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What's in a Name?
The Identitarian Discourses
of Highly Educated Turkish
Students in the Netherlands
Tugba Oztemir
Student number: 6238181
Migration and Ethnic Studies
First reader: Andrikopolous Apostolos
Second reader: Sebastien Chauvin
Word count: 19,742
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The increased discourse on the culturalization of citizenship in the Netherlands and its effect on Turkish-Dutch identity formations is this article's aim. This study contributes to the notion of belonging and how this can be realized both with and without identifying with ethnic labels. Based upon a mixed method analysis, the study finds that identifying both with hyphenated identities or only with the nominal label Dutch does not exclude loyalty to the Netherlands. External rejections, labelling and perceived discrimination, however, do effect the Turkish-Dutch identity. Moreover, social mobility crafts pathways for the higher educated to identify more with Turkish-Dutch and Dutch then only the Turkish label. These findings show the complex nature of identity formations and display that ethnic and religious identities can go hand in hand with Dutch affiliation and belonging.
Keywords: ethnicity; identity; immigrants; Muslim
Chapter 1.
Introduction
This thesis is dedicated to the so called ‘hyphenated’ Dutch students with an ethnic
background who encounter everyday discrimination, inclusion and exclusion based on their ethnicity. The importance of identity for ethnic minority youth was stressed for me by various personal encounters. During my school years, one specific experience at high school carried the heavily loaded meaning of feeling excluded. One day, I was giving a speech about gay rights in class when the teacher responded with: “You with your open mind, and critical ideas, you are more Dutch than Turkish''.Until recently, I did not know why I found this statement disturbing. It felt as if he presumed that being open minded was only assigned to being Dutch and not to being Turkish. Because such a statement assumes that the fight for LGBT rights is an element of Dutch identity and not of Turkish or Muslim identities. It felt, to me, as if having one nationality was presumably better than the other even if the intention of the statement was not aimed at this. As a university student, I came across the concept of micro aggressions. Finding this term meant comprehension of the situation back then. Micro aggression is a term coined by Pierce(1970) and Sue(2007) This term was brought into life in order to describe statements and insults that minorities encounter in a 'normative' world where the hidden norm is white, male, and cisgender. Persons from ethnic, racial and sexual minorities can also find intersections of their identity on the axes of other groups. One can be both Muslim, gay and black for example. When deviating from the norm or from the
stereotyped minority, a compliment with a hidden derogatory message is most likely to be addressed. People who seemed to have given you a compliment, uttered their prejudices in the hidden layers. This personal story is only one of the examples of how ethnic minorities in the Netherlands encounter stereotypes and 'Othering' given in the form of little packages of micro aggression statements. These micro aggressions, that give voice to everyday slurs, are part of macro discourses that are being fuelled by various xenophobic and Islamophobic
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political ideas in the Netherlands. Therefore, this thesis will explore how Dutch students with a Turkish background face and deal with these painful interactions in the course of student and personal life. Also the significance of micro-aggressions and discrimination for identity formations will be observed.
The firm discourse in the Netherlands considering Dutch identity has become an issue in both the realms of integration and identification (Meurs 2007,13). The Dutch identity, in political discourses and social integration discourses expressed heavy connotation which leads one part to being Dutch and the other part to being the 'Other'. These political
discourses where Dutch identities are being scrutinized is excluding immigrants as well as their children who were born and raised in the Netherlands (Ghorashi 2003, 2006).
The changing discourses and policies of Dutch integration politics will form the starting point of my research. Previous literature displays that the Netherlands has
experienced a ‘culturalization of citizenship' (Tonkens, Hurenkamp and Duyvendak(2008), in which who belongs and who-does-not-belong has become defined in cultural and moral terms. A dominant discourse of assimilation overrules the migration debates in which
immigrants and their offspring are required to internalize the modern ‘Dutch norms' and thus identify as Dutch. A loyalty problem is being sketched out as an important key factor when defining identity. Stationed on the presumption that one can be only loyal to one country and one culture, identifications in the Netherlands as Turkish or with any other ethnic background is deemed suspect. In addition to the problematized loyalty with ethnic backgrounds, religion is also being scrutinized when placing labels on certain identities. Muslims, whose religion is portrayed as conflicting with ‘Dutch culture’, are seen as the 'Other'. This process where Muslims are portrayed as incompatible with Dutchness can be traced back in media, politics and public opinion. The words that are beings used in Dutch debate programmes, by
bloggers and by politicians- such as Geert Wilders and the late Pim Fortuyn, create the idea of a huge culture clash because of ethnic identity. In this discourse about ethnic Dutch minorities, a mutually exclusive identity is generated.
The history of social tensions in the Netherlands goes back to the formation of Dutch identities where pillarization has played a role. The Netherlands has a history of embracing a religious diverse society, however the perceptions nowadays differ. Many Dutch believe that ethnic and religious diversity in the Netherlands is a very recent occurrence. Notwithstanding the Dutch history which has always been culturally and religiously diverse and not unified into a homogeneous frame, the current integration debate emphasizes the importance of this non-existent homogeneity. Since a very large segment of migrants in the Netherlands come
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from Muslim countries, the integration debate on ethnic minorities gained an ‘Islamized’ jacket. Within this debate, the public discourse with regard to Turkish Muslims was
overshadowed by the idea that having an Islamic identity is conflicting with a Dutch identity. It seems that Turkish Muslims should give up their Islamic identity in order to adhere to the principles of integrating successfully (Beck,2013). In addition, the discriminatory patterns experienced by Turks in the 1960s and 1970s, when they started as guest workers, where based on their ethnicity whereas after 9/11 the discriminatory patterns were based on their Islamic religion.
The attacks on 9/11 have played an important role in framing the Islam as the violent one, the deviant one, and the Other, who does not fit into the Western norms and values. Ethnic minorities with an Islamic background in Europe have experienced intolerance and discrimination on the base of their religion. A few weeks after 9/11, dozens of reported violence against Muslims in the Netherlands was reported by the European Centre on Racism and Xenophobia(EUMC,2001). Often, ethnic Muslim minorities find themselves defending Islam in public domain/sphere/milieu, i.e., work and schoolsettings. The downfall in this Islamic framing is also nourished in media. The media projects the Islamic identity as a homogeneous identity and as a threat to social cohesion in the Western world. Public discourse target Muslims and reproduce a set of harmful stereotypes that intensify their inferior position in Dutch society. These discourses and stereotypes bolster the intolerance against ethnic minorities with and Islamic background and make them the 'Other'. Within the discourses in the Netherlands about the Other, power can be detected according to Van Dijk (2008). In his study he explains that discourse and power are related to each other in the sense that the later maintains the former. People seem to form and change their minds by using the various discourses and information surrounding them. This distribution of
information includes mass media as well. Power can be exercised through different channels in which mass media plays an important role ''thus mass media organizations and their (often international) corporate owners control both the financial and the technological production conditions of discourse, for instance those of the newspaper and television'' (VanDijk,2008; Becker, Hedebro,& Paldán, 1986; Mattelart, 1979; Schiller, 1973).
This thesis focused on highly educated Turkish-Dutch students. Research has shown that the amount of social, cultural and economic capitals can influence your identity
formations. Therefore, this thesis choose to explore the identity formations of the highly educated Turkish-Dutch students whose social capital and social mobility is relatively higher. Alba(1985) has shown in his social mobility theory that the highly educated second
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this carried a correlation to their assimilation and identification. Alba (1985) created a distinction between assimilation and upward mobility, suggesting that among, for example, Italian Americans at least, ‘widespread opportunities for mobility ... will increase ...
assimilation’(1985:15). Starting off from where the notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are created in the discourse and for which goals they are being served in migrant and integration debates, I dived deeper in the identity politics of highly educated Turkish students in the Netherlands and shed light on their formations and possible transformations of their identity.
1.1 Research Question
This research focuses on the formations of identities of Turkish-Dutch students in Amsterdam through the experience of everyday exclusion and framing in the media. I decided to focus solely on highly educated Turkish-Dutch because of their accumulated social and cultural capital in their academic careers. According to Alba(1985) and his social mobility theory, the ethnic migrants with a higher education and a larger social and cultural capital are more likely to vacate their cultural heritage and create a flexible cultural identity in which various elements of different cultures can be merged. According to Alba, a higher education can grand the students a higher economic income and this economic mobility 'encourages acculturation and assimilation, because immigrants who become successful entrepreneurs in the mainstream economy may be tempted to adopt class-appropriate non-immigrant lifestyles' (Alba,1985) In my research I want to look if there is a possible
correlation between higher education, social mobility and a more 'non-immigrant'
identification and life style. Zhou & Lee(2007) who dived into hyphenated American identities found out that children of immigrants, just as the white Americans, embark on divergent pathways in their search for identification, successfulness and citizenship. In their study they unpack the myth of having a failed upward social mobility with national disidentification. They are not mutually exclusive. Embracing an ethnic identity or a hyphenated identity - rather than just only an American identity - does not have to bring contradiction into embracing American identity as well. Also, in their study they claim that an upward or downward social mobility does not have to influence an American identification. This research contradicts the findings by Alba(1985) who claims that social mobility, and thus class difference, is high likely in improving assimilation. Therefore, these two contrasting theories about class difference, social mobility and identity is interweaved in this thesis. In order to gain more in depth information about the identity formations of highly educated Turkish Dutch students, I choose to focus on both male and female students from universities in Amsterdam. Some of
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them werethird year Bachelor students, some Master students and some were just graduated and already applying for PhD opportunities.
The effects that Islamophobic discourses can cause on migrants’ identities and the effect of social mobility on migrants’ identities are the leading questions in the topic of my research. In the sociological debate of Islamophobia and highly educated students and how these two factors might correlate with the identities that these students perform, I conducted this research with the following question:
How do highly educated Turkish-Dutch students in Amsterdam identify themselves in an Islamophobic and integration discourse?
Sub-questions of this thesis will therefore be:
1. Do Turkish students identify with their ethnic labels? (To what extent do they feel ‘Dutch’ and ‘Turkish’?) 2. What does it mean for them when they identify with Turkish and Dutch labels?
3. What does the allochtoon label mean to them? 4. What does integration mean to them?
5. How are their identifications related to the various social contexts, such as racism and discrimination, in which they maneuver?
Research into these questions shows how the processes of identity formations develop through political and media framing and everyday social conflict in school or work place. Turkish students’ manners to deal with these moments of Othering and exclusion influencehow they present themselves in cultural and ethnic identitarian ways. The framing by the media and xenophobic politicians in the Netherlands create the ethnic social conflicts in which these Turkish students have to maneuver and form their identities. Identities develop in social contexts and can hardly be seen as fixed. The experience of exclusion or Othering during a social conflict is therefore allied to the negotiation of identities
-(Essers&Benshop,2009). Therefore, this thesis will explore the formations and negotiations of ethnic identities that develop and change when one item of the identitarian process is being challenged.
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1.3 Chapter Outline
Chapter 1 Introduction ...p. 2 Chapter 2 My Culture, whose construction? ...p. 7 Chapter 3 Identity: the making of ...p. 16 Chapter 4 Methodology ... p. 21 Chapter 5 Results and Conclusion ...p. 28 Chapter 6 Conclusion ... p. 48
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Chapter 2.
My Culture, whose construction?
“Tolerance, then, has its limits even for Dutch progressives. It is easy to be tolerant of those who are much like us. . . . It is much harder to extend the same principle to the strangers in our midst, who find our ways as disturbing as we do theirs.” (Buruma,2006)
This chapter investigates Othering, culturalization of citizenship, stereotyping and exclusion as forms of discrimination that agitates identity formations of the ethnic Dutch migrants. This chapter gives an overview of the theories that address the processes of the culturalization of citizenship, Othering and social exclusion. The theories show how the aforementioned three concepts can merge and reproduce inequality and social segregation. Also, I will operate on the acculturation model and integration model by Berry(1990,1997) in order to explain how political discourses and public opinions about integration and exclusion can include or exclude minorities and therefore influence their ethnic identity formations and their feelings of belonging to the Netherlands.
2.1 Holding on to Power
In this chapter a correlation between, who holds power in the Dutch migrant and integration debate and the ethnic identity formations of the Turkish-Dutch, will be explored and
demonstrated. Building on the bases which Van Dijk(2008) has established in the theories of power and discourse, the items that are considered as relevant for this chapter are as
follows:
'Social power is a property of the relationship between groups, classes, or other social formations, or between persons as social members. Although we may speak of personal forms of power, this individual power is less relevant for our systematic account of the role of power in discourse as social interaction' (VanDijk:2008).
For this chapter I will use the notion of social power and the power in 'who can maintain the established discourse in society'. Since identity formations and identity negotiations bear connotations to the prearranged stereotypes and prearranged framings, the notion of power in the discourse is relevant in further explorations of potential correlations and links between the two. With the notion of power I mean the power of control. Discourse production in itself is bound to various actors in which one of the actors is the power holder. VanDijk(2008) describes relevant questions for detecting the power holders in the discourses that a society has. His central questions are the following: 'Who can say or write what to whom in
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what situations? Who has access to the various forms or genres of discourse or to the means of its reproduction? The less powerful people are, the less they have access to various forms of text or talk (Van Dijk; 2008:20). I will now bring this approach of power holders in discourses to the Dutch identity discourse.
