"Where Lies the west? Exploring Performances of the west in Dutch Integration Practice"
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2023-05-09
Language
en
Document type
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Title
ISSN
Volume
Issue
Startpage
Endpage
DOI
Abstract
Claims to ‘the west’ are omnipresent, but what do they mean? Starting from the presumption that there is no objective ‘West Pole’, this thesis analyses how constructions of ‘the west’ were performed in Dutch integration practice (2000 – 2009). It shows that the notions of ‘the west’ were pivotal to integration practices in the Netherland in their use to formulate a system of categorization, a benchmark to measure and evaluate the (socio-cultural) integration of migrants and a logic judging which people were ‘normal’ and which were ‘problematic’. In the process, the thesis uncovers the governmental rationales and ideological presuppositions that explain the use of the notion in the setting of integration. Moreover, it takes into account performativity in order to address how the ‘problematic’ character of ‘non-western’ allochtonen is constantly ‘proven’ as real, which reifies these equivocal terms. In this way, the thesis rejects the implicit reductionism of existing works about ‘the west’ which leave invocations of the notion in the domain of integration firmly intact – instead, it attempts to deconstruct its neutrality and entertain a critical sensitivity towards the term’s inherent contradictions.
Keywords: West, Non-West, Imaginary Geography, Performativity, Occidentalism, Civilization, Integration.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen