure an equal distribution of texts from these different types of actors. Though specific historical texts were not selected and compared as part of this study, earlier literature presenting discursive investigations of the previous civic integration programmes and the role of multiple organizations within them were incorporated in the discussion. An iterative analysis consisted of multiple rounds of coding of 23 individual texts, followed by a cross-text analysis, as well as viewing texts through the theoretical framework. The analysis was discussed regularly within the research team. Quotes representing the complete discursive picture were selected from the texts and translated by bilingual authors from Dutch to English.

Analytical discussion

The texts analysed in this study are the products of a complex assemblage. Whereas previous studies have acknowledged a ‘responsibilization regime’ which transfers disciplinary power from state to municipalities and then further to private actors to discipline migrants, the analysis of texts in this study display significant shifts have taken place regarding the civic integration assemblage of today. Organizations such as Divosa and VNG have become important actors in the disciplining work, assuming a position between the state and the municipalities, directly taking on the role of disciplining the latter. Throughout previous changes to civic integration policy, Divosa was involved in commenting and reacting to proposed change. Since2016, in the lead up to the new civic integration programme 2021, they have taken on an active role on behalf of the ministry: running and evaluating pilots, creating communities of practice for municipalities, and preparing a breadth of guidebooks, tutorials and events to help municipalities to arrange their civic integration programme (Divosa, n.d.). Through this positioning these organizations align themselves with the government, taking on a large role in the promotion of its laws and the (re)production of its discourse towards municipalities (Rodenburg, 2019). In doing so, Divosa and VNG, are joining the state in disciplining municipalities on how they should, in turn, discipline the integrators: ‘You have the important role to stimulate them and to prevent that the process stagnates’ (VNG & Stimulansz, 2021, p. 6) as well as other actors within the assemblage of civic integration: ‘The advantage of short-term contracts (for example 1–2 years) is that you can quickly say goodbye to less performing providers. In this way, providers are “kept on track”’ (SZW, 2020, p. 23). This positioning of Divosa and VNG have allowed the state, though still active, to become increasingly silent in the discourse on civic integration.

Though significant, only acknowledging the role of Divosa and VNG would not do justice to the complexity of actors in the civic integration assemblage. Throughout the texts multiple practices are introduced and with each practice, a new assemblage of actors is brought to light, resulting not in a single chain of governance from state to municipality to private partners to migrant, but in multiple assemblages of actors. Our further analysis will demonstrate the important findings that all these actors are brought into cascades of governance to ensure they are disciplined in three ways. Firstly, they must be disciplined to view the problem of integration as a problem of cultural distance. Secondly, with this taken-for-granted truth perpetuated, the actors are disciplined to embrace a notion that this distance can, and must, be measured and identified, a necessary step to be able to act upon it. Thirdly, all actors must be disciplined to accept the solution which the texts aim to present, a solution which aims to address the inherent differences stagnating integration, a solution described as spontaneous compliance.

The problem of cultural difference

Hesse claims that the justification for governmental racialization is the notion of a ‘radically incommensurable corporeal “non-European” subject’ (Hesse, 2007, p. 656). The notion of incommensurability, of a lack of common ground, is the logic within discourse which normalizes difference and promotes the need for ‘the continuing governance of who belongs to the nation state and who does not’ (de Koning, 2020, p. 127). As previously stated, the Dutch civic integration programme has rooted itself in this logic of difference, operationalizing culturally racialized assumptions of newcomers to the Netherlands into the explanation for their failure to live self-sufficient and productive lives, thereby making assimilationist integration policies possible (Schinkel & Van Houdt, 2010; Suvarierol & Kirk, 2015; de Bonjour & Duyvendak, 2017; Korteweg, 2017; Korteweg & Triadafilopoulos, 2013; Vries & Spijkerboer, 2022).

The texts of the civic integration programme 2021, demonstrate that this new policy joins a long line of policy discourse which (re)produces these logics. These findings, perhaps unsurprising, are nevertheless important to acknowledge considering the above criticisms, the fact that the programme is presented as ‘new’, and the multiplicity of actors which are the disciplined because of the texts. Texts continue to normalize culture as a marker of difference, presenting dichotomous relations between the culture of ‘Us’ and the culture of ‘Them’. The texts accomplish this through discursive acts such as recommending that individuals working with newcomers must be aware of culture difference and skilled in inter-cultural communication (Divosa, 2020; 2022; Divosa & Stillare, 2021; VNG & Stimulansz, 2021), recommend involving persons coming from the same countries as peer-support volunteers or staff in order to ‘bridge’ cultural differences (Divosa, 2020; 2021b; 2021d; Verwey Jonker Instituut, 2021), or encouraging exercises in which participants reflect on the differences between their culture and ‘Dutch’ culture (Divosa, 2022; Divosa & Stillare, 2021).

