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Europe’s Silent Middle: Why Migration Isn’t the Polarised Fight You Think It Is

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The Dutch have voted. Migration was once again front and centre. Campaigns warned of crises, headlines framed Europe as divided. Open borders versus closed minds, compassion versus control. It all sounds like Europe has taken sides.

But has it?

New research from the PACES project, led by Anne-Marie Jeannet, Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Political Science, University of Milan, suggests a quieter, more nuanced reality.

Photo Credit: Rob Curran

Most Europeans are not at the extremes. They sit somewhere in the middle. Ambivalent, thoughtful, and conflicted, they recognise that migration can be both necessary and challenging. They want rules and fairness, but, they also care about protecting people in need. Europeans Want Balance and Fairness.

The findings show that Europeans tend to support strong border control and structured return policies, conditional welfare benefits, and targeted regularisation schemes. For example, this could include returning rejected asylum seekers, limiting benefits to those who meet certain conditions, and allowing some undocumented migrants to stay legally.

Immigration policies that included returning migrants with criminal convictions were over 10 percent more likely to be supported than those that did not. By contrast, policies proposing to contain asylum seekers in third-country camps were 4 percent more likely to be rejected, as were policies offering residential or tax-based incentives to attract migrants (3 percent more likely). Overall, the study shows that the public favours policies that are lawful and orderly, but not excessively restrictive.

The silent middle often resolves tensions between competing values using mental shortcuts, or heuristics. Citizens distinguish between authorised and unauthorised migrants and between law-abiding and criminal individuals when forming policy opinions. When rules are transparent and fair, trust grows. Yet migration policies are often viewed as unclear, which can fuel fear.

The Middle Is Large, But Quiet

This middle majority is easily overlooked. Loud, extreme voices dominate headlines, giving the impression that Europeans are either for or against migration. In reality, most people hold multiple, sometimes conflicting, values: humanitarian concern, fairness, and a desire for order. They recognise that migration is not simply good or bad — it is a normal part of social life that can bring benefits, challenges, and everything in between. Rather than choosing sides, they weigh trade-offs, evaluate policies conditionally, and respond to evidence.

As World Migrants Day approaches on the 18th of December, perhaps it is time to move beyond framing people as simply for or against migration. These debates often make me wonder why so many of us feel torn about it. Many people say they want to help refugees while also wanting borders to be managed, or that they support integration but worry about pressure on housing or jobs. That mix of concerns is not a contradiction. It reflects the complexity of real life.

It also raises further questions: why is it so difficult for the silent middle to express their moderate views? Is it a lack of knowledge, a lack of interest, or simply the noise of polarised debate? And what would it take to bring these more balanced voices into the conversation?

Migration is more than a policy debate. It is a mirror reflecting our values, fears, and hopes. Acknowledging the silent middle, the thoughtful but often conflicted majority, opens the door to conversations and policies that reflect reality rather than rhetoric. And the next time you read that Europe has turned against migration, it is worth remembering that while extreme voices are loud, a much larger, quieter middle is watching.

 

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Anne-Marie Jeannet

Anne-Marie Jeannet is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Milan and affiliated with Bocconi University’s Dondena Centre. Her research examines how social changes such as deindustrialization and immigration reshape political life and public perceptions. She leads the ERC-funded project Deindustrializing Societies and the Political Consequences (DESPO) and has published widely in leading journals.

Marcela Rubio

Marcela G. Rubio is an Economist in the Migration Unit at the Inter-American Development Bank. She earned her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from Bocconi University in 2022 and studies how migration dynamics affect crime, human capital, and development outcomes. Her work spans Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia, with prior experience in academia, NGOs, and international organizations.

Lois Mobach

Lois Mobach is a Communications Advisor at Erasmus University, where she supports major research initiatives. She works on projects including PACES, helping translate complex findings into accessible communication. As co-author, she brings expertise in research dissemination and public engagement.

 

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Verdict upheld against former president in Suriname (Part II)

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On 20 December 2023, Suriname’s highest court of appeal, the Hof van Justitie issued a judgement, confirming the conviction and twenty-year prison sentence of Desiré Delano Bouterse in what has been the longest criminal trial in the history of Suriname. In this article, which forms the second of two parts, Jeff Handmaker explains how the trial has been accompanied by a great deal of political drama and legal manipulations, but also judicial courage and perseverance by the victims of what has been referred to as the 1982 December Murders.

Image by We El at Dutch Wikipedia

Procedural delays

Back in 2012, there were hopes among many colleagues, including myself as a trial observer for the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) who supported the trial observation mission, that the Court would issue a definitive judgement on the constitutionality of the Amnesty Law (or not). This proved to be too optimistic. The process was hampered by further delays, most of which were triggered by the accused’s defence counsel raising procedural obstacles in lieu of substantive arguments, each of which demanded a decision by the Court and hence served to undermine the rule of law.

The ICJ responded by issuing a press release in 2013 outlining concerns over how ‘unacceptable’ the delays were, and in particular how delays caused great uncertainty. Eventually, the Court concluded on 9 June 2016 that the Amnesty Law was unconstitutional and therefore the trial ought to resume. President Bouterse responded shortly afterwards with an Executive Order determining the trial to be a threat against the country’s national security (with specific reference to economic grounds) and ordered the prosecutor to halt their efforts. Rather than stopping the trial entirely, this merely served as a further source of delay. In the meantime, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed its ‘deep concern’ about persistent delays in the resumption of the trial.

After another four years of procedural obstacles, the ICJ eventually issued a second report and statement on 8 May 2017 on the ‘Importance of Resuming the Trial Without Undue Delay’. In this report, the ICJ emphasised how ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. The ICJ did not engage in the substance of the allegations against Bouterse and his co-accused, but instead focussed on two issues. Firstly, the ICJ’s statement focussed on the context in which the trial was taking place, in particular the social and political climate which included statements by Bouterse that those who had opposed the Amnesty Law were ‘enemies of the people’. Secondly, the statement presented arguments drawing on international law that emphasised the need for a fair and speedy trial and an effective remedy for victims of human rights violations.

After a further round of further delays, including illness by one of the judges, the trial eventually resumed on the merits, in other words the substantive nature of the atrocity crimes that Bouterse and others were charged with.

 

Judgement and sentence for atrocity crimes

The Court issued a judgement on 29 November 2019. To the surprise of many, the Court found Bouterse and several of the accused (though not all) to be guilty of atrocity crimes.  Bouterse was sentenced to a prison term of twenty years. However, in a noticeable exception to criminal procedure, the court did not order an arrest warrant to be issued.

Unable to send a follow-up, in-person trial observation mission, the ICJ issued a press statement, both in English and in Dutch, calling ‘on all parties to respect the rule of law and to allow the legal system to run its course, in accordance with international fair trial standards, without further delays, threats or other forms of executive interference’.

Bouterse’s lawyers decided to appeal both the conviction and sentence and a new trial resumed in the country’s appeals court. Six months later, in July 2020, Bouterse stepped down as President of Suriname after his political party lost the election to the opposition party, led by Chandrikapersad Santokhi.

 

Appeal

In October 2020, the ICJ once again expressed its concern and gave new impulse to its trial observation mission by announcing a new trial observer, the former Attorney-General of Belize and senior barrister, Godfrey Smith, SC. Physical attendance was impossible at this stage due to Covid-related lockdown regulations.

Despite his inability his inability to attend in person, Smith continued to monitor the trial from afar, emphasising, in September 2021, how important it was that the trial proceed ‘without delay, ensuring due impartiality, independence and fairness to all concerned in the interests of the victims, the accused and the rule of law’.

 

Historic judgement on 20 December 2023

After 15 years, anticipation that Suriname Appeals Court would issue a final judgement was high. On this occasion, the ICJ decided to again send another, experienced in-person trial observer, Reed Brody, one of the Commissioners of the ICJ and a veteran human rights lawyer who had been involved in cases against previous heads of state, including: Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Hissène Habré of Chad and Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti, among others.

The decision of the Appeals Court on 20 December 2023 to confirm the conviction and twenty-year prison sentence of Bouterse was again not accompanied by an arrest warrant.  While in the first instance this was regarded as understandable given the likelihood that Bouterse would appeal (along with his significant public profile). In the second instance, especially the legal justification was less clear, and while Bouterse did not, as a last resort, apply for the final domestic remedy available, which was to seek a pardon from President Santokhi, he did submit a last-ditch appeal to the prosecutor, with new lawyers, to avoid being arrested (which was unsuccessful).

At the time of writing, the Court eventually issued an order that those accused of crimes were expected to report to the prison in Paramaribo. Some of the accused honoured this. Former president Bouterse did not and there remains a great deal of speculation where he may be.

Irrespective of this, the judgement of the Appeals Court in Suriname can be regarded historic. As Brody confirmed:

Today’s decision is a victory for the families of Bouterse’s victims, who never gave up, and for all those around the world seeking to bring powerful abusers to justice. It should serve as another reminder that accountability for the most serious crimes has no expiration date.

Read the first part of the blog: https://wp.me/p9fvbD-76v

Image by We El at Dutch Wikipedia: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dr. Jeff Handmaker is Associate Professor of Legal Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam and has published widely on topics concerning Israel’s decades-long impasse with the Palestinians. He conducts research on legal mobilization.

 

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Monitoring an atrocity crimes trial in Suriname (Part I)

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On 20 December 2023, the Hof van Justitie, Suriname’s highest court of appeal, issued a judgement confirming the conviction and twenty-year prison sentence of Desiré Delano Bouterse in what has been the longest criminal trial in the country’s history. In this article, which forms the first of two parts, Jeff Handmaker explains the background to the trial, and why the International Commission of Jurists started to actively monitor this trial since 2012.

Image by Antonisse, Marcel / Anefo (CC Zero)

The 1982 December Murders

What makes this trial unique and special is not only the severity and nature of the crimes being charged, but the fact that the principal accused is a former head of state. The charges against Bouterse and other accused comprised atrocity crimes, including torture and extra-judicial executions of fifteen men, allegedly committed in 1982 under the leadership of then Sergeant Desi Bouterse during a military coup that allegedly also included the complicity of the Dutch government.

According to Amnesty International, which has been following the case already since 1982, the killings were ‘never properly investigated’. This understanding aligned with other human rights organisations, including the Netherlands Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (NJCM) which released a report on 14 February 1983, and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) which conducted a mission and issued a report on 4 March 1983.

While the opportunities for seeking justice at the time were virtually non-existent, the events of December 1982 have certainly not been forgotten. In particular, the victims’ families of those men who lost their lives have refused to remain silent and remained committed in securing redress. Their advocacy was accompanied by a growing academic scholarship on atrocity crimes, including by Suriname jurist Gaetano Best, who later completed an (unrelated) doctoral thesis in 2016 at the University of Amsterdam on ‘Fair and Accurate Fact-Finding in Dutch Atrocity Crimes Cases‘ and subsequently returned to practice law in Suriname, which later also included frequent commentary on the Bouterse trial.

 

The trial begins

On November 2007, in the midst of advocacy by the victims of those killed in December 1982, a trial was initiated against Bouterse and twenty-four other individuals, including sitting government officials. The court was located on a naval base in Boxel just outside the capital city of Paramaribo, and comprised two chambers: a civilian chamber (criminal court) and a military chamber (court-martial) each with a three-judge panel. Both chambers had the same, highly experienced judge-president, Justice Cynthia Valstein-Montnor.

Three years later, Bouterse was elected as president of Suriname. Remarkably, the trial continued, largely unhindered by these developments. Eventually, the Suriname parliament passed an Amnesty Law in 2012 that aimed to extend immunity for prosecution to Bouterse and other co-accused. Emboldened by this, Bouterse’s lawyers argued that the prosecutor had no authority to purse the charges against him.

After five years of delays, and little tangible progress in the trial on its merits, doubts began to emerge as to whether the Court had the capacity to consider this matter in a free, impartial and objective manner.

 

ICJ trial observation

Confronted with persistent delays as well as some reports of intimidation against journalists, court officials and the public prosecutor, the ICJ, as one of the largest and most established human rights organizations in the world based in Geneva, decided to launch a trial observation mission. This was in anticipation of a judgement that the Court was due to issue in May 2012.

The ICJ’s first, in-person trial observation mission took place from 8 – 12 May 2012. As a British lawyer, with some years of experience teaching post-graduate students in the country and with a knowledge of Dutch (the official language of Suriname), I was asked to lead the mission. This comprised a combination of tasks, set-out in a trial observation manual that the ICJ had produced earlier, which drew on the experiences of earlier ICJ trial observation missions. This included meeting with officials, making clear to all actors that they were under scrutiny, collecting findings about the context in which the trial was being held in order to ensure compliance with international due process requirements, issuing press releases, speaking to the media and of course issuing a report.

 

Court’s first Judgement in 2012

The occasion of an in-person mission in May 2012 was to attend the trial itself and to speak with various key stakeholders to get a sense on whether international standards of due process were being respected. Based on its findings and a comprehensive analysis of both Suriname law and international law, the conclusions that we drew in the report were fourfold. First, while the Government of Suriname had co-operated fully with the trial observation mission and did not hinder the work of the mission, the court had not yet clearly decided on the implications of the Amnesty Law. Second, there appeared to be space for a fair trial in Suriname, although continued procedural delays raised questions about this. Third, the role of a free, professional and independent media was seen to be crucial. And finally, public interest in the trial from diplomatic missions, as well as international organizations, promoted greater visibility of the outcome and integrity of the process.

In other words, while there was no overt effort to subvert the rule of law by force, even by Bouterse, as both the sitting President of the country and the principal accused, the main legal issue at stake had not been conclusively established. This was namely: whether (1) the passing of an Amnesty Law was valid, which implied that the trial ought to be stopped altogether or alternatively, (2) the Amnesty Law was not consistent with the constitution and therefore the trial should proceed.

As discussed in Part II, the next stage in this legal drama proved to be both eventful and for us as trial observers, very frustrating.

Read the Second part of this blog: https://wp.me/p9fvbD-76E

Image by Antonisse, Marcel / Anefo (CC Zero): https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=december+moorden+suriname&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dr. Jeff Handmaker is Associate Professor of Legal Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam and has published widely on topics concerning Israel’s decades-long impasse with the Palestinians. He conducts research on legal mobilization.

 

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A right-wing populist party ‘won’ the Dutch elections. What does this mean? And will Geert Wilders become Prime Minister?

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In this blog, Thea Hilhorst looks at the potential outcomes following the Dutch general election last week. Whilst the PVV party, led by Geert Wilders, won the largest proportion of votes, this is just the beginning of the government-forming process. The Dutch system requires building governing coalitions, and the largest party does not always form the next government. So, what is the PVV? How might they govern? And will Geert Wilders become Prime Minister?

Photo 5533984 | Dutch Parliament © Jan Kranendonk | Dreamstime.com

Last Wednesday, 22 November, the PVV (Party for Freedom) led by Geert Wilders won the most votes in the national elections in the Netherlands. But the national elections to elect members of the Lower House of parliament in The Netherlands is just the beginning of the government-forming process.

The Netherlands has a system of parliamentary elections, unlike other countries that have presidential elections. In those countries, the two winners of a first round of elections may need to contend in a second round until one of the presidential candidates obtains a majority vote. In a parliamentary system, on the other hand, elections are about allocating parliamentary seats to political parties. The Netherlands has 150 parliamentary seats, and a party or coalition needs 76 seats to form a government, and so select a Prime Minister. The PVV came out of the elections as the largest party with 37 seats. As there are 150 seats in total, this means that slightly less than 25% of the electorate voted for PVV (and 75% did not).The second place in the elections came to the combination of the Green Left and Socialist Party, that ran together in these elections for 25 seats, followed by 24 seats for the currently largest party VVD and 20 seats for the new party of New Social Contract.

Another notable difference between a presidential and a parliamentary system is the different power invested in the leader of the government. While a President usually has executive power, a Prime Minister is technically speaking just the chairperson of the government – although far more powerful in practice than this job description would imply.

 

What is the PVV? And what did they win?

The Party for Freedom is mainly known for its leader: Geert Wilders, who has started PVV in 2005, having previously been a politician for the VVD party (of Mark Rutte, current Dutch PM). As a party it stands out, because there is no membership and hence it is often referred to as a ‘one-man show’. The PVV can be seen as a right-wing populist party. It rides strongly on anti-immigrant sentiments and islamophobia, and it denies the relevance of climate policies. Its political programme for the election proposes to end immigration, development cooperation and involvement in climate action. Geert Wilders also announced he wants to spend “not a single Euro” on gender equality, and he is a proclaimed fan of NEXIT (Netherlands leaving the EU). Socio-economically the PVV profiles itself as the champion of marginalized people, promising to lower costs for health insurance, lower the retirement age and increase minimum wages, although it is not clear how proposed measures will be financed.

The PVV has never previously been part of the Dutch government, but in 2010 they did provide support to the first government formed by Mark Rutte. This arrangement, sometimes known as a ‘confidence and supply’ formation meant that whilst the PVV did not provide any Ministers, they did support the government during votes in the Upper and Lower chambers of the Dutch parliament. In any case, the PVV pulled out of this arrangement in 2012 and collapsed the government, leading to fresh elections.

 

The Dutch government is almost always a coalition, and the process can take months

In the Dutch parliamentary system, coalitions need to be formed of different parties to reach a majority of seats in the parliament. Ruling by a single party could only happen when a political party won more than 75 seats, which has never happened in Dutch history. This means that PVV cannot form a government unless it can form a coalition with at least two more parties. The RTL News service has made a handy ‘coalition forming tool’– with so many political parties having been elected, coalitions can involve up to 5 parties in partnership. The formation of a coalition is a long-term process. The last government of the Netherlands consisted of 4 different parties and only reached an agreement  after 271 days. It is usual that the largest party can initiate the coalition building process, and that this party will take the lead in the government and provide the Prime Minister. This is not always the case, in fact there have been 11 elections in the 20th century where the leader of the largest party did not become Prime Minister, the most recent in 1986.

Moreover, it is even possible that the winner is not going to be part of the new government at all. Whilst the largest party is given the first chance to form a coalition, there have been a few historical precedents where coalition negotiations failed, and new negotiations started up with other parties. This can have the consequence that the party with the largest number of seats is shut out of the government. This happened three times in the last century, and co-incidentally always in cases where the Labour (PvdA) party won the elections. In 1982, the party obtained 52 seats, more than one third of the votes, and was nonetheless side-lined in the formation of the government.

 

What happens next?

Formation processes are very unpredictable. The programmes of PVV and any likely coalition partners (other parties on the right side of the political landscape) have some issues in common but are also hugely different on others. An additional complications  is that the VVD –the largest party for the last 12 years – now has a new leader who has initially ruled out working with the PVV. The new leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz, remarkably has a refugee background herself yet opposes liberal asylum practices.  The second likely coalition partner for the PVV would be New Social Contract (NSC), that is an entirely new Party formed by the popular parliamentarian Pieter Omtzigt, who won 20 seats  at the first election it joined. The combination of a new leader of the VVD and an entirely new party sitting at the negotiation table with Geert Wilders, who has been a solo player since he started the PVV, makes the process markedly unpredictable.

The three parties may find it easy to form a right-wing government in no time, or they may clash over their differences and leave an open arena for other parties to try to form a coalition. Only time will tell.

Photo 5533984 | Dutch Parliament © Jan Kranendonk | Dreamstime.com

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Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

 

 

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Jewish scholars refuse to be silent about Gaza

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Source: Afbeelding van Hosny Salah via Pixabay

There have been many statements, petitions, Op-Eds and other forms of concern and condemnation from scholars following the resurgence of violence around the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians. This also includes Jewish scholars, such as an open letter from Jewish students at Brown University and another from Jewish writers. Moreover, there have been critical Jewish organisations that have long-supported a Palestinian-centred narrative, including the Promised Land Museum, and in particular their tribute to the late German-Dutch phycisist Dr. Hajo Meyer, Zochrot and Jewish Voices for Peace. In the same spirit, as Jewish employees and students at Dutch universities, universities of applied science and research institutions, we also refuse to stay silent about Gaza, and so present the following statement.

We, Jewish employees and students in Dutch universities, universities of applied science and research institutions, refuse to stay silent about the recent surge in violence in Gaza.

We raise our voices to speak out against Israel’s war of destruction against the over two million Palestinians in Gaza, and demand an immediate cease fire. The high numbers of civilian victims of the Israeli bombardments so far, including the killing of thousands of children, a complete blockade for primary necessities of life in Gaza by Israel, and the actions and words of Israeli officials all justify the fear of a second Nakba; ethnic cleansing or genocide of the Palestinian population. “Never again” for us means never again for anyone.

We feel deep pain for the many civilian casualties during the attacks by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Precisely because we want to see an end to such gruesome violence, we refuse to abide by the logic of revenge that already has cost the lives of multiple times as many Palestinian civilians. We understand that the current wave of violence did not start with the actions of 7 October 2023, but is rooted in a long history of colonization, occupation and unequal treatment targeting the Palestinian people. If ending the current war against Gaza will only lead to a return to the status quo ante, this will mean a continuation of the violence that for Palestinians is a permanent reality. Peace, in this situation, will just be the prelude to the next major war.

Lasting peace is only possible on the basis of justice. At the very least, this means the recognition that the rule of law and human rights apply to all inhabitants of historic Palestine. It means recognizing the right of self-determination of the Palestinians, ending the blockade of Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank, acknowledgement of the right of return for all Palestinian refugees, and equal rights between Palestinians and Jews from the Mediterranean to the river Jordan.

We promise to continue our efforts in this direction, during and after the current war. We support the call from Palestinian civil society for ceasing all forms of cooperation with Israeli institutions that contribute to the occupation of Palestinian territories and the unequal treatment of the Palestinian population.

As long as the injustice for Palestinians persists, we demand that our institutions speak out against this as firmly as they did one and a half years ago at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We forcefully resist any form of racism, islamophobia, antisemitism or other types of hate speech. We are inspired by the many Jewish voices in and outside of Israel that take a principled stance for Palestinian rights. As Jewish opponents of the Israeli actions, we are indignant about the attempts to equate criticism of the Israeli state and support for Palestinian rights with antisemitism. Islamophobia and antisemitism in response to the current war are very real problems. We ask our institutions to take active measures against a climate of threats, polarization and discrimination. However, to do so does not give a free pass to censor critical anti-war voices.

A safe learning environment does not preclude a firm stance against war and injustice. On the contrary, such a firm stance is our shared duty.

This statement was first published in Dutch in the NRC Handelsbad on13 November 2023.

Image Source: Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed, Destruction in Gaza, October 2023.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Dr. Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken (Lecturer, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam).

Prof. dr. Pepijn Brandon (Professor of Global History, Free University of Amsterdam).

Alcide Breaux (Student, Sandberg Institute and Gerrit Rietveld Academie).

Zazie van Dorp (BA Philosophy, LLB Law & employee University of Amsterdam).

Dr. Jacob Engelberg (Lecturer, Film, Media and Culture, University of Amsterdam).

Dr. Sai Englert (Lecturer, University of Leiden).

Gabriel Gottlieb (Student, Econometrics, Erasmus University Rotterdam).

Dr. Aviva de Groot (Postdoctoral researcher AI & Human Rights, TILT, Tilburg University).

Sophia Haid (Student, Media studies, University of Amsterdam).

Dr. Jeff Handmaker (Associate Professor of Legal Sociology, ISS, Erasmus University Rotterdam).

Levi Hilz (Student, Sociology, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam).

Dr. Joost Kircz (Emeritus Lector Electronic Publishing, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences).

Naomi Kreitman (Student, Sandberg Institute).

Dr. Anna Mai (Postdoctoraal researcher, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics).

Yuval Molina Obedman, Ma (Recently graduated in Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, and International Relations, University of Leiden).

Dr. Tzula Propp (Postdoctotaal researcher, TU Delft).

Dr. Patricia Schor (Postdoctoral researcher, Free University of Amsterdam).

Juliet Tanzer (Student, Utrecht University).

Dr. Anya Topolski (Associate Professor, Ethics and Political Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen).

Dr. Markha Valenta (Lecturer, American Studies, Utrecht University).

Itaï van der Wal (Student LLM, Utrecht University).

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Academics must have a voice in social affairs, too, no matter their affiliation

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The current wave of protests on the A12 highway in The Hague against government subsidies for fossil fuels have been both applauded and condemned. Several scientists have joined the protests in their professional capacity, which has led to questions of whether their activism threatens their independence as scholars. In this blog article, Dorothea Hilhorst responds to the argument of Dutch scientist and writer Louise Fresco in an NRC column last week that academics have no place in protests. All academics/scientists should be wary of their place in society and should use their positions of expertise to advocate for better outcomes, she writes.

Last Sunday, on 1 October 2023, I was standing on the highway of the A12 in The Hague, together with about 600 activists from Extinction Rebellion, until we were taken away by the police. I was fascinated by the colourful collection of activists with their original slogans chalked on cardboard and enjoyed the cheerfulness of the chants and the music. Many of the activists were here for the twentieth time in a row. Extinction Rebellion has been blocking the highway on a daily basis, starting 9 September, and aims to return every day until the Dutch government stops subsidizing fossil fuels.

As I was sitting on the road, I had serious conversations about why I was there as a scientist and whether my presence was at the expense of my independence. What struck me most is that the question of independence is so strongly linked to activism and taking action to the street. Scientists constantly interact with social groups. In fact, this is encouraged. Scientists who entrench themselves in their ivory towers have an increasingly smaller chance of obtaining scientific funding or promotions. Science is part of society, and the issues we deal with are largely determined by societies. And often enabled by societal actors, too, a lot of research is in fact financed by commercial companies.

It is very common for scientists to be active in politics in addition to their work and, for example, to serve on behalf of a political party in the Senate or on municipal councils. Scientists also often sit on supervisory boards or are attached to a company as supervisory directors. This often leads to additional income, which must be properly reported, for example on university websites, for reasons of propriety and transparency.

The social involvement of scientists regularly leads to questions about the independence of science, especially when it can be demonstrated that the scientist takes the interests of a company into account in the scientific work or — as is currently the case — if the question is raised whether it is ethically responsible to have companies such as the fossil industry, the tobacco industry, or alcohol producers help pay for research. Except in these specific cases, social involvement is seen as a must and is not considered to be in conflict with the independence of the academe. But strangely enough, it does when it comes to involvement in an activist organization — a clear double standard.

Take for example Louise Fresco, who recently argued in a column for the NRC that scientists and academics have no place in a protest, is an example of a socially involved scientist. In the past, she was a supervisory director of Rabobank, a major Dutch bank, and, as a scientist, she was co-director of Unilever in addition to her scientific work. She is currently a supervisory director at agriculture company Syngenta. In her column, though, Fresco says that scientists should not demonstrate . With that argument, scientists should also not be involved in an industry or political party. These organisations are not exclusively based in their actions by scientific evidence, and their agendas are always encompassing more that the scientist’s field of expertise can oversee.

I am happy that the activists of Extinction Rebellion are open to listening to my research findings about the consequences of climate change for poor people in poor countries — people who have never been on an airplane, yet who are paying the highest price for climate change. I think that with my scientific attitude, which is used to questioning and critically observing (like all scientists), I can contribute to the movement, and I notice that my questions about the action strategy are taken seriously, whether or not they are taken up. Above all, I am convinced that being on the A12 will not prevent me from remaining true to my independent research methods.

Is criticism of the alleged loss of independence of demonstrating scientists perhaps a veiled rejection of the method of civil disobedience that Extinction Rebellion has adopted? In that case, I advise Louise Fresco and other concerned colleagues to delve into the positive contributions to the world history of civil disobedience for, for example, the abolition of slavery, decolonization, or the fight for women’s suffrage. Scientists that remain in their ivory towers, or indeed continue to sit around glass-topped boardroom tables, can fail to engage with the full spectrum of society. This, surely, is to the benefit of no-one.

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About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

 

 

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Scholars at risk: why the Dutch system for protecting persecuted scholars is failing and why the government urgently needs to get involved

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In the past, scholars facing persecution have regularly been received by Dutch universities, which have provided them with a safe space to continue conducting their research in times of adversity. In 2019, the Dutch system for providing a safe haven for such scholars collapsed – an event that went largely unnoticed at the time. Ever since, efforts to help scholars have been mostly futile, largely because the bureaucratic hurdles to providing a safe space are more or less insurmountable. In this article, Linda Johnson explains how and why the Dutch system for supporting refugee scholars has become ineffective and suggests what should be done about it.

Photo Credit: Ron Lach

The Russian invasion of Ukraine early last year galvanized universities in the Netherlands into a brief flurry of solidarity and a frantic but largely ineffectual effort to provide a safe space for Ukrainian researchers to continue their work. Working parties were set up, web pages were designed and countless meetings were held. The consternation was immense. Sadly, none of this led to much concrete assistance for imperilled scholars and students. There was simply no system in place that would allow grants to be paid out to those in dire need. It became abundantly clear that the infrastructure for supporting scholars at risk is inadequate.

The lack of an infrastructure for organizing meaningful support was systematically exposed in January this year in a report issued by a prestigious group of critical scholars (The Young Academy), who for the first time showed the deficiencies of the current system in a rigorous report that describes and analyses the situation as it is today. They have made clear that the infrastructure for supporting scholars at risk from all over the globe (Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, Iran and the list goes on…) is woefully inadequate. But how could this have happened and what needs to be done to remedy the situation?

The early days of Scholars At Risk NL

To answer this question, it is important to first take a look at what has happened in the past few years. In around 2010, the American organization Scholars at Risk (SAR) started approaching universities in Europe with a view to expanding global provision for at-risk scholars. I had been active in university internationalization circles globally for several decades; hence, I was one of the individuals approached for initial discussions on setting up a SAR provision in The Netherlands.

I was enthusiastic about the proposal and felt that the Netherlands should get involved in this important work. The aims of SAR and the mission of ISS were in alignment and it was not difficult to gain the approval of the then ISS rector (Professor Leo de Haan) to begin receiving students at ISS. Many ISS colleagues were in favour of creating a structural provision for scholars under threat. I set up an infrastructure and little by little extended the pilot so that the whole of the Erasmus University could participate.

We managed to place one or two scholars a year at ISS and occasional placements were found in other parts of the university. Mentoring a scholar who has had to flee for his/ her life is not easy work, but there were enough excellent colleagues willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to make the system work. Similar efforts took place at most universities in the Netherlands, largely based on solidarity and relying on colleagues who were willing to spend time and effort over and above their working hours to keep the system afloat.

Between 2010 and 2015, most European countries, including the Netherlands, set up programmes to help scholars at risk. The Dutch support organization for refugee students, the UAF, coordinated Dutch efforts and fulfilled the important task of disbursing the grants made available to scholars at risk. These grants came from a variety of sources (universities, private donations, local councils, SAR and others). For some time, things went well enough.

 

A turn for the worse

Sadly, in 2019 the UAF decided to end its partnership with the Dutch arm of Scholars at Risk. Worries had begun to surface about possible fines being imposed by the Dutch tax authorities because of the UAF’s role in the distribution of grants. The Dutch tax authorities had indicated that the modest bursaries could be construed as salary and would hence fall under the category of ‘notional’ employment on which the recipient would need to pay tax, and over which the employer would need to pay social insurance. This would multiply the costs involved and reduce the grants to a size too small to meet living costs for the scholar in question.

The financial risk was deemed too great by the UAF – in 2020, it withdrew entirely, effectively making it impossible for Dutch universities to offer financial assistance to at-risk scholars and also bringing to an end any structured coordination of support to at-risk scholars. Expertise on how best to support scholars at risk could no longer be shared and data could no longer be collected and collated on the numbers and origins of scholars seeking assistance from Dutch universities.

In short, since 2020, Dutch universities have no longer been able to make any provision to assist scholars at risk. This situation is in sharp contrast to the generous and well-organized support structures available in many European counties, such as Poland, Germany, the UK, and others.

 

Ripples of concern, but no comprehensive effort

In 2021, the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan led to a modest ripple of concern among Dutch universities. Small, but uncoordinated and largely unsuccessful efforts were made to offer a safe haven to a few Afghani scholars and their families. This proved to be impossible because of the lack of a grant distribution system. Very quickly, the concern ebbed away without any scholars being placed. A year later, in 2022, the onset of the war on Ukraine led to another ripple of concern within Dutch academia. The problem was closer to home this time. Most Dutch universities felt a moral imperative to get involved and to do something constructive to assist scholars and students from Ukraine. Nothing very concrete was achieved, in spite of the best efforts of some individuals.

 

Attempts to restart the system

A group of concerned university administrators from Dutch universities met several times throughout 2020-2022 to try finding a way to improve matters. I convened and chaired these meetings. It was agreed that Nuffic, the Dutch organization for internationalization and education, could perhaps take on the role previously fulfilled by the UAF. This seemed to be a good choice, as Nuffic has an extensive network within the Dutch higher education sector, is used to administering grants, and has considerable expertise that would be handy in helping to ensure that at risk scholars are placed in settings appropriate to their field of research.

Nuffic was keen to get involved but at the eleventh hour felt obliged to decline further involvement because of the risks involved in relation to tax authorities and the labour inspectorate. Back to square one…

 

An opportunity to turn the tide

At this point, the Dutch Young Academy decided to get involved. On 23 January of this year, the Young Academy’s report called ‘Support for at risk scholars in the Netherlands’ was launched. This was a tremendously important step: for the first time, a measured and reflective analysis of the support system was committed to paper in the form of a well-researched report. It showed that at-risk scholars are woefully underserved in the Netherlands. The main conclusion of the report is crystal clear: “There is currently no national infrastructure in the Netherlands for the registration and reception of at-risk scholars.”

The exposure of this embarrassing gap in provision for scholars at risk is important: it gives Dutch universities who wish to host scholars at risk the opportunity to do some repair work on a broken system. They need the assistance of the Dutch government in this endeavour. The question is whether this opportunity will be recognized and acted upon. The Young Academy has laid bare an uncomfortable truth. It is surely impossible for the government to ignore their plea for action……

I believe that the only way forward is for politicians to enter the arena to resolve the impasse. The tax authorities and the labour inspectorate understandably have little interest in ensuring that scholars at risk are supported within Dutch universities. It is hardly their core business. The ministers involved (Education, Culture & Science, and Finance) thus need to take the political initiative to remove the obstacles around the tax and labour regulations and to provide guarantees that will allow the universities in collaboration with Nuffic and UAF to fulfil their moral duty to support scholars who cannot practise their profession in freedom and/or whose very life is threatened.

“It is precisely scholars who are often the first people to pose a threat to repressive regimes, and they are therefore often among the first group who must take flight.’’ – ‘Support for scholars at risk in the Netherlands’, January 2023.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Linda Johnson was the executive secretary of ISS, but has now retired. She is particularly interested in the societal relevance of research. In addition, she has done recent work on the safety and security of researchers and co-developed a course on literature as a lens on development.

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The East African Community’s regional economic integration efforts are starting to pay off – here’s why to take note

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Good news about Africa always seems to travel slowly. The East African Community has successfully been pushing for regional economic integration in East Africa, but not everyone has gotten wind of it. ISS researchers Peter van Bergeijk and Binyam Demena in their recently published book called ‘Trade and Investment in East Africa’ show how the EAC’s many successes and failures can provide several opportunities – and lessons – for the Netherlands and other countries seeking to further strengthen regional economic integration.

Uhuru Monument by Arthur Buliva

For the past few years, the seven member states of the East African Community (EAC) – the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania – have been working hard on furthering regional economic integration. The group of countries recognize the importance of foreign trade and investment (FTI) for their economic development and have started to reap the benefits: Kenya and Tanzania have already been reclassified as Middle Income Countries (MICs) by the World Bank.

Yet not much is known about these efforts in the Netherlands. Our recently published book, Trade and Investment in East Africa, is an attempt to showcase the EAC’s efforts by analysing these developments, identifying possible bottlenecks, and thereby also outlining perspectives that are important for the Dutch trade and development policy. We summarise some of book’s the key takeaways below to show why countries seeking to improve their regional economic integration should take note of the book.

 

Increased trade bring benefits, but it’s no free lunch

Economically, the EAC is a remarkable success. Africa is a patchwork of overlapping regional organizations that are all working towards economic integration, which is somewhat inevitable (just as the Netherlands is a member both of the EU and the Benelux). This leads to inconsistency and inefficiency in trade between countries but, as one of the studies in the book shows, the EAC suffers relatively little from this.

One possible reason for its success could be its sectoral productivity. In the book chapter, the authors using microdata on firms show that sectoral productivity patterns differ between EAC members: the countries differ in their strengths and weaknesses (what economists call their comparative advantage). Because of the different comparative advantages, it pays to specialize in what you are good at, also to increase intra-regional trade. Uganda can specialize in food where it has a comparative advantage and in the same vein we find different candidates for different countries: Kenya can specialize in furniture, Rwanda in non-metallic manufacturing, and Tanzania in printing and publishing.

That fertile base for specialization and increased trade is good news because the export premium (the higher productivity of internationally operating firms) is substantial for EAC member states and greater than the average for sub-Saharan countries. Higher productivity can be translated into higher per capita income, which is considered necessary for economic growth. Incidentally, this is not a free lunch and requires related policies (training, income support), because amongst the high-productivity winners there are also clear losers in low-productivity sectors.

 

More investment, less bureaucratic red tape needed

Beyond dealing with those sectors that are lagging, the area faces several policy challenges. The book contains some five case studies[1] that reveal some of the main challenges, which include a lack of institutional support and private sector investments. Many sectors, such as rice farming, seaweed fishing and leather production, lack investments by firms that can help these countries position themselves higher up in international value chains. State institutions on the other hand are important both for ensuring the quality of export products and for funding research and development into product-specific improvements.

Another challenge relates to a lack of investment by firms in primary sectors. For example, while Tanzania is one of the largest regional exporters of live cattle, its lack of formal slaughterhouses and leather processing facilities prevents it from expanding its leather production sector. As a result, it needs to import shoes and other simple leather products, and the upscaling of the sector is hardly possible.

When it comes to trade with the EAC region, the main bottlenecks are related to difficulties getting import and export products across borders without delay. One study contained in the book reveals bottlenecks that impede trade both within and outside of the EAC. The challenges include inadequate (air)port management and excessive bureaucratic red tape, which are compounded by the lack of a one-stop-shop approach; in principle, these are factors that could be resolved without having to make major financial investments but require a change in practices and training to implement newly developed systems.