In the Netherlands, a heated debate about Dutch cultural identity and how much differentiation could be allowed to this identity is persistent in the public domain. The Netherlands has witnessed an increase of rightwing and xenophobic discourses which portray migrants as the main problem to social Dutch cohesion. This Dutch cohesion and the presumed threat by migrants bears a connotation to the Dutch national identity as well. In this debate where right wing politicians, media and public opinion all distribute their voices, the defining of culture follows the terms of an essentialist and a nostalgic character. Within this essentialist view, culture is characterized as a non-fluid, timeless and fixed item. When the importance of a closed concept of culture is being emphasized in the discourse, people will tend to maintain this form and parry new forms of defining culture and cultural identity. In the Netherlands, the culturalization of Dutch citizenship centres the potential threat that ethnic minorities and Muslim minorities can place. Due to the social hold on a delimited form of culture, any new form, any new idea is deemed suspect. In the Netherlands, the
xenophobic and Islamophobic party named List Pim Fortuyn(LPF) took second place in the 2002 elections, just right after the leader of the party had been murdered
(Tonken,Hurenkamp and Duyvendak:2010). The murder on the party leader gave way to a firm embrace on the party's ideals and increased the framing of Islam as a backward culture. After the political murders on Pim Fortuyn and on Theo van Gogh, a fear of migrants and a fear of Islam started to gain ground in the social and political discourse in the Netherlands just as in many other European countries after 9/11.
In the following, I will clarify how multiculturalism in the Netherlands found its pitfall, how culturalization of citizenship enhances Othering in Dutch society and how this can bear consequences for relationships between the ethnic and the native Dutch.
2.2 The Multicultural Dream
The image of the Netherlands was often known as a country of tolerance and diversity. The country allowed all minorities to build on their own norm and values and gave room to religious and ethnic diversity. However, even though the imago of the Netherlands has been portrayed as such to the outer world, an in depth look in Dutch policies and their social consequences might show otherwise. According to Joppke(2004), the whole approach of
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''allowing designated minority groups to emancipate themselves within their own parallel institutions allegedly fuelled segregation and separation from mainstream society'' (Joppke:2004). This idea of a short sighted look on in-group emancipation where segregation was not expected, is been supported by other scholars as well. The Dutch multiculturalists integration policy had, it seems, malicious effect of the integration processes of migrants regarding their cultural and economic integration. In the words of Snidermand and Hagendoorn(2006) a critical view has to be accumulated when depicting and analyzing the multicultural policies: ''The politics of the Netherlands since the assassination of Pim Fortuyn has been the politics of multiculturalism in extremis.”(Snidermand and
Hagendoorn:2006). It seems that this policy on promoting multiculturalism and manoeuvring in own ethnic institutions generated a thick tensions regarding inclusion and exclusion in Dutch culture. Allegedly, it seems that the downfall of a multiculturalists perspective, which many have overseen, lays in the foundations of promoting separate (ethnic) identities.“The whole thrust of multiculturalism is to accentuate, even exaggerate, differences between majority and minority and insist on their importance''(Snidermand and Hagedoorn:2006). The promoted implication of a well working multiculturalists society allegedly did not foresee the pitfall of creating boundaries between the ethnic identities which stuck in the minds of people as fixed borders and fixed boundaries when looking for cultural identification. This
internalizing process which people undergo is fed by the prearranged framings of groups. A culture or a ethnic background which is allegorically nailed down in socially constructed boxes from which it may not move, can create tension when people try to look for an inclusive form of national belonging. Also, this delimited lines of ethnic and cultural background form a problem for the Turkish children who are born and raised in the
Netherlands and are expected to choose one culture over the other. Not only did the idea of a multiculturalist society, in which thick lines between cultures are drawn, accumulate to the segregated communities the Netherlands faces today, also the culturalization of citizenship helped in creating the recent social segregation. Tonkens, Hurekamp and Duyvendak(2010) argue that ''a restorative culturalization of citizenship has come to dominate the Dutch debate on integration''. In the integration debate, the Dutch culture is portrayed as 'fearing the label of the ever consensus making culture'. In order to dismantle this consensus
making 'fragile' culture, the essentialist view in the integration debate thus started to promote protecting the Dutch culture from external influences. Migrants have to be prevented from infiltrating in the Dutch culture with 'their' norms and values and 'they' should prove loyalty to the Dutch state. This illustration of how exclusive the Dutch culture and the Dutch identity have become throughout rightwing and xenophobic discourses with an essentialist standpoint of culture, shows how 'Othering' and fear can be established in society.
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2.3 Stereotyping in Media
The Turkish-Dutch social (dis)identification towards the Dutch state is portrayed as a key element of blocking integration and cohesion. Verkuyten & Yildiz(2007) did research into the Turkish migrants' identities regarding their religion and their social identification towards the state. According to their research, the portrayal of Muslims in media and in the discourses as undeserving and backward is a key element that enforces their ingroup identity. The
enforcement of ingroup identity of Muslim migrants, however, is also due to exclusion from society which seems eager in demanding assimilation from them and excluding them when goals are not reached. Examples of how one can be included as a Dutch person and how one can be excluded as the ethnic Other can often be screened in newspaper articles and media. For example, the Dutch news NOS portrayed some Antillean-Dutch softball players as Dutch when they won a game in the MLB. The headline was ‘’The Dutch leave an impression in the MLB games.’’(NOS,2013). However, people with the same hybrid identity of Antillean-Dutch who committed a crime were portrayed by the NOS as only Antillean. Such as the headline in 2015 ‘’Antilleans sentenced for human trafficking’’(NOS,2015). The screening of these headlines might seem trivial but are the key points in everyday inclusive and exclusive discourses. The words that we use to describe groups will become the frames we build around them. People understand the world when words and categories are being assigned to groups and in this categorization the pitfall lies in creating ethnic Dutch groups as the Other and ill fitting in the Netherlands. Here again, in the power of media discourses we can see the notion of the Other being created. The ‘negative Other’ in the Dutch media is not only dedicated to people with and ethnic background but also to people with a Muslim background. This religion has become symbolic for problems related to ethnic minorities and immigration (Ter Wal, 2004) and some Dutch politicians, such as Fortuyn and Wilders, have defined Islam as a backward religion which in turn is perpetuating Islamophobia. As a result, the current public discussion strongly focuses on the need to compel Islamic groups to assimilate because "they are a threat to Dutch values and identity" (Verkuyten,2007:1460). In his research he draws on the lines of correlations. When a certain minority faces identity threats, this minority will tend to focus on their ingroup identity. According to him, Islamic groups clearly face high levels of threat to the value of their religious identity and the public condemnation of Islam and the plea for assimilation can lead to strong ingroup identification among these groups (Verkuyten & Zaremba:2005). In this correlation one can detect that Muslim identity could be important for Turkish-Dutch students in the Netherlands when researching their identity and their national affiliation together with integration.
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2.4 Layered Identities
In the search for identity formations of the Turkish-Dutch in the Netherlands, the aspect of religious identity within ethnic identity is often left out. Verkuyten&Yildiz(2007) detect a gap in the research for migrant identity formation, namely the lack of religion. Not only hyphenated identities ought to be researched but also the meaning and the role of religion within this identity deserves the scrutiny. The combination of religion, ethnic background, exclusion, and inclusion within Dutch identity formations, leave their footprints on the whole of society as Verkuyten(2007) and Ogbu(1993) bring forward. Therefore, I will incorporate these notions in my study when conducting research to the identity formations of highly educated Turkish-Dutch students. Correlations between muslim identities, ethnic Dutch identities and the feeling of belonging to the Netherlands are therefore explored.
2.5 Assuming Assimilation
Integration models vary from melting pots to segregated communities(Berry:1974).
Acculturation, which tries to describe how minorities try to adapt to dominant culture or try to find a negotiation with it, does not necessarily has to filter out the luggage of cultural
heritage. According to the integration models by Berry(1974) he sheds light on the understanding of acculturation in more than only one way by claiming "that it is not necessary for immigrants to give up their culture of origin in order to adapt to the new society"(Vedder,2005:335).
Adhering to the cultural principles and standards of a nation is often based on
subjective inhomogeneous ideas which are often voiced by the mainstream culture. Creating a culture as a fixed marker is where struggles come into existence. Cultural and national identities are fluid and context bound which leaves room for broader interpretations and performances. However, a broader interpretation of cultural and national identity blurs the lines of the ‘we’ and the ‘them’ that were constructed to make the division clear and feel group connection. Interpreting national and ethnic identity became even more blurred and challenged when, in the 1960s and 1970s the Moroccan and Turkish migrants arrived in the Netherlands. The loyalty to the Dutch state and the integration of the migrants is still, after 50 years, a heated debate in the Netherlands. What does real integration mean and how does one accumulate this state is an unclear wandering pool full of inconsistencies.
The right wing discourses on integration politics is a field where discrimination and migrant exclusion from nation state can be researched. The acculturation model by
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Berry(1990, 1997) who introduced a two-dimensional model of acculturation in which he implicitly recognizes the two dominant aspects of acculturation, namely, preservation of one’s heritage culture and adaptation to the host society. These two are not seen as mutually exclusive, they are understood as the two possible domains of identification, whereas they are promoted as mutually exclusive in the Dutch media and Dutch right wing politics. Vedder(2005) brings the model by Berry back into the Western discourses on
Muslim migrants and shows how the usage of the model highlights the fact that acculturation proceeds in diverse ways, and "that it is not necessary for immigrants to give up their culture of origin in order to adapt to the new society"(Vedder,2005:335). It seems that identities on both sides, whether outgroup or ingroup play a role on the meta level of society and on the mechanisms of cohesion in public spheres. Verkuyten&Yildiz(2007) found out that the meaning of being Turkish-Dutch in the Netherlands is strongly associated with being Muslim (Phalet&Güngör: 2004). In addition they found that in the Netherlands, the public
condemnation of Islam and the harsh discourse on migrants to assimilate have increased the salience and importance of Muslim identity (Verkuyten & Zaremba:2005). The Turkish-Dutch participants in their research identified more with the Turkish and Muslim ingroup when they perceived more rejection from the dominant outgroup. The rejection that these migrants perceive can have a combined effect of strengthening minority identification and weakening national identification. The weakening of national identification is associated with a decrease in commitment to nation-state in the eyes of the public discourse beholder. Verkuyten(2007) pictures the paramount importance in the difference between commitment to nation state and having a self declared Dutch national identity. His research indicates that a total ethnic or Muslim identification does not block a feeling of commitment to the nation. However, his research does show a strong evidence that a strong Turkish or Muslim identity is contradictory to Dutch national identification. This non-Dutch attitude has no negative outcomes for integration however, even if the perceived discourse does portray so.
2.6 The Dimensions of Culturalization
When we deconstruct the Dutch debate on social integration, we can find the broken fragments of emotional bonding and functional bonding to the Netherlands. The
aforementioned polarization effect, being the consequence of the Dutch multiculturalism policy, can only be understood when comprehending the culturalization of citizenship. Rejecting or trivializing the importance of the culturalization of citizenship would narrow the concept of culture and bonding and in turn would also ignore its affect on individuals' life chances and individuals' identities. Since identities are part of the process where formations
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of cultures occur, it would be more than fair to include cultural en emotional bonding to the debate. Scrutinizing the identity formations together with the formations of constructed cultures, which alter continuously, will grant an overview of various social processes that can elicit social bonding and social cohesion.
In order to break down the broad concept of culturalization of citizenship which can be described as giving more meaning to cultural participation in order to claim a Dutch identity, Tonkens, Hurenkamp and Duyvendak(2010) introduced four micro-terms of culturalization. These four micro-terms are functional culturalization, emotive culturalization, restorative culturalization and constructivist culturalization. The functional culturalization describes the functional parts that can help you to belong to a culture such as speaking the language or gaining knowledge about a culture's history and its traditions. Moreover, emotive
culturalization is bound to the items of feeling of belonging and feeling respected. These culturalization rules that emphasize the 'feeling rules' are one of the most important items that will concern my research when exploring the identities of the Turkish-Dutch students.
Moreover, the restorative and constructivist culturalization will describe how culture in itself is seen and treated by its 'owners'. Sometimes a culture is seen as a noun, it stand for itself and thus cannot be changes and sometimes a culture is seen as a verb, hence changeable. The idea of a restorative culture is that a culture is perceived as already given and fixed and therefore could not be altered. To the contrary, the idea of a constructivist culture is based on perceiving culture as fluid and dynamic and always in the making.
The central point of the restorative culturalization is the reestablishment of culture and identity by claiming fixed notions as tokens. Often, mainstream cultural items are beings used when illustrating culture and identity. Totalitarian conceptions of culture in the
restorative culturalization processes have the aftermath of creating more polarization. This polarization effect has great consequences for migrants in the Netherlands. Muslim migrants and autochthonous youth can experience this totalitarian and essentialstic culturalization as form of exclusion. This feeling of exclusion will not trigger them to speak out but rather push them to the limits of opting out and creating a new box where their transnational identity comes into play. Creating an new box in which a new identity can fit, nourishes the public debate of Dutch loyalty and loyalty to the state. For example, the Dutch cabinet created a motion in 2012 where all political parties could discuss if having two passports could be seen as a disloyalty to the Dutch state and to the Dutch identity. Here again we can detect how fixed items such as having one or two passports are portrayed as being loyal or not. The functional restorative culturalization of citizenship is constituted on the presumptions that
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every citizen has to adapt to the prescribed core values of a certain culture. The
culturalization of this type brings emphasis on the nation as a homogeneous whole where variation is not considered.
The central point of a constructivist culturalization lies in its dynamic and inclusive character. Culture is not seen as a package which can be uncovered and distributed, rather it is seen as a concept which we can knead and mold in order to make it inclusive for all who
participate. Here we can detect that culture is not something you can find but it is something you can make. This making of culture happens in everyday life, in everyday exchanges by citizens and everyday habits.
The base of the constructivist approach to culturalization is planted on a critical rethinking of the inclusive and exclusive practices and their consequences. Everyday politics and
everyday discourses in public and in private are all part of the ongoing process of
culturalization. When we add an emotive dimension of the constructivist culturalization we can depict how feelings play a role in forming identities. This emotive constructivist
culturalization approach involves questions that look for the 'feeling rules' of citizens. When and where and how does a citizen feel home and what are the elements in this home-feeling, collective and individual identity? The answers will vary due to macro and micro social movements and social integration discourses (Tonkens et all:2010). Since social integration, social identity and feelings of belonging are intermingled with emotions, it would be more than fair to include and stress the emotionalization of the debate. This
emotionalization of the debate will be elaborated on in the interviews. The emotional part of this debate will pinpoint the relevance of emotions such as belonging and feeling at home. This feeling at home is both important for native Dutch and migrant Dutch citizens.
2.7 Conclusion
In this chapter, I described broad social and political tensions that contribute to bias and intolerance against ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. In this thesis the aim will not be how identities face challenges by these social and political constructions, but it will explore how these identities by Turkish Dutch students enter into the experience of these students and how in turn these students challenge the forms of exclusion when being discriminated against or when being portrayed as the Other. Everyday discrimination, micro-aggression and racism such as jokes and discussions etc are part of institutionalized and structural inequality between majorities and minorities in society. When we focus on the micro level
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and on the individual level of forms of exclusion and discrimination we can provide ourselves a lens in which we can detect the consequences of harmless jokes and identity threats. Regarding identities in the discourse of the culturalization of citizenship can present how a joined interlace between identity threat, identity formations and culturalization of citizenship can act out. These concepts that I have explained in this chapter will aid my exploration in the layered world of creating identities.
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Chapter 3.
Identity: The making of
When, in 2007, the Dutch princess said that 'the Dutch identity' did not exist, a huge outrage exploded in the right wing parties. The Dutch princess Maxima clarified her statement but this was again brushed aside. Her clarification displayed her concern of Othering each other in the Netherlands. She criticized the use of identity boxes: ''The Dutch still think in divisions, sort by sort, but we are not in a zoo, we life in a human society. We all can be diverse and blended and this can give us strength.'' (Maxima). These words by the Dutch princess were not applauded by the majority in the Netherlands, still, her words were a starting point of creating awareness about how the Dutch discourses create identities.
This chapter will explore how identities are socially constructed. From the point of social construction it is important to consider identity as multi-layered where individual experiences, cultural and religious values and experiences, social and political environments are all interlinked with this phenomenon (Orbe, 2004). However, exploring identity formations and identity negotiations can have an after-effect of simplifying reality due to the fact of the multi-complex identities which cannot be reduced into sound bites or theories and graphs. Still, in order to display an overview of how the negotiating and forming of identities take place in the real world, models and categories are beneficial when doing so.
3.1 Immoveable Constructions
In the 19th century an intellectual debate brake out in the Netherlands where the search for a fixed Dutch citizenship had to be found. Historian de Haan(2014) explained how back then some items were randomly chosen to create and measure the Dutch citizenship. These items were income, taxpaying ability and the status of one's job. The establishment of a Dutch identity was now based on three randomly chosen items. In this example we can see how the urge for fixation of something socially fluid is in the making. We create boundaries in order for the measurement to be legit. History shows that identity can only be formed at the moment when people decide, according to chosen criteria, that some do not belong to their group. Philosophers such as Sarte, Lacan, de Beauvoir and Said have all elaborated on the notion of the self and the identity of the self. One can find oneself by defining others first. In the Dutch debate, identity and integration are bound to the realm of belonging to the
Netherlands. In the last two decades the interpretation on belonging to the Netherlands are framed in two main aspects of social loyalty measurements. These measurements are the cultural and emotional belongings. The processing of attaching value to cultural and
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emotional belonging increased the debate around the culturalization of citizenship(Tonkens et all:2010).
Connotations and stereotypes are the offspring of the already born discourses. In the Netherlands, just as in various other countries, there is a belief that a specific ethnic
background is linked to a specific culture and thus cannot overthrow the invisible barriers when inclusivity is called upon. These ideas which hold and essentialist view and therefore produce essentialist connotations are also interwoven in the Dutch integration policies (Schrover, 2010). Along the side of the integration and identity debates in the Netherlands, another figure comes into play. Islam is perceived as 'intrinsically conflicting with what are considered Western norms and values' (Uitermark, Mepschen, and Duyvendak, 2014). It is remarkable to see that this essentialist identity discourse in the Netherlands contradicts with the understanding of ethnicity as is used in the social science. In the realms of the social science ethnicity is understood as something that humans themselves constructed and created. Ethnicity is and has always been a social construction. Brubaker(1969) brought out his publication of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries(1969) as a manifestation of the
understanding of ethnicity as socially constructed. In the ideology of Brubaker, he gave a new understanding of approaching and comprehending ethnic identities. In his
comprehension the attention was drawn to the fact that humans seek boundaries to make a saver inner-group culture which differs from the assumed outer-group. In this scenario, the inner-group can create bonding and rely on their sameness and thus on their belonging. This approach by Brubaker(1969) shows that monolithic cultures do not provide cultures since cultures are not bound to soil limitations. The noteworthy in today's societies is that we still represent the groups by their ethnic labels. Notwithstanding the fact that the social sciences presented a 'de-essentializing' perspective on the world of ethnic boundaries (Tonkens et all :2010), it seems that academic studies, perspectives and angles are deemed to stay in the iron towers of the universities hence not entering in society itself. This process of holding social studies and social knowledge in the iron towers of universities can be seen as one of the reasons why there is ethnic ignorance in the Dutch identity discourse and Dutch
integration discourse(Baumann and Sunier, 1995).
3.2 Self Identity
The making of identity, its expressions and its residuals are the sources for discussions and debates in multicultural societies. The urge for ethnic identity is brought up through
consciousness of sameness and differences and through the eyes of others who express their reactions. When bringing the ethnic identity down on the micro level, it has been shown
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that identification with a dominant group or with a marginalized group carries consequences for self-esteem and well-being in various ways. Thus, issues of belonging to a group or not and (dis)identifying with a group bear real significance for individuals. When we take this individual position in our gaze and zoom out on macro level, the issue concerning
individuals' identities have consequences for societies as well. The maintenance of ethnic identities in West European countries shows two ways of interpretation; one, it is perceived as a threat because of the assumption of national disloyalty and two, it can be perceived as flexible and adaptive due to the belief of fluid identities. Ongoing debates about this
maintenance in ethnic identity brings up the question of social segregation and social cohesion (Georgiadis and Manning:2011). In this debate, the ties among minorities are brought at stake, while questioning if claiming a certain ethnic identity will improve self-segregation or social national cohesion.
