Old and and new Amsterdammers in tune: an ethnographic exploration of intercultural communication and belonging in the contact zone of the Swallow choir

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Old and new Amsterdammers in tune

An ethnographic exploration of intercultural communication and

belonging in the contact zone of the Swallow choir

Master thesis by Roline Smeele

04-03-2021

Studentnumber: 12719129

MSc Applied Anthropology

Graduate School for Social Sciences

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam

Supervisor: Dr. Rob van Ginkel

Second reader: Dr. Vincent de Rooij

Word count: 26 823

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Acknowledgements

Writing my master thesis has been a long, exhausting and at times excruciatingly frustrating process. However, it’s also been a beautiful and inspiring experience. Writing this thesis came at a diﬃcult time for me, a time during which I had to deal with great loss. I have always valued music as an outlet and a coping mechanism but this research elicited a whole diﬀerent level of appreciation and admiration for its power and those who perform.

I want to thank my supervisor Rob van Ginkel for his encouragement, patience and understanding. Your faith in me and the project continuously motivated me to keep going. I also want to thank my family and friends for checking in on me, for allowing me to express my struggles and frustration and providing me with some distraction when desperately needed. Thank you Daan, for being there during this diﬃcult time. You never doubted me for one second; without you by my side I couldn’t have done it.

Thanks to the wonderful members of the Swallow choir who accepted me with open arms and allowed me to enter their liveworlds. I’m still deeply touched by the stories and experiences you shared with me, the happy ones and those which broke my heart. Finally I want to thank you pap. You always pushed me to get to this moment. I wish you could be here to experience it with me, you would have been so proud.

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Abstract

The settlement and accommodation of newcomers in the Netherlands has historically been accompanied by tensions with the autochthonous population. Actual or imagined (cultural) boundaries impede the process of (intercultural) communication and consequential formation of social relations and construction of belonging. These boundaries act as constructions of diﬀerence (Yuval-Davis 2006), enforcing separations between members of the autochthonous population and newcomers resulting in the creation of hierarchies. This thesis will show how collective music making in the contact zone of the intercultural Swallow choir allows for the ‘deculturalization’ of communication and reduction of prejudice and stereotypes (Allport 1979 [1954]) facilitating intergroup relations. Additionally it will demonstrate the presence of newcomers’ belonging within the contact zone in relation to its absence in their wider lives within the Netherlands. Social, cultural and autobiographical connections in the contact zone generate emotional attachment to the choir (Antonish 2011), while the politics of belonging in the contact zone enable social acceptance and inclusion of members accompanied by social aﬃrmation and recognition of their individual value. In the collective performance of music, these shared sensations combined, construct an experience of a collective identity and an (imagined) alternative social structure (Frith 1991) which generates a powerful sense of togetherness and momentary belonging.

Keywords: Intercultural communication, contact zone, senses of belonging, music, newcomers

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En alleen de vogels vliegen van Oost- naar West-Berlijn Worden niet teruggeﬂoten, ook niet neergeschoten Over de Muur, over het IJzeren Gordijn

Omdat ze soms in het westen Soms ook in het oosten willen zijn Omdat ze soms in het westen Soms ook in het oosten willen zijn

- Klein Orkest, 1984

If you cannot teach me to ﬂy, teach me to sing_.

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Introduction

‘If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.’ - Jimi Hendrix

On the 17th of January 2020, RTL4 aired the 11th episode of the 10th season of Dutch TV’s most popular singing contest, the Voice of Holland. Usually I would have changed the channel or perhaps watched mindlessly; after having seen one too many singing and talent shows I have become somewhat desensitized to these TV performances. However, in this particular show one performance seemed out of the ordinary. The performance of Kes and Ayoub really struck me and left me with a warm tingling sensation.

Judging from reactions I was not the only one. The performance brought tears to the eyes of coach Ali B and touched the hearts of the audience, while millions of other viewers at home seemed to be captivated by the magical moment on stage where Moroccan and Dutch pop music found each other. Since the show, the YouTube video of the performance has reached over 2 million views, a number by which the popularity of the winner’s videos pales in comparison. What made this performance so special and moving?

Two contenders and protégés of coach Ali B had to compete against each other in a singing battle, the Dutch Kes and Ayoub, a Dutch boy with Moroccan roots. Ali B, also of Moroccan descent, picked a song, which is sung in two languages, Dutch and Arabic: a mashup of the Moroccan ‘Menak Wla Meni’ and the Dutch ‘ Verleden Tijd’. What made the performance so moving lies not just in the song or the singers, but in the meaning of the performance as a whole, according to coach Ali B.1 _{The song in itself, the melody, is}

aesthetically pleasing he notes. For someone who is unaware of the social challenges we are facing in the Netherlands, ‘let’s say someone in Canada, it’s just a “lekker liedje”.2 _{But for}

me, I was moved. As crazy as it sounds, for the Moroccan community, when such a sweet

2_{Dutch way of saying a good-sounding song. Literally translated: tasty song.} 1_{Ali B. De wereld draait door, 21 January 2020.}

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blond girl takes the courage to sing an Arabic song, you get the feeling, whether justiﬁed or not, that you do matter. That is what moves us’ (Moroccan community).

From this example we could derive some possible answers to the questions that have fascinated musicians, scholars and scientists alike for centuries: What is the meaning of music? And what is the function of music in human life? This little fragment illustrates how music can act as a bridge between communities or individuals with different cultural backgrounds. This example also demonstrates how the aesthetics of a musical piece can move far beyond words, melody, rhythm and individual meaning, but are determined by the social impact. The joining of two representatives from different cultural music traditions, different linguistic and national backgrounds triggered an emotional response in many. However, to the Dutch rap artist with Moroccan roots, coach Ali B, and other members of the Moroccan community, the performance triggered something more. Moroccans have a history of settlement and accommodation in the Netherlands, which at times has been accompanied by tensions and conflict with the ‘autochthonous’3 _{population. Criminality, lack of cultural}

adjustment and socio-economic lagging have often been associated with Moroccan immigrants.4 _{Even second-generation migrants (like Ali B) still experience hostility and}

discrimination and can feel unaccepted in the Netherlands at times (Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau 2019). The treatment they experience is exclusionary because it questions the ‘belonging’ of allochthonous individuals in the Netherlands.

The social challenges accompanying the immigration and integration of newcomers continue to be a pressing priority but also an opportunity to think about new and more intelligent approaches to a more diverse society. In this research I will investigate such an approach at the local level. I will look into the ‘bridging’ capacity of music between Dutch local Amsterdammers and newcomers with a migration background. I will do this by exploring a musical space created for innovative encounters and communication, where new forms of belonging are negotiated. By using the term newcomers I include all immigrants, without making a distinction based on their reason for migration. I do this because regardless

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Paul Scheﬀer, Het multiculturele drama, NRC Handelsblad, 29 January 2000.