 

Offering aid in addition to trade

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation can learn several things from the EAC in doing trade and investment better. One important finding that can be considered in the Netherlands is that trade cannot work without a certain amount of aid. An empirical study by Sylvanus Afesorgbor of European trade with the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries with which Europe has a special development aid relationship shows that trade promotion appears to lead to economic development only if it is complemented by development aid. One reason is that additional policies are necessary to help individuals that work in sectors with low productivity that lose due to international specialization.

However, the similarities have been somewhat overlooked. From this perspective alone, it is unfortunate that the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation’s new strategic policy paper, ‘Doen waar Nederland goed is in’ (‘Do what the Netherlands does best’), does not consider the EAC as an economic community of nations. While some individual EAC countries are mentioned, the emphasis is on the Netherlands’ long-standing foreign policy strategy focused on the Horn of Africa.

This leaves the opportunities that lie in the EAC out of the policy picture. For example, the Netherlands can play an important role in helping the EAC address the logistical challenges hampering trade, in particular with regard to (air)port management. It also has much to offer African policy makers through its own regional economic integration experiences, from Benelux to the EU. Moreover, several large Dutch companies also have a foothold in Tanzania, which illustrates that this is already recognized as an interesting market.

Our book brings together economists from the Global South that provide a relevant multidimensional analysis of how sensible policies can be designed that move trade and development in the same direction.

 

[1] The case studies are a comparative analysis of the leather industry by Fauzul Muna, a survey of common bean smallholder farmers in Arusha by Eliaza Mkuna, an econometric analysis of Tanzanian horticultural export by William Georde, a survey of the seaweed sector in Zanzibar by Wahida Makame, and a structured review of cross-border cooperatives in the EAC by Gerard Dushimimana.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Peter van Bergeijk is Professor of International Economic Relations and Macroeconomics at the Hague-based Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University (ISS); one of the leading educational and research institutes in the field of development cooperation in Europe.

 

 

 

 

 

Binyam Afewerk Demena is an empirical economist with expertise across economic disciplines focusing on the area of development, environment, and health. He is an Assistant professor the Hague-based Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University (ISS).

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Do we ever learn? Collective memory as a blind spot in KNAW report on pandemics

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In its latest advisory report ‘Met de kennis van straks’ (‘With the knowledge of later’), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) maps out what Dutch science and society need to do in order to be well prepared – and thus ready – for future pandemics. However, the report pays scant attention to macro(economic) issues, which doesn’t do justice to this societal-medical problem, writes Peter van Bergeijk.

Source: Syaibatul Hamdi, Pixabay.

Introduction

If we have learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands, it is that it is almost impossible for economists to make clear what our field is about. In fact, debates on economics all but stopped in my home country (Van Bergeijk 2022) [1]. Important insights from economics therefore did not sufficiently feed into other fields of science and policy.

From an economic point of view, the most important question is how to deal with the scarcity that arises during a pandemic. This requires insight into the effects and effectiveness of measures that have been considered and taken. I want to illustrate this with three topics that also provide concrete recommendations for improvement.

 

Be transparent about intended measures

A macroeconomic analysis is indispensable both because of the pandemic, which involves a simultaneous loss of a large part of the labour force, and because of measures including business closures and restrictions on gathering and movement. That up-to-date analyses of a flu pandemic were not ready in the Netherlands is an omission of the major policy institutions (CPB Netherlands Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Dutch Central Bank DNB), because the risk was known. On the eve of the COVID-19 outbreak, the ‘Geïntegreerde risicoanalyse Nationale Veiligheid’ (‘Integrated National Security Risk Analysis’ – ANV 2019) for example reported that a flu pandemic in the near future was both likely (5-50%) and a major threat for society with a significant impact on population and the economy at large.

However, the econometricians at CPB and DNB cannot be blamed for not foreseeing the lockdowns that were suddenly conjured out of the medical top hat in 2020. None of the national and international roadmaps anticipated lockdowns (van Bergeijk 2021a). As a result, not only policy analysts, but also scientists could not anticipate that lockdown instruments would be used. A first important conclusion is therefore that realistic roadmaps should be drawn up – and published – as early on as possible so that analyses of concretely considered (combinations of) instruments can be made in advance without the time pressure of an unfolding pandemic.

 

International comparative macro-research is needed

The KNAW report focuses mainly on improved accessibility of micro data (for example health status and socio-economic characteristics of large groups of individuals). This requires linking medical data files with data on socio-economic characteristics, either by means of long-term panels or through CBS Statistics Netherlands. At face value, this focus on micro and the Netherlands is understandable, but at the same time, one might argue that this focus is too narrow. After all, a pandemic is not a national problem, the micro-macro paradox can lead to bias, and a third relevant problem is whether the vulnerable are (or will be) adequately represented in the data. A very obvious problem with Internet panels, for example, is the under-representation of both the elderly and the disadvantaged and marginally poor, who are both more vulnerable and inherently more difficult to survey.

It is unfortunate that the KNAW focuses so much on the Dutch context. Every national context is unique and findings are therefore strongly determined by the conditions of time and place. ‘Met de kennis van straks’ uses these differences in context to justify an essentially national research strategy. Learning, however, actually requires making to make good use of differences in national contexts. Where regional policy in the Netherlands has proved to be impossible, researchers will have to look beyond national borders for differences in policies, institutions, and behaviour. National navel-gazing can be expected to lead to opportunities and threats being overlooked. It is important to start asking what the optimal design of our society would be from the perspective of pandemic resilience, lest the costs become too high. The second conclusion is therefore that building resilience in an evidence-based way requires extensive investments and structural change, which in turns requires research on the influence of differences between national contexts.

 

Final research findings do not exist

The economic view of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to change significantly in coming years. After all, definitive research findings do not exist. Consider, for example, the estimate for the growth rate of world GDP in the year 2020 provided by the IMF in its World Economic Outlook [2]. Figure 1 shows that successive estimates for 2021 and 2022 became slightly less negative each time. 2020 will never be a good year, of course, but the adjustments made to the historical data are not insignificant. It amounts to 0.3 percentage points, or 10 percent of the first estimate. The adjustments themselves moreover come as no surprise at all (van Bergeijk 2021b).

 

Figure 1. Adjustments made in four instances by the IMF to the 2020 world production growth estimates provided in its World Economic Outlook.

Source: IMF website, accessed 11 October 2022.

 

The medical impact of the pandemic will also take time to become clear. We know the number of people that got COVID-19 and whether they recovered or died due to infection, but we know neither the impact on the long run of the lockdowns on the health status of the population, nor the long-term effects of COVID-19 itself. This uncertainty does not mean that no general policy recommendations can be made. Cost-benefit analyses, for example, have shown that while short lockdowns may make a rational and cost-effective contribution during pandemic outbreaks, the same cannot be said of long-term lockdown policies. This is basically because at its core, a human life can only be saved once, while longer lockdowns continuously increase economic costs. So, whether such an insight is valid for the next pandemic is not the question. However, what is ‘short’ cannot be answered in advance. The third conclusion is that economics can play an important role in helping design macro trade-off frameworks to best fill in and adjust the parameters in the event of a breakout as soon as new insights become available.

 

Conclusion

Science pretends to know a lot and to be able to contribute much. In this regard, it is probably too big for its boots. Vaccines have been important, but if we can actually put the COVID-19 crisis behind us, it will be mostly thanks to the gift Mother Nature gave us, namely a less severe, more infectious variant that makes COVID-19 better socially manageable. It is human nature to draw some lessons after a pandemic has died out and then to forget them. It is remarkable that all the issues that came up during the previous pandemic, the Mexican Flu pandemic, remained unresolved and came back again during the COVID-19 pandemic. Science could and should play a much more important role here, not so much in research, but in education. It is actually strange that the report does not pay attention to the core task of science. Providing the knowledge about the previous pandemic requires a better place in the curricula of all fields of science. If not, our students, who will probably experience four to five more pandemics in their lifetime, will be not be prepared for the next one.

Footnotes

[1] Dutch readers may want to consult van Bergeijk 2021b.

[2] Another example is the resurgence of research on the economic impact of the Spanish Flu.

 

References

ANV, 2019, Geïntegreerde risicoanalyse Nationale Veiligheid, ANV Netherlands Network of Safety and Security Analysts http://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2019-10/Geintegreerde%20risicoanalyse%20Nationale%20Veiligheid%202019.pdfhttp://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2019-10/Geintegreerde%20risicoanalyse%20Nationale%20Veiligheid%202019.pdf

Bergeijk, P.A.G. van, 2021a, Pandemic Economics, Edward Elgar 2021.

Bergeijk, P.A.G. van, 2021b, De volgende pandemie: een deltaplan voor overleving, Walburg, 2021.

Bergeijk, P.A.G. van, 2022, The Political Economy of the Next Pandemic, Review of Economic Analysis, 14 (1), 27-49

KNAW, 2022, Met de Kennis van straks: De wetenschap goed voorbereid op pandemieën.

This article was originally published on MeJudice and has been republished with permission of the author and editors.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Peter van Bergeijk is Professor of International Economic Relations and Macroeconomics at the Hague-based Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University (ISS); one of the leading educational and research institutes in the field of development cooperation in Europe.

 

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Transformative Methodologies | Changing minds and policy through collaborative research?

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Can collaborative research with marginalised communities be transformative, turning around unjust social relations, and supporting solidarity and rights in a practical sense? In this blog post, we (Jack Apostol, Helen Hintjens, Joy Melani and Karin Astrid Siegmann) reflect on this question based on our experience with the PEER approach, a participatory research methodology, that we used in a study on undocumented people’s access to healthcare in the Netherlands. The answer? We posit that the claim that social science methodologies can directly transform social realities, may be raising expectations too high, at least for the PEER approach. Yet, dissolving barriers between academic and non-academic knowers might be useful in itself, leading to greater respect for, and the amplification of the voices of marginalised people.

https://www.istockphoto.com/nl/foto/vluchtelingen-mensen-met-bagage-lopen-in-een-rij-gm921353784-253049275

What is PEER?

PEER stands for Participatory Ethnographic Evaluation and Research. The participatory aspect stems from the involvement of members of marginalised and stigmatised communities as co-researchers. It is used in contexts where it is essential to build trust, where new insights are needed, and where the underbelly of sensitive topics can be exposed through mostly non-directive (open-ended) interviews with hard-to-research and marginalised groups in society. Examples of such topics include research on sexual health, sex work, the illicit or informal economy, and refugees on the move.

 

PEER research on undocumented people’s access to healthcare

We used the PEER methodology to understand the puzzle of why undocumented people in the Netherlands rarely access healthcare, despite their health rights being formally guaranteed in Dutch and EU regulations. Our research team consisted of people based at universities, like Helen, Karin, and our colleague Richard Staring, and non-academic experts from a group of undocumented peer researchers, including Joy and Jack. Interview questions were developed within the team, with peer researchers knowing best how to address sensitive issues with other undocumented people. Once interviews were concluded, debriefing meetings with the peer researchers formed the starting point of our data analysis.

The benefits of the PEER methodology for accessing and learning from people, who have good reasons to remain under the radar, came out clearly in our study. Joy highlights trust as the main advantage of reaching out to fellow undocumented persons for an interview: “Undocumented people cannot trust anyone. But if we interview them, they know that we are undocumented, and they can open up easily. They can tell the real story, their own emotions, and experiences. Because they know, having the same situation, you can understand them, how they feel, their thoughts.”

Time constrains were tough for peer researchers for whom research came on top of their normal working day. Working as a domestic worker full time, Jack recalls: “I worked as a full domestic worker that time. I started my work from the morning until 6 in the afternoon. Attending workshops and meetings during the whole period of PEER research project were a challenge to me. Usually, I rushed to the evening meetings at ISS [International Institute of Social Studies] after my whole day work. This made me physically and mentally a bit tired to participate in the discussion and share my ideas. Sometimes, I came late due to extra work. But I ought to do it as part of my commitment to the project.”

Two PEER researchers simulating an interview during training, August 2014, The Hague

So can the PEER Methodology change minds, influence policy?

Contributing to social change clearly motivated Jack:

“First, I believed that the project was for the well-being of the undocumented migrants in the Hague. This was about a health issue which was vital for the interest of the undocumented migrants whose access to medical care had been hindered by lack of information, discrimination, and ignorance of some medical professionals about the existing health policy of the government.” But what is the actual potential of such collaborative research to transform the injustices that undocumented people experience? Jack soberly concludes that any broader impact depends on the political context: “Absolutely, a rightist government is against migrants. Any outcome of the research based on a PEER approach would not actually convince the rightist government to take initiatives to change their policy in favour of migrants.”

This suggests the practical limits of what one can realistically achieve with academic research under an illiberal dispensation. On its own, without a shift in attitudes, social research cannot shift policy parameters. As the saying goes, one can take a horse to water, one cannot make it drink! Yet PEER research does break down barriers. The status-quo that segregates undocumented people from the rest of society is challenged, as PEER researchers open doors to long-concealed stories of undocumented life in the midst of plenty. Those without status are respected experts in self-organisation, and can be supported to negotiate access to rights and services. In conclusion, one can highlight the vital transformative role played by migrant self-help organisations like Filmis and others, whose solidarity work has stepped up since the start of the COVID pandemic.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Jacob Apostol is the co-founder and the current president of the Filipino Migrant in Solidarity (FILMIS) Association. He is a human rights advocate.