These actions discipline the municipalities to accept the normalized idea that there are inherently different cultures. Through processes of cultural racialization in the texts, markers of un-modernity are attributed to certain cultures and to their related bodies, understood as markers of their ‘non-Europeanness’ (Hesse, 2007). Markers embodied in territories, seen in the repeated dichotomy of ‘Western vs. non-Western’:

The differences in work environment in the Netherlands and other countries can be bigger than you think. Also, if we’re talking about Western countries like Japan, Australia, and England. What we think is normal to ask during a job interview can be very strange in another culture. For example, the question, ‘How do you deal with a bad day? In some cultures, for example in Asia, it’s not normal to admit that you are having a bad day (Divosa & Stillare, 2021, p. 10),

markers embodied in values:

At one extreme of the spectrum, we are dealing with people who are familiar with the Dutch core values of freedom, equality, solidarity and participation (as mentioned in the Participation Statement), have grown up with them and have made them their personal values. At the other extreme, we are dealing with people who grew up in countries where society is at a great distance from these core values and may never have experience them in their personal context (Divosa & Stillare, 2021, p. 13),

markers embodied in behaviour: ‘The trainer will cover different central values within different cultures so that you get insight into the cultural baggage and codes of yourself and others. You learn what effect this has on perceiving, thinking and acting from different perspectives’ (VluchtelingenWerk Nederland [VWN], n.d.-a) and markers embodied in skills needed to live a ‘modern’ self-sufficient life: ‘There can be big cultural difference in how finances are dealt with in the country of origin vs. the Netherlands’ (Divosa, 2021e).

Providing a specific example, previous studies have identified and critiqued the processes through which markers of modernity are attributed to cultural and religious populations in relation to their assumed problematic gender values (Bonjour, 2020; Korteweg, 2017; Korteweg & Triadafilopoulos, 2013). In the texts of civic integration 2021 it can be said that this has only increased. The texts present the belief of unmodern values associated with gender as so persistent that regardless of other markers of ‘modernity’, the need to have people becoming aware of gender norms is seen as essential ‘People who have higher education or who can learn the new material more quickly should be grouped together. That is motivating for the integration. Additionally, you have more time over to discuss other topics. Like women’s rights’ (Verwey Jonker Instituut, 2021, p. 42). To strengthen this belief we see an example of one of the complex assemblages of civic integration, in this cased deemed necessary to instruct female migrants on ‘what it means to be a woman in the Netherlands’ (Divosa, 2021b). Texts present knowledge gained from Divosa led pilot programmes and present a list of actors who are involved and activated within them: language teachers, translators, individuals with a migrant background as ‘cultural connectors’, citizen volunteers, consultants from unemployment programmes, private reintegration companies, civil society organizations, job coaches, client managers from social services, theatre groups, potential future employers and private research institutes (Divosa, 2021b). These best practices perpetuate the view of the woman as a victim of her culture, impacting on her lack of self-sufficiency: ‘Who am I and what do I want? This is a question which in many countries is not asked to women’; (Divosa, 2021b), and her unmodern position in her family:

If you ask these women how they are doing, they ask themselves first, how is my husband doing? How are my children doing? Only then is it their turn … they are in service of their men and children and must learn to make choices for themselves. (Divosa, 2021b)

This image of women makes it possible to unproblematically promote a multiple of practices aimed at self-sufficiency, money management and ‘empowerment’, all paternalistic notions of emancipation possible within the civic integration programme: ‘ … the Dutch context opens doors for these [Eritrean] women in terms of (financial) emancipation’ (Verwey Jonker Instituut, 2021, p. 47). Therefore the ‘emancipation’ of women must be learned and recognized not only by the women themselves, but by all the various actors in this assemblage who are tasked with evaluating and facilitating it (D’Aoust, 2013).

