Constructing difference, contesting exclusive citizenship in the classroom : resonances of debates on Dutch immigrant integration and multiculturalism in new realist times

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Constructing Difference,

Contesting Exclusive Citizenship

in the Classroom

Resonances of Debates on Dutch Immigrant Integration

and Multiculturalism in New Realist Times

By Maartje van der Zedde

MA Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. Department of Cultural

Anthropology and Sociology of non-Western Societies, University of Amsterdam. 12 August 2013

Student number: 9759700 E-mail: mvdzedde@me.com Supervisor: Dr. A. de Koning Second reader: Dr. V. de Rooij Third reader: Dr. F. Guadeloupe

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Acknowledgements

First of all I want to express my gratitude to the teachers, staff and pupils of the Cartesius Lyceum in Amsterdam for accepting me in their midst and making me feel part of everyday school life. Although the nature of my research did not allow for much participation I never felt a stranger and for that I am grateful. My special thanks go to Marit van Huystee, Sien-Lan Kam, Tom Schep, Simon Verhoef, Gianna Trojani, Malou Stoffels and Dave Susan for allowing me to sit in their classrooms and observe during their lessons, and for the many conversations that helped me gain a better understanding of the events that unfolded before me.

I also wish to thank the pupils of 4H1 and 4H2 for having me sit among them during lessons, and for sharing their thoughts and experiences. I promised them anonymity, which is why I do not mention their real names.

I am indebted to my parents without whom this project would not have been possible. I will be happy to thank them in person for always supporting me.

The person I cannot thank enough is my supervisor Anouk de Koning who, time and again, provided me with new insights, guidance and inspiration.

Finally, this thesis is dedicated to Gerd Baumann, who encourages his students to ‘study their own tribe’, and who inspired me to go out there and try and solve part of the multicultural riddle.

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CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

From 1 September 2010 to 13 January 2011 I conducted ethnographic research at the Cartesius Lyceum, an ‘ethnically mixed’ school in the Oud-West neighbourhood in Amsterdam offering education for the higher levels of secondary education (HAVO and VWO). The goal of my project was to contribute to an understanding of what Duyvendak et al. (2010) have labelled ‘culturalization of citizenship’. Over the past twenty years a major challenge facing Western European nation-states has been to ‘integrate ethnic minorities’ (Baumann 2004: 1), which has resulted in often heated debates about how much and what sort of cultural differences are to be allowed in the public domain (Duyvendak et al. 2010: 233). Since the new millennium the notion of culture in the Netherlands has become increasingly more important in defining citizenship and developing integration policy. Immigrants are obliged to follow ‘citizenship courses’ (inburgeringscursussen) through which they must learn Dutch language, culture and history in order to qualify for legal citizenship. They can become citizens, but on the condition that they culturally integrate (Geschiere 2009: 167).

Being an anthropology student, my aim was to study how ‘people on the ground’ make sense of the complex social reality associated with issues of immigrant integration and multiculturalism. To scrutinise multicultural society, and more importantly the multicultural city – a site of cultural dialogue, of fission and fusion – we need to look closer at the spaces and places where collective identifications, moral orders and the ethics of everyday life are construed and contested (Keith 2005a: 19-59). We need to study the sites where the rules of the formal public sphere of political debate enter into dialogue with the ‘people on the ground’, who often have competing, and frequently contradictory, perceptions of the world around them. (Keith 2005b: 256). The nation-state school has proven to be an excellent

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setting for such an effort. State-supervised schooling has long been recognised as the essential means by which nation-states turn children into citizens (Baumann 2004: 2). Schools are an instrument of the nation-state but also part of civil society. They operate on the cutting edge between, on the one hand, reproducing national structures and routines and, on the other, managing cultural differences and socio-cultural inequalities on a day-to-day basis (ibid: 1). By focussing on classroom interaction I was able to observe and document the multifarious ways in which pupils and teachers engaged in discussions that resonated with current and former public and political debates on Dutch immigrant integration and multiculturalism. This had led me to the following main question that I intend to answer in this thesis: How do debates on Dutch immigrant integration and multiculturalism resonate inside the classroom and how do they inform and regulate the ways in which ethno-cultural differences and belonging are construed and contested? Before I explain how I intend to answer this question, let me first give an overview of those debates that form the background to this thesis.

Dutch debates on integration and multiculturalism

What has happened to the Netherlands? Over the years scholars, journalists, publicists, commentators, politicians and social scientists have spoken, wondered and written about how the Netherlands seemingly changed from a tolerant and open country – where immigrants were welcomed and enabled to make a living while retaining their own language and culture – into a country with one of the strictest immigration policies in the world that advocates a compulsory integration of immigrants with knowledge and respect for the principles of Dutch national culture. Peter Geschiere, for instance, writes how ‘in only two years’ the Netherlands ‘completely changed’ (Geschiere 2009: 133), and Christian Joppke, speaks of a ‘seismic shift’ (Joppke 2004: 249). Until well into the 1990s the Netherlands was considered one of the few European countries with an integration model that comes closest to the multicultural ideal wherein the government supports the principle of cultural diversity and actively defends the rights of different ethnic groups to retain their cultural identities (Vink 2007: 337). Apparently all this changed suddenly, raising the question how a country that has institutionalised the acceptance of difference can shift from multicultural policies to a coercive and assimilationist policy and public discourse (Vasta 2007: 714). An answer to this question is that the acceptance of difference was only partially institutionalised and that the ‘shift’ was far less sudden than is generally assumed.

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In Dutch integration politics multiculturalism, or the ‘notion of providing space for new forms of diversity in Dutch society’ (Van Reekum and Duyvendak 2012: 465), was never accepted as fully as many have suggested. It is often assumed that Dutch integration policies were an extension of the historical tradition of ‘pillarisation’ (verzuiling) where, despite strong social segregation between Protestants, Catholics, liberals and socialists, all segments of society peacefully coexisted as a result of ‘a pacification strategy of group-based autonomy combined with consultation and compromise at the elite level’ (Vink 2007: 342). Maarten Vink (2007) has dubbed this assumption ‘the pillarisation myth’, that can be traced back to the objective of ‘integration while retaining one’s own culture’ (integratie met behoud van

cultuur), which is often mentioned to emphasise the ‘multicultural’ intentions of integration

policy in the Netherlands (ibid: 344). But although the Dutch approach to the integration of immigrant minorities developed in the 1980s resembles the emancipation of national minorities at the beginning of the twentieth century (through, for example, the establishment of specific schools and broadcast media), immigrant minorities never came close to the level of organisation that national minorities obtained in those days (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 272-273). More importantly, from the moment the Dutch government acknowledged that immigrants, the former ‘guest workers’, were here to stay, immigrant policy was much more focused on integration than on the institutionalization of cultural pluralism. Already in 1979 the influential Dutch scientific council for government policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad

voor het Regeringsbeleid, WRR) criticised the objective of immigrants ‘retaining their own

culture’ that was motivated by an aspired return to the home country, because this would strengthen the isolated position of ethnic minorities and inhibit social and economic participation in Dutch society (WRR 1979: XX). The WRR voiced its concern with the problems that participation by ethnic minorities in Dutch society would generate:

The various cultures coming into confrontation with one another display some attitudes and behaviours that are not easily reconcilable, and that are regarded by both sides as fundamental achievements. Thus, for example, very important aspects of our Western culture, such as individual liberty and equality, will be contested by another culture, sometimes militantly. In those cases of confrontation where no practical compromise is possible there remains no choice but to defend the achievements of our culture against dissenting assertions (WRR 1979: XXII, translation: Uitermark 2010: 50-51).