 

 

Helen Hintjens has been interested in pro-asylum advocacy for about 40 years now. She is inspired by the self-advocacy of those confronting current deterrence-based policies on migration and asylum.

 

Melanie (Joy) Escano is the Vice-President of Migrant Domestic Workers Union. She is also the co-founder and the current public relation officer of the Filipino Migrant in Solidarity (FILMIS) Association.

 

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

 

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Transformative Methodologies | A reflection on collaborative writing across sex worker organisations and academia

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We – members of Empower Foundation – a sex workers’ rights organisation in Thailand – and two scholar-activists from International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS) in the Netherlands, reflected on our experience of collaboration in light of our search for social transformation.

 

About us and what brought us together

Empower Foundation is a leading organisation in the defense of sex workers’ rights, and is located in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It has almost 40 years experience of working with creative and transformative methodologies – doing community-based research which then feeds into policy proposals, that are brought to the attention of governmental and international organisations, such as International Labour Organisation (ILO). It models best labor practices in their own ‘Can Do Bar’. Empower is the space for sex workers to exchange experiences, organise and create ways, often using art and culture, to inform and influence society on many issues, including the harms caused by anti-trafficking policy and practices.

What brought us together initially was the interest in bringing insights from labor studies – Karin’s area of research – on the one hand, and gender and sexuality studies – Silke’s field of expertise – on the other, in conversation with each other, in order to explore how that could contribute to proposals for structurally improving labor conditions of sex workers. Our first paper was on analysing ILO discussions around decent work, and how sex work and sex workers have been systematically excluded from conversations around the decent work agenda. It was in this context that in 2014 Silke and Karin contacted members of Empower Foundation that Silke had met the year before at an event co-organised with Mama Cash at ISS.

Trying to make a difference in the way we collaborate

While Silke and Karin had an initial idea about the paper, there was explicit room for adapting the focus, approach, and language. Neither of the three partners had experience in this kind of joint project, so we had an open conversation about the ways in which we wanted to collaborate from the beginning, thereby establishing some common guiding principles – that we would explore how to go about it along the way, keeping in mind that the contribution of the expertise and perspectives of Empower was crucial to the paper, both in terms of the kind of knowledge that we wanted to produce, as well as in terms of the social impact that we were seeking, namely, to improve sex workers’ labor conditions. We also agreed that Empower’s involvement could be more or less, depending on their availability, while our shared preference would be to have the collective as co-author.

This conversation was particularly important given the previous negative experience of working with academics. Liz Hilton from Empower Foundation summarised: “We’ve had one or two earlier experiences with people who wanted to collaborate and that was really terrible. The whole premise of collaboration was theft, of stealing our work.” Liz mentioned the importance of being aware of the differences in our language – “…not just the difference between Thai and English, but also the difference between sex worker language and academic language. We don’t see this as an obstacle, but it will be an adventure!”. The problem with academic jargon, as Empower also explained in a preparatory note for a meeting of sex workers organisations at ISS that took place at a later stage, is not that sex workers are not able to understand it, but that it does not reflect their experiences or realities properly, and it often operates with implicit assumptions that are problematic.

One common assumption in both academia and policy for instance is the conflation between sex work and trafficking that occurs when using the term “sexual exploitation”, to refer to what in any other economic sector would be called either “forced labor” or “labor exploitation”. Moreover, even within academic language, there were many different ways of talking about sex work with important political implications. Empower has published a dictionary that provides many examples of such – often problematic – assumptions and disconnects that occur. So, one of the first things that Silke and Karin asked was: how does (or doesn´t) the language that we use speak to members of Empower Foundation? In which ways do they think we should change it?

We also talked about timelines, and the need to adapt those to the realities of the different parties involved. For Empower, this compared positively with earlier collaborations with academics: “Other people that we were collaborating with didn’t want to give us the time to properly translate, think, come back to it, put forward what we can do, will do, and what we think. They were very rushed. Everybody has deadlines, we know that, but their rush was quite rude. They were continuously trying to fit us into what they already decided.”

Final reflections

We co-authored the paper that came out two years later. Empower Foundation made a tremendous contribution to the paper by critically analysing the language used, and by bringing in the findings of the community-based research that Empower was conducting independently –  both through previous research on the adverse impact of anti-trafficking measures, published under the title “Hit and Run”, and the study on “Moving Toward Decent Sex Work”. This contributed towards a very nuanced and very tangible understanding of what decent work and labor exploitation means for sex workers in Thailand, by looking at these not as a binary, but as a continuum and as multidimensional.

Finally, and most importantly, in this process we developed a relationship of trust, friendship, and deep appreciation that became the basis for our further collaboration.

Now, has this collaboration lessened the precarity and contributed to more decent working conditions experienced by sex workers, as our chapter’s title suggests? Probably not. Yet, in a context in which sex workers’ knowledge about their lives and work is continuously devalued and ignored, we like to believe that a respectful collaboration that challenges these hierarchies of knowledge, and augments sex workers’ own voices can make a small, yet, meaningful contribution to a changed discourse on sex work – and ultimately to more respect and rights for them.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Sex Worker Networking Zone at the International AIDS Conference 2018, Amsterdam.” by junomac is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Empower Foundation is a Thai sex worker organization promoting opportunities and rights for sex workers for more than 30 years

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silke Heumann is a Sociologist and Assistant Professor (Senior Lecturer) in the Major Social Justice Perspectives (SJP). Her areas of expertise and interest are Gender and Sexuality Studies, Social Movements, Latin American Politics, Discourse Analysis and Social Theory.

 

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

 

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Human Trafficking | How anti-trafficking governance is getting it wrong: consequences of the differential treatment of migrant worker groups in the Netherlands

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In many countries, including the Netherlands, being an immigrant – or being perceived as one – is a key mechanism used to normalise job precarity and poorly paid work. From this perspective, in theory, the rising attention to exploitative conditions that has paralleled anti-trafficking interventions is promising for migrant workers. Yet, using the case of the Netherlands as an example, this post highlights that, in practice, the exploitation of some workers seems to worry policy-makers more than others. The selective concern for migrant workers’ exploitation has paradoxical consequences, writes Karin Astrid Siegmann.

Holland Fintech

In a recent case of human trafficking of Slovak workers on a Dutch strawberry farm, the Netherlands Supreme Court identified “systematic substantial underpayment and provision of poor, far too expensive housing” as indicators of exploitation. While hardly used in the International Labour Organisation’s labour rights framework, the term ‘exploitation’ is central to the 2000 UN Anti-Trafficking Protocol – shorthand for the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. The Protocol does not define exploitation, but outlines forms that it can take, such as the “exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs”. By 2021, with 178 ratifications, most countries of the world are party to the Protocol.

Having worked with migrant workers in the Netherlands for a couple of years now, I can’t get my head around how Dutch policy discourses on exploitation differentiate between occupational groups. Take migrant workers employed in the Dutch agricultural sector, like the Slovak migrants mentioned above. Agriculture employs the biggest share of the approximately 370,000 migrants from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) working in the Netherlands. Significantly contributing to the country’s Euro 49 billion value added produced in the agri-food industry, they make this small country the largest agricultural producer in EU and the second largest agricultural exporter globally.

These successes are lauded publicly, yet the migrant workers contributing to these successes are commonly invisibilised. While court cases countering the exploitation of farm workers are exceptional, their insecurity, poverty, and dependency are the rule. Even the Dutch Labour Inspectorate speaks of a large grey area of unfair labour practices affecting agricultural workers that are de jure legal. Mostly being workers deployed through employment agencies, they have little say about the number of hours they will work or the resulting earnings – and they can easily lose their job from one day to the next. Given that the employment agency often provides them with housing, too, dismissal simultaneously means losing accommodation.

Then there are migrant sex workers. Other than in many other countries, sex work is a legal profession in the Netherlands. A closer look reveals that this might not be much more than a ‘legal façade’: instead of being treated as work like any other, sex work is handled as a security risk, reflected in the fact that the sector is regulated by the Ministry of Justice and Security instead of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Welfare. A small sector anyway, in which an estimated 4,000 to 4,500 sex workers provide direct forms of sex work on a daily basis, the number of licenses for legal workspaces for sex work have halved since 2000. Based on a split image in which the Dutch sex workers are cast as modern, emancipated on the one hand, and migrant sex workers depicted as exploited and trafficked on the other, the sex industry is the only sector in the Netherlands that does not allow non-EU foreigners to work legally in the sector.

Yet despite their small number, migrant sex workers figure prominently in discourses around anti-trafficking governance in the Netherlands. This becomes evident in the proposed law on the regulation of sex work (WRS), which lists the fight against human trafficking as one of the drivers of the law amendment and argues that the sex industry is more prone to trafficking than other sectors. It is ironic here that for many years, the incidence of forced labour in other sectors, such as horticulture, was actually not included in official reports on human trafficking.

Anti-trafficking interventions heighten rather than reduce risk of exploitation

The selective concern for migrant workers’ exploitation has paradoxical consequences. The skewed framing of migrant sex workers’ realities justifies repressive policies that heighten the risk of sex workers’ exploitation. The conflation of sex work with human trafficking that has been exacerbated since the ratification of the Anti-Trafficking Protocol affects all sex workers. It has been used to justify increasingly repressive regulation of this legal profession, for example through the progressive closure of streetwalker zones across the Netherlands and the criminalisation of the clients of unlicensed workers. Undermining the stated objective of such regulation, the focus on human trafficking pushes migrant sex workers further into informality with greater vulnerability as a consequence.

The underpayment, insecurity, and dependence of a much larger group of migrant workers in the agricultural sector, in contrast, commonly remains out of view in media and policy discourses. This supports the normalisation of their ‘regulated precarity’: they pay for economic success of Dutch agriculture. In this way, both the misrepresentation of migrant sex workers and the invisibilisation of migrant farmworkers’ realities heighten the risk of exploitation that they face.

These examples demonstrate that anti-trafficking governance has not been an effective tool to address migrant workers’ exploitation. Both groups are losing instead of gaining what’s sorely needed – job security, better working conditions, and fair treatment. A more promising road towards fair labour practices for migrant workers involves a shift from a criminal law to a labour approach to human trafficking, including migrant sex work, as María Inés Cubides Kovacsics argued in her recent post in this series. This implies a regulatory environment that considers both migrant workers in agriculture and the sex industry citizens rather than passive production factors or victims – and effectively guarantees living wages and inclusive social protection based on that recognition.

This post is based on the author’s presentation on ‘Paradoxes of Migrants’ Exploitation in the Netherlands’ during an ISS expert meeting with representatives of the Dutch Ministries of Justice and Security and Foreign Affairs on 9 January 2020.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)

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EADI/ISS Series | Two faces of the automation revolution: impacts on working conditions of migrant labourers in the Dutch agri-food sector

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by Tyler Williams, Oane Visser, Karin Astrid Siegmann and Petar Ivosevic

Rapid advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling production increases in the Dutch agri-food sector, but are also creating harsh working conditions as the sector remains dependent on manual labour, while implementing new technologies. To ensure better working conditions for migrants forming the majority of manual labourers in this sector, ‘worker-friendly’ implementation of new technologies is necessary to limit the negative effects of the automation revolution.

The ‘Threat’ of Automation?

Decades-old debates about the extent of job loss induced by the automation revolution were re-ignited by the seminal work of Frey and Osborne (2013), who suggested large numbers of jobs would be replaced by automation. Where jobs are not lost, automation impacts labour conditions as facilities are geared towards the optimal use of new technology. Novel ICTs offer possibilities to increase labour productivity and to free workers from harsh and repetitive tasks (OECD 2018). Yet they also enable high levels of remote, covert monitoring and measurement of work, often resulting in increased work pressure and the risk of turning workplaces into ‘electronic sweatshops’ (Fernie and Metcalf 1998).

Ever since Keynes (1930) warned about “technological unemployment” in his essay ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’, tech innovations have been eliminating jobs across sectors (e.g., in manufacturing), while simultaneously leading to the creation of new types of work (e.g., machine engineers). However, the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ (Schwab 2016) currently taking place might differ from earlier ones: automation is accelerating, affecting a wider variety of jobs, and is now also penetrating sectors like agriculture. Likely candidates for new automation waves are ‘3D jobs’ (dirty, dangerous and demeaning) which are overrepresented in agriculture and often performed by migrant workers (manual mushroom picking, for example, which is physically demanding and carries myriad other risks like respiratory issues). Therefore, this sector – understudied in research on automation – deserves attention.

Farm Robots and Migrant Workers

‘Milking robots’, drones, and (semi-)automated tractors have appeared on farms in the U.S. and the EU. As the second largest exporter of agricultural products and the ‘Silicon Valley of Agriculture’ (Schultz 2017), the Netherlands is at the forefront of such innovations. Yet despite this position, Dutch agriculture still depends strongly on manual labour, as the complexity and variability of nature (crops, animals, soils, and weather) have hampered automation.

Technological innovation and the recourse to low-paid, flexible migrant labour in the Dutch agri-food sector both represent cost-saving responses to the increased market power by supermarkets (Distrifood 2019) and the financialisation of agriculture. A FNV (Federation of Dutch Trade Unions) representative asserted: “Employers see those people as machines […]. Employers need fingers, cheap fingers, if I may call it like that”[1].

However, an educated migrant workforce provides benefits to employers beyond ‘cheap fingers’. The majority of labour migrants from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the largest group of migrant labour workers on Dutch soil (CBS 2019), hold a post-secondary education (Snel et al 2015: 524). As the Dutch are reluctant to do the low-paid 3D jobs, agriculture depends heavily on migrants from CEE countries, especially from Poland (Engbersen et al 2010). An estimated 30 percent of all CEE migrants in the Netherlands work in agri-food, contributing almost 2 billion euros to the country’s GDP in that sector (ABU 2018).

While technology can and does assist in and accelerate the harvesting process, this educated workforce can flexibly perform manifold tasks like identifying and communicating inconsistencies in products or processes to their supervisors, including plant illness, irregular production, etc. This makes them invaluable in improving agricultural production processes and output[2]. However, their working conditions remain precarious. Consequently, grasping the impact that technological innovations have on agriculture necessitates studying transnational labour.

To this end, ISS scholars – with the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) – initiated a research project titled ‘Technological change in the agro-food sector in the Netherlands: mapping the role and responses of CEE migrant workers’. So far, it has included interviews with organisations in the agri-food sector, trade unions, engineering/labour experts, and migrant workers; this formed the basis for the MA theses of Petar Ivosevic and Tyler Williams. First results were discussed during an ISS workshop with practitioners in December 2018, and a follow-up workshop will be held on 17 March 2020. In addition, two sessions on the topic will be organised at the 2020 EADI Conference taking place from 29 June to 2 July at the ISS.

Industry versus Workers

To date, the benefits of automation for industry and farm workers are highly unevenly distributed. For example, technologies such as (semi-)automated LED lighting allow for more crops to be grown indoors, accelerating crop growth and extending the growing season. This benefits the agricultural industry and supermarkets by leading to all-year production. It also initially improved agricultural labour conditions: workers received a more stable, year-round income and a reduction in time spent working outdoors in difficult weather conditions. However, these improvements also brought negative consequences for labourers. The workweek increased (from 40 to roughly 60 hours – occasionally 80 hours – per week), and smart LED-lighting technologies, sterile environments, and novel ways of conserving heat and humidity created harsher working conditions (cf. Pekkeriet 2019).

Moving Forward

 How can decent labour conditions for (migrant) farmworkers be ensured while further automation of agricultural workplaces takes place? First, further research involving (migrant) workers themselves, growers, and other practitioners is needed to inform policy. So far, policy debates on the future of agriculture have paid only scant attention to (migrant) workers and labour conditions. Farm labour ‘shortages’ in agriculture are often narrowly and one-sidedly discussed in terms of supposed ‘unwillingness’ to work in agriculture per se or the tendency of CEE migrants to return to their home countries where economic growth has picked up. Such a position ignores the harsh (and often insecure) working conditions or postulates them as a given. It strongly underestimates the (potential) role of ‘worker-friendly’ implementation of new technologies and decent labour conditions in shaping the quality (and attractiveness) of farm work. Support from Dutch labour unions – which have started to organise and include CEE migrant workers – could increase migrant workers’ voice. Insecure, dependent work arrangements, language problems, and fragmentation of the migrant workforce have thus far impeded migrants’ own collective action. Finally, food certifications in the Netherlands primarily target food safety and sustainability. Including social (labour-related) criteria would reward farms with sound labour conditions[3].

[1] FNV Representative. 18 June 2018, interviewed by Karin Astrid Siegmann and Petar Ivosevic.
[2] Municipality Westland Presentation, World Horticulture Centre, 19 February 2019.
[3] For instance, the pillar of fair food in the slow food manifesto includes respectful labour conditions.

This article is part of a series launched by the EADI (European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes) and the ISS in preparation for the 2020 EADI/ISS General Conference “Solidarity, Peace and Social Justice”. It was also published on the EADI blog.

Photo-Tyler-image1About the authors:

Tyler Williams recently completed the ISS MA Development Studies’ track in Migration and Diversity and co-organised the abovementioned workshop.

 

Foto-OaneVisser-Balkon-1[1]

Oane Visser (associate professor, Political Ecology research group, ISS) leads an international research project on the socio-economic effects of and responses to big data and automatization in agriculture.photo-KarinSiegmann-fromISSwebsite

 

Karin Astrid Siegmann is a Senior Lecturer in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), studying how precarious workers challenge marginalization of their labour.Photo-Petar-image1

 

Petar Ivosevic graduated from the ISS MA program in Development Studies in 2018, with a major in Agrarian, Food and Environmental Studies.

 

Venezuelan refugees on Curaçao have entered the Kingdom of the Netherlands! by Peter Heintze, Dorothea Hilhorst and Dennis Dijkzeul

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“Reception of refugees in the region” is a central concept in the foreign policy of the Dutch government. It means that the Netherlands wants to financially support countries that accept refugees fleeing from a conflict in a neighboring region rather than enabling refugees to migrate onwards to Europe. Usually, the regions where refugees need to be sheltered are far away from the borders of our Kingdom. Suddenly, however, the Netherlands Kingdom has become the region itself.

Refugees from Venezuela are arriving in small but growing numbers on the Caribbean island of Curaçao. Curaçao is a remnant of colonial history, in that it is an independent country that continues to be part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The response to the fleeing Venezuelans now arriving on the island is highly inadequate and it is recognized that human rights are being violated on a large scale.

A recent report of Refugee International states that: “In displacement crises, the quality of services and assistance typically varies from one host country to another, but the fate of Venezuelans seeking refuge on the small island of Curaçao, only 40 miles from the coast of Venezuela, could very well be the worst in the Americas”. It is high time that the Netherlands, as the main country of the Kingdom, starts to make a serious effort to ensure that refugees are properly accommodated in their own region.

Distraught

Curaçao, an island state with 160,000 inhabitants, is struggling with major problems. The exploitation of the Curaçao oil refinery by the Venezuelan oil company brought jobs and foreign currency. And so did wealthy Americans and Venezuelans who came to spend their money in the paradise-like tropical tourist resorts.

Now everything has changed. Due to American sanctions against Venezuela, the refinery has almost come to a standstill, hotels have closed their doors, and the Insel Air airline was declared bankrupt in February. Twenty-six percent of the population is unemployed. The crisis in Venezuela is deeply affecting the economy of Curaçao, and its public finances are running out. Meanwhile, in Venezuela, less than eighty kilometers away from Curaçao, a political, social and economic tragedy is taking place. The international community is preparing for the large-scale provision of humanitarian aid. Distraught Venezuelans are leaving the country.

And that’s how the problems arise on Curaçao. Under pressure from a complaining population, a faltering economy and declining government revenues, the government in Willemstad is trying to prevent the arrival of undocumented Venezuelan migrants. Instead of recognizing their desperate situation, the Venezuelan migrants are being portrayed as criminals.

Boats

For generations, people have travelled back and forth between the South American mainland and the Caribbean Islands off the coast. Boats brought fish, fruits and seasonal workers. This has always gone on openly, outside of official rules and without international supervision. Besides fish and fruit, the boats also bring drugs and weapons and facilitate human trafficking. Nowadays they also bring more and more refugees from Venezuela.

The Venezuelans, who could be entitled to international protection under international law, are suffering the consequences. They do not receive shelter or protection. Instead, they are treated as criminals who need to be expelled as soon as possible. The Curaçao government does not acknowledge that this entails grave human rights violations. The government is resorting to fear mongering and repeatedly states it needs to act against illegal migration in order to avoid a potential pull effect, which might cause the country to attract even more migrants.

The role of the Netherlands

Curaçao is an independent state within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and is responsible for its own asylum policy and migration issues. However, the Statute of the Kingdom stipulates that the states have a duty of care for each other, especially in times of emergency. Moreover, foreign and defence policy is formally a responsibility of the Kingdom as a whole. If there are human rights violations within the Kingdom, the Kingdom is responsible. However, the Netherlands is currently failing to extend support to the forced migrants who are entitled to protection. Observers in Curaçao are advocating a more hands-on attitude on the part of the Netherlands: less distant and more in cognizance of the spirit of the Kingdom.

As early as July 2018, the Advisory Council for International Issues (Adviesraad voor Internationale Vraagstukken / IAV) warned of legal inequality within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and pointed out the importance of respect for human rights. The potential impact of the Venezuela crisis on Curaçao forces the Kingdom to take a pro-active stance to protect Venezuelan refugees. Everyone understands that in the current situation, Curaçao can neither handle the influx with its own resources nor uphold refugee law. It is time for civil servants from Curaçao and the Netherlands to jointly set up a functioning asylum procedure for Curaçao and make it work!

Protecting Venezuelan refugees is in the first place a responsibility of the state of Curaçao. Nonetheless, the Netherlands should step in and support the country to provide a decent level of care to the despair migrants from Venezuela. The Netherlands has always favoured reception of refugees in the region; it is time to walk the talk.

Image Credit: Cookie Nguyen. The image was cropped.

About the authors:

Peter Heintze 2016 01 19_048Peter Heintze is an independent researcher, as well as coordinator of the KUNO – platform for humanitarian knowledge exchange in the Netherlands.

 

TheaDorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a regular author for Bliss. Read all her posts here. 

 

dennis finalDennis Dijkzeul is a Professor in Conflict and Organization Research at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.

 

The Netherlands and Colombia: A Blurry Alliance by Ana María Arbeláez Trujillo

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The Netherlands may have found in Colombia a strategic partner to help expand its commercial activities, but Colombia’s complex social context needs to be carefully considered. Whether this alliance will benefit both countries, or will reinforce the dynamics of the longest conflict in Latin American history, will depend greatly on the Dutch stance towards very sensitive issues that affect the Colombian rural sector.

The Netherlands has found in Colombia a strategic partner to expand its commercial activity in Latin America. In 2017, the exports of the South American country to the Netherlands amounted to 1.542 million US dollars, situating the Dutch economy as the fourth most important destination of Colombian products worldwide, and the first within the European Union[1].

This partnership is presented as a win-win scenario. While the Netherlands could benefit from Colombia’s 40 million hectares of land suitable for agriculture[2], Colombia could fully develop its rural potential through an alliance with the world leader in agricultural innovation. This cooperation holds a great deal of promise. Thus, there are grand expectations regarding the meeting that took place last November in Bogotá between Prime Minister Mark Rutte and President Iván Duque, who came to power in August 2018.

However, some caution is needed. The Prime Minister’s visit occured in a context of uncertainty and digression given Duque’s lack of political will to comply with the peace agreement reached between the former government and the FARC, as well as his dismissive attitude towards structural problems of the rural sector such as the excessive concentration of land, extreme poverty, and inequality.

In this regard, a study conducted by Oxfam in 2017[3] revealed that currently, concentration of land in Colombia is much higher than it was in the 1960s when the conflict started. The statistics show that while 80% of rural land in the country is controlled by 1% of the large estates, small farmers have lost most of their territory. As evidence, 80% of small peasants have a landholding smaller than 10 hectares, which do not occupy even 5% of the census area. Moreover, official data shows that the Gini coefficient of rural property is 89,7% (with 0 corresponding to complete equality and 100 corresponding to complete inequality)[4].

The government’s approach, however, has been to neglect the multidimensional character of the rural problem. Since his presidential campaign, Duque has been skeptical of the peace process. Therefore, although the first point of the peace agreement is to push forward a comprehensive agrarian reform, the policy of the new government has focused mainly on supporting agro-business, implementing modernisation measures, and protecting the property rights of large landowners[5].

This official position has raised a deep concern among many civil society actors who have fears pertaining to the success of historical compromises reached in La Habana. The initiatives that are at risk include: the creation of a Land Fund for the distribution of land that was illegally acquired; the development of procedures to formalise property rights of small and medium farmers; and the establishment of ‘Territorial Spaces for Training and Reincorporation Spaces’ (ETCR in Spanish), which are places dedicated  to training the former members of the FARC for their reincorporation into civil life through productive projects[6]. To this day, the government has not shown a serious commitment to advance any of these strategies, threatening the future of the post-conflict phase.

Most worryingly, the Office of the Ombudsman in Colombia reported that 331 community leaders were killed between January 2016 and August 2018[7], and that the number keeps growing[8]. The seriousness of the situation led the UN[9] and IACHR[10] to urge the Colombian government to strengthen protection measures to guarantee the integrity of social leaders. Although the government has denied the systematic character of these killings,  in the face of strong national and international pressure, the creation of an integral policy to tackle this urgent situation was announced[11].  It is worth noting that 80% of the leaders that have been killed were involved in the defense of the territory and restitution of land efforts[12].

 

In this regard, on 5 April more than 500 Colombians gathered in The Hague to march peacefully from the Colombian Embassy to the Headquarters of the ICC[13]. Their aim was to denounce that the lack of action of the Colombian State is leading to impunity of crimes against humanity, and to raise awareness among the international community[14].

This complex social context must be seriously considered by the Dutch commission that will advise the Prime Minister on his negotiations with Colombia. Whether this alliance will foster both countries, or will reinforce the dynamics of the longest conflict in Latin American history, will depend greatly on the Dutch stance towards these very sensitive issues that affect the Colombian rural sector.

References
[1]http://www.mincit.gov.co/loader.php?lServicio=Documentos&lFuncion=verPdf&id=80988&name=OEE_MA_JM_Estadisticas_de_comercio_exterior_ene-ago_2018.pdf&prefijo=file
[2] https://www.elespectador.com/economia/colombia-tiene-40-millones-de-hectareas-para-producir-alimentos-articulo-795814 and http://es.presidencia.gov.co/noticia/180621-Gobierno-definio-Frontera-Agricola-Nacional-para-avanzar-hacia-el-desarrollo-rural-sostenible-y-proteger-la-biodiversidad
[3] https://d1tn3vj7xz9fdh.cloudfront.net/s3fs-public/file_attachments/colombia_-_snapshot_of_inequality.pdf
[4] https://www.eltiempo.com/economia/sectores/desigualdad-en-la-propiedad-de-la-tierra-en-colombia-32186
[5] https://lasillavacia.com/silla-llena/red-rural/historia/los-programas-agrarios-de-los-candidatos-en-campana-un-analisis  and https://semanarural.com/web/articulo/elecciones-presidenciales-2018-las-propuestas-para-el-campo/504 and https://www.portafolio.co/economia/propuestas-de-los-candidatos-presidenciales-en-el-agro-y-lo-rural-son-incompletas-517480
[6]https://semanarural.com/web/articulo/que-le-espera-a-la-colombia-rural-en-la-presidencia-de-ivan-duque/550 and https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/08/30/planeta_futuro/1535660220_091882.html
[7] https://colombia2020.elespectador.com/pais/agresiones-contra-lideres-sociales-antes-y-despues-del-acuerdo-de-paz
[8] https://www.rcnradio.com/colombia/durante-el-gobierno-duque-22-lideres-sociales-han-sido-asesinados
[9] https://colombia.unmissions.org/en/un-rejects-and-condemns-killings-human-rights-defenders-and-leaders-colombia
[10] http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/PReleases/2018/065.asp
[11] https://www.elheraldo.co/politica/no-podemos-decir-que-asesinato-de-lideres-sociales-sea-sistematico-mininterior-543998 and https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/gobiernos-de-santos-y-duque-coinciden-asesinato-de-lideres-sociales-no-es-sistematico-articulo-813250
[12] https://www.rcnradio.com/colombia/durante-el-gobierno-duque-22-lideres-sociales-han-sido-asesinados
[13] https://paxencolombia.org/la-cpi-recibio-documentacion-sobre-asesinato-de-lideres-sociales-en-colombia/
[14] https://www.resumen-english.org/2019/04/march-to-the-international-criminal-court-to-stop-the-murders-of-social-leaders-in-colombia/

Ana Maria ArbelaezAbout the author:

Ana María Arbeláez Trujillo is a recent graduate from the Erasmus Mundus Program in Public Policy. She is a lawyer and a specialist in Environmental Law. Her research interests are the political economy of extractivist industries, environmental conflicts, and rural development.

 

 

 

Striking for a transformative university by Karin Astrid Siegmann and Amod Shah

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Budget cuts in higher education limit universities’ transformative potential. A big strike is therefore planned in the Netherlands for all sectors of education on 15 March 2019. This strike follows demonstrations amongst others by university staff and students in The Hague in December 2018. This post is a conversation between ISS PhD researcher Amod Shah and senior lecturer Karin Astrid Siegmann about what motivates them to participate in the protests.

Karin: So many people came for the demonstration in The Hague—many more than I had expected! There were 1,000, some say even 2,000 people. What motivated you to join, Amod?

Amod: I was very impressed at the size of the demonstration, too. Being part of an educational institution, an element of solidarity motivated me to join. And there are very real impacts of these proposed cuts on us as PhD researchers. We are already in a situation where there is limited capacity for PhD supervision and training because academic and administrative staff are stretched and need to balance research and teaching responsibilities. The budget cuts aggravate that. There’s also a broader discussion to be had: these cuts are huge and structural. What does that mean for the university?

Karin: I see people without permanent contracts and tenure often don’t dare to speak up, criticise, or do anything that would distract their attention from getting those publication points necessary to get tenure. Overall, I see a move towards the neoliberalisation of universities: universities are more and more managed like ‘knowledge factories’. There’s more attention to quantifiable outputs than to the contents of your research, the meaning of what you teach, and of your research for society. To me, a public university should be a space where people manage to think out of the box, creatively for a better, more just society.

In my research and teaching, I use Polanyi’s work quite a bit. He looked at European societies from the perspective of efforts to commodify everything in society, driven by business interests and also pushed by governments. I see similar dynamics in the neoliberalisation of universities. Yet they are a space that should not be commodified in a healthy society. The effort will backfire, I think. But Polanyi also perceived simultaneous counter-movements by ordinary people, by social movements. I see the protests as such a form of resistance.

Amod: Very real conflicts of interest are created when, instead of government funding, you rely on a private organisation, foundation, or company to provide funds for research.

Karin: ‘Conflict of interests’ puts it very politely. I see an increasing influence of corporate interests that want to uphold the status quo. For instance, I see many more calls for research on climate change adaptation rather than what can be done to prevent climate change. That allows us to not question a westernised consumerist way of life, a dogma of economic growth.

For the ‘knowledge factory’, a similar model is being implemented not only in universities but also other sectors, such as in healthcare or in government offices where you should care about the public good rather than higher productivity. This model works through individualisation and competition. It provides disincentives for people to collaborate, but also encourages them to recycle their own work in order to make a career.

Such an individualistic model also makes it easier within institutions to divide and rule and silence critical voices. Michael Burawoy has written a really interesting class analysis of how a university manages to silence protest against new public management restructuring by dividing academic staff from admin staff, through the provision of some privileges to academic staff.

Amod: This is a very good point! As a former MA student and now as a PhD researcher, I see that playing out at ISS, too. By creating such differences—that as a PhD student you are not a student but you are not a staff member either—you intentionally or unintentionally harm the ability for people to collaborate.

We are of course aware that there are funding pressures, but it’s important not to let go of the ethos of a university that contributes to social change. There should be space for collaboration, to think more broadly, not to be oriented solely towards the next publication, or finishing your PhD or getting a job. There are universities and spaces where people are trying to get away from this rat-race kind of orientation The University of Gent is one example: their new system for faculty evaluation de-emphasises quantitative metrics and focuses on what faculty members are proud of[1]. There are real examples out there about how things can be better—these are not ideas which are just up in the air.

Karin: Yes, I was really touched by that example. Another example I have heard about is the planned cooperative university in Manchester. Because of the increasing privatisation in universities, students don’t have the funds to study. That way, universities becomes a more and more exclusive space. With a cooperative university, they want to develop an alternative model with students and staff as the main stakeholders.

Amod: For me, what’s happening in the Netherlands is symptomatic of a more global phenomenon, of the state withdrawing from higher education. What do you think?

Karin: I just referred to Burawoy’s class analysis of neoliberalised universities. I heard him speak about that two years back in Lahore, Pakistan, at a private university. I found it so interesting that somebody coming from a public university in the US presented an analysis that spoke both to the situation of students at a private, elite university in Pakistan and somebody like me who is teaching at a public university in the Netherlands. Very different contexts, but his observations rang a bell for so many people in the audience.

Amod: I would add to this the idea of the university as an egalitarian space, where people from very different backgrounds are able to come and study together. I think that’s a hallmark of public education across the world. This egalitarian space is one of the first casualties of the privatisation and neoliberalisation of higher education. I see that a lot in India now, with the mushrooming of expensive private universities.

Karin: I think even in the publicly funded universities in countries that claim to be very egalitarian like the Netherlands, you very often see the reproduction of class, racial, and gender hierarchies. I don’t pretend that right now public universities are egalitarian spaces. But in private universities, it is very clear that the customer-pays principle rules. Whereas in public universities you can contest that, and there’s space to demand more inclusiveness.

Amod: I agree. I think that’s what these protests are about—maintaining a space for contestation in the public higher education system.

Karin: So, we will take to the streets again on 15 March?

Amod: Yes!

The 15 March demonstration at Malieveld, The Hague will start at 12:00 (noon) and will continue until approximately 13:30.

[1] We would like to thank Zuleika Sheik for sharing this information.

Image Credit: Alice Pasqual on Unsplash

About the authors:

csm_5abd70057687ec5e3741252630d8cc66-karin-siegmann_60d4db99baKarin Astrid Siegmann is a senior lecturer in gender & labour economics at ISS.

 

 

 

amod-photoAmod Shah is a PhD candidate at the ISS.

 

The battle for Zwarte Piet: Everyday racism in the Netherlands by Dorothea Hilhorst

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Every year around this time, a major cultural and identity clash emerges in the Netherlands as proponents and opponents of Sinterklaas (the Dutch version of Santa Claus) clash over Zwarte Piet, his black servant. However, instead of leading to resolution, debates on Zwarte Piet have become increasingly marked by violence and intolerance, as some fiercely defend this tradition, while others call for change. What is the debate all about, and how can it provide us with insights on everyday racism in the Netherlands and beyond?

As a child growing up in a Dutch, white suburb, my favourite tradition in the Netherlands has always been Sinterklaas. It is our variation of Santa Claus, but our Sint gives the children presents on the occasion of his birthday on 5 December. Three weeks before the big day, Sint arrives by steamboat in the Netherlands and during the three weeks’ stay he visits schools, families, and hospitals to meet children. Before going to bed, kids place their shoes near the chimney or door. They sing the traditional songs about Sinterklaas, and add a root or water for Sinterklaas’ horse. In the middle of the night, Sinterklaas’ servants – so the story goes – would enter through the chimney and place sweets or presents in the shoes.

THE ISSUE WITH ZWARTE PIET…

As a child, Sinterklaas was the highlight of my year, and I was never aware of the racist character of the tradition. Sinterklaas is surrounded by servants that are black. Although there are many myths about the origin of Zwarte Piet, it is not difficult to see remnants here of the Dutch history riddled with slavery. The representation of Zwarte Piet, a servant with exaggerated racial traits, including shiny black skin, kinky hair, and fat red lips, is perceived by many as reproducing racial stereotypes and as a form of everyday racism. For the last ten years, the discussion on Zwarte Piet has escalated to become a principal battleground of what it means to be Dutch in the twenty-first century.

In 2014, a UN research team concluded that Zwarte Piet was indeed racist, and the report noted that the committee was shocked to find how ignorant Dutch society is about its history with slavery. The e-mail account of one of the researchers, Jamaican professor Verene Shepherd, had to be temporarily closed due to extensive hate mail from Dutch people who felt that one of their most precious traditions was being attacked.

ZWARTE PIET REIMAGINED?

While protest against Zwarte Piet is growing in the Netherlands, it is important to note that the tradition is not under attack. Nobody wants to ban the tradition of Sinterklaas, protesters just want a minor adaptation to Zwarte Piet. The proposed alternative is Roetveegpiet: a person of unspecified ethnicity that is blackened by the soot from inside the chimneys through which Piet supposedly enters the houses. This alternative seems simple and doable, yet the Netherlands continues to be utterly divided over the matter. When HEMA – a popular store – announced in 2015 that it was changing its December displays to the Roetveegpiet, it quickly had to backtrack because of a consumer boycott and security threats received by HEMA personnel.

In 2017, when Sinterklaas’ arrival by steamboat took place in the province of Friesland, a number of people blocked the highway to stop anti-Zwarte Piet demonstrators from holding a peaceful protest. The people who blocked the highway have recently been convicted by a court to several weeks of community service, but fail to understand why and show no remorse or regrets.

This year, 2018, the arrival of Sinterklaas was accompanied in many cities by violent attacks on peaceful protesters against Zwarte Piet. Apparently, the core of those coming to the defence of Zwarte Piet is now formed by football hooligans that take joy in throwing cans and other objects at the protesters. Dozens of the hooligans have been arrested. While extremist hooligans are the most visible part of the pro-Zwarte Piet movement, surveys show that in the society at large the support for Zwarte Piet is declining, but that he can still count on majority support among the population.

For this reason perhaps, the Dutch government so far has refused to intervene in the debate, claiming this is not a political, but a socio-cultural issue. Only last week, the leader of the Christian party Christen Unie that forms part of the current government coalition publicly announced his support for Roetvegenpiet.

It is quite incredible how Zwarte Piet has become the epicentre of the stormy discussion on how the Netherlands has to relate to itself in times of diversity and migration. Accusations of racism on the one hand and treason on the other entrench antagonism in the battle for or against Zwarte Piet.

RESISTING EVERYDAY RACISM

At ISS, everyday racism is a major topic of analysis. One of the things that I’ve learned from our international students is that something can be racist with or without intention. When somebody is reprimanded after telling a nasty joke about black people, the usual defence is, “Oh, but I never meant that to be racist, and, by the way, I have many black friends.”

But even without the intention of racism, a joke can be racist in the sense that it reproduces prejudice about minority groups with a different skin colour or a non-majority ethnic background. And even without racist intention, these friends may still find it unpleasant to hear the jokes.

How can this insight help us in the Zwarte Piet debate? Could Zwarte Piet critics believe that the large majority of Zwarte Piet lovers have no racist intentions? And could Zwarte Piet defenders then acknowledge that Zwarte Piet is nonetheless a hurtful expression of everyday racism?

1974 2 VAN DE DRIE MEISJES.
The author (on the right) with her sister in the 1970s.

In November 2013, the ISS community sent a letter to Erasmus University’s Rector Magnificus to raise the issue of the celebration of Sinterklaas and the everyday racism it represents. The letter was a response to an invitation (which just had a picture of Zwarte Piet) to celebrate Sinterklaas on the Erasmus University campus in Rotterdam. Authors of the letter called for the recognition and appreciation of principles of tolerance on which the ISS strives to be built and requested that the university starts to consider alternative forms of representation to overcome the racial stereotyping from the celebration of Sinterklaas. The letter was signed by 52 members of the community.

Picture Credit: MysterieusVP

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About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

 

 

The university of paleness by Willem Schinkel

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In a recent attempt to address the underrepresentation of female professors in the Netherlands, the Dutch government made extra funds available to universities to appoint women. To the dismay of many people at Erasmus University, the university refused to fill over half of the available positions and sent the money back. This triggered Willem Schinkel’s personal essay in which he explains how he feels alienated from a university whose masculine dominance is closely tied to its corporate character.

 

If an alien from an exoplanet came to Erasmus University, or to any other university in the Netherlands, and if that alien considered the composition of the university in terms of gender and race, it would most likely draw one of two conclusions. One, this space has been invaded by white men. Two, the model that best describes the spread of white men through institutions of higher learning is that of some kind of plague or epidemic. Of course us earthlings would be quick to explain to our alien friend that the unequal distribution of men and women, of white people and people of color, is normal – even though it is not a normal distribution in the statistical sense! You see, we would tell this alien, the principle that governs our distribution over institutions of knowledge and power, is what we call quality. To which the alien might rightfully respond: ‘I see. And what is the principle that governs the distribution of your quality?’

At this point in time, I don’t think administrators at Erasmus University have a good answer to this question. Recently, our university refused government money for the appointment of so-called Westerdijk chairs for female professors. The dean of the Rotterdam School of Management, Steef van de Velde, made a classic patriarchal move and wasn’t shy about it: in an interview with Erasmus Magazine he said he hadn’t appointed any women because he wanted to “protect” them. After all, an appointment on a Westerdijk chair would be perceived as “stigmatising”, since people would think ‘that they needed this type of appointment because they could not get an appointment on their own merits.’ Moreover, he said, this was not at all a question of money – the RSM has plenty and doesn’t need such money to appoint women. To top it, he said there were plenty of upcoming women in tenure tracks – and why give some women some money (in Dutch, he spoke of a “sweetener”, or douceurtje) and others not?

This kind of reasoning and rhetoric is an affront on so many levels, including the level of intellectual discussion befitting a university. I have no intention to counter it with all the good reasons for the appointment of women. I don’t think it’s my place in particular to make that case, and I also think that the case has been made over and over again. We know all the arguments – that is, if we choose to pay due attention to the scientific study of “diversity” – but they run aground in the morass of the white male dean-dominated powerhouses that university faculties are in this country and elsewhere in the world. So this essay is not a case for diversity. If anything, it’s a case for a university that may be gone, and that more likely may have never existed.

The alien in my hypothetical example might assume that an invasion had occurred. And in a way, of course, the invasion has always already taken place. We are in a state of occupation. Getting serious about undoing it is what is called “decolonising the university”. Here’s another way to think about what it means that our appointments are so one-sided. If I often feel alienated from the university  it has something to do with the model of living together we embody.

The university, like any other setting, is always also one answer to the question how to live together, how to be social, how to practice sociality as being in the world together. And I guess it just keeps on being disappointing that this – the current composition of the university – is the modality of sociality that keeps on being reproduced. Ours is a conditioned stupidity. It is conditioned by an imagination limited to market-based modes of finding value in life. But being so conditioned is not a condition; it is a constraint that is enforced, but over which we might have control.

So whatever happens, let it be obvious that our “diversity”, that is, the composition of our togetherness, is a choice. And the university as it is produces what might be best called a form of paleness. By this I mean a uniformity and homogeneity, a desire for and expression of an order of looking and working alike, an order of whiteness and masculinity, in which “I don’t recognize this picture of the university” even counts as an argument. This paleness is of course a form of whiteness. But the paleness I’m alluding to is also an intellectual desolation or drabness, an achromatics of thinking. And it is a submission to neoliberal procedural routines in the ways we work, as well as a general appreciation of mediocrity sold as “excellence” – remember that, after appointing men on half the positions available, we’re tapping into the lower tiers of intellect and creativity if we continue to appoint men.

And what a bleak picture it is to see those with a ticket to inclusion! What has happened when students (they are not to blame for this!) don’t even think to criticise the curriculum set by the order of pale sameness? What has happened when technocratic markers of achievement that are “evidence based” take precedence when in fact most have no clue what a genuine spirit of inquiry would be, what intelligence might be as a mode of sociality beyond individuated IQ indicators, or how study might be a shared venture to recompose the world in ways that subvert the pale order of sameness to which we currently sacrifice ourselves, but mostly others, for the noble cause of producing “knowledge”?

If anything is clear, it’s that the university is invested in state and corporate power, including criminal fossil fuel companies, and divested in diversity. And when we keep on seeing how diversity basically functions as what Sarah Ahmed calls a “non-performative”[1] – something designed not to produce its stated goals – the only way to move forward is to step up our critical reflection on, and our subversion of, the university at large. The point is thus not to consider the university as basically fine as it is, and to just grant access to it to a greater number of people, or by people of a variety of gender and “race”. It’s not about letting others get a piece of the pie, of sharing in the otherwise unchanged corporate paleness that marks the university today. Much more fundamentally, it is a matter of living as such, of living together. After all, this is what we do on campus: during the day, ours is a specific modality of being together, a selective, tilted, and pale form of intimacy. So the question who gets to be there is pertinent, and concerns us all.

[1] See: Ahmed, S. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life, Durham: Duke University Press.

An earlier and longer version of this piece was published in Erasmus Magazine: https://www.erasmusmagazine.nl/en/2018/05/19/opinion-the-university-of-paleness/?noredirect=en_US


willemschinkeloverracismecensuurenpolitiekecorrect-0-0-820-540About the author:

Willem Schinkel is Professor of Social Theory at Erasmus University Rotterdam and a member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

 

 

Diversity in the Dutch local elections by Kees Biekart and Antony Otieno Ong’ayo

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‘Migrant-led’ political parties are on the rise in the Netherlands—a natural reaction to extreme anti-migration populism of the past decade. Insights into the local elections held on 21 March 2018 across the country show us how the rise of parties led by migrants (so-called allochtonen) can diversify the Dutch political landscape in a positive way.

 

New political parties established by Dutch people with a migration background have been quite successful in the recent municipal council elections in The Netherlands. Especially DENK, a new party formed by people with a migration background (largely from Turkish and Moroccan descent) managed to attract unexpected levels of support. This is quite a contrast with four years ago, when the Freedom Party (PVV) of anti-Islam activist Geert Wilders secured a landslide win in two Dutch cities (The Hague and Almere).

This year, Wilders’s party decided to compete in thirty cities—the ones in which his support was largest during last year’s parliamentary elections. However, his performance was rather disappointing. Wilders and his party lost most of the seats it had acquired four years ago to local parties that the PVV had competed with. These local parties won almost a third of the municipal votes—an increase of ten per cent compared to four years ago. EU nationals and non-EU citizens who lived in the Netherlands for more than five years were also allowed to vote in the local elections. This feature of the Dutch electoral system makes the municipalities an important battleground of political participation.

‘Migrant’ parties: countering anti-migration populism

hsp logoThe boom of the new ‘migrant’ political parties—next to DENK also NIDA, the Islam Democrats, Platform Amsterdam, Ubuntu Connected Front, BIJ1 and the Party for Unity—can be understood as a natural reaction to extreme anti-migration populism of the past decade. This anti-migration sentiment has been echoed by several mainstream political parties, desperately trying to capture the Wilders constituency. That is why the Christian Democrats rallied for the reintroduction of the national anthem in primary school classes, and the liberal governing party VVD reconfirmed its support for Zwarte Piet, a popular (though racist) traditional celebration for young children which is increasingly challenged by a variety of Dutch citizens.

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Not surprisingly, the new political party DENK attracted its support especially in a dozen cities that are known for their elevated migrant (and especially Turkish and Moroccan) population such as Schiedam, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Utrecht. DENK launched a targeted and effective election campaign, largely focusing on young voters via social media. There are also concerns, as DENK leaders have repeatedly voiced their support to the Erdogan government, and some even labelled Turkish parliamentarians rejecting Erdogan’s policies as ‘traitors’. But that seems to be a sideline, as DENK mobilised support particularly from those migrants that feel alienated by mainstream political parties who tell them to ‘better integrate into Dutch society’.

Platform AmsterdamThese voters with a migration background feel offended not only because second or third generation migrants were actually born here, but also because they experience discrimination on the labour and the housing market (even if they feel totally ‘integrated’). DENK (as well as the other migrant-linked parties) offer those ‘new Dutch citizens’ a platform that was absent in most mainstream parties, which often moved (for electoral reasons) closer to the xenophobic and Islamophobic position of Geert Wilders.UCF logo_3

Not surprisingly, there is also tension amongst migrants competing for Dutch council seats. Sylvana Simons, originally part of DENK, left after a conflict over strategic positioning. She is from Surinamese descent, with a more diverse Amsterdam constituency, and decided to run with her own party BIJ1 (“Together”). This new party also includes anti-Zwarte Piet activists from the African and Caribbean community who are generally not very well represented at the political level. The Ubuntu Connected Forum and Platform Amsterdam with largely African and Afro-Caribbean candidates, for example, did not get any council seats in the big cities. Still, Ugbaad Killincci, a young Somali woman, who had arrived as a baby to the eastern city of Emmen, was elected after racist action against her triggered a national campaign in the Labour Party (PvDA) rallying to elect her with preferential votes.

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The political party Bij1 (‘Together’) focuses on a ‘new politics’ of economic justice and radical equality.

Pre-election debates at ISSThe ISS was also involved in this debate on migration and its links to the Dutch elections by organising a public debate in which several local council candidates with a migration background participated. Half a dozen ‘migrant candidates’ brought their transnational linkages to the ISS in order to share their views and motivations to participate in these elections. Coming from Nigeria, Burundi, Suriname, as well as Turkey, they discussed how diversity played a role in the Dutch local elections. Key themes during the debate included perspectives on immigration and integration, economy and jobs, as well as public services.

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Debate held at ISS with representatives of ‘migrant-led’ parties before the Dutch local elections on 21 March 2018.

However, identity issues such as racism, gender and discrimination also emerged as critical topics in the debate. The candidates highlighted the value of their multiple and multi-layered identities, their civic commitment, and the need to leverage these linkages for the benefit of the Netherlands and countries of origin. These multiple identities reflect a demographic shift in the Netherlands, especially the increased multicultural feature of municipalities.

 

Politically, some structural shifts are happening with the ‘migrant vote’. It is about time, many migrants argue, since the majority of the population in the three biggest cities in the Netherlands now has a migration background. Still, we see migrant interests underrepresented and migrant delegates remaining the exception: migrant parties and migrant candidates overall achieved less than 8 percent of the municipal vote.

It is yet to be seen whether the newly established migrant-linked parties will gain more electoral support in the major cities; the increased competition amongst them for the same migrant constituencies may have a divisive effect, leading actually to reducing their seats in municipalities and councils. Notwithstanding, the tendency towards more diversity in Dutch politics is in motion if we look at the Chair of the National Parliament plus the mayors of Rotterdam and Arnhem being from a Moroccan background. Even though similar positions are not yet filled by persons with a Turkish, African, Asian or Caribbean background, this seems to be only a matter of time. The successes of the new migrant-linked political parties certainly are a promising step in that direction.

Main photo: Picture from DENK’s political manifesto stating that ‘people should be able to be proud of their heritage’.

csm_166bed604f68c0443160dc5f1905fa7a-kees-biekart_6d238c8725.jpgAbout the authors:

Kees Biekart is Associate Professor in Political Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

antony.pngAntony Otieno Ong’ayo is a political scientist by training and currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University in The Hague. he focuses on diaspora transnational practices, civic driven change, political remittances and transformations in the countries of destination and origin