The identification of difference

With the notion of cultural difference confirmed in the texts, our analysis displays another shift in the discourse and practices within civic integration 2021. Viewing integration and self-sufficiency as a problem of ‘culture’ makes it possible, if not necessary, to measure and identify cultural distance to be able to act accordingly to minimize it. Multiple practices and actors are mobilized to achieve this goal.

The Broad Intake is one practice presented as necessary in the assessment of difference, or rather the assessment of the ‘start’ position of an individual prior to beginning the transformation of civic integration: ‘The broad intake takes an important place in the new programme: it gives insight on an individual level of the start position and opportunities for development of the integrator²’ (Divosa, 2021c). Municipalities are disciplined through the texts to see the information obtained during the broad intake as necessary for obtaining: ‘the best possible picture of the integrator and to choose the learning route that is most fitting for them’ (Divosa, 2020, p. 12) and that this necessity justifies that municipalities use disciplinary measures if individuals are not cooperative in its completion.

Due to the significance of the broad intake for the civic integration trajectory, it is of great importance that the integrator cooperates with it. If the integrator culpably does not appear or does not cooperate during the broad intake, then a fine is in order. The amount of the fine is 250 euros per offence. (Divosa, 2021a)

By doing this, the importance of the broad intake is left unquestioned. Instead, the intake is presented as not only necessary for assessment, but for identifying potentially problematic behaviours:

When organizing the broad intake, it is important to take the time to get to know the person completing civic integration and to get a picture of their capacities. Some municipalities do this by organizing the broad intake as an intensive pre-trajectory of a few weeks. Knowledge of behaviour is an almost indispensable tool here to influence undesirable behaviour where necessary. (VNG & Stimulansz, 2021, p. 15)

A mandatory portion of this broad intake is the learnability test (leerbaarheidstoets) which has been formally introduced despite critique on previous forms of language and learnability assessments (Suvarierol & Kirk, 2015). The test assesses an individual’s potential for learning and provides a yes/no answer: ‘Is the level of Dutch language needed to follow the B1-route (or at least level A2) possible within the civic integration period of 3 years?’ (VNG, 2021a, p. 18). By doing so, this tool separates individuals into subject streams which represent their assumed distance from a desired state of productivity and participation. Those receiving a ‘yes’ continue to the B1 language route, seen as the route with most potential for economic participation, while those receiving a ‘no’ are streamed into the Z-route. Where despite their lack of Dutch fluency and likely subsequent lack of economic participation, the individuals must still become self-reliant citizens, at the basic level of ‘surviving’: ‘Self-sufficiency Route (Z-Route): for people who will not be able to attain the education or B1 route, a learning route will be offered in which everyone learns to survive in society’ (SZW, 2020, p. 5).

The involvement of various actors in the creation and implementation of the learnability test is yet another example of the complexity of the civic integration assemblages. Bureau ICE, presented as experts in ‘reliable, valid and fun tests’ (Bureau ICE, 2023) are brought into the assemblage for the development of the test and for the training and certification of test supervisors, employees of the municipalities, which are deemed as necessary for the test’s successful implementation in practice.

As of January 1, 2022, there is per municipality a minimum of 1 exam supervisor trained and certified by Bureau ICE, the rest of the exam supervisors (an expected total of 858 exam supervisors) should be trained and certified by April 1, 2022. (VNG, 2021a, p. 4)

DUO, the government body responsible for education is activated to manage the registration and the communication of results to municipalities through a secure online portal (VNG, 2021a), and Divosa and VNG are discursively mobilized to discipline the municipalities to accept the necessity and importance of the test. The texts promote notions of ‘uniformity’ and ‘objectivity’ as a desirable outcome of this assemblage. ‘Because the learnability test is uniform and independent of language ability, it is for every integrator the same’ (VNG, 2021a, p. 20) and this claim to objectivity is further used to govern the conduct of municipalities in relation to the amount of discretion they can take during their assessment. Municipalities are told that they need ‘strong reasons’ to depart from the advice which comes out of the learnability test (Kamerstukken II, 2020).

Beyond the above example of the learnability test, the texts promote other measurement tools to assess and mark positions of difference as well as progress towards the end goal of a self-sufficient citizen. Tests are recommended to measure the level of financial self-reliance (Divosa, 2021e; Verwey Jonker Instituut, 2021; VWN, n.d.-b), which are used for categorizations determining governing practices

At the start of the coaching a test is carried out to measure the level of financial skills. This test is repeated after 6 months. If the test shows that the participant is still insufficiently financially self-reliant then the financial unburdening is extended by another 6 months. (Verwey Jonker Instituut, 2021, p. 19)

Furthermore, the texts promote assessment tools used to grade level of self-reliance ‘we complete the self-reliance matrix three times during the trajectory and hope of course that we see improvements in all areas’ (Divosa, 2021d) and share statistics as a way of strengthening the belief that self-reliance as a state which can be measured and ‘achieved’ ‘15% was measured as being sufficiently financially self-reliant at the beginning, 40% as limited in their level of financial reliance and 45% as insufficiently financially self-reliant/sufficiency’ (Verwey Jonker Instituut, 2021, p. 13).

Through the promotion of tools which claim to objectively measure and identify distance, multiple actors in the assemblage are involved in mundane routinization of the marking of difference (Hesse, 2005; Löwenheim & Gazit, 2009) in an unproblematic way. The effect of this is that the actors are actively producing the difference they claim to be ‘measuring’ (Schinkel & Van Houdt, 2010). The level of self-sufficiency of migrants is ‘lowered’ purely because we can define it, measure it and furthermore present this measurement in the form of a statistic, solidifying its truth. ‘ … the examiner justifies its decision or recommendations not in terms of power (which is imbued with politically contested aspects), but in terms of the objective nature and capacity of the examinee – as revealed in the examination’ (Löwenheim & Gazit, 2009, p. 151). Throughout all these practices of measurement, the ‘subject’ of integration is identified and problematized (Ocak, 2021; Tudor, 2018) and made tangible through the discursive formation of groups and categories.

The solution of spontaneous compliance

With cultural difference accepted and measured, the texts also participate in disciplining municipalities in understanding the most effective solution; a solution which ensures individuals address the inherent, cultural traits which are seen as contributing to their problematic integration. Previous literature has described responsibilization as the goal of civic integration programmes, ensuring that people accept the responsibility for successfully completing their integration requirements and for understanding Dutch values (Schinkel & Van Houdt, 2010; Suvarierol & Kirk, 2015). In the civic integration 2021, we argue that the discourse has moved beyond the aim of responsibilization; promoting a process which could be more accurately referred to as internalization. The texts present a discourse which emphasizes individuals must not only understand and accept modern values but must absorb them to the point that they become part of their own character. ‘That takes time, to make those values your own. Therefore, there are suggestions and activities in the training which touch on certain core values, such as participation and equity’ (Divosa & Stillare, 2021, p. 10). The testing described above thus form multiple ‘checkpoints’, which help to define the starting point, and the progress an individual makes towards an internalized state of ‘modernity’.

Whereas previous programmes used strict rules and sanctions to ensure compliance, the new civic integration programme distances itself from this approach, promoting instead an approach called spontaneous compliance, or rather, an approach which ensures that individuals themselves will complete what is required of them, from their own internal motivation, without external motivators or sanctions.

Enforcement in the new civic integration programme is much more than just giving a fine or a consequence. It aims to bring about spontaneous compliance in adhering to the laws and regulations. In the new civic integration this means that enforcement must primarily be aimed at the person spontaneously cooperating with the requested effort and the intended end result. (VNG, 2021b 2021b, p. 17)

Multiple practices are introduced in the texts, strengthened with discourses drawing from social psychology and behavioural sciences, to facilitate this process of internalization.

Firstly, municipalities are encouraged to structure their civic integration programme, in a way which provides opportunities to facilitate the real-life ‘practicing’ of skills and values, seen as the best pathway to internalize them, understood as ‘learning by doing’ (Divosa & Stillare, 2021, p. 8). The texts promote this as not only important for municipalities themselves, but also encourage municipalities to discipline organizations offering portions of the civic integration programme to do the same, for example by operationalizing this into criteria which are weighed when awarded contracts to provide portions of the civic integration programme (SZW, 2020). This discourse of ‘experiential learning’ is made possible through shifts in the new civic integration programme including the promotion of dual trajectories for language development (SZW, 2020), excursions for individuals in the Z-route (Divosa, 2021d), and the adding of ‘practical hours’ to the existing Participation Statement Programme, seen as better facilitating the internalization of values.