3_{Dutch term previously used to refer to the native ethnically Dutch population. Since 1987 the Dutch} government deﬁned immigrants and their (recent) descendants as ‘allochtonen’, a term quickly adopted by researchers, policy makers, media and the general public at large and gradually becoming emotionally negatively charged. The highly contested conceptual pair has been criticised not only for its deﬁnitional problems but exclusionary nature which systemically denies allochtonen as members of Dutch society (Geschiere 2009).

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of the different motives for migration, newcomers do face similar social, cultural and emotional challenges due to geographical and cultural displacement which are affecting their senses of belonging in the Netherlands. However, in this thesis, due to the specific research population I had access to, I will refer to two broad categories of immigrants with different motivations for settlement in the Netherlands: expats and refugees.

The Netherlands and ‘immigrant integration’

On the ﬁrst of October 2020, the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) estimated that 24.5 percent of the Dutch population has a migration background (CBS 2019).5 _{The CBS also}

reports that this percentage has been increasing over the last decade. Of people with a migration background 53.7% were born outside of the Netherlands (ﬁrst generation immigrants or newcomers), with the remaining 46.3% being second-generation immigrants (they have at least one parent who was born outside the Netherlands) (ibid.). First generation immigrants and newcomers in the Netherlands come from a wide variety of countries and continents, including Europe (51.2%), Asia (19.4%), America (11.3%) and Africa (7.9%). According to the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP, 2019) this increase in ethnic and cultural diversity is a growing concern among the Dutch population. Their quarterly report, which assesses public perception of personal, economic, political and societal well-being speciﬁcally highlights the integration of newcomers among the greatest concerns on national level.

However, what people are actually concerned about remains vague and varies greatly depending on whom you ask. Despite the frequent use of ‘immigrant integration’ as a self-explanatory term in public and political discourse and social research, no one can claim a universal deﬁnition of the concept. Many Dutch seem to believe – embracing rather essentialist terms – that successful integration means immigrants should adopt Dutch values and culture, which means not practicing much of their home cultures (SCP 2019). More than half (54%) think people with a migration background should celebrate Dutch traditions, and 56% agree immigrants should let go of their own culture and practices more than they do now (ibid.). To immigrants however, integration means something quite diﬀerent. Dutch

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komen-naar-nederland-second-generation immigrants are concerned about the decreasing level of acceptance and increased hostility. They emphasize acceptance of difference and mutual respect for each other and their cultural traditions as important aspects of integration; they seem to be concerned about their ‘belonging’. Even though they have been born in the Netherlands they express worries about exclusion, unequal treatment, discrimination and not always ‘feeling at home’ in the Netherlands (SCP 2019). These different concerns expressed by majority and minority group members not only illustrate the definitional problems of the term ‘immigrant integration’. They also show some of the adverse consequences of its careless use in public and political discourse and the media for the relations between members of the two groups. In social science the concept is highly contested because, rather than being a neutral description of social processes of immigrant settlement and accommodation, it problematizes immigration and has become a concept used to ‘address specific minorities and their more or less unsatisfactory ways of being and belonging in particular nation-states’ (Rytter 2019: 677). The concept not only creates bias, but is also exclusionary. Schrover and Schinkel (2013: 1133) argue how ‘the discourse of integration is based on a common-sense differentiation between “society” and an “outside society”. The boundaries between these two realms are demarcated by making the ‘non-integrated’ hyper-visible and placing them ‘outside society’ (ibid.), thus denying their belonging. Additionally becoming part of society and being granted with belonging has become an individual responsibility of the ‘outsiders’, since integration is being viewed as a one-sided and personal process, where it is a requirement of migrants only (ibid.: 1134). These integration discourses portraying immigration as a problem, and immigrants as ‘outsiders’ who are individually responsible for integration, create prejudice, encourage misunderstandings and increase tensions.

The population does seem to think these disagreements, tensions and conflicts between Dutch ‘autochtonen’ and ‘allochtonen’ are on the rise (SCP 2019). Where 57% stated to perceive tensions between the groups in 2012, this percentage has risen to 69 in 2019 (ibid.). These numbers do not reflect the actual increase in tension or conflict, but they do point at a growing feeling about these group relations among the population.

Contact hypothesis

According to public opinion, the answer to the question how to counteract the tensions between Dutch autochthones and newcomers, lies in a more respectful and open attitude

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towards each other and to prevent the separation of the life worlds of the two categories (SCP 2019). This sentiment is in line with the Contact hypothesis (Allport 1979 [1954]). This theoretical notion proposes that contact between members of a majority and minority group, under certain circumstances, fosters mutual understanding and reduces mutual negative perceptions and prejudice, resulting in better group relations. The conditions proposed by Allport (ibid.) are equal group-status of the individuals establishing contact, cooperation and the pursuit of a common goal and support of an authority.

The contact zone

Going back to the example I used to begin this introduction, music could be a promising medium for contact between individuals ‘belonging’ or categorized as belonging to different groups. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the contact hypothesis in a particular setting: an intercultural music collaboration, where contact and communication between Dutch autochthones and newcomers is initiated through music. This space I will define as a ‘contact zone’, a term coined by anthropologist Mary Pratt (1991), which she used to explore aspects of intercultural communication in historical contexts (often imperial spaces of encounter). She defines the contact zone as: ‘Social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power’ (ibid: 34). A contact perspective allows me to consider both sides, the newcomers and the locals. It focuses on the ‘interactive dimensions of encounters’ and ‘emphasizes how subjects get constituted in and by their relations to each other’ (Pratt 2007 [1992]: 8). This concept, similarly to that of intercultural communication, does imply an essentialist view and use of culture. These essentialist tendencies are reason for anthropologists’ skepticism of the term ‘culture as an etic category’ (Rytter 2019: 692). However as this thesis will show ‘people want culture, and they often want it [and use it] in the bounded, reified, essentialised and timeless fashion that most of us do now reject’ (Brumann in Sahlins 1999: 403).

Why music?

The individual beneﬁts of both listening to and performing of music are well documented; music is used in therapy as expressive tool, to adjust mood, retrieve memory and process trauma to name a few (Schrock 2009). Additionally, music is increasingly being recognized for its advantageous social functions. Since music exists within almost all societies

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functioning as cultural and social practice (Zhang et al. 1999 in Qinhan 2017: 43), it could serve as common ground between individuals coming from diﬀerent cultures. Indeed music has been found to promote social cohesion and reduce intergroup hostility (Harwood 2017). Katerhyn Marsh (2012) found music and dance assisted refugee and newly arrived immigrant children to cope with the challenges of geographical and cultural displacement by establishing attachments with and within the receiving society while maintaining connections with their home countries.

Several other empirical studies suggest making music together can also be beneficial for communication between individuals from different cultural or national backgrounds (Barney 2013; Bartleet 2016; Qinhan 2017). The studies of Barney (2013) and Bartleet (2016) investigated relations between Aboriginals and Australians, and have found intercultural music collaborations to be a space to negotiate difference, to increase trust, empathy and intercultural understanding. According to Qihan (2017) musical activities including learning, performing and evaluating music with origins in different cultures introduced by one another, increased the intercultural competency of participants.

This research will look into the Dutch context, and explore whether collaborative performance of music can have beneficial effects on intercultural contact and communication between Dutch autochthones and newcomers. Additionally this research will seek to investigate the effect of collaborative music performance on newcomers’ senses of belonging, which provides ‘a powerful lens through which to examine immigrant integration in modern times’ (Mulgan 2009).

By considering the experiences of both newcomers and Dutch autochtones in intercultural music collaborations, I aim to ﬁnd answers to the question: How does participation in intercultural music collaborations aﬀect intercultural communication and the fostering of senses of belonging?

Methodology and ethical considerations

This thesis is based on ethnographic research I conducted between early January and late March 2020.6 _{To gain insight into the workings of intercultural music collaborations and the}

experiences of its members I had to access the ﬁeld of music collaborations. This did not

6_{Fortunately, I managed to conduct and finish my fieldwork before the first partial lockdown was announced to} curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The virus and the measures that were taken did not affect my data collection, nor did they affect the subsequent phase of writing my thesis in any major way.

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prove to be too diﬃcult since, after the so called ‘refugee crisis’, the phenomenon of culturally diverse music groups seems to have rapidly spread all over Europe including the Netherlands. Initially I set out to immerse myself into two collaborations: the Amsterdam-based Swallow choir and the Catching Cultures Orchestra from Utrecht. The Swallow choir is one of the projects from Philomela, a non-proﬁt organization that aims to make the performance and practice of music accessible to marginalized groups in society. The Swallow choir is led by a professional singer and conductor and consists of around 40 professional and amateur singers, ages ranging from 11 up to 76 and a great diversity in nationalities including: Dutch, Syrian, Iranian, Moroccan, Australian, Malaysian, Argentinian, Chinese, Sudanese and Indian. The newcomers who participate have either an expat or refugee background and the repertoire mainly includes folk songs corresponding with the national backgrounds of the members. Catching Cultures Orchestra (CCO) is an orchestra of around 25 members, including professional and semi-professional musicians from various national backgrounds. The non-Dutch members are mostly newcomers with a refugee background.

Both collaborations and its members were pleased with my interest and happy with my presence. During the first experiences in the ‘field’ at the rehearsals, I was allowed to observe and encouraged to join in their collective performance of music. In the musical settings of both the choir and the orchestra it wasn’t difficult to establish my first contacts and arrange the interviews. Generally the conversations with informants from the Swallow choir went smoothly; they went more or less according to my expectations and were informative and helpful. However during some interviews with male members, I started to notice a difference in expectations concerning our meeting; some informants seemed to foreground my status as an ‘interested’ female rather than my role as researcher. In the choir I addressed these issues with one particular informant and the conductor, which easily solved my discomfort. In the orchestra however, I experienced a similar uneasy situation with one male member, but unfortunately addressing it didn’t improve the situation but only worsened it. Finally, after some careful deliberation and consulting my supervisor and the orchestra’s music director, I decided to discontinue my fieldwork with Catching Cultures Orchestra. Instead I intensified my focus on the Swallow choir and used my experiences with CCO as complimentary data.

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To enter the field of the Swallow choir and immerse myself in the local dynamics of this music collaboration I needed to become one of the Swallows myself. For two months I joined the two-hour weekly rehearsals, and other related social gatherings. I participated in the singing, learning and joy of collective music making. Joining the choir allowed me to experience first hand what it felt like to practice communal singing in such a diverse group of individuals. Additionally, it allowed me to observe the group, the dynamics, relationships and communication between the members. It also familiarized me with the members, helped to establish rapport and opened up possibilities to meet with members outside of the choir. Over time I realized, although the choir officially counts over 40 members, there was a rather high turnover rate; during my time of participation many members seemed to come and go. This was confirmed by the conductor and several committed members. There did appear to be a steady core of around 15 people, who were consistently present during rehearsals and other social events. The results of this thesis and consequential conclusions are mainly based on this specific population, due to the inability to study the other less frequently present members.

Talking with the Swallows

To learn about the meanings individual members contributed to their participation in the music collaboration, I conducted in depth interviews. Recruiting participants proved to be somewhat difficult in the beginning when they did not know me yet. However after having talked to the first members and being present at the rehearsals people became more willing to confide in me and share their stories. Finally, I conducted 11 semi-structured interviews, which took between 60 to 180 minutes each. During most interviews I would use a list of topics and open questions as a reminder of the things I wanted to touch upon. However, most interviews took the natural course of an informal conversation, drifting from past and present experiences of migration, obstacles accommodating in the Netherlands to passionate stories about music and friendship. The ages of interviewees ranged from 27 to 76 and nationalities included: Dutch, Afghan, Chinese, Argentinian, Sudanese and Iranian. I interviewed two Dutch members and nine newcomers. Of the newcomers two were expats and seven refugees.

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Theoretical and conceptual framework

The following section outlines the main theories and concepts I will use, alongside the concepts of ‘contact zone’ and ‘contact theory’ introduced earlier, to answer the research question.

Intercultural communication

During recent years, intercultural communication has become a popular term used in public discourse, education and other related fields to address and examine the ‘interaction between members of different cultural groups and communities’ (Zhu 2019). Communication is the process during which meanings are exchanged (Shadid 1998: 5). Verbal and non-verbal codes allow people to convey and interpret intentions, thoughts, feelings and ideas (ibid.). These codes depend on social agreements and may thus be different in various collectivities. As mentioned previously, the intercultural communication discourse reflects the tendency to categorize individuals into certain cultural groups and consequent use of ‘culture’ as a single independent variable to explain differences (Croucher 2018 [2004]: 42) between individuals, groups or their communication. In this essentialist view cultures are being perceived as fixed or solid (Bauman 2004) and cultural identities or cultural differences as ‘something pregiven, organic and “natural”’ (Croucher 2018 [2004]: 42). I will study intercultural communication as an emerging research paradigm that departs from such traditions and instead:

problematises the notion of cultural identities and emphasizes the emergent, discursive and inter nature of interactions. By examining interactional practices, […], interculturality seeks to interpret how participants make (aspects of) cultural identities relevant or irrelevant to interactions through interplay of self-orientation and ascription-by-others and interplay of language use and identities (Zhu 2019: 8). Communication is affected by the explicit or implicit use of cultural identity and the perceived cultural identity of the communication partner in two major ways. Firstly an expressed or perceived difference in cultural systems of meaning between the communication partners influences the nature and quality of interaction (Shadid 1998: 14). To belong to a cultural system of meaning means to be part ‘of a universe of shared learning and to heave learnt a certain language but also a certain cognitive and communicative competence, social horizon,

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worldview or set of beliefs, a certain way of interpreting or deﬁning situations, of coping with uncertainty, and of emitting signals’ (Therborn 1991: 182-183). Secondly and most importantly, preconceived notions about the cultural group the communication partner is presumed to belong to aﬀect communication (Agar 1994; Shadid 1998).