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From this account it becomes clear that the WRR not only deemed the ‘objective of retaining one’s own culture’ as undesirable, but it also considered the notion of culture as problematic in its own right. The council reified culture by framing it as something that can be opposed to another culture, bringing to mind the now infamous anthropological idea of cultures as building blocks consisting of essentialised cultures, which came to occupy a central place in the ways in which anti-immigration sentiments and policies were rationalised (Stolcke 1995: 2). To mention ‘our Western culture’ immediately evokes its counterpart, namely non-Western, an opposition that would become central to debates on immigrant integration and multiculturalism. The scientific council thus characterised subordinate groups, which it had labelled ‘ethnic minorities’, as problematically different and – as the words ‘militantly’, and ‘defend’ indicate – dangerous. The Dutch government also distanced itself from the objective of ‘integration while retaining one’s own culture’. It stated that:

… there are tensions between the culture of a certain minority group and, for example, dominant norms and values in Dutch society … From their own culture members of minority groups will need to adjust to Dutch society (Dutch Government 1980: 6)1_.

The multicultural society that we in fact form contains an area of tension that the government wants to respond to positively. The benefit of this society does not lie in the first place in more multicolouredness but in a confrontation of norms and values, whereby mutual enrichment can take place (Dutch Government 1981: 19).

Although the government felt that the integration of minorities had to be accomplished by ‘mutual adaptation’ and not by ‘forcing them to adopt the Dutch cultural pattern and merely conform to our customs and practices’ (Dutch Government 1980: 5), it also stated that ‘it can be expected from members of minority groups that they respect the core values and norms of the surrounding society … and that they make an effort to adopt those social skills – including sufficient mastery of the Dutch language – needed to function in Dutch society (ibid 1981: 37-38). Although the government stressed that culture should not be seen as static but as something changing and dynamic, the notion of culture was thus already seen as an important impediment to integration, and cultural differences were viewed as a source of conflict, a challenge, something to overcome. Minority organisations criticised the proposed policy

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because they felt cultural differences were too quickly branded as the main obstacle to reducing marginalisation. The national umbrella organisation of foreign workers LSOBA (Landelijke Samenwerking van Organisaties van Buitenlandse Arbeiders) stated that the government considered culture as an isolated explanation without taking into account the specific societal circumstances in which culture develops. They felt that the government considered cultural differences a source of conflict (Fermin 1997: 174).

So, although more recently several events such as 9/11 and the murder of filmmaker and iconoclast Theo van Gogh have been at the centre of often heated debates about Dutch integration policy, the crucial challenges to ‘multiculturalism’ took place long before 2001 (Vink 2007: 338), and especially ideas and notions about culture and cultural differences reveal a strong continuity in Dutch immigrant policy and discourse over the past three to four decades.

The framing approach

Of course that is not to say that nothing has changed. Debates on integration policy and multiculturalism in the Netherlands have known several stages that differ in the ways that actors have framed the challenges to the multicultural question. Following Duyvendak and Scholten (2012) I use the framing approach because, contrary to the model-approach, it enables one to show how frames shift over time but do not replace each other. Ideas of ‘national models of integration’, that have gained great resonance in European migration research, start from an assumption of boundedness and resistance to change (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 267). The social and institutional construction of (cultural) difference, however, is a process that in principle has no beginning and no end and involves an endless iteration between identification and categorisation (Keith 2005b: 5). Models, although helpful in reducing complexity, tend to oversimplify integration policies and the debates surrounding them, and overstress their assumed coherence and consistency (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 268). Instead of stressing how national models structure public discourse and policy-making, the framing approach focuses on how social meaning is attached to immigrant integration and multiculturalism by actors within a specific setting (ibid: 268). A frame is ‘an interpretative schemata that signifies and condenses “the world out there” by selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and sequences in one’s present or past environments’ (Snow & Benford, cited in Uitermark 2010: 14). A frame is composed of ideas, notions and signs (Uitermark 2010: 14). ‘Ideas’ refer to more or less

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explicit assumptions and causal reasoning; they stipulate how the world works and suggest certain ways to identify and explain patterns of social behaviour (ibid). ‘Notions’ refer to immediate conceptions or impressions. They often remain implicit but can be expressed as statements that immediately reveal the position of actors (ibid).

Allochtonen and autochtonen

In 1989 the Dutch scientific council for government policy (WRR) published another report on immigrant policy called ‘Allochtonen policy’ (Allochtonenbeleid) in which it opted for a more socio-economically and individually focused policy approach. It pointed to the stigmatising effects of the focus on ethnic minority groups and the labelling of these groups in terms of an accumulation of socio-economic deprivation and socio-cultural differences (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 271). Instead of categorising immigrants on ethno-cultural traits, they were now categorised on an individual basis grounded on foreign descent under the label of allochtonen (ibid: 273), which was to become a common term for ‘all foreigners who live here, all ex-foreigners who are naturalised as Dutch citizens and all Dutch persons from the (former) Dutch colonies’, including their children and their children’s children, the so-called second and third generations (WRR 1989: 61). The reasons the council chose to include the immigrants’ children was that, although they are born in the Netherlands, ‘they often occupy a similar position as their parents and encounter similar barriers’ (ibid, my italics). The term ‘foreigner’ (vreemdeling) was discarded because it excluded those who already possessed (people from the [former] colonies) or had acquired Dutch nationality: ‘They are no longer foreigners but their integration into Dutch society can show deficits that have something to do with their immigration status’ (ibid, my italics). The words ‘barriers’ and ‘deficits’ imply that the board advised the government to direct its policy towards people who supposedly lack integration, even if they had already acquired Dutch citizenship. The primary policy goal became promoting ‘good’ or ‘active’ citizenship, stimulating immigrants to live up to their civic rights and duties and to become economically independent participants in society (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 273). The focus on the socio-economic position of immigrants did not mean that cultural differences were no longer seen as an obstacle to integration. The underlying idea was that socio-economic improvement would also enhance their social-cultural position (Duyvendak and Scholten 2012: 273) and that participation in Dutch society would lead to more ‘intensive contact’ between allochtonen and autochtonen – the latter a term that would increasingly be used for ‘native Dutch’ – and ‘mutual adaptation