One of the biggest changes with the old civic integration programme is the extension of the minimum number of hours of the programme to 12 hours. Also, the programme must include one activity in which a core value (freedom, equity, solidarity or participation) is translated into practice. (Divosa, 2022)

This discourse is reproduced by civil society organizations such as Vluchtelingenwerk: ‘This is how we transform the core values from abstract concepts into a self-evident way of doing things for newcomers’ (VWN, n.d.-c), demonstrating their role in the assemblage.

Beyond the provision of opportunities to ‘practice’, the solution of spontaneous compliance is made possible through the promotion of insights from behavioural sciences

Spontaneous compliance with rules and agreements benefits from prevention. Good communication and appropriate services are necessary for effective prevention. Insights from behavioural sciences can help you to recognize the behaviours of integrators and by doing so support the compliance with agreements and rules. (VNG & Stimulansz, 2021, p. 2)

This makes it possible to promote practices which move beyond a cognitive level of ‘understanding’ values, an approach deemed insufficient. Instead, the texts are informed by documents such as: ‘Knowing is Not Doing’ (WRR, 2017), published by the Scientific Council for Government Policy, and the contracting of organizations such as Stillare who present themselves as experts who ‘help you with influencing attitude and behaviour’ (Stillare, n.d.), bringing them into the assemblage to promote objective insights, based on ‘scientific knowledge’. Municipalities are therefore disciplined to operationalize this knowledge into practices to address the inherent behavioural issues standing in the way of civic integration, such as: minimizing stress (Divosa, 2021d; VWN, n.d.-d)

Chronic stress can lead to less impulse control, working memory and mental flexibility. Additionally, it minimizes the ability to solve one’s own problems. This is of course the opposite of what is needed to successfully complete a civic integration programme. (VNG & Stimulansz, 2021, p. 15),

providing information in a ‘digestible’ way (Verwey Jonker Instituut, 2021; VNG, 2021b; VNG & Stimulansz, 2021)

What is your municipalities shared vision regarding communication with integrators? How will your municipality ensure that the integrator understands the formal agreement and the responsibilities that come with it? Will you as a municipality provide the information about the agreements in the PIP in another way then in writing, for example in visualizations? (VNG, 2021b, p. 10),

setting SMART goals (VNG & Stimulansz, 2021), developing self-confidence (Divosa, 2021b; 2021a; VWN, n.d.-d), facilitating success experiences ‘It can help to break the trajectory down into smaller steps, so that small steps can be completed successful through with the motivation for the rest of the steps increases’ (VNG & Stimulansz, 2021, p. 8) and providing examples of ‘successful’ others to encourage desirable conduct.

People like to conform to the group. If it is widely expressed that newcomers are actively committed to civic integration, integration and paid work, other newcomers will be more inclined to do the same, in order to belong to the group. (VNG & Stimulansz, 2021, p. 8)

Again, here we see a complex assemblage developing around a practice aimed at guiding integrators towards spontaneous compliance. The Plan (Civic) Integration and Participation (PIP) contains goals and a personalized plan for integration, acting as an agreement and as a technology-of-self and technology-of-discipline between them and the municipality:

The PIP is leading throughout the civic integration trajectory. The PIP is a formal agreement and the goals in the document determine wither the civic integration requirements have been met. To monitor progress, the municipality holds progress interviews with the integrator at regular intervals during the period of the PIP. The starting point is that the PIP is not voluntary – not for integrators and not for the municipality; both parties commit to the plan. Culpable failure to integrate has consequences: a fine. Moreover, the person integrating will then not be eligible for a strong residency permit or naturalisation (Divosa, 2020),

but also acts as a tool to govern the conduct of all actors in the assemblage, ensuring everyone is on the same page:

The new Civic Integration Act emphasizes that the PIP is a dynamic document that can be adjusted. When this happens, it is important that changes are clearly recorded and that both the integrators, the providers of the integration route and – if necessary – the societal support are well informed and have an accurate version of the PIP in their hands. The municipality always retains the lead role and is ultimately the only one with the authority to make adjustments to the PIP. Afterall, it remains a formal agreement. (Divosa, 2020)

Learning spontaneous compliance is therefore the duty of the integrator, but also of all actors within the assemblage (D’Aoust, 2013). With all the different actors on board, the PIP then becomes a prime example of ‘governing through freedom’. Decribed by Rose as ‘a twin process of autonomization plus responsibilization – opening free space for the choices of individual actors whilst enwrapping these autonomized actors within new forms of control’ (1999b, p. 23). ‘The set goals must be acceptable for the person required to integrate. His input is important when making the agreements. If he recognizes himself in the agreements, you create ownership and thus a greater commitment to fulfilling the agreements’ (VNG & Stimulansz, 2021, p. 19). In this sense, the PIP can be understood as a practice which operationalizes the internalization of the integration, aiming to have individuals own their current position of ‘distance’, and normalizes by goal setting, the discipline and conduct needed to ‘close the gap’.

With spontaneous compliance as the goal of the new civic integration programme, one trait which is commonly and unproblematically attributed to certain groups in a racialized way, suddenly becomes crucial to address. This is a trait of ‘inactivity’, a lack of motivation or even laziness (Bonjour & Duyvendak, 2017). ‘Coaches notice that some asylum migrants have a “wait and see” attitude. They didn’t actively ask for help themselves’ (Verwey Jonker Instituut, 2021, p. 64). The texts normalize this idea and its problematic nature by continuously disciplining the municipalities to ensure they, and the other organizations are aware of its necessity ‘In all the learning routes, activation and participation is an explicit goal’ (SZW, 2020, p. 7). The discourse of activation displays a deep-seated assumption that this activation is necessary for the personal transformation which civic integration aims to facilitate. Again this marking of inactivity is not only placed on the unmodern other, but is intensified through additional markers such as gender: ‘We want to get these women in to action’ (Divosa, 2021b). With topics such as ‘power women training’ and ‘empowerment’ women are understood as being activated in a way which will ensure they themselves address their undesirable place in society: ‘Some women have no access to a bank account. The job coaches stimulate women to have a conversation with this at home. In this way we turned resistance into positive energy’ (Divosa, 2021b). This expectation of positive energy echoes with a colonial past. ‘In colonial ideology, European civilization was represented as the best and most desirable and adhering to European values and customs the surest way to anyone’s happiness. Colonial subjects were therefore expected to be enthusiastic and grateful about being “civilized”’ (Bonjour, 2020, p. 140).

Summary and conclusions

The analysis presented above demonstrates that though responsibilization is still present in the discourse on civic integration; ‘You can expect from civic integrators that they do everything they can to pass their civic integration exam’ (VNG & Stimulansz, 2021, p. 6), the discourse has also moved beyond this goal, focusing on promoting practices which facilitate and measure progress towards a state of spontaneous compliance, understood in this study as an internalization of values. This perspective sets the stage for negative experiences of ‘failure’ and ‘blame’ when individuals are deemed as making the wrong choices. Though the new civic integration programme operates within discourses of choice, with practices of personalized goals and personalized (maatwerk) integration pathways, our analysis displays that these are done in a way which ensure individuals internalize ‘modern’ conduct and make it their own. In this way the concept of ‘free subject’, or in the case of our analysis ‘spontaneous compliance’ ‘should be appreciated in its full irony and ambiguity’ (Dean, 1995, p. 561). As practices aim to guide the ‘right’ behaviour, those who are seen as not adopting them are sanctioned and marked as increasingly risky in their path to becoming productive citizens (Dean, 1995). Thus, when technologies-of-self fail, and spontaneous compliance is not achieved, new governing strategies are necessary to ensure the problem of culture is still addressed:

Most integrators will be intrinsically motivated to learn the language to pass their civic integration exams. Still, there is still a possibility that there will be integrators for whom civic integration is not obvious and who fail to take their own responsibility to achieve it. Therefore, it is important you can apply sanctions in situations in which people required to integrate show minimal or no effort during their civic integration programme. This should also motivate integrators to complete their civic integrate as quickly as possible, at the highest possible level. (VNG & Stimulansz, 2021, p. 13)

Returning to Hesse, we conclude by drawing on his words:

This imaginary could only express and refine itself through the deployment of particularist strategies which claimed the right to administer, tame, proselytise, segregate or evict different populations depending on whether they could be depicted as naturally inside or outside the “nation”. (Hesse, 2005, p. 98)

Our analysis of texts on the new civic integration programme have displayed that they are actively participating in the reciliation of groups, in doing so confirming the imaginary of them, and of their opposite, the Dutch nation. Through practices of racialized governance, this discourse of distance was demonstrated in the texts as making practices possible which aim to administer and measure this distance. Additionally, the discourse of difference results in an increased focus on a process of internalizing integration, promoting practices aimed to ‘spontaneously’ proselytise, or ‘convert’, the other at the level of their inherent traits and values. Ocak (2021) refers to practices of contractualism in civic integration as ‘novel racism’ which ‘marks the immigrants as non-European and thus yet to be integrated subjects, all the while engaging them as prudent individuals of entrepreneurial quality who must “own” and “improve” their nature in return to legal residency’ (2021, p. 3). The word ‘nature’ is important to attend to in this definition. We argue that this approach to spontaneous compliance is an embodied form of racialized governance with complex assemblages mobilized to address the very nature of an individual. This embodied approach normalizes the belief of cultural difference to the point that any other explanation, as well as the problematic foundation of this belief, are silenced (de Noronha, 2019; Turner, 2018). ‘By internalising the “causes” inside the discriminated communities and explaining their social situation in terms of their own cultural features, cultural racist discourses conceal the reproduction of racism and the old colonial/racial hierarchies inside the metropoles’ (Grosfoguel et al., 2015, pp. 645–646).

Looking forward, we recognize that this article was based on texts and that a subsequent translation occurs when texts are transferred to practice, where frontline workers actively engage with the new practices in their encounters with individuals. Studying these encounters would allow for the exploration of nuances in the discourses and for identifying how discourses are shaped or resisted. Studying these encounters is a further aim of our research group and this study provides a point-of-departure to do so.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Samir Achbab for his generous dialogue and reflections during the preparation of the manuscript and revisions; and the reviewers for taking the time to provide detailed and constructive feedback.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Dutch Research Council (Nederlandse organisatie voor wetenschappelijk onderzoek NWO) [grant number 023.014.012].

Notes on contributors

Nadine Blankvoort

Nadine Blankvoort is an external PhD candidate at Maastricht University in the Department of Health Inequities and Societal Participation and a researcher and instructor at the Department of Occupational Therapy at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. She holds a master’s degree in Occupational Therapy from the University of Manitoba in Canada and a master’s degree in Global Health from Maastricht University. Outside of research, Nadine contributes to education at the bachelor and master level. Nadine has been a keynote speaker and presenter at a variety of international conferences and contributes to a variety of international academic and professional networks. She is currently a board member of Civic Foundation in the Netherlands, a foundation striving for evidence-based improvements to civic integration policy.

Debbie Laliberte Rudman

Debbie Laliberte Rudman is a full professor and Associate Director of the School of Occupational Therapy at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She is also a steering committee member of Western’s Centre for Research on Health Equity and Social Inclusion. She has published numerous works within the field of migration and integration, and critical occupational sciences. Her methods embrace critical social theory and critical discourse analysis and she guides various PhD researchers in their exploration of marginalized populations in society using approaches such as these. She is affiliated with a variety of departments and research centres focusing on topics such as Women’s Studies and Feminist Research, Public Health Sciences and Critical Qualitative Research. She has been a keynote speaker at a variety of international conferences and is a steering member of the international Social Transformation through Occupation interest group.

Margo van Hartingsveldt

Margo van Hartingsveldt is the head of the Occupational Therapy program at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and is the Associate Professor for the research group Participation and Environment. She has written and published many books guiding Occupational Therapy practice in Europe and is involved in the national advice group on Research and Science in Occupational Therapy. She guides a team of researchers at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences who explore the interactions between participation, environment and health across a variety of perspectives: exploring concepts of diversity, technology, arts and participatory action research methods.

Anja Krumeich

Anja Krumeich is the director of the Global Health program and the Global Health Research centre at Maastricht University. She is a full professor in Translational Ethnography in Global Health and Education, a chair position embedded within the Department of Health Inequities Societal Participation and the School for Health Professions Education. She is also chair of the Platform for Internationalization of Education at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences. She holds adjunct professor positions at Manipal University in India and Thammasat University in Thailand. She has published numerous works within the field of critical global health and ethnography and leads a diverse group of international PhD candidates in exploring research questions within these field. Additionally, she has been awarded numerous prizes for her dedication to global health education and international partnerships.

Notes

1 The new civic integration programme was planned to be launched in 2021 but was delayed one year due to COVID-19, eventually introduced in January 2022. As all the official ministry documents refer to the ‘Civic Integration Law 2021’ we will also refer to it in this way through the article.

2 In Dutch there is a word – inburgeringsplichtige which literally translates to ‘person required to integrate’. For clarity in presenting the results we have translated this to ‘the integrator’.