Bridging and bonding

To investigate how music could be employed as a means to overcome boundaries between newcomers and Dutch autochthones, I will ﬁrstly analyse the ’bridging’ capacity of music. Bridging is the process of establishing relationships with members of another social group (Putnam 2000), and ‘hinges on discovering or creating such traits as shared or potentially shared interests, activities, tastes, and attitudes’ (De Souza 2003: 2). By bridging, heterogeneous diﬀerences such as ethnicity or cultural background can be overcome. Besides bridging I will examine ‘bonding’ within the contact zone. Bonding refers to the fostering of social relations within one’s own social group (Putnam 2000); this concept allows me to consider the commonalities between the members and how these contribute to their communication and fostering of social relations.

Music

To understand the speciﬁc role of music - not only as a shared interest, but as a form of art with particular qualities – in communication and construction of belonging, I will examine music’s ability to function as a means to communicate, to create social attachment and evoke a sense of social unity and collective identity.

Ethnomusicologist Thomas Turino (2008) explains how music making has powerful evolutionary value because of the social solidarity it generates. The collective creation of sound, he suggests, strengthens social relations between performers through ‘sonic bonding’7_,

a term he uses to describe the sense of ‘oneness’ people experience when moving and sounding together in close synchrony. This intimate feeling of fellowship is ‘felt to be true’ during these moments because ‘the signs of social intimacy are experienced directly – body to body’ (ibid.: 2-3). He additionally argues how the collective performance of music allows

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Turino (2008) derived this term from William H. McNeill’s (1995) concept of ‘muscular bonding’ which refers to the feeling of ‘oneness’ people experience when their movements are synchronized with other people within a group during dance or marching.

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people to experience a sense of collective identity through practicing and expressing shared cultural knowledge and values that make the group unique (ibid.: 2).

According to sociomusicologist Simon Frith (1996), music is a manifestation and experience of both personal and collective identity. He describes identity as a ‘self in process’, a ‘state of becoming’, rather than ‘being’ (ibid.: 109). He argues music can express our identities when it is used to validate our ideas, values and satisﬁes our desires. More interesting however, music is an experience of identity when it generates ideas, preferences and desires (ibid). In the choir where novel musical styles are shared by the members, expression and experience accompany each other as a heterogeneous company of people momentarily come together as one. As ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin (1993: 43) notes: in the collective performance of music performers work out ‘a shared vision that involves both the assertion of pride, even ambition, and the simultaneous disappearance of the ego’ (Slobin 1993: 43).

Senses of Belonging

To study senses of belonging I will use the analytical framework of human geographer Marco Antonisch (2011) and examine two major dimensions of belonging; ‘place-belongingness’ and the ‘politics of belonging’. I will use the plural form ‘senses’ of belonging since as sociologist Nira Yuval-Davis (2006: 199) argues, belonging is a multidimensional concept and individuals can experience differential belonging to a variety of places and/or (groups of) people. Additionally belonging involves both ‘self-identification’ and ‘identification by others, and can be experienced in ‘stable’, ‘contested’ or ‘transient’ ways (ibid.).

Place-belongingness

The ﬁrst dimension of belonging, place-belongingness, is the individual feeling of ‘being at home’ in a place (Yuval-Davis 2006: 197). Home refers to a place of emotional investment, attachment (ibid. 202) ‘familiarity, comfort and security’ (Hooks 2009: 213 in Antonisch 2011: 6). Throughout this thesis I will refer to three factors which I found to be implicated in the fostering of feelings of place-belongingness: autobiographical, communicative and relational. Autobiographical factors (Antonisch 2011) refer to the memories and past experiences of one’s personal history which connect an individual to a speciﬁc place (Dixon and Durrheim 2004: 459). Secondly communicative factors include language and music as an

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alternative means to exchange meaning. The ﬁnal set of factors involve the social relations which attach an individual to certain people in a speciﬁc place (Baumeister and Leary 1995).

Politics of belonging

Belonging is not just a personal matter but a social one. Whether someone feels like he/she belongs also depends on the politics of belonging; discourses and practices which ‘construct, claim, justify, or resist forms of socio-spatial inclusion/exclusion’ (Antonish 2011: 4). The politics of belonging create, organize and maintain the boundaries of groups, communities, societies or nation states and shape the newcomer’s sense of membership within these particular collectivities (Yuval-Davis 2006). The politics of belonging naturally revolve around ‘two opposite sides’: the side of the newcomers who claim belonging in the newly settled country and the autochthonous population ‘which has the power of “granting” [or denying] belonging’ (Antonish 2011: 13). In this thesis I will look at three aspects which affect newcomers’ sense of being granted with belonging: the level of inclusion in the Dutch social imaginary (Davis and Nencel 2011) and the nation state, equal and dignified treatment (Sajjad 2018) and affirmation and recognition of individual value (Mulgan 2009).

With the given context and theoretical considerations in mind, this thesis will analyze the ethnographic data I collected in the field to find answers to the research question. This thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter will explore the musical contact zone where intercultural encounters occur between Dutch autochthones and foreign-born newcomers. This chapter will test the contact hypothesis in practice by analysing who is engaging in contact, under which circumstances and what the effects are. Chapters 2 and 3 will explore the relationship between the musical contact zone and the construction of senses of belonging. Chapter 2 will elaborate on the first component of belonging: place belonging, whereas the third chapter will analyse the second analytical dimension: the politics of belonging.

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Chapter 1 Birds of a feather ﬂock together

Intercultural communication in the contact zone

After the first of many trips on my way to the field, I find myself in Boost, the community centre of the ‘Transvaalbuurt’ in East Amsterdam where the Swallow choir rehearses every Tuesday. I arrive around 19.15, a little early so I can have a chat with Mariana the conductor, before the rehearsal starts. When I meet Mariana and she starts talking, I am pleased to recognize a familiar Latin accent. My presumptions are confirmed when she tells me she migrated from Argentina to study music and has been living in the Netherlands since. As we are chatting, people slowly start trickling in, greeting Mariana and each other enthusiastically; hugs and kisses are exchanged while an animated buzz of chatter fills the room. It takes quite a while before the group is complete. ‘Time is a little bit of an issue’ admits Yvonne, a Dutch woman who is handing out the sheet music. ‘It has to do with foreign people, they’re just never on time’. When I look around the room, I do see a lot of individuals who seem foreign and when I listen, I hear besides Dutch, people speaking in different languages. I realise I have rarely, if ever, been in the presence of such a seemingly heterogeneous company. The choir members are men and women of different ages from different national, racial, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. They do seem to form a united group, having established close relationships, judging from the enthusiasm and amount of physical touching when greeting each other. ‘What we have here is unique’ says Mariana, with a warm smile on her face when she looks around the room, a comment I would come to hear a lot over the course of my fieldwork.

Why did it feel so unique to be part of this intercultural group encounter? In Amsterdam, where I study and most of the choir members live, there are plenty of opportunities to interact with individuals from diﬀerent cultural backgrounds; 55.6% of the population has a migration background.8 _{Still, many members of the choir claim they do not experience much meaningful}

communication with individuals from diﬀerent cultural backgrounds outside of the choir. When I ask Dutch choir member Yvonne - who has lived in a multicultural neighbourhood for 34 years - about her intercultural relations outside of the choir she answers a little sarcastically: ‘I have a neighbour from Pakistan; we lived next to each other for years. Well,

we nod at each other, that’s it’. Reza, an Iranian member of the choir similarly experiences diﬃculty ‘getting close to the Dutch’. He mostly associates with other migrants; ‘I tried to get

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komen-naar-nederland-close with some Dutch men, but it’s really a little bit tough and hard. They are polite people, speaking with you one day, but tomorrow they forget’.9_{Generally, these sentiments seem to be}

shared by the majority of the Dutch population. The Netherlands Institute for Social Research claims 43% of Dutch citizens think Dutch 'autochthones’ and people with a migration background don’t have enough contact (SCP 2019). They additionally feel this lack of contact is an important hindrance for the integration of newcomers (ibid.).

The motivation, or lack thereof, to interact with ‘cultural others’ is historically explained by the homophily principle (McPherson et al.: 2001). This principle holds that ‘contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people’ (McPherson et al. 2001: 416) or as Plato simply put it: “similarity begets friendship” (ibid.: 416). This empirical pattern of ‘attraction to similarity’ has been affirmed by a vast amount of research and applies to a range of demographic factors such as social class and religion, gender and age but also psychological factors such as beliefs, attitudes and aspirations (ibid.). However, similarity in racial/ethnic background remains the most powerful predictor of attraction (ibid.). Individuals especially prefer social relations with ethnic or racially similar others because they share a variety of traits facilitating communication including language, physical appearance, regional or national origin, tastes and normative disposition (Xouza 2003). Specifically these traits which signal visible and audible cues that reveal one’s national, racial, ethnic, linguistic but also religious background are strong markers used to assign one’s cultural identity (Zhu 2019). By no means do these markers signify the ‘true’ cultural identity of others, they are simply the first things we notice and consequently use in the universal and everyday process of social categorization. Based on prior experience this cognitive mechanism allows us to categorize others as belonging to certain social groups (Rhodes & Baron 2019: 359) including cultures. As choir member Aliyah explains: ‘You can see the

culture when you meet someone, the way they look, how they dress, if you talk to them’. Needless to say, culture or cultural identity is not limited to these social backgrounds and may include an immense variety of group memberships, however as this chapter demonstrates speciﬁcally nationality is often equated with cultural membership.

9_{Quotations from interviewees have not been altered to correct grammatical errors or incorrect word usage. All} quotes include only the exact words used by the informants (or translations), so to avoid altering the meaning or paint a misleading picture of their level and command of the English language.

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Intercultural communication

As we know the assigning of cultural identities of ‘others’ is central to intercultural communication (Zhu 2019). Additionally how we perceive and demonstrate our own cultural identity is implicated in intercultural encounters (ibid.). The next fragment, where Yvonne shares her struggles in the communication with her neighbour from Pakistan, illustrates this use of cultural identities and how it aﬀects communication.

With Christmas I’ll send a card to all my neighbours, including him, but I never get anything back. His wife, I see her sometimes in the shop or around but when I invite her to my house she never comes. They’re very polite and nice, but distant. They had their third baby and I didn’t even know! Everything is always shut. But last summer I had a barbeque at my house and I invited all the members of the choir. We were sitting in the garden with a big tent when he [neighbour] walked by. So he saw all the nationalities, heard Arabic speaking and singing and whatever, and Ervin [member of the choir] invited him to join. So he had a drink with us. And since then we have much better contact! He must have figured I’m not as ‘Dutch’ as he thought. It really depends on both sides. He also told me he is being discriminated against and people see him as a terrorist because his children go to an Islamic school. He is very religious I think, has a long beard… So it is very difficult for him too. And I’m a woman, living alone. So he probably can’t have contact with a single woman you know because of his culture. And maybe his wife can’t go visit another woman alone, I don’t know. So there must be some cultural stuff you can’t just fix or easily ask about.

Besides the obvious difference in national origin between Yvonne and her neighbour, this story highlights some key aspects involved in the interaction between herself and her neighbor, which add to the intercultural character of their communication. Both cultural identities of Yvonne and her neighbour are central to their (lack of) communication; they become relevant in their interaction through an interplay of self-orientation and mutual ascription (Zhu 2019). Despite Yvonne’s efforts to establish friendly ‘neighbourly’ contact, her neighbour from Pakistan remains distant. She hypothesizes this might have to do with the prejudice and discrimination he experiences in the Netherlands, which makes him hesitant to enter into social relations with the ‘Dutch’. Shadid (1998) indeed argues that the nature of intercultural communication is most importantly affected by perceptions and attitudes about the cultural or ethnic background of the interlocutors. According to Yvonne, communication between the two improved because she actively resists an aspect of her cultural membership. She states: ‘he must have figured I’m not as Dutch’, referring to her social interactions with,

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and acceptance of people with diﬀerent ethnicities and nationalities. Hereby she is distancing herself from the ‘Dutch’ who assumably don’t engage in these behaviours.

Another intercultural explanation Yvonne offers for her neighbour’s reluctance to socialize with her is related to the behavioural norms regarding social interaction she associates with his cultural identity. She makes an inference about a visible cue: her neighbours ‘long beard’, which to her, signifies a strong religious affiliation with Islam. She uses this information when she goes on to assume his commitment to cultural norms regarding male/female interaction, which would not allow him to socialize with her.

Besides assigning others certain cultural memberships, individuals perceive and demonstrate themselves as members of a particular cultural group. An important aspect of this sense of ‘cultural belonging’ is ‘having a shared identity with some people and a shared diﬀerentiation from some other people’ (Therborn 1991: 182-183). Yvonne’s example shows how the extent to which and the way people identify with and are involved in these cultural memberships varies between individuals. For example Iranian choir member Reza identiﬁes very strongly with his cultural background:

I think I have a very strong Persian culture. Yeah and it's quite diﬀerent from the Dutch culture. For example, the Dutch are more frank, more candid than Persians. They are diﬀerent. I come from a traditional culture.

This way of expressing cultural identity reflects an essentialist view of culture; ‘it promotes (or demotes) culture to an aspect of nature’, treating it as an essence within a group (Verschueren 2008: 28). This example also demonstrates how the tendency to essentialize cultures is implicated in the practice of cultural stereotyping when socially categorizing others. When individuals use cultural stereotypes, they claim there is a difference regarding the qualities associated with the members of different cultural groups (Lehtonen 2005: 62). Reza’s example shows how usually the cultural out-group - the Dutch in this case - is perceived as more homogeneous compared to the in-group, generalizing the arbitrary trait of frankness/candidness to all Dutch people. Cultural out-groups are also usually presumed to have less desirable traits (ibid.), as is reflected in the use of cultural stereotypes by Ervin when he compares members of the Dutch and Iranian - culture:

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I think that many Dutch people think superﬁcially. Not deep. For example philosophy doesn't have any role in the society, for them it's not important thing. But in the Iranian culture philosophy has an important role, they think about philosophy but in Dutch society no.

The comparison he makes shows how the concept of ethnocentricity is intertwined with cultural stereotyping. The other ‘Dutch’ culture is valued negatively. It’s perceived as ‘superficial’ and lacking philosophy compared to Ervin’s own, Iranian culture which is thought of as “normal”, “natural” and “correct” (Lehtonen 2005: 61). Cultural stereotypes do not only affect the content and course of intercultural communication, they affect an individual's motivation to seek intercultural encounters and engage in communication:

Maybe this is a racist message, but I’m more interested in having a dialogue and conversation with colourful people, like black people or African people. I enjoy more to speak with them than to speak with for example Germans, disciplined German people. -Ervin

Bridging

Despite belonging to a variety of diﬀerent social and cultural groups, and the apparent use of cultural stereotypes, members seemed to have established close friendly relationships. The social ties between the choir members appeared to be what Putnam (2000: 22) calls ‘bridging’: creating social capital that is ‘outward looking, generating broader identities and encompassing people across diverse social cleavages’. Bridging social ties, lacking the powerful social glue of shared historically endowed traits included in cultural identity, ‘hinges on discovering or creating such traits’ (Xouza 2003: 6). In the Swallow choir, music is a shared interest and functions as the social glue that holds the group together. Ervin, points this out by referring to the artistic nature of music which can elicit a shared sensation among people belonging to diﬀerent social categories:

That's the magic of the art that could bring different people together. It could be music, a painting, it could also be a particular view of a place, title of a book, scent of a perfume. That’s the magic of art that could bring different people together. They’re different people, but these different and various people are quite unified about and they have the same or quite the same feeling about the one thing.

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Aliyah, a young female member from Sudan, expresses a similar sentiment when she talks about the ‘bridging’ eﬀect of music in practice:

We are from different backgrounds and different ages. [Music] did connect us because we are from different cultures, different beliefs... even the way of life is different, our race, the colour of our skin. But even so you can't feel that difference when you are in the choir because everybody is happy. Everybody is singing the same song from our hearts so you can't see any differences. The only thing you can see is that they are all human, that's it. No matter from which country they came and what is their situation it doesn't matter, cause they just sing.

She explains how a connection with the other members is felt through the shared activity and sensation of communal singing, by which heterogeneous socio-demographic diﬀerences become momentarily non-existent. Ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin (1991: 41) explains this sensation by illuminating a unique quality of collective music performance: the simultaneous projecting and dissolving of the self. As he puts it:

Individual, family, gender, age, supercultural givens, and other factors hover around the musical space but can penetrate only very partially the moment of enactment of musical fellowship. Visible to the observer, these constraints remain unseen by the musicians, who are instead working out a shared vision that involves both the assertion of pride, even ambition, and the simultaneous disappearance of the ego

From an interculturality perspective, an individual has multiple identities and simultaneously belongs to diﬀerent membership categories, but not all these identities are equally relevant or salient during diﬀerent social interactions (Zhu 2019). In the collective performance of music during the choir rehearsals, cultural identity becomes irrelevant, because the shared identity of ‘singers’ or ‘Swallows’ or as Aliyah experiences ‘humans’, become more salient and communication seems to become ‘deculturalized’.

However, the eﬀects of music described above are mostly experienced by those members who share a deep appreciation for the choir’s repertoire. As Swallow member Damian recognizes, the level of connection music can generate depends on the similarity in people’s musical tastes, and not all choir members enjoy world music or traditional folk songs. Like Zemar, one of the younger members, who clearly expresses his disinterest in the choir’s repertoire and his lack of connection with the members:

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The choir, I’m just doing this to have a busy time in my empty schedule. That's why I'm doing this. They think that I enjoy that, boring, I'm young. It's also boring because of the age of people. In the end I don't like to come, I don't like to sing like that. I just want to have my guitar, I want to rap, I just want to do my song.

Despite these feelings, Zemar still joins the rehearsals frequently, (the reasons for his continued participation will be explained further in Chapter 3) however others might discontinue their participation due to a loss of interest:

I think people just get to the point where they decide there is some pleasure attached to it, it has some psychic rewards but their interest changed. You know, they get tired of doing it, they get tired of coming to rehearsal. I mean, they don't like the songs.

Bonding

Getting involved in the choir and learning about the individual characters, I noticed the choir members were not only bridging but also ‘bonding’: creating social capital that is ‘inward looking, reinforcing exclusive identities and homogenous groups’ (Putnam 2000: 22). I discovered the group was not as heterogeneous as I initially assumed; besides a shared love of music and singing, the members of the choir seemed to have a few other characteristics in common. Especially psychological traits such as values, attitudes, ideological affiliation and aspirations seemed to be shared by many Swallows. Specifically, associated with these traits, many members appeared to be highly educated. This is common for most collectivities according to Putnam (2000: 23); ‘many groups simultaneously bond along some social dimensions and bridge across others’. Most Swallows, while belonging to different ethnic or national cultural backgrounds, come from a similar educational background. Many obtained (university) degrees in areas including international health, international trade, human rights and international law. Factors such as educational background facilitate bonding because they contribute to the development of shared norms, values and perceptions (Shadid 1998).