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and understanding between citizens of different ethnic origins’ (WRR 1989: 16 and 65). The council deemed this an important condition for ‘the forming of a culturally multiform but undivided society’ (ibid). The labelling of ethnic minorities as allochtonen, however, introduced an opposition between ‘native Dutch citizens’, the autochtonen, and ‘others’ who are seen to suffer from a lack of adjustment to Dutch culture. Many people who were in fact citizens in the formal sense, and often born on Dutch soil, were thus framed as the object of problematic ‘integration’ (Schinkel 2010: 271). These categories became central to official statistics and demographic prognoses (Geschiere 2009: 150) and allochtoon became a key term in the framing of issues of immigrant integration and multiculturalism over the next two decades.2_{A problem was the confusing division in official statistics of allochtonen into}

‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’. This meant for example that people from Japan and Indonesia are seen as ‘Western’ while Turks are classified as non-Western. Also, the term was increasingly restricted to the largest ethnic minority ‘groups’ in the Netherlands that had earlier been called ‘guest workers’: the ‘Moroccans and Turks, which were also the two main Muslim groups’ (ibid: 150).

The rise of new realism

In 1991, Frits Bolkestein, then leader of the liberal party VVD, published an article in Dutch leftist newspaper De Volkskrant that incited a news-mediated National Minorities Debate that drew the attention to the ostensible differences between ‘Western and Islamic civilizations’ and the integration problems associated with this ‘cultural mismatch’ (Bjornson 2007: 69-70). Bolkestein asserted that Muslims do not recognise the most important values of European civilization – the secular state, freedom of speech and the principle of non-discrimination – and that it should be made clear to Muslims living in the Netherlands that these ‘fundamentals of Western liberalism’ are not open to negotiation (De Volkskrant, 12 September 1991). He claimed that ‘guts’ and ‘creativity’ were needed to solve the problem of integration and that there was no room for ‘compromise’, ‘taboos’ or ‘noncommittal attitudes’ (vrijblijvendheid). Such statements are exemplary of what Baukje Prins (2002) has named the public discourse of ‘new realism’, that from the new millennium would become more and more dominant in the social and the political realm. Those who enter into this discourse present themselves as someone who dares to face the facts and who speaks ‘honestly’ about ‘truths’ that the leftist elite has supposedly covered up, and set themselves up as the spokesperson of the ordinary

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people, the autochtonen that is, who deserve to be represented because they know from day-to-day experience what is ‘really’ going on and are not blinded by politically correct ideas (Prins 2002: 368-369). New realists suggest that realism is a characteristic feature of national Dutch identity: being Dutch means being honest, straightforward, and realistic (ibid: 369), and that it is time to break the power of the leftist elite with its politically correct sensibilities and relativistic approach towards multicultural society, racism and intolerance (ibid). Although Bolkestein was severely criticised by journalists, academics, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, who argued that he had been too blunt in his criticisms of minority cultures, they praised him for opening up the debate, and only marginal actors accused Bolkestein of stigmatising migrants and playing into the hands of the extreme right (Uitermark 2012: 64). This was most likely due to the fact that the idea that the world is divided into cultures, and that ‘our enlightened, liberal culture’ should be defended against the claims of minorities committed to illiberal religions and ideologies, had already been emerging in several discursive milieus (ibid). The discourse surrounding this idea that Uitermark calls ‘culturalism’, was elevated by Bolkestein into a prominent discourse in the core arenas of the civil sphere (ibid).

In 1994 Minority Policy was officially renamed Integration Policy, and ‘citizenship’ was chosen as the ‘leading principle’ for an ‘activating’ and ‘mandatory’ policy of individual integration (Fermin 2009: 15). In the following years, social and political debates on ‘integration problems’ were more and more defined in terms of a ‘culture conflict’ with Islam as the main source of an assumed lack of social cohesion (ibid: 16). ‘Minority cultures’, and especially Muslims and Arabs, were increasingly problematised for their lack of adjustment to ‘the dominant Dutch culture’ (Schinkel 2010: 269). Pleas for a ‘mutual adaptation’ became less prevalent, and a one-sided integration into a pre-defined national/cultural whole on the part of allochtonen was increasingly framed as necessary to maintaining social cohesion.

In spite of the integration measures taken throughout the 1990s – including the 1998 Newcomer Integration Law (Wet Inburgering Nieuwkomers, WIN), which obliged most non-EU newcomers to participate in a twelve-month integration course consisting of 600 hours of Dutch language instruction, civic education, and preparation for the labour market (Joppke 2007: 249) – another national debate about the lack of immigrant integration erupted in 2000. In an essay in the well-respected newspaper NRC Handelsblad, publicist and professor of urban problems Paul Scheffer denounced the Dutch for closing their eyes to the ‘multicultural drama’ that was taking place right in front of them (Prins 2002: 370). While the rates of

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unemployment, criminality and school dropouts among ethnic minorities were extremely high, the Dutch mistakenly held on to their old strategies of deliberation and compromise (ibid). According to Scheffer the Dutch had ignored basic liberal democratic values in favour of the acceptance of diverse cultural identities, which would ultimately destroy social cohesion (Vasta 2007: 714). ‘Half of the minorities are Muslim’, Scheffer wrote ‘and soon a million Dutch citizens will be Muslim’ (NRC Handelsblad, 29 January 2000). Scheffer argued that Islam, for its refusal to accept the separation between church and state, could not be compared to modernised Christianity. Teaching Dutch language, culture and history should be taken much more seriously. Only then would immigrants and their children acquire a clear view of the basic values of Dutch society (Prins 2007: 370) During this Multicultural Tragedy debate most commentators welcomed his ‘tougher’ demands as a justified critique on multiculturalism and were pleased that it was finally possible to have an ‘honest’ and ‘candid’ conversation without ‘politically correct reflexes’ (ibid 2004: 370). Many took Scheffer’s essay as an opportunity to ring the alarm bells on what they thought to be the true drama: the influx of too many immigrants (ibid: 371).

The demise of multiculturalism

In the crisis-sphere following the events of 11 September 2001, cultural differences were associated with Islamic terrorism and with undermining social cohesion and national identity. Around this time flamboyant anti-immigrant and anti-Islam politician Pim Fortuyn appeared on the political stage. Fortuyn further radicalised the new realist discourse by claiming that freedom of opinion was more important than legal protection against discrimination (ibid: 371). In a notorious interview he claimed that the Netherlands was a ‘full country’, Islam a ‘backward culture’, and that it would be better to ‘abolish that weird article of the constitution: thou shall not discriminate’ (De Volkskrant, 9 February 2002). He said that people could rely on him because he was ‘a man who says what he thinks and does what he says’ (Prins 2004: 376). On 6 May 2002 polls showed that his party Lijst Pim Fortyun (LPF) would possibly become the biggest party in parliament. The same day he was shot by a radical environmentalist, followed by a massive public outburst of anger and grief. His followers blamed left-wing politicians and the leftist press for having demonised Fortuyn. Combined with judical charges and death threats, this resulted in an atmosphere of (self-)censorship, silencing any argument in favour of multiculturalism (Prins and Saharso 2010: 78). In the mainstream media, multiculturalism was framed as a hopelessly outdated

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and politically disastrous ideology, and firm talk about the need to reanimate Dutch norms and values dominated the political and the media realms (ibid). In this period a parliamentary commission was appointed to evaluate the effects of three decades of integration policy. The report criticised past policy measures for lacking coherence and clear goals, and stated that ‘discrimination in the public sphere is a reality, unfortunately,’ and recommended that ‘fighting discrimination and prejudices by native Dutch and allochtonen become an active effort’ (Martineau 2006: 263). In response, the party chairman of the Christian Democratic Party (CDA) stated that ‘nowhere did the Commission dare to draw the conclusion that integration policy had failed’ and the liberal VVD characterised it as ‘unbelievably naïve’. Especially its conclusion that the integration project was partially successful met with disapproval among members of parliament. The general opinion among politicians was that integration had failed (Prins and Saharso 2010: 79). Conservative and populist groups called for cultural integration with a view to restoring an (imagined) homogeneous Dutch nation (Vasta 2007: 718) and strived to be tougher and more ‘realistic’ than each other (Martineau 2006: 265). Especially Muslim immigrants were portrayed as not having met their ‘responsibility to integrate’. The right-wing coalition that came to power after Fortuyn’s murder was keen on showing that it was tough on immigration and immigrants. In April 2004 the Cabinet accepted a new, more forceful, integration system that conferred on new and already-settled immigrants the responsibility ‘of their own integration’, risking a fine if ‘failing to integrate after five years’ (Vasta 2007: 718). There was a near total absence of politicians and prominent public intellectuals who critiqued policies and speeches as racist and politically opportunistic, and the ones who did step forward received little media attention (Martineau 2006: 265). Without public outcry against stigmatising language, the existence of daily discrimination and exclusion was no longer cast as unjust and anti-social (ibid). In this atmosphere, well-known filmmaker, columnist and talking head Theo van Gogh, who frequently made extremely provocative, discriminatory remarks could call Muslims ‘goat-fuckers’ and the then leader of the Social Democrats in Amsterdam Rob Oudkerk could laugh about using the term ‘kutmarokkanen’3 (‘fucking Moroccans’), all without much

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In March of 2002, the leader of the Labour Party in Amsterdam, Rob Oudkerk, made headlines when he uttered the term ‘kutmarokkanen’ and was caught on television doing it. Oudkerk was chatting with Mayor Job Cohen after an election campaign event, and their conversation was broadcast on the programme (2Vandaag, or ‘Channel 2 Today’). Cohen asked Oudkerk whether he thought Pim Fortuyn, then a rising star in politics and recently having won many votes in Rotterdam, could have garnered as many votes in Amsterdam. Oudkerk replied affirmatively: ‘We have kutmarokkanen here too’. The incident was widely reported. In the aftermath, Oudkerk apologised, while also defending himself: ‘Without falling into stigmatising, it must be possible to say

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condemnation from public figures (ibid). To criticise Rob Oudkerk for using the word ‘kutmarokkaan’ was to align oneself with political correctness because ‘realists’ know that many ‘Moroccan’ boys are a problem, they aren’t hampered in stating the truth (ibid: 245, my emphasis).

In November 2004 Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street by a 26-year-old Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent who had left a letter on his body proclaiming that his act was committed in the name of Islam. After his death, Van Gogh was lionised as a ‘martyr for free speech’. A public memorial and demonstration was held on Dam Square in central Amsterdam, during which people banged on pots and pans to protest the ‘silencing’ of Van Gogh. In the name of free speech, it became more and more acceptable to make polarising, outrageous, and racist statements (ibid: 41-42). For example, in response to the murder of Van Gogh, one politician publicly called on the King of Morocco to ‘stop exporting murderers’, even though Van Gogh’s killer was born and raised in the Netherlands (ibid). Such statements would become the trademark of anti-Islam, anti-immigrant and self-proclaimed new-realist politician Geert Wilders who, from 2004, was gaining ever more support. Wilders, who received massive media attention, continuously coupled social problems to the presence of allochtonen who he directly connected to Islam and violence. He repeatedly spoke of the ‘Islamisation of the Netherlands’ and a ‘tsunami of Muslims’ and constantly framed Islam and Muslims as unequal, less civilised and dangerous. The demands from politicians and public intellectuals that ethnic minorities, and most notably Muslims, ‘integrate’ by pointing to the unbridgeable differences between Western and Islamic civilizations had only expanded the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (ibid: 266), and as Wilders came to dominate the debate, the question was no longer what integration is and how it should be achieved but whether it is at all possible for Muslims to become part of the Dutch civil community (Uitermark 2010: 287).

In this climate it became almost impossible for leading politicians in the Netherlands to opt for a more inclusive approach towards Muslims. In July 2007 the minister for integration and housing, Ella Vogelaar, stated in an interview in Dutch newspaper Trouw that she wanted to ‘help Muslims feel at home here’, that ‘Islam and Muslims need to be able to take root here’ and that she could imagine that ‘one day, a few centuries from now, we will speak of the

that “srotten boys of Moroccan-Amsterdammer background” cause a lot of trouble on the streets’. In a later interview, Oudkerk claimed that he did not ‘slip’ in using the term: ‘The term kutmarokkanen was not just a slip of the tongue, it is everyday Amsterdam speech. It describes how people in this city think about a small group of people who pester the public (Martineau 2006: 232).

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Netherlands being a country of Jewish-Christian-Islamic traditions’. In a parliamentary debate the then member of parliament for the VVD and current prime-minister Mark Rutte stated that he was ‘baffled’ by her statements and stressed that ‘the Netherlands does not have an Islamic tradition. You need to be clear about that. People who come to our country must underwrite our core values such as the equality of men and women and our democratic constitutional state.’ He also stated that if she spoke for the whole cabinet ‘then the cultural relativism of the eighties is back and that is surely a dangerous development’. Wilders called Vogelaar ‘raving mad’ (knettergek) (which was accompanied by laughter from several members of parliament, as was often the case when he made ‘outrageous’ statements), accused her of ‘betraying Dutch culture’ and filed a motion of non-confidence against her, which was only supported by his own party, the Party of Freedom (PVV).

Setting: The Cartesius Lyceum in Amsterdam

I chose the classrooms of an ‘ethnically mixed’ school as my main research setting. The classroom, as I will show in this thesis, proved to be a stage, an arena, where everyday negotiations and contestations resonated with current and former public and political debates on Dutch immigrant integration and multiculturalism. I choose the city of Amsterdam as the larger setting to conduct my research. Although migrant minorities are not just found in the contemporary metropolitan city, it is there where markers of cultural difference and collective identifications are made visible (and invisible) through the interplay between processes of cultural glocalisation and the sociological formations of metropolitan institutions embedded in specific urban settings (Keith 2005a: 40-59). The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area4 is now home to over two million people from various backgrounds and different trajectories, with the city of Amsterdam currently housing 178 nationalities. To study this multicultural space one has to move beyond the focus on single ‘ethnic communities’. Although since the 1980s anthropologists have reached an essential point of consensus, namely that culture cannot be objectified and that it is purely an abstract and analytical notion (Baumann 1996: 11), a great deal of the research by anthropologists who study multicultural societies still tends to focus on members of a particular ethnic minority. So while they do not reify culture, these scholars do underwrite one of the underlying notions of public and political discourse, namely that the immigrants or members of ‘the second generation’ of a certain ‘immigrant community’ they

4_{The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area is a name given to the metropolitan area around the Dutch capital} Amsterdam and is comprised of several surrounding municipalities, including the cities of Purmerend, Almere, Amstelveen and Haarlemmermeer.

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study share certain characteristics. Generalising from experiences and conversations with people in a community tends to flatten out differences among them (Abu-Lughod 1991: 152-153) and disregard sameness with ‘others’ outside the ‘community’. These studies therefore run the risk of contributing to the fiction of essentially different others (ibid: 155). Following Baumann (1996) I seek to break with the tradition of studying a single ethnic community and conduct research that does not ‘exoticise’ the immigrant. Groups and communities are not a bounded entity. As Frederic Barth (1969) argued four decades ago, ethnicity is a social relationship. Ethnic boundaries are not created by the ‘cultural stuff’ enclosed by those boundaries; they are created through social interaction between people, at the contact zones of ‘cultures’ which stage everyday negotiations that resonate with the ways in which ethno-cultural differences have been framed by individuals and institutions in the past and the present.

The Cartesius Lyceum is a school offering education for the higher levels (HAVO and VWO)5 of secondary education. At the time of my research, from September 2010 to January 2011, the official building of the school at the Frederik Hendrikplantsoen in the Westerpark neighbourhood was being renovated and the school was split over two temporary locations. The junior school, housing pupils in their first three years of secondary education, was located on the Stavangerweg in the more remote western harbour area (Westelijk Havengebied), a twenty-minute bike-ride away from the school building on the Elisabeth Wolffstraat in the Oud-West neighbourhood where I conducted my research. The latter was a temporary location for the last two or three years of secondary school, housing around 200 pupils from different parts of the city. In total the school provided education to around 600 pupils. Several teachers had to go back and forth between the two locations and although the small-scale of both sites had its advantages, most looked forward to the following school year, when, after

5 _{The Netherlands has a binary system of higher education, which means there are two types of programmes:}

research-oriented education (wetenschappelijk onderwijs, WO), traditionally offered by research universities, and professional higher education (hoger beroepsonderwijs, HBO), traditionally offered by universities of applied sciences (hogescholen). In this description, the Dutch abbreviations WO and HBO will be used.

Secondary education, which begins at the age of 12 and is compulsory until the age of 16, is offered at several levels. VMBO programmes (four years) combine general and vocational education, after which pupils can continue in senior secondary vocational education and training (MBO) lasting one to four years. The two general education programmes that grant admission to higher education are HAVO (five years) and VWO (six years). Pupils are enrolled according to their ability, and although VWO is more rigorous, both HAVO and VWO can be characterised as selective types of secondary education. The VWO curriculum prepares pupils for university, and only the VWO diploma grants access to WO. The HAVO diploma is the minimum requirement for access to HBO. (Source: http://www.kempel.nl/DeKempel/Documents/EducationSystemInTheNetherlands.pdf).

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five years of being apart, both schools would be reunited in a completely renovated and modernised building.

The Cartesius Lyceum has a history of being a so-called black school (‘zwarte school’), a term first used for a school in Rotterdam and later, in the 1980s, for schools in the Amsterdam neighbourhood ‘De Bijlmer’ where a lot of immigrants from Suriname settled after the Dutch colony became independent (Vink 2010: 40). Over the years the term was widely used in discussions about ethnic segregation in education in the Netherlands, and generally referred to schools with large numbers of ‘non-Western’ allochtonen, specifically children from Surinamese, Antillean, Moroccan and Turkish descent. From the mid 1990s more and more schools in Amsterdam (and other large cities) were becoming either predominantly ‘black’ or ‘white’, meaning they either housed poor, immigrant children, or white, middle-class children (ibid)6_{, and this is still largely the case. In Amsterdam it is especially uncommon for schools}

offering education for the higher levels HAVO and VWO to have large number of ‘non-Western allochtonen’ (Karsten et al. 2005: 69). Teachers and staff at the Cartesius Lyceum were proud to be teaching at a ‘mixed’ (gemengde) school. For ‘privacy-reasons’ neither the school nor the Amsterdam municipality would provide me with data concerning the background of the pupils, but the overall opinion was that the school ‘mirrored’ the population of Amsterdam, with pupils from various ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds and from different parts of the city.

The school in the Elisabeth Wolffstraat where I conducted my research is located in the Oud-West neighbourhood, which is part of the 19th-century city expansion around the centre of Amsterdam. It is a small, densely built area that facilitates easy access by bike, bus or tram to other areas inside the city ring road. Central Station can be reached in fifteen minutes by bike. It is a lively neighbourhood housing almost 32,000 residents on 1.6 square kilometres. Most of Oud-West was built as a working-class area and consists mainly of small houses of around 60m2. It is mainly home to singles, childless couples and immigrant families, and within the area there are considerable differences between the residents and neighbourhoods concerning welfare and education (Pieters et al. 2009: 8).

On 1 January 2009 municipal statistics counted a total of 126 nationalities in Oud-West. Forty percent of its residents were categorised as allochtoon, half of whom were ‘non-Western’, with ‘Moroccans’ (24 percent) and ‘Surinamese’ (21 percent) as the largest ‘groups’ within this category (Dienst Onderzoek en Statistiek Amsterdam). Fourteen percent

6

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of the residents are younger than twenty, 60 percent of whom are counted as ‘non-Western

allochtoon’ (ibid). Oud-West has several busy streets with shops, markets, cafés, bars,

restaurants and marijuana coffeeshops, but few green and public spaces. Over the last twenty years it has transformed from being labelled as a problem area with a lot of excessive nuisance (overlast) to a popular neighbourhood where many of the city’s residents would want to live (Pieters et al. 2009: 8).

The temporary school building, which is now being converted into an apartment block, is just around the corner from the De Clerqstraat, one of the area’s busiest streets that pupils visited regularly during breaks and ‘in-between-hours’ (tussenuren) to buy food, go for a coffee or just a stroll. The Elisabeth Wolffstraat is a typical Oud-West street with reddish brick apartment buildings, four storeys high, with cars parked on both sides and no trees. The school, also a brick building three storeys tall, had large, high windows on each floor and one entrance on the front side consisting of two swing doors that led to a small hallway and another set of swing doors opening onto the main corridor. There was no fence or space in front of these doors, only a small flight of stone steps that led down to the pavement of the public street. It was a small school with twelve classrooms that was built in 1910 as a secondary school and used as such until the 1960s. The building had a worn-out feeling, with cracks in the walls, open joints between the bricks and paint peeling off the window frames. Once inside, you passed the school reception – a small space with two desks and a bar with a sliding window overlooking the main corridor. The corridor had swing doors on both ends that led to flights of stairs. Like the rest of the school, it had high ceilings and dirty looking linoleum flooring. A pin board with rules concerning absence and a list of absentees hung on the wall opposite the reception area. The two downstairs classrooms could be accessed through an entrance in the main corridor. The spacious canteen, adjacent to the reception area, was furnished with long wooden tables, plywood chairs, a soda- and a candy machine, lockers and a shop selling different kinds of bread rolls and drinks during breaks. The whole school felt a bit grimy with its dirty walls, old paint, aged furniture and curtains, and messy wiring. On each floor the walls of the corridors were covered with posters of universities and colleges promoting their courses and open days, and of museum exhibitions and cultural activities. In the second week of my research I was given a key that gave me access to the classrooms, staffroom, and the teachers’ computer room on the third floor. The atmosphere was that of a small-scale school where most pupils and teachers knew each other and where teachers were quite approachable for the pupils. Often they would knock on the door of the staffroom

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looking for a teacher, which was mostly handled in a friendly way, and also in the school corridors teachers were obliging towards the pupils, unless they displayed behaviour that was considered improper or deviant.

As in any school the timetable ruled much of the interaction at the Cartesius Lyceum. A school day started at 8.30 and ended at 16.30 and was divided in ten lessons of 45 minutes with one morning and one afternoon break of fifteen minutes. Other breaks depended on the pupils class schedule, which once or twice a day was interrupted by an ‘in between hour’ (tussenuur). Pupils moved from one classroom to the other according to their schedules. Each classroom radiated the subject being taught there through the materials that covered the walls such as maps, poems, newspaper articles and pictures. Before the start of the new school year all the pupils of the 4-HAVO and 5-VWO classes had chosen one of the four ‘profiles’ (profielen): ‘Culture and Society’, ‘Economy and Society’, ‘Nature and Health’ and ‘Nature and Technique’. Pupils who chose the same profile were put together in a class. Within each profile there were obligatory and optional subjects, so schedules between pupils in one class also differed.

Research population

Although this research could be carried out at several levels of secondary education I was aware that the richness of my data would greatly depend on discussions that arose during lessons. Pupils in the last two or three years of the higher levels of secondary education have mastered many cognitive skills that makes spontaneous discussion in the classroom quite easy for them (Sunier 2004a: 213). Pupils at the lower level of VMBO will probably never master this degree of oral skill (ibid). This research could be conducted at VWO as well as HAVO level but I expected pupils at the highest level of VWO to be more likely to try and reproduce certain discourses and to give ‘the right’ answers instead of ‘honest’ ones, which was the case, when, for a master course assignment, I led a group discussion with six 4-VWO pupils. I therefore decided to study two 4-HAVO classes, both at the Cartesius Lyceum. 5-HAVO would be too occupied with preparing for the exams, which would limit the amount of time spent on teaching and discussing topics relevant to my research. Comparing two classes would allow me to identify similarities and differences through which I would gain a better understanding of what was happening inside the classroom.

My research population thus consisted of the pupils and teachers of two 4-HAVO classes. The pupils were from different parts of the city, most from the Western neighbourhoods and

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the centre, and a few from adjacent towns Purmerend and Monnickendam. Most of the pupils were aged 16 years; a smaller number were 15 and a few were 17 years old. The age differences were due to fact that quite some pupils had had to repeat a class in previous years. I choose to observe during social sciences (maatschappijwetenschappen), social studies (maatschappijleer), history, and Dutch language lessons because I anticipated that those subjects would most likely raise issues that would generate interactions, discussions and conflicts that resonated with debates on multiculturalism and immigrant integrations. The teachers whose lessons I observed were one (male) history teacher and one (male) student history teacher, one (male) social sciences and social studies teacher, one (female) student social sciences teacher, one (female) student social studies teacher, and two (female) Dutch language teachers. The two classes I observed were called 4H1 (profile ‘Culture and Society’) and 4H2 (profile ‘Economy and Society’). 4H1 consisted of 30 pupils, eighteen girls and twelve boys. 4H2 consisted of 27 pupils, nine girls and eighteen boys.

Research methods

My main research method consisted of classroom observation. Over the course of four months I observed a total of 100 lessons of 45 minutes, divided among seven teachers and two 4-HAVO classes, consisting of 33 history, 31 social sciences, 24 social studies and twelve Dutch language lessons. During my observations I continuously took notes, listening and watching carefully, and after each observation session I worked out my field notes on my laptop as soon as possible (in the staffroom, the school library, a café nearby or at home which was only a ten-minute bike ride away). It was a very time-consuming task, as it took me several hours a day to work out my notes, filling in details and recalling events, but eventually this provided me with very detailed accounts of what was happening inside the classroom

In the Netherlands there are two different ways of placing the tables in a classroom. One is the traditional way of arranging (three) rows of two tables next to each other. The other is a so-called ‘carré-form’ or U-form meaning that the tables are positioned so that two U’s are formed, one smaller one inside the other. I either sat on a chair behind a table next to other pupils, or, if all the seats were occupied, at the back of the classroom on an extra chair. Classroom observation does not allow for much participation but I never tried to keep myself aloof or maintain the stance of a completely distant, ‘objective’ observer (Fine 1993: 416). My aim was to interview the pupils who figured prominently in the cases that I expected to

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use for my thesis. For them to speak freely with me I needed to be known and trusted by them. To get to know them and to let them know me I often sat among them and participated to the degree that, like them, I was listening to the teacher, laughing about jokes, reading from a text book, and talking to pupils in front, behind or next to me during the five-minute breaks and sometimes during the assignment- or homework time. This wasn’t considered good classroom behaviour, so I kept it to a minimum. This certainly helped to establish me as someone without authority, neither pupil nor teacher, judging by the acts of misbehaviour that were soon happening right before my eyes.

During one of the first lessons I presented myself in front of both classes and explained that I was there for a research project of the University of Amsterdam studying ‘citizenship’, and that I would be observing them for three to four months and if they wanted to know more about it they could always ask me. I deliberately did not go into much detail because I felt that explaining the theoretical and political/social context of my research would give away too much of what I would be focussing on and possibly influence classroom interaction. When I initially introduced myself to the teachers I told them my subject was ‘culturalization of citizenship’, at that time an important aspect of my theoretical framework, but it proved too complex and abstract to explain, and I was occasionally thrown by their confused expressions. I decided to keep it simple and told teachers that I was studying how the broad ‘citizenship-agenda’ of the Ministry of Education was being implemented at the school and what kind of interactions this generated inside the classroom. This was quickly accepted as a satisfactory explanation and wasn’t too far from the truth.

When asked by pupils about the meaning of my presence, I tried to stay close to their world and explained it in terms of having to ‘hand in’ a thesis to ‘get my diploma’, and told them about the last year of studying anthropology when you have to carry out your own research. I thus focused more on the practical side and this was accepted as a satisfactory answer. My continuous, in-class writing was obvious to all present and often pupils teased me saying I shouldn’t write down so much because this only meant more work (I had explained that I worked it all out on my computer later) and what was happening wasn’t interesting anyway. There were several pupils that I frequently chatted with, in and outside the classroom – about, for example, the weekend, parties they attended, teachers, tests, grades, future plans – but there were also quite a few who kept their distance. I was very lucky to be given two lists with the names of the pupils accompanied by their pictures, which allowed me to quickly memorise their names and faces so I could write down who was saying what in the classroom

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during my observations. Although I did not participate actively in class discussions, I of course recognise that even by just being present in a setting you change it. How I changed it is hard to say. Teachers assured me that pupils didn’t behave differently in my presence but there is no way for me to be sure.

Towards the end of my research I asked several pupils if I could interview them. Although some did not show up, I eventually interviewed ten pupils, in pairs, in the canteen after school or in a nearby cafe. I tried to keep the conversations as open and friendly as possible without using a pen and notebook so they would feel comfortable. The digital recorder on the table did seem to make them a bit uncomfortable at first but after a few minutes it did not seem to bother them anymore. I would open the conversation by mentioning something casual and then slowly direct the conversation towards the classroom and the things that I wanted to know more about. This worked pretty well, and although some pupils were a bit more distant than others, I was surprised by the level of openness between us, given how quickly they started gossiping about teachers and other pupils.

At the end of a lesson I would often ‘stick around’ and chat with the teacher, which turned out to be a good way to hear the teachers impressions of the lesson and ask questions about what I had just observed. I also spent a great deal of time in the staffroom listening, eavesdropping and talking to teachers, and in the hallway, canteen and in front of the school talking to pupils and teachers and observing them. My relations with the pupils and teachers were open and friendly. Near the end of my research I held interviews with all seven teachers whose lessons I had been observing. I wanted to make the interviews more of a continuation of our mostly friendly and open conversations, with the benefit that now I had their full attention and could record the conversations digitally. I invited them to a café near the school and over a coffee or a beer most teachers seemed comfortable and were quite talkative. Two interviews with student-teachers took a more formal character and I had to make an effort to keep them talking. To get them started I began the interviews by asking about why they chose to become a teacher and then moved onto the difficulties they faced while teaching to see if they would refer to the things that I had observed, which often happened. If they didn’t mention those things themselves I would ask about them later in the interview. I interviewed two teachers whose lessons I did not attend but who had worked at the school for a long time, and asked them about the history of the school. I also interviewed the two section heads, one responsible for the HAVO and one for the VWO-department, and asked them about the

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broader school policies, how they saw the school, and their views on the two classes that I was observing. I later transcribed (parts of) all the interviews.

I always read the sections of the books that were given to the pupils as homework and were the subjects of the lessons and discussions that I observed. I collected all the text- and assignment books, readers and Powerpoint presentations that the teachers used during the lessons, so that while analysing my field notes I was be able to connect the content of the lesson, the readings, and the subsequent interactions and discussions.

To map out the rules and regulations of the school I spent a day with the school janitor who, among other tasks, was responsible for keeping order in the hallways and the canteen, and for registering and sanctioning pupils who came in late or had been ordered to leave the classroom.

After four months of classroom observation and hanging around the school I had gathered a lot of rich and detailed ethnographic data, which forms the basis of this thesis.

Chapter overview

In this chapter I provided an overview of three decades of public and political debates on Dutch immigrant integration and multiculturalism that form the background to this thesis. Over the course of my research I was able to observe and document the multifarious ways in which pupils and teachers engaged in discussions that resonated with these debates, and how they informed and regulated the ways in which ethno-cultural differences and belonging were construed and contested.

In Chapter Two I take up a different approach towards ethnicity than is commonly found in social scientific research. I was able to record the dynamics of group-making on a very mundane level, and I will show that ethnicity is an active process of creating meaning in which debates about the failure of multiculturalism in the Netherlands play an important part. Chapter Three discusses the framing by teachers and pupils of the use of ‘Moroccan’ and ‘street language’ inside the school and in the classroom, and how this resonated with the ways in which cultural diversity and multilingualism have come to be seen as threats to social cohesion in the Netherlands.

In Chapter Four I show how several pupils re-appropriated stigmatising labels through joking and name-calling, thereby contesting negative images of ‘Moroccans’ and attempting to renegotiate the negative value attributed to their ‘group’.

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Finally, Chapter Five follows two classroom discussions on Geert Wilders that incited pupils to contest the ways that this anti-immigrant and anti-Islam politician excludes and discriminates against them. It shows how two discursive ways of dealing with issues connected to multicultural society and integration in the Netherlands prompted teachers to downplay, avoid and subvert issues concerning ethno-cultural difference, discrimination and stigma.

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CHAPTER TWO

Constructing difference:

‘The problem with “Moroccan” boys’

Ethnicity is often taken to be self-evident and treated as something concrete, bounded and enduring. In policy reports people are categorised according to their ‘ethnic’ background. Accompanied by data such as unemployment and crime rates, level of education and income, people are blithely presented as belonging to a certain ‘ethnic group’. In public debate the commonsense view of ethnicity as a personal characteristic acquired by birth has remained largely unchallenged (Baumann 1999: 59). ‘Ethnic groups’, however, are generated through framings of power and subjectivity (Keith 2005a: 252). Ethnicity is essentially an aspect of a social relationship; it is an event, something that ‘happens’ (E. P. Thompson, quoted in Brubaker 2002: 168). Ethnicity is constituted through social interaction (Eriksen 2002 [1993]: 12-13) and, as I will show in this chapter, it is an active process of creating meaning in which debates about the failure of multiculturalism in the Netherlands play an important part.

When I sat down in the two classes for the first few lessons I did not know any of the pupils who I would be observing over the next four months. I did not ask them about their ‘ethnic’ background, or any other details except their age and which part of the city they came from. I put ‘ethnic’ in quotation marks here because it refers to an understanding of ethnicity as something fixed and stable. In this chapter I focus on the construction of ethnicity by my informants. I was able to record the dynamics of group-making on a very mundane level and as I will show, these dynamics were strongly connected to the larger debates in society on

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immigrant integration and multiculturalism. It all started in the classroom at the beginning of the new school year, when a particular set of pupils showed behaviour that would become ethnicised (and racialised) in the weeks to come.

(4H2) [It’s 10.30. Imad walks into the classroom and hits Anouar against the back of his head.] Teacher: Hey man, what are you doing?

Imad: It’s love sir, look.

[Imad kisses Anouar on the cheek. They both laugh. The social sciences lesson today is about Goffman. The teacher talks about Goffman, his metaphor of life as a theatre and the roles that people play. The lesson starts quietly. They are all writing down notes and are paying attention to the teacher.

Teacher: At this moment I am playing the role of... Anouar: Teacher.

Teacher: Yes, and I take that role seriously … I try to carry across my enthusiasm. Imad: It’s just your job.

Teacher: It’s my job but it’s also a role because when I get home later I’m no longer a teacher. Then I drop that role and assume the role of….

Imad [interrupting the teacher]: Housewife, houseman.

[Several pupils giggle. Imad smiles with his hands folded against his chin and nods approvingly. For about 15 minutes the teacher explains Goffman’s work.]

Teacher: I could play the role of a policeman here. Handing out fines, catching thieves. That would be weird, wouldn’t it? Or, instead of teaching I could tell you about the great adventure I had in a bar. That will be a bit strange. If I do that for one hour you will forgive me, but if I behave as if I was a pupil myself for weeks, then you would find me a weird, bad teacher.

Ahmed: No way. Anouar: No way.

Anouar shouts at Kubilay: Shut up! Teacher: You take it easy friend. Anouar: Sorry sir …

[Manu asks if the sunblind can be lowered.] Teacher: It’s broken.

[Manu pushes the button. Only one side of the sunblind lowers and then it’s stuck.] Anouar [laughing mockingly]: Why don’t you listen to the teacher, it’s broken.

Anouar and Ahmed are talking. Imad turns around and says: ‘Hey guys’ and gives them a strict look imitating the teacher …

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Teacher: That’s a very good question. Imad [mockingly]: Clever (Scherp). Anouar: Yes, very clever.

[Ahmed, Anouar, Imad and Kemal smile mockingly in her direction. Saida waves them away, but they keep making faces at her.]

Teacher: Gentlemen, she’s just asked a good question. [To Saida:] Yes, because if you always play a role this implies that….

[They keep making faces at Saida.] Teacher: Guys!

In both 4H1 and 4H2 there were several pupils who usually sat close together, talked and laughed with one another, teased, pushed and hit each other, made jokes and often responded to the teachers’ questions and interrupted the teacher by shouting something or loudly commenting on the subject being taught or under discussion. These pupils quickly became notorious for being disruptive. Both classes had their own dynamic and naturally this influenced the behaviour of these pupils. 4H2 consisted of nine girls and eighteen boys and was boisterous, although the level of liveliness greatly depended on the teacher and composition. 4H1 consisted of twelve boys and eighteen girls and was lively as well, but easier to control. In both classes, however, there were specific traits in the behaviour of these pupils that, over the course of my research, I started to recognise. For example, when they were reprimanded to silence by the teacher or scolded after breaking a rule, they usually responded with ‘Yes, Sir/Miss’ (meester, juf), or ‘Sorry, Sir/Miss’, whereas other pupils mostly just looked at the teacher and didn’t say anything. On several occasions I observed this specific bunch of pupils jokingly calling each other to order, mimicking the teacher. When the teacher made a mistake, such as accidentally skipping a subject on the whiteboard, they were the first ones to point this out. Oftentimes, mostly in 4H2, when one of them answered a question correctly, or made an effort to pay attention the others mocked this, but they also tended to be proud of giving the right answer. They seemed to struggle with a tension between peer pressure to be deviant and a desire to do well in school.

The pupils often showed active participation and were engaged in the lesson, but there was also almost constant activity between them such as talking, shouting, laughing, giving each other meaningful looks, joking, touching, pushing and hitting each other. The pupils jokingly and theatrically showed affection by kissing and hugging each other. Through observations and conversations I learned that these pupils knew each other well and several were good

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friends. In 4H2 the pupils who engaged in this behaviour were Imad, Ahmed, Anouar, Kemal and Danilo; in 4H1 Farid, Omar, Erdem, Rachid and Iskender. In 4H1 the behaviour tended to be more physical and consisted more of joking and teasing each other, whereas in 4H1 it tended more towards deliberately provoking their teacher and contesting things, whether it were rules of absence or topics from the curriculum. The matter and frequency of such behaviour greatly depended on the teacher. Their history teacher for example held a firm grip and made it very clear this kind of behaviour was unacceptable. Their (student) social sciences teacher, on the other hand, had great difficulty keeping order, and, having done a psychology master and not being educated in the social sciences, struggled with the content of the lessons which made her insecure and thereby vulnerable. The example below is from one of her lessons.

(4H1) [It’s almost 8.30 and pupils are slowly entering the classroom. Omar and Iskender sit next to each other and Rachid sits in front of them. Erdem enters the classroom waving wildly with his arms as he walks towards Rachid. They start talking. Farid walks in, leans over to Rachid and gives him a hug. They both smile. Rachida enters and sits down next to Farid. Many pupils are talking.] Teacher: We’re going to start. Get your books, your things.

[Erdem is still standing.] Teacher: Erdem, sit down.

[He sits down, reluctantly, moving slowly. The teacher explains that if they haven’t done their homework three times, they’re sent out of the classroom.]

Erdem [rather angry-looking]: Is that allowed? Teacher: Yes.

Erdem: Is that in the PTA7?

[The teacher looks at him as if she wants to say: ‘Please don’t do this to me’.] Erdem: If it’s not in the PTA it’s not allowed.

Teacher: You just have to do your homework, OK?

[The teacher starts the lesson but several pupils are talking. She turns to Farid and Rachida.] Teacher: Can’t you be quiet?

Farid: I’m not the only one talking, others talk 23 times and I… Teacher: I hear you talking all the time.

[Farid looks at her with an aggrieved expression. For a while the pupils are quiet, copying the texts on the slides projected on the whiteboard. Then, while the teacher is busy with the computer and

7

The PTA (Programma van Toetsing en Afsluiting) is the program that states all the requirements for passing school exams.