Identity formations are always bound to interactions with others, hence the
importance of social constructions and social discourses about migrants when exploring the dimensions of identities(Barth,1969). In the fields of anthropology, not only the ideas of others where rejection or acceptance is expressed, in processes of interaction, can shape and furnish identities but also social discourses. The social discourses that linger around can give way to discrimination and ethnic hostility. In order to understand one's (re)formation and shaping of identity it is necessary to understand the social context in which this (re)formation is happening. In addition, in the fields of social-psychology Tjafel (1981) describes the formation of social identity as: '' that part of an individual's self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group, or groups, together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership.'' In this perspective a social identity is seen as a base from which other identities can be derived from, as can be detected in the studies by Turner et al (1994) where self-categorisation is described. In this self-categories that one makes, one is defining oneself as an individual who is unique in the group to which it belongs. A subcategory of social identity can be the self-categorisation identity. The former refers to a group to which an attachment is being felt, the other refers to an uniqueness in which individuality is being expressed. Both social and self identity formations can merge or find intersection and reform the individual in which a multidimensional nature of ethnic identity is brought into existence (Burton, Nandi and Platt, 2010). Moreover, within the area of social and self identification another aspect takes place. The self-identification that involves the representation of identity to others when environmental stress and tensions are exposed, fits into the sub categories of identitarian formations. How individuals represent themselves or refer to themselves is described as negotiating identity (Cook-Huffmann, 2008). In this thesis this phenomenon is of paramount importance because the exploration of
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how people negotiate their identities provides us observations in how peculiar identities can become important and meaningful for individuals and groups. Also, the negotiation of identities can show how the intersections of one's own identity can take form and create meaning and thus elicit the concept of multi-layered identities. The negotiation of identities are most relevant when certain groups face an environment of hostility that frames one or more layers of their identity as a threat (Orbe, 2004). These environments can be traced back to the Netherlands where a Dutch identity discourse is framing the ethnic migrants and especially the Muslim ethnic migrants as a potential threat to the essentialstic prearranged Dutch identity. These discourses create identity crisis moments for the individuals who are at stake. These framed individuals are triggered to enforce their focus on identity constructions since some items of their already established identity is at stake in a broader discourse in which they also walk around. This mechanism of crisis moments are described by
Sveningsson & Alvesson (2003) as moments of transition en enlightenment that give more awareness to the individual of the fact that identities are constructed.
3.3 Action and Reaction
When identities are being constructed in discourses, it will not only be a matter of free-choosing but a reactive way to social situations as well. In addition, Slootman(2015) also took a more in-depth critical look in group formations. The identity formations which are being processed by Turkish students also make room for a new form of middle class group where diversity plays a role. The path of reinvention of ethnic identification among Turkish-Dutch students sheds light on the possibility of being middle-class without completely assimilating into the ethnic majority mainstream. In her study Slootman(2015) claims the acceptance of the emergence of a more diverse Dutch middle class in which social mobility and maintained cultural heritage within assimilation can take place. The interviews in this thesis will elaborate on the notion of assimilation, integration and maintaining own cultural heritage.
3.4 Conclusion
In this chapter, I described how both cultures and ethnicities are socially constructed. Notwithstanding this notion of being socially constructed, this perspective on ethnicities and cultures never made it to the world of public discourses which can explain the ethnicity ignorance in the identitarian discourses. Also, I described how the self-identity and the social identity of an individual can be formed due to one's perceptions and exposure to one's
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surroundings. In this thesis my aim is to explore the argumentations of the Turkish-Dutch students in the claims that they make about their social and self identification and if extern factors such as the integration discourses they manoeuvre in, play a significant role. In addition, not only argumentation for their own identitarian claims will be explored but also their challenges when claiming certain identities.
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Chapter 4.
Methodology
For this research, the focus is laid upon the highly educated Turkish-Dutch students and their identity formations. This highly educated group is chosen due to their access to certain forms of capital such as cultural capital and social mobility. These capitals which one can accumulate are high likely in bringing more chances in job opportunities and housing. Also, the highly educated Turkish-Dutch students gained access into a broader social and cultural life style compared to their lower educated peers or compared to their parents. This means that some of the accumulated capitals can be the cause for the diverting lifestyles these students walk into. Having gained a higher education and a higher social and economic status, grants them the possibility to explore out of the migrant neighbourhoods and in to the other dimensions and spaces of society. These other spaces of society are places in which their parents might not have manoeuvred in due to their lack in capitals. Considering cultural capital and social mobility, one can take into consideration the social mobility theory by Alba(1985). According to this theory, the highly educated second generation migrants accumulated other capitals and other privileges than their parents and this might have a correlation to their assimilation and identification. Alba (1985) created a distinction between assimilation and upward mobility, suggesting that among, for example, Italian-Americans at least, ‘widespread opportunities for mobility ... will increase ... assimilation’(1985:15). Placing emphasis on the difference between social mobility and assimilation made the topic of identity formations a core field in the social science. In the case of the Turkish-Dutch
students in the Netherlands, a research into this phenomenon gives us insight in how social mobility might influence assimilation or identity formation.
Contrary of social mobility and assimilation, another phenomenon might arise such as described by a Dutch sociologist Slootman(2015). A recent study by Slootman(2015) displays the factors that explain the relevance of ethnic identity for Turkish students. It seems that many of them identify in ethnic terms because they feel attached to ''certain customs or ideologies, or to the country of their parents’ origin; or because their ethnic background has shaped their experiences in particular ways'' (2015:5). In the research of Slootman the social situational factors in identity formations are being emphasized. The social situational factors can be drawn back to the negative migrant discourses and Islamophobic discourses that wander around in public discourse. When a part of one's ethnic or religious identity is feeling a threat, one is willing to protect this. It seems that ethnic self identifications are at times ''responses to the social situation at hand and contain
strategic elements''(2015:5). Building further on these identity threats, I will explore how highly educated Turkish Dutch students experience and negotiate their identity. This
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exploration will be conducted in twofold. A qualitative research reveals the experiences on identity threats and identity formations and how discourses play a role in these processes. Moreover, a quantitative research displays which elements such as gender, sexual
orientation, perceived discrimination, religion and educational level have the most significant impact in the forming of identities.
Therefore, a mixed methods approach is used. For this study a quantitative research in survey form is used in order to display the possible correlations between factors that lead to certain identifications. Seeking correlations in identity formations provides an overview in which some factors bear a strong correlation and other factors might not. This overview of correlations will enlighten the effects of extern and intern influences. Moreover, a qualitative research is used in order to gain more in-depth insights into the subjective identity
formations that one creates. This qualitative approach is operationalized in the form of interviews. Personal explanations within interviews will provide the study a more contextual background in how certain identities are formed and due to what they are formed.