Besides similar levels of educational achievement and areas of study, many Swallows have had multiple international travel experiences. They share a certain intercultural orientation and competency; they express cultural knowledge, curiosity and openness towards other cultures and a similar understanding of social processes such as social categorization and cultural stereotyping. Ervin, for example, was motivated to join the choir because he

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views socialization with people from different backgrounds as enriching and beneficial to his own development. He explains how experiencing different cultures can broaden an individual's perspective and reveal different ways of looking at the world:

What is interesting that I joined the group is the character of the different people, the personalities of different people. I have Iranian phobia, I have a phobia and am scared of having relationships with Iranian people. Every person has a specific personality and every person is opening another door from the world to me and he is showing another thing of the world to me and that's something that's interesting for me. That's why I’m attracted to different people from different contexts.

Favouring the association with dissimilar people or ‘people with diﬀerent backgrounds’ instead of fellow Iranians, Ervin emphasises the educational quality of such heterogeneous relations which could broaden one’s identity. Indeed Macpherson et al. (2001: 415) argue that homogeneous relations ‘limit people’s social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience’; the social capital created in this way ‘bolsters our narrower selves’ (Putnam 2000: 23).

For Aliyah, travel experience in an unknown society did serve as a personal learning moment, raising her awareness about the perceptions and attitudes we have of other societies, their inhabitants and cultures. As Aliyah expresses:

I have been in India before and when I went there I knew the culture at that time. Because before I have been watching Indian movies. But before I travelled to India I thought: ‘well everybody in India they like drama and they are like very poor and they are rude and they have guns’.’ But when I went there it was not the truth. Sometimes you see the image and you see as they want you to see. But when you are there, well you realise that is not the reality. When I went to India I find out that they have a lot, a lot of different people, different religions, they have like you know some people that are ISIS, some people that believe in cows.10

Several incidents mentioned by the choir members also reﬂected their awareness and understanding of cultural stereotypes. As Yvonne tells me:

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He [Reza] had dinner at my house at Christmas, with some other people. I didn’t hear this myself but from somebody else but he said to Henry: ‘no, I don’t want a Dutch woman because they can’t cook’. Meanwhile, I was in the kitchen preparing dinner!

While I could still notice some irritation in Yvonne’s voice she explains she did not take oﬀense at Reza’s remark, but rather rationalized his statement: ‘It’s just how he has been

brought up, he cannot help it. It’s just everything he has ever known’. This is in line with Shadid (1998: 8) who explains that when interacting with individuals from other cultural backgrounds, it is inevitable people take their own culture as a frame of reference, simply because they don’t possess other criteria.

Aliyah, who has been confronted with many cultural stereotypes since her arrival to the Netherlands, expresses a similar way of dealing with these - sometimes - ignorant and oﬀensive generalizations. Aliyah, who is a highly educated political and social activist and studied human rights in Sudan before migrating to the Netherlands, was asked by a Dutch woman whether she can read or write. About this she says:

In the azc, many people feel like they are personally attacked because of these kind of questions. So they feel like they are on purpose humiliating you. [...] Like for me I really don't get mad or angry, she doesn't do that on purpose, she has this idea that any refugee from Africa they don't have schools, universities. Those people are poor, they don’t have anything. So I don't blame her, but I feel sorry for her because she doesn't know about what is outside of the Netherlands. Because maybe in her life she doesn't travel to Africa, maybe she only travels to Italy and Spain. So she is the one who doesn't know a lot of things, not me. She doesn't want to oﬀend me or humiliate me. I understand. It's just the way that she was raised

The contact zone

Besides the shared traits and interests which help the choir members bonding and bridging, certain conditions in the contact zone of the choir further facilitate the communication between the diﬀerent individuals. The weekly choir rehearsals are held in one of the open spaces in Amsterdam community centre Boost. Boost is a place where locals and newcomers can meet, get to know each other and work together to create social networks and facilitate integration. By welcoming everyone who is interested, to join and be part of shared activities such as cooking, sports, language classes, they aim to contribute to an inclusive society.11

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Allport’s conditions

As we know, Allport’s (1979 [1954]) contact theory holds that ‘contact’ alone will not beneﬁt intergroup relations between members belonging to diﬀerent social groups. We already saw how certain shared characteristics and most importantly an interest in music contributed to the establishment of intercultural relations. This section discusses the additional value of the conditions Allport suggested to facilitate communication and improve relations, including equal status, cooperation, common goals and support from an authority (ibid.).

Cooperation and Common goal

Choir member Yvonne lives in a multicultural neighbourhood, with many residents of Surinamese or Antillean background. Despite her motivation and eﬀorts to initiate contact, meaningful communication is lacking. She blames this on the absence of a collective activity: ‘I have lived there for 34 years and there has never been any social activity or initiative. […]

You need to have something to do together.’ In the Swallow choir however, members clearly cooperate in a social activity with a shared objective. This becomes clear when Yvonne explains the purpose of the choir:

The Swallow choir is really something diﬀerent from other choirs, because the intention is diﬀerent. The intention is not to sing the most beautiful, but the intention is to do something together with people who don’t have roots in the Netherlands. To do something together with them and to pick up something from the intention with which they sing.

According to Yvonne and many other Swallows, the contact zone provides the opportunity to establish relationships and build social networks, especially for newcomers. As Reza explains his motivation to join: ‘I saw a lot of refugees are coming to the choir and it’s a good

opportunity for integration’. Willem shares these opinions but adds the intercultural perspective to it:

[...] to make a connection between diﬀerent cultures, especially with people from ‘outside’

and to make them feel at home. Creating that feeling with each other, and within that you really try to make it work. But that comes in second place. It’s really about making that

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connection and being with such a heterogeneous company and to have a fun Tuesday evening together. But it’s also fun to work towards something together, to perform.

Besides the social element, Willem feels the choir strives to stimulate speciﬁcally intercultural social connection and communication. Additionally he mentions another common goal: the creation of music and the end-product of a musical performance. Mariana, the conductor, emphasises how working together to create such a musical piece is essential to the strengthening of social relations of the members:

Singing together, or an orchestra or making music together is teamwork. So everyone has to do something, to build towards something you have to work together. Of course you see that in every activity, but with music you can see the eﬀect right away. If everyone participates you can sing a song at the end of the day and everyone feels proud like: ‘Yes we did this together!’. That is a sort of friendship.

Another final important purpose of the choir is ‘the sharing of songs from different traditions, nationalities, and different countries’ mentioned by Damian. How essential the cultural and linguistic diversity of the songs is, is explained by Aliyah when I ask her about sharing a song with the choir from her homeland Sudan.

Well for me, I think for me it's really important, because many people they don't know about Sudan anything. They know only the war or whatever, they know the bad side of Sudan. So for me, I wanted to show them the good side through music. Because they are musicians. So from music you can really see that yeah… like we have besides the war and suﬀering there is also a good side; there is beautiful music! And after that maybe they can get interested to know more about Sudan. Maybe they can get in touch with Sudan in a way. They can know, well Sudan is a big country and diverse.

Aliyah expresses her motivation to transform people’s perceptions of Sudan, by showing another side of the country though music.

Equal status

When Allport (1979 [1954]) was working on this contact theory, he was conscious of the eﬀects of asymmetrical power relations on everyday experiences of intergroup contact and communication. Therefore he proposed equal group status within the situation as one of the conditions. This means the assumed group memberships of individuals can be of diﬀerent status outside of the contact zone, as long as both groups perceive and expect equal status

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within the situation (Pettigrew 1998). I soon discovered equality is a very central feature in the choir, something that is consciously and actively established and maintained. As Mariana, the conductor and co-founder of the choir mentions:

So that’s a thing here, that everyone is equal; for me there are no labels here. It’s not like ‘you are a newcomer and you are Dutch’. We make music together and everyone has a special role one moment or another.

One way Mariana disregards these labels is explained by Yvonne: ‘Mariana doesn’t make

much, if she even gets paid at all. And I said to her, the people who can afford to pay, would like to. But she refuses, because she doesn’t want to make a distinction’. By not accepting financial compensation from those ‘who can afford it’ (mostly Dutch members) she aims to blur the lines between newcomers and the Dutch by treating both groups the same. Mariana also recognizes how immigration in the Netherlands is accompanied by power imbalances between the autochthonous populations and newcomers and this affects intergroup contact between the two groups. Specifically, navigating through an unknown cultural landscape can induce feelings of ‘naivety’, ‘incompetency’ or ‘powerlessness’ in the newcomers according to Mariana. This mainly motivates her to choose a repertoire of a great variety of cultural folk songs corresponding with the backgrounds of the members, so everyone can experience the act of teaching as well as being taught;

I thought about singing only Dutch songs, because it would be good for integration, but then I thought newcomers already feel like they are always behind the Dutch, always lacking something because they are in a new culture. [...] Normally, the Dutch don’t have to make an eﬀort, because it’s their country, but when they come to the choir they have to learn for example Chinese or Persian. So somebody else is your boss there. [...] If there is

someone in the choir who speaks the language and who comes from this culture, I’ll let them take the lead. I like to see someone get a little stronger this way, and everyone will appreciate this person. Or they won’t see this person as naive, but as strong. They will see him as a human, without all the labels.

Support authority

Besides contributing to the establishment of equal status of newcomers and Dutch members, Mariana is also an authority ﬁgure who establishes certain norms of acceptance (Pettigrew 1998), which facilitate communication in the choir. Mariana founded the Swallow choir in

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2017 driven by a humanitarian morality. Night after night she witnessed refugees arriving on the Amsterdam train station in 2015 during the ‘refugee crisis.’ Her desire to help those newcomers ‘who were now staying in this country’ and her passion for music resulted in the creation of the choir. She is a professional singer and talented musician, but also a charismatic and caring human being. These traits together with her devotion to the choir and its members make her someone the members look up to and use as an example.

Mariana is amazing of course. I mean where do you ﬁnd such a conductor, who is such a wonderful musician and singer and also that sweet… and well that makes you think: ‘I cannot leave this place’. She really is the choir, she creates it. Especially because she is so tolerant towards anybody, whatever they do. Like all those people who come late, chronically, which makes me think: ‘Oh!’. But she can deal with it. And our little Younis, who is sometimes very diﬃcult, she can manage so well!

In this fragment, Yvonne shares her admiration for Mariana regarding her talents but also her tolerance towards all members and their behaviour. With this, she does set an example for the choir members and displays how members should treat each other. Besides establishing social norms, she also actively encourages social behaviours as the following example of a social gathering illustrates. During an interview with John we discuss the event to which Ervin invited his fellow Swallows - including me - to his new ﬂat where he prepared a festive traditional Iranian dinner:

When we were at Ervin’s, that’s the first time he invited people over. He has lived there since May last year; before that he didn’t have a place. So of course he wanted to show us. And he really tried so hard, with the decoration and everything; it looks cosy what he did with the flat. [...] I had to think about it before going, because Ervin is not always easy in the choir. It’s always about his ego or his trauma. But well, he was a very nice host so I thought he can do that too! So you see a different side of him. And then after, Mariana writes on Facebook: ‘That’s great you guys went to Ervin’s!’ and on the whatsapp group too. So she signals that we went there from Argentina, and was like ‘so nice of you to go!’. That is really important.

By collectively praising the members who visited Ervin at his house, Mariana endorses one of the objectives of the choir: providing social networks for newcomers. Finally Mariana also tries to establish a collective ‘open’ attitude towards difference. When Yvonne discusses the difficulty of learning the variety of songs, in different styles and languages she says:

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In the beginning when it’s new people do complain about it, they don’t always feel like it. But Mariana just ignores it and that’s very good. She just thinks: ‘we are going to do it the “Chinese way” and that takes time’. It was the same with the Iranian song. It is quite complicated, the music, to start liking it. In the beginning no one liked it, but then we just sing it and everybody loves it!

The first time I participated in a choir rehearsal I was stunned at the ease and flexibility with which the members switched between songs from different cultural traditions, different languages, different rhythms and styles. Yvonne’s story highlights Mariana’s guiding and encouraging role in this learning process. Regardless of the members’ resistance to ‘new’ music, with perseverance Mariana manages to transform people’s tastes and attitudes towards different cultural styles of music.

Intercultural conﬂict

The contact zone, besides providing transformative possibilities regarding intercultural relations, is also a social space where members of different (cultural) backgrounds occasionally ‘grapple and clash with each other’ (Pratt 1991: 34). The group is definitely ‘not without its drama and its crazy people’ according to John, one of the oldest members. Almost eagerly he shares the choir’s gossip about singing rivalry, arguments, members being banished from the choir and unanswered love stories. Whether these incidents can be labelled as intercultural seemed to be a difficult question, because clearly there are many other non-cultural factors influencing the process of communication such as the context of the interaction and personal characteristics of the communication partners (Shadid 1998). Shadid (ibid.) rightfully warns for the essentialist tendency to perceive of culture as the only independent variable, which under all circumstances completely determines an individual’s behaviour. This is especially worrisome in a situation involving migrants, because individual miscommunication becomes culturalized (ibid.).

One particular incident, which was a recurring theme during the interviews involved Ervin and a Dutch girl, Anna. When Damian, another member introduced a new song to the choir, a Chinese lullaby, Ervin started to laugh and make fun of the song. Anna, disapproving of him ridiculing another member’s musical choice, directly called him out on his behaviour in front of the group. Her public criticism towards him clearly oﬀended him and triggered an emotional response: