Rogier van Reekum

This book offers a detailed and innovative study of the Dutch case of politics of citizenship and nationalism by focusing on public and political controversies in the crucial period of 1973–2015. By foregrounding the crucial role of performance and narration in public and political debates, this book shows how discourses of citizenship and nationhood are deeply shaped by established repertoires and long-lasting lines of disagreement about difference and belonging in the Netherlands. While change did occur within the Dutch context during this period, this book reveals that these transformations were not primarily driven by purportedly permissive and accommodating responses to immigration and cultural diversity. Instead, it unveils a Dutch landscape deeply marked by challenges related to race, democracy, and liberal exceptionalism. In doing so, the book contributes to ongoing debates in the study of citizenship, nationalism, and intellectual history around the merits and limitations of liberal politics of inclusion. It critically extends concepts and arguments in cultural pragmatics and problematizes the common hope that public debate may progressively resolve antagonisms over difference. With a focus on empirical research, the book meticulously reconstructs the emergence of national identity debates in recent decades and vividly portrays the dynamics and tensions of these public performances while dissecting their role in shaping the nation's identity and its boundaries. The book covers a crucial period of the European politics of citizenship and nationhood in which anti-immigrant politics, new modes of racism, and the bordering of Europe took shape. It locates the Dutch case within these developments and insists on the importance of historical continuity and narrative performance. This book demonstrates that the Netherlands, and Europe more broadly, has not overcome the profound consequences of its past.

Debating Dutchness, Narrating Citizenship

Out of Character

Nancy Foner

Jan Willem Duyvendak

Jan Rath

Immigration is dramatically changing major cities throughout the world. Nowhere is this more so than in New York City and Amsterdam, which, after decades of large-scale immigration, now have populations that are more than a third foreign-born. These cities have had to deal with the challenge of incorporating hundreds of thousands of immigrants whose cultures, languages, religions, and racial backgrounds differ dramatically from those of many long-established residents. New York and Amsterdam brings together a distinguished and interdisciplinary group of American and Dutch scholars to examine and compare the impact of immigration on two of the world’s largest urban centers. The original essays in this volume discuss how immigration has affected social, political, and economic structures, cultural patterns, and intergroup relations in the two cities, investigating how the particular, and changing, urban contexts of New York City and Amsterdam have shaped immigrant and second generation experiences. Despite many parallels between New York and Amsterdam, the differences stand out, and juxtaposing essays on immigration in the two cities helps to illuminate the essential issues that today’s immigrants and their children confront. Organized around five main themes, this book offers an in-depth view of the impact of immigration as it affects particular places, with specific histories, institutions, and immigrant populations. New York and Amsterdam profoundly contributes to our broader understanding of the transformations wrought by immigration and the dynamics of urban change, providing new insights into how—and why— immigration’s effects differ on the two sides of the Atlantic.

Immigration and the New Urban Landscape

New York and Amsterdam

Immigration is dramatically changing major cities throughout the world. Nowhere is this more so than in New York City and Amsterdam, which, after decades of large-scale immigration, now have populations that are more than a third foreign-born. These cities have had to deal with the challenge of incorporating hundreds of thousands of immigrants whose cultures, languages, religions, and racial backgrounds differ dramatically from those of many long-established residents. New York and Amsterdam brings together a distinguished and interdisciplinary group of American and Dutch scholars to examine and compare the impact of immigration on two of the world’s largest urban centers. The original essays in this volume discuss how immigration has affected social, political, and economic structures, cultural patterns, and intergroup relations in the two cities, investigating how the particular, and changing, urban contexts of New York City and Amsterdam have shaped immigrant and second generation experiences. Despite many parallels between New York and Amsterdam, the differences stand out, and juxtaposing essays on immigration in the two cities helps to illuminate the essential issues that today’s immigrants and their children confront. Organized around five main themes, this bookoffers an in-depth view of the impact of immigration as it affects particular places, with specific histories, institutions, and immigrant populations. New York and Amsterdam profoundly contributes to our broader understanding of the transformations wrought by immigration and the dynamics of urban change, providing new insights into how—and why— immigration’s effects differ on the two sides of the Atlantic.

Rogier van Reekum

Books

Your next favorite book is out there