4.1 Participants
The sample consists of 52 Turkish-Dutch students who were asked questions about their view on their hyphenated-Dutch identities, integration, social life and perceived
discrimination. The questionnaire used for this thesis is a replicated and adjusted form of the European Social Survey which is being conducted in Europe every two years. For this research data has been collected at two Universities and one Higher Vocational Education; Vrije Universiteit, Universiteit van Amsterdam and Hogeschool van Amsterdam. The
participating students were Bachelor, Master and just graduated students. Due to time restrictions, only 52 participants could be recruited for this research. Results and outcomes based on 52 respondents carries a tangibility of insignificant correlations between the variables.
4.2 Quantitative Data
For this thesis two dependent variables, which both measure Turkish and Dutch identity, are created. The dependent variable which measures Dutch identity and Dutch culture affiliation is called "Dutch Identity". Moreover, the dependent variable measuring Turkish identity and Turkish culture affiliation is called “Turkish Identity”. In order to make an identity variable I collected questions and statements from the ESS(2014) The following statements were
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merged together into one dependent variable in which a Dutch or Turkish identity mean was calculated.
1. I can express myself fully in Dutch / Turkish 2. I feel comfortable when writing in Dutch / Turkish 3. I feel comfortable when speaking in Dutch / Turkish
4. I feel comfortable when being around Dutch / Turkish people 5. I see myself as only Dutch / only Turkish
6. I see myself as Turkish Dutch
7. I see the Netherlands / country of my parents as an important factor for my identity
These identity statements are measured on a Likert scale from 1 till 5 where 5 expresses a high connection to the statement and 1 expresses disconnection. After creating a scale based dependent variable a PCA test was run in order to detect the potential underlying components. The PCA test provided two Eigen values above 1. One Eigen value of 1.16 and one of 2.57 which are both not high enough to display a strong underlying component in my dependent variable. However, a rotation test can clarify more about the underlying
components, thus such a test was conducted. The rotation test differentiates questions 5 and 7 from the total set of questions. Paying a closer look on the presumed deviant questions it seems that these two particular questions measure the Dutch nationalistic affiliation whereas the other questions measure the comfort-ability with the language and the culture. Considering the aim of this thesis which is aimed at measuring the identity
formations of Turkish-Dutch students on a broader scale that is including every minor factor of feeling belonging to the Netherlands, I think it would be fertile to include the broader and specific questions concerning Dutch or Turkish identity, language and nationality. Identities that are being created are often in touch with these concepts of national feeling, language and comfort-ability with culture, therefore I would like to see them together in my dependent variable. For a dependent variable to have a significant mean and a significant aim of measuring the same concept, an alpha of at least .60 is required. In this research, both Turkish and Dutch identity scales were reliable, according to Cronbach’s alpha (α= .68) with six items.
Measuring language comfort-ability and language use seems odd when doing research into identity. However, languages are acquired in public and private domains from infancy on. The first tool of identity comes in through language use. One is made able to express themselves through a language. Also, identities are bound to memories and associations in which language again plays a role. This social aspect of language displays how sharing setting, memories and experiences with others in the very same language can
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enhance identity. A specific form of language can become significant for a group when ingroup feelings are emphasised. Language then can accumulate the status of an identity marker for this group by underlying a collective identity. Therefore, the use of language as an important part of identity formations is used in this thesis. Overall, language does not only serve communication; rather it elucidates the symbolic function of it and makes it an
important element of group cohesion and belonging.
4.3 Independent Variables
The independent variables used in this thesis are the following: gender, educational level, religion and the perceived amount of discrimination. The independent variable of religious background and the importance of your religious background in forming your identity is included in order to detect a possible correlation of (dis)identification to the Dutch state and religious identity. Also, the independent variable of the perceived amount of discrimination is included. With this variable I measured if discrimination plays a significant role in having a (dis)connection to the Netherlands as a state or to the Dutch culture. The two independent variables of religion and discrimination are included in my research of national and ethnic identities due to the importance of former research conducted by Verkuyten &
Zaremba(2005). It seems that migrant Islamic groups in the Netherlands face high levels of threat to the value of their religious identity. Encountering the threats based on their Islamic identity sets into motion the mechanisms of exclusion from the essentialist Dutch identity. Moreover, the public condemnation of Islamic identities and the plea for assimilation are leading these Islamic groups into strong ingroup identification (Verkuyten & Zaremba, 2005). It seems that public exclusion and discourses on 'failed' integration or assimilations are key factor in ethnic identity formations. In order to measure possible correlations between ingroup identity and discrimination a 'Discrimination Encountered' mean was created.
1. Have you ever been discriminated against at school?
2. Have you ever been discriminated against during applying for jobs? 3. Have you ever been discriminated against at work?
4. Have you ever been discriminated against during shopping, in stores? 5. Have you ever been discriminated against on street?
6. Have you ever been discriminated against by the police?
These perceived discrimination questions were rated on a Likert scale from 1 till 4. The value 1 carried the meaning of experiencing no discrimination whereas the value of 4 carried the meaning of being discriminated against more than 4 times in that area. The alpha for this
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combined mean is (α= .81) with six items. All dependent and independent items showed no missings due to the small amount of data collection.
4.4 Quantitative Participants
For this study, which focuses on the Turkish Dutch students in Amsterdam a total of 52 respondents is used. The gender division is set at 25 male and 27 women. The minimum age of the respondents was 21 years old and the maximum age was 30 years old with a mean of 23,2 years old. The religious background asked from the participants portrayed the following: 47 Muslims and 4 non-religious persons. There were no Christians respondents in the survey however, 3 respondents expressed their religion to be otherwise than the
provided labels.
4.5 Quantitative Procedure and Participants
The data is obtained through online surveys which were distributed between March 2016 and May 2016. The surveys were distributed in Dutch and were later translated into English. All respondents were informed about the purpose of the study in advance and anonymity was guaranteed. For the qualitative research 8 respondent, who also contributed to the survey, were interviewed. The respondents that were approached had to fit into a broad frame in which diversity could be realized. Therefore the pool of 8 participants contained both male and female, heterosexuals and homosexuals.
4.6 Qualitative Procedure
The interviews were held at school or at home in which a quit room was chosen. The interviews took between 30 and 60 minutes depending on the amount of experiences the participants was willing to share. The interview questions are replicated from Measuring
Race and Ethnicity by Davis & Engel (2011) and adjusted to the topics of Islamophobia and
Dutch citizenship in which terminology of allochtoon and autochthon was also included. The interview questions can be found in appendix 1.
4. 7 Qualitative Research Design and Methods
This research has combined methods. Greene, Caracelli and Graham (1989) explain the usefulness of combining different methods. The first advantage is that one can find
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expansion in its data. With expansion, the increase of the scope of the study is stressed. The second advantage of combining methods is that more clarification can be found. Qualitative data can clarify, illustrate and interpret the quantitative date on a broader scope. This fruitful method is therefore used.
This study deals specifically with Turkish-Dutch students' identity in Amsterdam and is focussed contextual and socially interactive conditions. The impact of this study is
exclusive and cannot be generalized directly to other Turkish-Dutch students elsewhere or to other ethnic-Dutch students elsewhere. The experiences of these students are bound to the context in which they spend their childhood, the time and space in which they engaged in social and university life, and the composition of their family ethnic identity formations. The need for understanding and displaying the identity formations of this Turkish-Dutch group is important in the broader discourse of the Netherlands where assimilation and cultural citizenship have become the mechanisms of including and excluding citizens. In the current situation where Muslims, Moroccans and Turkish people in the Netherlands are frequently subjects of debates, it is of importance to research how these ethnic Dutch students make sense of their everyday interactions and everyday negotiating of their identity. I tried to detect leading factors of strong identity formations whether based on ingroup or outgroup and how this plays out in the social and political context of the Netherlands.
Enabling the respondents to display their personal views and experiences on the conflicts they encounter while negotiating their identity, I decided to use a narrative method. In the world of ethnography narrated stories or encounters are seen as one of the best ways of discovering one's lived experience. Storytelling seems to be one's best tool in reliving moments of the past again. This story telling method therefore can provide a practical way in documenting all the richly described experiences and feelings(Mattingly&Lawlor 2000). Narratives are event-centered and focus on the social interaction at that particular moment which releases the emotions being felt. These narratives told by the respondents will reveal a glimpse into their social and political constructed lives. Thus analysing narratives provides a way to understand the social and political context of constructing identities and personal developments (Ibid).
I have chosen to use grounded theory to gain the insights in the identity formation processes of the Turkish-Dutch students. The grounded theory can be of help while trying to find frameworks in theorizing the students' experiences. Grounded theory develops theory through an interplay between analysis and data collection(Strauss&Corbin,1994). While
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writing this thesis and while analyzing the data, I adjusted my working theories. Moreover, the approach of grounded theory aided my in having a non-prearranged look when diving into the collected data. I believe that grounded theory showed a way to preserve the unique stories of the participants without categorizing them into one whole but still gave an
opportunity to link the unique stories to theoretical concepts. These theoretical concepts are advantageous for drawing conclusions which are enhanced by a close reading of the data itself.
4.8 Ethical Considerations
This thesis researches the stories of Turkish-Dutch students in Amsterdam. The analysis and the derived conclusions of this research involve interpretations of the stories. Therefore it can be said that it is undeniable that the researcher's values are installed in the data analysis. It might be the case that quote interpretation of the respondents can be viewed as troublesome by the respondents themselves even when they have agreed with the
displaying of the quote(Cllary:2013). For this pitfall that lingers in quote interpretations, I am aware of. Therefore I acknowledge ownership of all interpretations for all the selected quotes. Moreover, in order for the researcher to draw conclusions and correlations,
generalization on the unique stories had to be generated. This means that in the process of data analyzing uniqueness of stories had to be reduced to solid frames that could be interpreted for further comprehension.
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Chapter 5. Results and Discussion
5.1 Descriptive statistics
The survey was distributed online among 52 Turkish-Dutch students. The survey both contained University students and HBO students. HBO students can be translated to Higher Vocational Education in the Netherlands. In total, 29 HBO students and 23 University students completed the survey. The gender division among them were 25 male and 27 female. In addition, 41 heterosexual respondents and 11 LGBTQI respondents were
measured in the survey. The division of religious background was as follow: 47 Muslim and 7 non-religious.
5.2 Educational background
When researching identity formation, one's educational background is a factor which can play a pivotal role in the identitarian discourses. When measuring the Turkish ethnic identity of the students regarding their educational background the survey results displayed a
negative Turkish identity coefficient of -0.179 for University students. The negative coefficient illustrates that students with an University background tend to feel less Turkish than students with an HBO background (Table 1&2). Moreover, these results cannot be considered as significant (α =.12) However, when Dutch identity was measured, the findings showed that there was a significant correlation between educational level and Dutch
identification. University students tend to feel more Dutch or identify as Dutch when compared to their HBO peers. The coefficient showed a positive and significant (α = .01) outcome of 0.375. It seems that these outcomes refute the Dutch dominant discourse on failed integration and migrant identification where an essentialstic view of Dutchness is promoted. The survey outcomes show that the identity of being Dutch is also claimed by the Turkish-Dutch students and especially by University students. However this outcome shows a counter-communication with the results by Slootman (2015) who expressed that
educational background did not play a major role in identifying with (non) ethnic labels. Her research showed that ethnic identification did not significantly vary by educational level. This outcome is interesting because of the hierarchical positions people have due to their
educational background. It could be assumed that hierarchical job positions and structural layers in opportunities, due to educational levels, could play a role in self identification and ethnic identification as was described in the social mobility theory by Alba(1985).
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with one another. Moreover, the differences in outcomes about identifying with ethnic labels in Slootman's study and in this study could be drawn on the amount of respondents. Due to the limited amount of time, only 52 respondents were collected for this research which can bring out the possible correlations as insignificant. The small amount of respondents and the outcomes of this small scale study will not be sufficient in generating a general view of the Turkish-Dutch student population in the Netherlands. Nonetheless, this small scale study does provide an overview in the identity formations and identification mechanisms of University and HBO students in Amsterdam. Furthermore, multivariate analysis shows that, in this study, gender is not significantly associated with ethnic identification. Also, age and sexual orientation do not significantly associate with ethnic identification.
5.3 Religious Background and Perceived Discrimination
The survey results showed that having a religious background does play a pivotal role in identifying with ethnic labels (Table 2). The correlations between finding one's religion important for self-identity and ethnic identity are significant (α = .01). The respondents who valued their religious background as very important for self identity also tend to express themselves more Turkish than Dutch. This interrelationship between ethnic identification and religion has a coefficient of .68 which displays a strong correlation. These outcomes
communicate in a positive way with the results by Slootman(2015) who also found a significant correlation between identifying as Muslim and identifying with ethnic labels. However, these survey results which bring forward the significance of educational level and religious background when researching identification are now bound to numbers and scale values. These numerical results lack broader views and explanations of identities. The following section, where interviews are displayed, gives the missing in-depth reasoning and contexts behind the (non) ethnic identifications. Furthermore, the independent variable of perceived discrimination shows that people who were often discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity or religion tend to feel less Dutch (Table2). However, this correlation between ethnic identity and discrimination is not significantly correlated. The concepts of feeling discriminated and feeling less Dutch will be elaborated on in the following section.
