UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Dutch domopolitics:
towards the preservation
of the ‘Home’
Understanding the national-local dynamics
concerning Dutch alien policies
Liz van Blitterswijk 1-6-2016
Master thesis Politicologie: Internationale Betrekkingen Begeleid door Jeroen Doomernik
1 Index
Introduction ... 3
Chapter 1 - Theoretical framework ... 7
Multilevel politics ... 7
Politics of the Home ... 9
Walters’ domopolitics ... 11
Internal domopolitics: nationally governed ... 13
Internal domopolitics: locally governed ... 16
Chapter 2 – Methods and Data ... 17
Analysed policy documents ... 18
Why the WPR Method? ... 19
What is a WPR analysis ... 21
Media analysis ... 23
Interview ... 24
WPR Walters: domopolitics ... 25
Chapter 3 – Genesis of domopolitics: (up to) the nineties ... 28
WPR-analysis: the Allochtonen policy ... 31
Media analysis ... 35
De Volkskrant: 1995-1999 ... 35
Telegraaf: 1999 ... 38
Chapter 4 – Genesis of domopolitics: 2000-2004 ... 40
WPR-analysis: 2000-2004 ... 40
Media analysis ... 44
De Volkskrant: 2000-2004 ... 45
Telegraaf: 2000-2004 ... 47
Chapter 5 – The dynamics: Dutch domopolitics and the local level ... 49
Experiencing domopolitical logics ... 49
Dealing with domopolitical logics ... 52
Pragmatic solutions and innovative ideas ... 53
Who´s the boss? ... 56
Skipping a level of governance ... 57
Conclusion ... 58
Bibliography ... 62
Bibliography media analysis ... 66
Appendix I: Translated quotes from the policy documents and newspapers ... 72
2
“In the Roman view, domus as house and household had a
direct bearing on a man's standing and prestige. (…) in Roman
society (...) the domus was a central symbol of status and
honour.” (Saller, 1984: 349)
3 Introduction
“I need majors to create new refugee shelters. And actually this has to be done today or tomorrow.” (Central organization Sheltering Refugees 2016)
This call for help was made during the European Refugee crisis by Gerard Bakker, chairman of the board of the COA (Central organization Sheltering Refugees). Due to an unceasing civil war in Syria and a dictatorial regime in Eritrea, the influx of refugees crossing Europe’s borders increased drastically between 2014 and 2016. In the Netherlands the total amount of asylum requests quickly increased from almost 30.000 in 2014 towards almost 59.000 in 2015. In October 2015 the amount of requests reached a peak (Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland n.d.). The COA, which is the organisation that was inserted by the Dutch national government to execute its asylum seeker housing policies, at that point was diligently looking for new locations to accommodate all these new asylum seekers as the limits of the capacity of the locations at their disposal was reached. This quick growth of asylum seekers in the fall of 2015 was the reason for Bakker to try and mobilize municipalities to voluntarily facilitate new emergency shelters: “This high influx is a unique problem. A problem that concerns the whole of society. (…) I continue to make an urgent appeal to municipalities to take their responsibility” (Central organization Sheltering Refugees 2016). This appeal was the start of a chaotic period in the Netherlands. Municipalities and the COA were trying to balance out their desires, the desires of the refugees and those of the citizens. Some municipalities abided by the call of the COA, while others refused the request and kept quiet. Again others started to negotiate the COA’s rulings: there were strong arguments between municipalities and the - national policy executing - COA on the minimum number of asylum seekers that a municipality had to take in if they wanted to open an emergency shelter. The COA started with a minimum of 400 refugees, but after the explicit and public protest of two majors (Tromp 2016) the COA reshaped their rules and made exceptions and in some cases the organization indeed downgraded the minimum number of asylum seekers (De Vries 2016). Simultaneously, a few months later, four big municipalities sent an open letter to protest the national policy and the lack of collaboration between the state and municipalities on the issue in general (Feenstra 2016). The municipal administrations of the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, threatened to tear up the administrative agreement that was under development at that point. The municipalities argued that the funding the national government was offering them was insufficient. They argued that without an increased budget, “irresponsible situations would emerge” (ibid). Since then, an administrative agreement between the Dutch municipalities and the national government is in place. In this agreement provisions are made between the two levels of governance on the topics of labour, integration, education, healthcare and housing (VNG 2016). This thesis will illustrate how the dynamics between national and local government
4
on the subject of alien policies are, despite this agreement, certainly still in motion. The above developments demonstrate the current dynamics between Dutch municipalities and the national government on the issue of alien affairs. The goal of this thesis is to better understand these contemporary dynamics between local governments and the state on this issue. These dynamics between the national and local governments are attempted to be understood through a concept that is introduced by Walters (2004): domopolitics. Walters describes “domopolitics as an analytic for certain developments in the governance of security” (Walters 2004: 244) and is defined by Darling as “a new configuration of governance centred upon the alignment of security, territory and nationhood” (Darling 2011: 264). Or, as Brickel puts it, it is “the aspiration to run the state and homeland like a protected cocoon of community and citizenship, set against a dangerous outside of illegals, traffickers and terrorists” (Brickel 2012: 578). In this paradigm the state is perceived as a safe home. The core of the domopolitical logic comes down to a positive perception towards phenomena, movements and developments within national borders (i.e. the home or domos), opposed to an idea of external flows as (potentially) threatening. Before welcomed in, these external flows first need to be domesticated. Walters argues that “in Western Europe, domopolitics currently offers [a] (…) pole to redefine the state and citizenship” (Walters 2004: 244). Walters perceives domopolitics as a diagram through which security measures are rationalized (idem: 241). By analysing a state’s alien policies through domopolitics, this thesis attempts to create a more inclusive understanding of securitizing the national borders by aligning it with the concepts of nationhood and citizenship. Walters derives his ideas of domopolitics from an analysis of UK the alien policies during the first years of the new millennium. This thesis will aim at the emergence of domopolitics in the Dutch case. As will become clear in the theoretical framework, the domopolitical logic is very state-centric. It is therefore interesting to study these nationally rooted logics from the perspective of a lower level of governance. In this thesis, therefore, it is argued that by understanding the Dutch domopolitics, the current dynamics between municipalities and the national government can be understood in a new context.
To reach this understanding this thesis is directed at answering the following question: How is
Dutch domopolitics affecting the dynamics between the national and local governments on the issues of alien policies? To answer this question it is split up into two sub-questions: 1. where has
domopolitics become visible in the Dutch alien policies? and 2. how do Dutch municipalities experience and how do they deal with national domopolitics on the issue of asylum seekers? Through answering the first sub-question it is illustrated that the Dutch national alien policies can indeed be analysed through the ideas of domopolitics. Furthermore, besides showing that domopolitical logics are indeed present, it also illustrates where, how and when it has become present: i.e. a general genesis of Dutch domopolitics. With this knowledge in mind, the second sub-question can be addressed. By
5
understanding Dutch domopolitics through the eyes of municipalities and by elaborating on their experiences with domopolitical structures and how they deal with these structures, the dynamics between the national and local governments can be understood and explained in a new context. As can be derived from the research question, this study plays at three main domains: domopolitics, national-local dynamics and the Dutch alien policies. This is a field that so far has stayed untouched. After Walters introduced the concept of domopolitics in 2004, there have been several scholars that introduced the concept in their studies. Walters has developed the understanding of domopolitics through the analysis of the UK border and alien policies and - in line with this - Hynek (2012) introduced domopolitics in his study to understand Japanese human security. In other studies the concept was for example used to try and understand public health issues (Ingram 2008), the social and political position of Travelers communities in the UK (Ciaschi n.d.), or the role of transnational media sources in Ireland (Titley 2012). Darling uses the concept to understand to issues surrounding asylum seekers and aliens on the - micro - level like sheltering and local citizenship (Darling 2011; 2014; 2016). When it comes to the case of the Netherlands domopolitics has been lightly touched upon by some studies (Pozzo and Evers 2015; Engelbert and Awad 2014). However, both in general and - even more - in the Dutch case, the subject is far from exhaustively discussed.
Within this study, the domestic dynamics that emerge and develop if national borders are crossed by external individuals - i.e. by border crossing individuals (BCI’s) - are analysed. This contains both policies of immigration, asylum and integration in the Netherlands. During the last few decades many have been interested in the developments on this particular issue in the Netherlands. For example Muus (1997) studied integration in the Netherlands through the scope of inclusion and exclusion. Oeesterom-Staples (2007) and Penninx (2006) analysed the impact of terrorism and Islamist violence on the Dutch immigration and asylum legislation, or the other way around (Tom 2006). From a more political point of view Van den Brug et al. (2009) analysed the development of the immigration debate according to the political party programmes and concluded that culture has gained an increasingly prominent role. Furthermore, in other studies the Dutch policies are perceived through the European perspective (Fenema and Van den Brug 2006; Koopmans 2004). The analytical foundation that is provided by the concept of domopolitics in this study, creates a new understanding of the structures that underlie these previously studied developments.
As will be extensively exemplified in the theoretical chapter of this thesis, domopolitics is a concept that has a strong connotation with the securitization of migration, of citizenship and of the position of ‘the home’. In the past few decades many authors have examined these subjects both in a more analytical sense as on specific cases. During the last years of the previous century the Copenhagen school created a framework towards a new understanding of securitization (Buzan, et. al.,
6
1998). This collective of thinkers challenged the ‘traditionalist’ approach of security and introduced a more constructivist understanding of the concept. The Copenhagen school produced this analytical framework by enlarging the security scope from a political-military issue to a concept that was also linked with economy, environment and society (idem: vii). The frame has been an inspiration for many authors resulting in many studies within which securitization is linked to issues of migration and citizenship (Bigo 1994, 2002; Hysmans 2000; Ceyhan and Tsoukala 2002; Boswell 2007; Fauser 2006; Hiddes 2004; Nyers 2004; Muller 2004). It is within this understanding of securitization that domopolitics is embedded. Domopolitics however has to be understood in the way it produces identities and practices that go beyond the security issue: “It rationalizes a series of security measures in the name of a particular conception of home.” (Walters 2004 :241; italics added). So by analysing the issue of Dutch alien policies on the national and local level of governance through the scope of domopolitics, the securitization ideas are embedded and analysed in a more all-encompassing empirical perception: that of the Home.
Previous to this study, others have been interested in the multi-level aspect of integration and immigration policies (Bak Jørgensen 2012; Caponio and Borkert 2010; Leerkes 2012). When it comes to the Dutch case there have been studies according to the multilevel aspect as well (Scholten 2013; Kos et al 2015). This study will contribute to this knowledge by introducing both a different methodological (see below) as another analytical framework that helps to understand these dynamics in a broader sense. Furthermore, as there have been many developments in the past few years in these local-national dynamics, this study illustrates and analyses these new developments in a scientific context. With the idea of national Home politics as the matrix for the current local-national dynamics, a different light is shed on both these dynamics as on developments that may emerge in the future.
From a social relevance perspective this study contributes to the understanding of the dynamics between the national and the local government when it comes to the issue of the housing of asylum seekers. By understanding the structures that underlie certain dynamics, current and future policies may be better understood not only in the Dutch case, but also outside the Netherlands. The multi-level governance character of this study also can also serve as a framework to interpret this particular case through the scope of different levels of governance: for example the role of the regional borders of the EU or the state- federal government construction of the USA. Furthermore, if this knowledge is integrated in the decision- and policy-making processes, potential bumps in the dynamics between these levels of governance can be prevented.
As the aim of this study is to create a new understanding of the Dutch national-local dynamics through the ideas of domopolitics, the main question - how is Dutch domopolitics affecting the dynamics between the national and local governments on the issues of alien policies? - has to be answered. To
7
be able to do this properly, its sub-questions - 1. where has domopolitics become visible in the Dutch alien policies? and 2. how do Dutch municipalities experience and how do they deal with national domopolitics on the issue of asylum seekers? - are studied through a policy analysis, a media analysis and interviews with municipal officials. Sub-question one contains an analysis of the reports by the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), the research of the Committee Blok (2004), and the official Dutch policy documents based on Bacchi’s (2009) What’s the Problem Represented to be (WPR) methodology, which is a post-modernist approach of analysing policy documents. In line with her ideas, additional to this policy analysis, a media analysis is conducted of two main Dutch newspapers: de Volkskrant and Telegraaf. The second sub-question is answered through interviews with officials of four Dutch municipalities (The Hague, Leiden, Utrecht and Arnhem) and a Dutch Local Government Association (VNG) employee. Together, the analysis of this data will provide a clear illustration of Dutch domopolitics and its implications on the Dutch national-local dynamics on the issue of aliens.
The thesis will start with a theoretical chapter in which the Politics of the Home and domopolitics are discussed thoroughly both through the scope of national and local levels of governance. In the following chapter, the methodology and the data that are deployed in this study are comprehensively discussed and applied on the theory before starting the actual analysis. After this, three chapters will follow in which the data are analysed and interpreted. The first and second analytical chapter (chapter 3 and 4) contain the analysis of the development of domopolitics in the Dutch immigration and integration policies respectively between 1990-1999 and 2000-2004. After the illustration of the emergence and appearance of Dutch domopolitics, the third analytical chapter (chapter 5) reveals the implications of these domopolitical logics for the national-local dynamics on the issue of aliens. Finally, the thesis will finish with some concluding remarks and thoughts. But first, what do we actually mean when speaking of domopolitics?
Chapter 1 - Theoretical framework Multilevel politics
Before elaborating on domopolitics, we should first understand the context in which it is placed within this study: that of national-local dynamics. These dynamics are in this study analysed through the ideas of multilevel politics.
When it comes to the development and implementation of policy ideas, it is not uncommon to find that these policies in practice are concerning more than one governmental level. In the field of international relations, is often studied through the scope of multilevel politics. These multilevel dynamics can create friction between the different levels of governmentalities. The different levels
8
involved can differ on their ideas on the issue, but can also have a different opinion on what issue is actually at stake:
“When the framing of policies differs between levels, it can be expected that interaction and the coordination of policy efforts between levels will be complicated. Governments at different levels will not only prefer very different policy measures, but also have very different ideas about what the problem is in the first place.“ (Scholten 2012: 4)
This potential discrepancy between different levels of policy is an interesting idea to analyse the dynamics surrounding the efficiency of policy implementation at particular governmental levels.
Scholten distinguishes four types of multilevel governance: centralist, multilevel, localist and decoupling (idem: 5). Centralist policies concern a top-down perspective. The issues here are framed as of national concern that are connected to other national issues and thus need to be approached from a national perspective. The multilevel type of approach - not to confuse with its’ omnibus namesake - is according to Scholten “most likely to emerge in situations where the multilevel character of a policy problem is explicitly recognised” (ibid). In this typology the issue at stake is probably highly depoliticized and the interaction between the different levels has a functional foundation. When issues are considered to be approached from a local perspective, the policy building can be viewed within a localist context. This bottom-up perspective on different levels of governance is focussed on local governments not only as the implementers of policies, but also as autonomous agenda setting actors. Scholtenn’s last multilevel governance type is decoupling: “(…) there is no meaningful interaction between government levels and (…) policies at various levels may even contradict and conflict with each other” (idem: 6). Governance decoupling is identified when the logic of policymaking vividly differs between the local and the national level, this can even result in local policy measures that directly conflict with those of the national government.
It is interesting that the policy on a particular issue can shift between these types as the context changes. For example, a multilevel topic can become politicized and problematical and therefore shift towards what would be analysed as the decoupling of governance. Or an issue that that was previously perceived to be a primarily local concern can transform in a national or multilevel type of multilevel governance. This potential flexibility and fluidity of issues across the different types shows that- as Scholten argues - the framing of an issue is crucial for the way it is addressed between and within the different levels of governance. These frames are largely influenced by the logic of the national and local governments on which the policies are founded. A discrepancy between the logics of these actors can create friction and governance decoupling or, in other words, inadequate and inefficient national
9
policies. With his ideas Scholten illustrates that there are various ways to perceive policies that transcending their own ‘fields’. This study will show that in the case of Dutch domopolitics and alien policies, in some cases this strong tendency towards governance decoupling can be found. In the next sections this multilevel character of governance will be useful to understand the implications of ‘The politics of the Home’.
Politics of the Home
“The framing of the nation itself as a ‘home’ is a notable characteristic of the debates raging in Western Europe. While this is nothing new in the history of nationalism, the longing for a homogeneous national home is a novel development in those European countries that so assiduously distanced themselves from traditions of ‘Boden’, ‘soil’ and ‘Heimat’ in post-war years.” (Duyvendak 2015: 1)
With this quote Duyvendak (2015) introduces his work on the Politics of the Home. He argues that the developments towards rising sentiments of nationalism nowadays can be analysed through ‘home feelings’. Or rather, through the fear to be undermined in one’s “right to belong and the ability to feel at home” (Duyvendak 2015: 2). Home feelings can vary from the very micro space of a specific place like a house or a town, but is increasingly associated with much greater scales: the feeling at home on a national level, or even, within ‘global society’. With this development Duyvendak experiences the politicization of the ‘home’ over the last few decades. These different scales which one can experience home feelings are interrelated (Duyvendak 2015; Brickel 2012), and therefore
“actions on a national, even global, stage (…) [can] readily be allied with protecting the intimate spaces of domestic, the home and heart, potentially stirring into the mix of geopolitical praxis deeply problematic connotations about who “we” would wish to invite into or, more tellingly, debar from “our” cosy homes.” (Philo 2012: 2)
In other words, the implications of an individual’s perception of home does not end at the borders of one’s own world of experience, but - like a stone in a pond - diffuses towards scales that at the first sight seem to be very far away from one’s particular experience of ‘home feeling’.
When it comes to the perception of Home in the contemporary globalizing world, Duyvendak distinguishes four types of people: people lost in space, the chronically mobile, the defensive localists and the elective belongers (2015: 15). These categories embody, from their own perspectives, an
10
experience of the feeling of home in a world of increasing mobility. The chronically mobile and the elective belongers both experience the increasing mobility as positive and do not directly experience a threat to their home feelings due to these developments. The chronically mobile create spaces that are similar, however residing on different localities. This way they have the ability to feel at home around the globe. The elective belongers utilize the mobile home strategy and, contrary to the chronically mobile, create particular places of home by familiarizing a new place with ‘aspects of their own home’ (Duyvendak 2015: 15). In contradiction to these positive experiences of mobility, Duyvendak argues that there are also individuals that experience mobility as a negative development when it comes to the concept of home. The people lost in space experience a general feeling of disconnection due to global mobility. In this paradigm “people have less the capacity to relate to particular places” (idem: 12), which creates an experience of the loss of opportunities to feel at home. The last category described by Duyvendak, the defensive localists, is the category that can be explanatory for the tendency towards the politicization of the home:
“‘[D]efensive localists’ long for the good old days when goods and markets were local and people were rooted (…). Defensive localists are also pessimistic about their future chances to feel at home: they believe (…) that mobile - and thus generic - goods undermine feelings of home in local communities” (idem: 14).
Within this paradigm the matrix emerges on which the politics of the home can thrive.
Within the defensive localist paradigm, the threat of losing the ability to ‘belong’ due to globally increasing mobile forces is central. When it comes to home feelings on the national scale, these threats take a prominent position: ‘Homeland’ today seems to be conceptualized as the national extension of the old ideal of the secure, private home (idem: 20). This Homeland security thinking creates the idea of “(…) ‘home, nation and family (…) within the same mythic metaphorical field’. As such home and nation have normatively been interpreted as safe reassuring places of trust, familiarity and togetherness” (Brickel 2012: 578). Duyvendak argues that Western European countries have been positioning themselves within this defensive localist paradigm and thereby conceptualizing themselves ‘as one large home’ (Duyvendak 2015: 24). Within this national home, the state has to “guard against harmful external influences, (…) [and] culture has to be restored and protected” (idem: 87). Politics of the Home thus is not only a paradigm or a perception on global mobility that can vary between individuals or even between institutions; it is a mode of governance, a concrete scope through which the state manages both its external borders as its internal affairs. It is on this playing field of the politicization of the home,
11
the experienced threat from ‘the outside’ and the cherished aspects of ‘the inside’ where domopolitics can be found.
Walters’ domopolitics
“The home is at heart, a refuge or a sanctuary in a heartless world; the home is our place, where we belong and others do not (…) every people should (at least) have one; home as a place that we must protect. We may invite guests in our home, but they come at our invitation; they don’t stay indefinitely. Others are, by definition, uninvited. Illegal migrants and bogus refugees should be returned to ‘their homes’. Home as a place to be secured because it contents (our property) are valuable and envied by others. (…) Hence domopolitics embodies a tactic which juxtaposes the ‘warm words’ (Connoly, 1995, p. 142) of community with the danger words of a chaotic outside.” (Walters 2004: 241)
Domopolitics is a concept that is introduced by Walters (2004) and is what Darling defines as “a new configuration of governance centred upon the alignment of security, territory and nationhood” (Darling 2011: 264). It is “the aspiration to run the state and homeland like a protected cocoon of community and citizenship, set against a dangerous outside of illegals, traffickers and terrorists” (Brickel 2012: 578). In line with Bigo’s “security continuum that stretches from terrorism to regulation of asylum rights, including drugs, action against crime, clandestine immigration, and migratory flows” (Bigo 1994: 164; emphasis added), Walters argues that transnational mobility and movement are increasingly experienced as potential threats to the Homeland security (Walters 2004: 244). Parallel to Duyvendak’s defensive localist paradigm (2015), he argues that “insecurity is [perceived to be] bound up with themes of mobility: it is the movement, the circulation, the presence of unauthorized bodies which have violated the borders of the nation state” (Walers 2004: 247). The nation state within this paradigm is, and this is at the heart of domopolitics, perceived as a home, or more specifically as a safe home that is a fateful conjunction together with land and security (idem: 241).
Domopolitics plays at two fields: firstly, it creates the positive image of the home opposed to a threatening outside world. And secondly, it aims at the domesticating of forces that threaten the sanctity of home (idem: 242). It is thus within this domopolitical context that “security measures are rationalized” (idem: 241): “The conflations of nationhood, homeliness and threatening otherness that marks the narratives of domopolitics present security and the filtering and classification of ‘risks’ and ‘threats’ from ‘outside’ as central concerns of government” (Darling 2011: 265; italics added).
12
In his article, Walters defines domopolitics within the UK through six marking points within the state’s national policy: mobile worlds, insecure societies, dividing practices, reterritorialize the state, deterritorialize the border and reterritorialize citizenship. Starting with mobile worlds Walters argues that the recognition of the discourse of globalization “will prove crucial for how insecurity is now being defined” (Walters 2004: 244). To be able to domesticate the flows that are induced by this globalizing mobile world, and to filter those who are potentially lucrative for the home state from those who are not, a state has to some extent become more transnational itself. Domopolitics is thus not simply the act of pulling up fences and becoming politically (or economically) secluded from the international community. It recognises global movement, and tries to “disentangle, to tap energies of one flow, while taming and supressing the other” (idem: 254). The selection of flows that are perceived to be threatening and have to be ‘tamed’, is made through the scope of the insecure societies - i.e. the defensive localist paradigm. This insecurity is both created by the mobile, open world that produces “illicit and clandestine mobilities” that are threatening ‘our’ home, but also by the internationalization of issues previously considered “domestic” (idem: 246). This creates a threat not only to the state as a political and economic sovereign unity, but also to ‘our’ values and ‘our’ way of life (idem: 247). An important means through which domopolitics aims to tame these flows, is through dividing practices. Walters argues that “the will to divide appears as a core element within modern governmentality” (idem: 249). Dividing between genuine and clandestine moblities is both a manner through which the potentially lucrative flows can be filtered and welcomed in, but also a means through which the state can tame the flows that are perceived to be unauthorized trying to get in. “[T]his will allow us to deal with the others, the ‘bogus’, with greater confidence from the public and thus with more firmness” (ibid). Or, as Pozzo and Evers explain: “More specifically, labels such as ‘asylum seekers’, ‘refugees’, ‘aliens’, ‘legal’, and ‘illegal’ immigrants define people as transitional actors and challenges to the political order of citizenship, borders, sovereignty of nation states, and consequently ‘in need’ of measures of reception, assistance and integration in order to successfully integrate.” (Posso and Evers 2015: 2). Mitropoulos (2015) uses very clear categorizations of the state ordering border crossing individuals (BCI’s) from an economical frame as the ‘Useful’ and the ‘Unwanted’. In this study these categories are completed with the ‘Obligatory’, as the states that signed the Geneva Convention perceive themselves as obliged to take in ‘real’ refugees.
The most prominent space where this dividing and categorizing takes place is at a nation’s border. Walters argues that, in the last few decades border control “acquired a prominence and a priority within politics that is arguably qualitatively different” from the decades previous to it (Walters 2004: 250). In other words: the state is reterritorialized. Domopolitics here, “[draws] the equation (…) between security and the exercise of border controls” (ibid). Parallel to the reterritorialization of the state
13
is domopolitics visible through the deterritorialization of the border. Walters argues that this tendency can be analysed in twofold. First, the border control practices seem to be literally diffused from the actual border within the country’s territory, such as visa policies. This way “the entire national territory is being treated as an expanded frontier” (idem: 251). Second, Walters observes the externalization of several state borders, into regional borders, i.e. Schengenland. This tendency combined with the reterritorialization of the state that between the borders of the Homeland and there were the externalized borders reside.
The last marking point that Walters uses to define domopolitics within the UK policies is the reterritotialization of the citizen. After positioning itself in a globalizing world, defining potential threats due to mobility and arming itself with a positive self-image parallel to taming these threats with border control and division, domopolitics has to deal with those who have made it through the selection and have been able to (irregularly) enter the Homeland: “Immigrants are to become (…) acquainted with the rights and responsibilities of becoming a (…) citizen” (idem: 254).This citizenship has to be cherished from the moment the migrant is ‘invited’ into society. However, domopolitics is not only aiming at the newcomers, it also “problematizes the host population” (ibid). To create a situation where the host population accepts the newcomers in their Homeland, there needs to be trust and faith in the state’s dividing and taming practices, there has to be confidence towards the state protection of the shared home. “Only then will people ‘have the confidence to welcome asylum seekers and migrants’” (ibid). This results in government actions that are aimed at producing trust and at internally (re)shaping and defining - or reterritorializing - citizenship. If both six factors that influence and interact with each other, as well as these tendencies altogether are to be found in a particular national policy, one can speak of domopolitics.
While developing his argument Walters mainly focusses on the affairs surrounding a country’s external, sovereign borders. However, he slightly touches upon the implications that domopolitics have within the borders of a country: he speaks of the creation of a positive image of the Homeland, he discusses the internal diffusion of border and he presents the redefinition of citizenship as one of the six marking points of domopolitics. Besides from what is happening at the borders, domopolitics thus is also an interesting concept to study what is happening within national borders. Or, put differently, what is happening after the actual border is crossed. In the next section it becomes clear that citizenship takes in a central position when speaking of the implications domopolitics after crossing actual borders; the dynamics of internal domopolitics.
14
“[T]he security focussed mode of governing mobility” (Darling 2011: 267)
After a BCI has managed to cross a physical national border, domopolitics does not end. On the contrary: as Walters describes, domopolitics makes borders diffuse both outside, as inside the national territory. As is described above, it reterritorializes citizenship and divides the individuals on national territory according to their rights - that are formulated by the state itself - to actually reside on this territory: the right to be(come) a national citizen. It is thus at the internal affairs after the actual border is crossed that citizenship plays a major part in the domopolitical logic.
In his article on domicile citizenship Bauder (2013) distinguishes between three principles of citizenship: jus sanguinis, jus soli and jus domicilii. All three terms refer to a way in which citizenship can be obtained. Jus sanguinis refers to obtaining citizenship through ancestry and jus soli bases itself on granting citizenship through place of birth. These two forms of citizenship are based on clear ex- and inclusion: “citizenship [can be] inaccessible to persons born to the ‘wrong’ parents or the ‘wrong’ territory” (Bauder 2013: 3). These are the kinds of citizenship on which domopolitics is founded: the residents that obtained citizenship through the jus sanguinis or jus soli principle are the rightful and non-threatening inhabitants of the homeland. Others (continually) have to prove that they rightfully belong and call themselves ‘at home’ for otherwise they are perceived as ungrateful to hospitability and/or threatening to the sanctuary of the home: “Particularly at the national level, new ‘feeling [at home] rules’ are applied to immigrants who are increasingly expected to demonstrate feelings of attachment, belonging, connectedness and loyalty to their new country” (Duyvendak 2015: 93). The jus domocilii principle however, is more inclusionary and is “granted to people independently of the place and community of birth, and applies to migrants after they entered a territory and established residence in this territory” (Bauder 2013: 3). This notion of citizenship however seems to be incompatible with the domopolitical logic in which external flows per definition are potentially threatening, and thus need to be filtered, categorized and continuously proved to be safe. It is therefore that the filtering of newcomers - i.e. immigration and integration procedures - in the countries where domopolitical logics are uppermost, can be very illustrative to understand state actions.
As noted above, within the defensive localist paradigm of domopolitics, mobile bodies are potentially threatening to the nation, to the safety of the home. Therefore, “mobility [has to be] tamed (…) into a series of designated pathways” (Darling 2011: 266). These pathways both create and assign as a BCI. If we look at asylum seekers this happens through the construction of images if a genuine refugees versus ‘bogus’. The BCI - in this case the asylum seeker - is categorized within groups that either are connoted positively (genuine) or negatively (bogus) (ibid). This way positions become fixed
15
and mobility becomes directly linked to an assigned identity (the good versus the threat); the mobility is tamed. Therefore domopolitics
“denotes both systems of ordering mobility and differentiating claims, and the discursive construction of those who are filtered through such mechanisms. (…) “The ‘integrity of the asylum seeker or refugee’ [here] becomes the quality ‘or more specifically the lack of it - which is used to justify and explain all else’” (Darling 2011: 266)
In other words: domopolitics produces a ranked categorization of BCI’s to tame the potentially threatening influx.
If we look at asylum procedures Darling finds that domopolitics has an impact on accommodation or the “regulation of dispersal”. Darling argues that domopolitics “produces a series of spaces of filtering (…). (idem: 267). By this, the movement of bodies that are crossing the border is directly linked with ordering accommodation. This ordered accommodation reflects the domopolitical logic to regulate and discipline mobility and tends to reproduce its ‘taming’ character. Both the individual that is part of the accommodating process as the citizen that beholds the process is influenced by this materialized image of domopolitical governance: trust is created. The sovereign state fulfils its duty by securing the home from threats, by inviting in those who are ‘permitted’ in the home, by filtering out the ‘bogus’, which is visualised through the accommodations that represent this filtering process. The filtering process this way is not only ‘performed’ at the actual border, but also within the territory of the state after the border is crossed: “Accommodation becomes articulated as both a hospitable and humanitarian provision for those ‘in need’ and a device for managing, monitoring and ‘warehousing’ (…), those under review of domopolitics” (ibid). In other words: “Here the ‘taming’ mobility which is so central to domopolitics is achieved through the reterritorialization of asylum flows into particular, known controllable spaces” (ibid: emphasis added). With this statement, Darling uses Walters rhetoric - that originally mainly aims at the domopolitical external border practices - as a means to explain what happens within the territory in the context of domopolitics.
Within these accommodating processes of asylum seekers, Darling finds another factor that is produced by domopolitics: discomfort. He perceives “(…) accommodation itself as a form of governance through which modes of sovereign power are reinserted into a regime of governmentality to forge an affective politics of discomfort” (idem: 268). The domopolitical logic that underlies this producing of discomfort, is that asylum seekers are not ‘filtered’ yet. They are still perceived as potentially threatening to the home; as an influx that has to be ‘tamed’; as bodies that need to be accommodated by the home,
16
“but [are] not [yet] trusted” (ibid). In other words: “discomfort is practiced as a marker of those not yet admitted to the nation” (idem: 269).
Through the filtering, accommodating and discomforting of incoming asylum seekers, the state can positon them “as those forever at the border” (idem: 264). And within these asylum procedures the state filters, visualises and rationalizes its actions to protect and cherish the borders of the Homeland. The ordering, regulating (i.e. taming) of the influx by domopolitics thus continuously impacts and shapes the internal society.
Internal domopolitics: the locally governed
The analysis of domopolitics and asylum seekers above - indeed described from an internal border point of view - can be argued to be very nation-state-centric. However, the dynamics between mobility and domopolitics do not end with the rule of national governments. The different levels of governance - as Scholten argues - can perceive issues within different logics that can have great impact on the actual implementation and execution of the national government’s ruling. And as asylum seekers have to take residency in a particular locality, it is the government of that precise place that can sometimes have a great saying in aspects of the course of their lives as a migrant. Lebhun therefore argues to perceive “the city and the local political arena as a new and important arena where state borders are being produced and contested”. (Lebhun 2013: 39).
The (re)production of state borders on the local level is a tendency that has not been uncommon over the last few decades (Darling 2016: 6). The domopolitical logics of security, nationhood and territory here are diffused to the local and have created the execution of ‘local border control’ (Lebhun 2013: 38). With local border control “the practice of immigration control, [has] extended responsibility for border policing into new domains of everyday life” (Darling 2016: 7). This means that localities transform the governments’ domopolitical ideas towards actions that can fit the specific locality, but are still in line with the state’s logic. On the other hand, it is exactly on the local scale that state ruling can be negotiated:
“[N]ational laws and regulations cannot be simply imposed on local agencies. Instead, each city has to go through a place-specific process of adoption and implementation, in which various actors with different interests participate. Laws and ordinances (whether they are local or national) also need to be translated into administrative action. Both processes come with plenty of leeway for local actors to modify and soften intended strategies of control.” (Lebhun 2013: 44)
17
Lebhun in his last sentence aims at what Darling (2016) calls “the city as sanctuary”. These are the local governments that take up resistance against the restrictive national immigration laws and try to bend - or sometimes even defect - national ruling to protect the migrants that have taken residency within their sphere of responsibility (Darling 2016; Lebhun 2013). These actions directly intervene with the state-centric logic of domopolitics.
However, according to Lebhun and Darling, even if a city can bend and shape the national alien policy into a less restrictive local implementation, it will always be embedded within national governance. A local government that takes a ‘sanctuary’ or activist position therefore does not immediately distance itself from the domopolitical logic: “agencies and institutions always run the risk of being absorbed into the border regime” (Lebhun 2013: 45; italics added). Because of this embeddedness, I argue, is it impossible to break loose from the domopolitical paradigm. Although being embedded in the national logic, localities can adopt soft domopolitics. Soft domopolitics is like its original (i.e. hard) sibling, founded on three basic principles. As hard domopolitics is centred upon security, nationhood and territory, soft domopolitics centres upon residency, hospitability and inclusion. This is still a form of domopolitics, because there is a main precondition to become part of the home: residency. Citizenship here is based on the jus domocilii principle. Furthermore, by promoting inclusion of residents, the non-residents are directly excluded from being part of the home. And last, the hospitability of the city towards potential newcomers inherently is an act of mercy, not of unconditional inclusion. The hard domopolitical order of the state can thus be found in the local implementation and execution of the immigration policy both in a hard or even harder way, but also, the state logic can be transformed into soft domopolitical logics of a locality.
In the analytical chapters these theoretical ideas will contribute to the understanding of the questions asked in this thesis. Nevertheless, before going there, in the next chapter the methods and data that were used are exemplified.
Chapter 2 - Methods and Data
Because domopolitics is a development that has been emerging over the last couple of decades, the first sub-question - where has domopolitics become visible in the Dutch alien policies? - is analysed both within the context of the present, as will it be placed within a historical context. Two main periods are analysed: as the first policy on asylum seekers other than political refugees was executed on a large scale in 1991 the actual analysis will start from 1989 up to 1999. Before 1991 merely political refugees were permitted, from this point on also asylum seekers from ‘unsafe areas’ where temporarily “tolerated” (Bocker 1998:3). As the analysis will show, during this last decade of the previous century many
18
developments have taken place surrounding the issue of border crossing individuals (BCI’s). The next period that will be analysed is that from 2000 up to 2004, this is a period in which the New Alien Law (Korthals and Cohen 2000) was implemented and in which the Dutch immigration and integration policies where going through turbulent times with many changes and - as will become clear in the next chapters - within a highly politicised climate. Then the study jumps towards contemporary times. The period between 2004 and approximately a decade later that is skipped in this study, was mainly characterised by excrescences of a paradigm on BCI’s that mainly developed in the years previous to it, followed by the credit crisis that produced an attention shift away from immigration and integration towards economic issues. The last part of the analysis therefore focusses on current dynamics between the state and the municipalities surrounding the issue of immigration, integration and asylum in the Netherlands.
In line with the ideas of triangulation, the analysis is divided into three methods. To be able to answer sub-question one, the periods of the nineties and the period between 2000 and 2004 will be analysed through a policy analysis and a media analysis. Both of these analyses contribute to the creation of a clear image of the genealogy and the developments of Dutch domopolitics specifically focussed on the issue of immigration and integration policies. The policy analysis is based on the What’s the Problem Represented to be method (WPR) of Bacchi that is elucidated below. In line with the WPR approach a media analyses on two Dutch newspapers is conducted. The last part is mainly aimed at answering sub-question two - how do Dutch municipalities experience and how do they deal with national domopolitics on the issue of asylum seekers? -, and thus focusses on the current policy combined with local developments on the issue of asylum policy. Therefore interviews were conducted with municipal officials. In the section below the methods will be discussed more extensively.
Analysed policy documents
In this study the policy analysis is centralised surrounding the documents that where produced by three different institutions are analysed: the reports by the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), the research of the Committee Blok (2004), and some important official Dutch policy documents. The WRR is an independent research organ that publishes advisory reports for the Dutch government. On the issues of migration and integration the reports published by the WRR have played an important role in the development of ideas on these areas (Scholten 2008: 207). In the last few decades the WRR has published four reports on these issues, as this study focusses on the developments of domopolitics from the early signs of this phenomenon towards its mature appearance the reports from 1979 (Etnische Minderheden) (WRR 1979), 1989 (Allochtonenbeleid) (WRR 1989) and 2001 (Nederland als immigratiesamenleving) (WRR 2001) on integration and immigration are included
19
in this study. Scholten argues that the reports started off with the main goal of advising the government, however, the report in 2001, so he argues, mainly aims its message on society in general (idem: 213). This development has also had its implications of the influence that the WRR reports have had on the actual policy, in the new millennium the WRR increasingly took in a more critical reflection position towards the policies (ibid). In other words, to analyse the emerge of Dutch domopolitics, the first two reports can be analysed as being a guidance of the Dutch immigration and integration policies, and the 2001 report can be seen as a critical reflection the at that time current policies and societal tendencies.
The second document that is deployed for the analysis of Dutch domopolitics is the final report of a research that was conducted by the Committee commissioned by the Dutch national government. The Committees command was to judge the effectiveness of the Dutch integration policies over the thirty years previously under the assumption that “the integration policy so far has not been successful” (Blok 2004: 9). The report was based on a research including a literature study, many interviews with important actors and in-depth studies of four Dutch cities.
The last the documents that is included in the policy analysis are the official publication of the government according to changes in the immigration and integration laws and policies during the nineties and the first few years of the new millennium. Up for analysis were the Allochtonen-policy (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken 1990), the New Alien Law (Korthals and Cohen 2000), the policy document called Integration in the perspective of immigration (Van Boxtel 2001) and the Report Integration and Ethnic Minorities (Verdonk 2003). These official documents combined with the WRR-advises are analysed through the WPR-method.
Why the WPR method?
“There is nothing inevitable about [a problem]. That is, there are always exigencies that affect how developments take place, putting emphasis on the politics, the contestation, the strategic relations involved in those developments” (Bacchi 2012: 4)
A policy analysis on domopolitics is not directly about the screening of the efficient implementation of a certain policy, at which many forms of policy analysis aim. Governments around the world do not openly or directly aim at a ‘domopolitical policy’. There are no white papers or official policy statements on ‘how to implement domopolitics’, because domopolitics is not an official policy construction. This also is visible in the way Walters outlines his argument. To visualise the domopolitical structures within the UK, Walters deconstructs an official statement to reveal the underlying structures that are the fundaments for the creation of this policy. Through this deconstruction of the UK border policy, Walters finds the six different characteristics that together can be argued to be the fundaments of domopolitics (see
20
theoretical chapter). As domopolitics in itself is a poststructuralist concept, one needs a ditto method to analyse the way the concept is influencing the empirical world. Bacchi (2009) has developed such a method to study policies from a poststructuralist perspective: the What’s the Problem Represented to be (WPR) method.
Instead of aiming at the efficiency of a policy, the WPR method aims at the structures or ‘diagrams’ that underlie a policy: “it suggests that all policy proposals rely on problematizations which can be opened up and studied to gain access to the “implicit system in which we find ourselves”” (Bacchi 2012: 5).In other words, it does not focus on the problem the policy is trying to tackle, but on the problematization which serves as the matrix for particular policies (idem: 1). The method is based on Foucauldian ideas of the way problems are constructed through discursive and non-discursive practices: “The WPR approach rests on a basic premise—that what we say we want to do about something indicates what we think needs to change and hence how we constitute the “problem”” (idem: 4). With this method Bacchi criticizes the so called ‘evidence-based’ policies, which are framed within a problem-solving paradigm. Bacchi argues that this is a unilateral way of approaching a problem because policy here is - inadequately - assumed to be “a neutral, technical process [which] is depoliticising and potentially regressive” (Partridge 2009: 1). Therefore “Bacchi seeks to shift the focus from problem-solving to problem questioning” (idem: 1). “By challenging the view that governments simply 'respond' to 'problems' that exist 'out there', it draws attention to the ways in which particular issues are given a shape, which in turn affects what will be done, or not done.” (Bacchi 2007: 2). In her WPR approach Bacchi furthermore elaborates on the concept of problem representations (PR’s): “I call competing understandings of social issues 'problem representations' and argue that it is crucially important to identify competing problem representations because they constitute a form of political intervention with a range of effects” (idem: 1). An important notion she makes on analysing PR’s, is that one is not aiming at intentionally shaping issues, but on the unintentional premises: “The point, in other words, is not to identify some ‘promises’ as empty, but to draw attention to the assumptions and presuppositions that made it possible to make those ‘promises’ and to develop those policies” (Bacchi 2009: xix).
During his analysis Walters does not directly refers to the importance of problem representation in the analysis of domopolitics. However, by using quotation marks when he addresses words like ‘illegal’, ‘bogus’ and refugee ‘problems’, he constantly reminds the reader that the ‘problems’ in itself are not a given. Furthermore, he directly criticizes the way in which ‘problems’ of illegality are approached: “It’s almost as though our response to them [e.g. illegal acts] needs no further explanation” (Walters 2004: 247). In other words, our response does need further explanation, because it is an important aspect of understanding the ‘problem’. This critical view towards that what is assumed to be the problem, underlines the relevance of using the WPR method in the analysis of Dutch domopolitics.
21
Same as in Walter’s paper, this study will not focus on the efficiency of a certain ‘domopolitical’ or security policy, but on its genealogy, its logics and on the implications that are henceforth produced on the local level. Therefore, it is to be expected that the WPR method will provide a useful framework for this analysis.
What is a WPR analysis?
“Policies give shape to ‘problems’; they do not address them” (Bacchi 2009: x)
Additional to the theoretical foundation that Bacchi bases her WPR method on, she created a pragmatic tool to analyse problematization. In line with the shift towards a problem questioning approach, she asks six questions “[t]o assist in the task of identifying and scrutinizing the effects of problem representations within specific policies” (Bacchi 2007). When conducting a WPR analysis, one ‘works backwards’, starting with a policy and deconstructs it to present the problematization that what underlies this policy (Bacchi 2012: 4). As the time and resources of this analysis are limited, Bacchi’s original model is slightly altered into a model that is workable for this particular study. Question five (see below) will in this study particularly aimed at the media instead of covering every single actor that is involved. The sixth question here, is not as thoroughly studied as was originally aimed at within Bacchi’s original model. These decisions are explained more thoroughly in the next section, as all questions are outlined and exemplified below:
Q 1. What is the problem represented to be in a specific policy?
This is the question with which the WPR analysis takes off. This is according to Bacchi the ‘straightforward’ question: “if a government purposes to do something, what is it hoping to change? And, hence, what does it produce as the problem?” (Bacchi 2009: x). In this way of questioning the policy that is analysed the approach of the problem as ‘constructed’ by the policy itself is already captured. By asking oneself how a problem is produced or represented, one does not take the problem as a given, but as a concept that is influenced by the context in which it is embedded. Therefore, it is that this question serves as a sufficient starting point to enter the WPR analysis. The PR’s within a certain policy can be multiple and even present themselves to be contradictory (idem: xi).
Q 2. What presuppositions or assumptions underlie this representation of the problem?
This second question “refers to background knowledge that is taken-for-granted” (Bacchi 2009: 5). The goal of answering this question lays in the meanings that have to be in place to make something
22
happen, the conceptual logics (ibid). Bacchi specifically expresses that this question is explicitly not aiming at exemplifying biases, but at identifying “the assumptions and/or presuppositions that lodge within the problem representations” (ibid). This question can be answered through the study of the binaries, key concepts and categorizations (idem: 7-9). It is therefore that the WPR analysis partly has to be conducted through the severe analysis of the policy - and as will be argued below - the media.
Q 3. What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the problem be thought about differently?
This question is mainly aiming at the providence of reflection. The simplified question that can be asked here is: “what fails to be problematized?” (idem: 13). By the dominancy of particular PR other issues and perspectives can be silenced. By presenting a certain issue as a problem - and thus as negative - the positive (or alternative) connotations of the issue can implicitly be silenced. By asking this question, these arenas of silence are entered. Again it is the study of the policy discourse that will provide an answer to this question (ibid).
Q 4. What effects are produced by this representation of the problem?
This is the analysis of the allocation of the different roles between the individuals that are touched by a particular policy. Or, in other words, how some are benefited and others are harmed by a certain PR. Bacchi divides these effects is either subjectification effects or lived effects (idem: 15-18). Subjectification effects cover the way in which “constitutive power of policy to shape social relationships, place specific populations in certain positions and form them as particular subjects for government” (Mitropoulos 2015: 34). The latter, the lived effects, is aiming at the concrete (e.g. material) results that a particular PR produces.
Q 5: How the representation is elaborated and disseminated?
The domopolitical logic will probably most visibly come about in the answer that is produced by this question. That is, because PR’s according to Bacchi achieve most of their legitimacy through their audiences (Bacchi 2009: 19). This question is slightly modified to fit this particular research. The original WPR analysis aims at an analysis of all actors that are affected by a certain PR, in this study this question will be mainly answered by Media analysis (exemplified below). As the representation within the media is such an important component of the representation of security and domopolitics (Darling 2014: 79), this analysis will be sufficient to cover this section of the WPR analysis on Dutch domopolitics. It is within this section where the domopolitical alignment of nationhood, territory and security is presumed to be most profoundly visible.
23
Q 6. How has this representation of the problem come about?
The goal of this question is to provide evidence for the falsification of the idea that there is such a thing as a natural evolution towards an inevitable ‘problem’ or policy construction: “the purpose (…) is to highlight the conditions that allow a particular problem representation to take shape and assume dominance” (Bacchi 2009: 11). This question can only be completely answered through a thorough study of the genealogy of all the decisions, and - as Bacchi admits herself - such an analysis is a time- and labour-intensive process (idem: 44). Therefore in this study, because time and resources are limited, the genealogy will indeed be conducted, but in a sober manner. The study is built up through the analysis of Dutch domopolitics through the course of time. This way, the historical context in which the policies are embedded that is important for a coherent WPR analysis - say less thorough - , will indeed be provided.
In this study these six questions are answered through the conduct of an analysis of the policies themselves and a media-analysis. This way the first sub-question - where has domopolitics become visible in the Dutch alien policies? - will is answered. In the next section there will be elaborated on the media-analysis.
Media analysis
The empirical media-analyses consist of the analysis of newspaper articles of two main Dutch newspapers. To cover the different angles of the political spectrum it was decided to conduct an analysis on the following Dutch newspapers: de Volkskrant and Telegraaf. De Volkskrant is described as a progressive quality-newspaper and the Telegraaf as a popular progressive-liberal newspaper (Ward, 2004: 126). The papers were chosen because of their relevance in the public debate, circulation and reputation. Furthermore, these newspapers have quite a similar circulation which makes their range of influence comparable for this study.
The study focusses on an analysis of both of the newspapers form the period of 1995-2004. However it was initially meant to conduct a research from the year of 1990, the online archive of both of the newspaper only starts at respectively 1995 and 1999. As the time and means of this study are limited, the study was dependent on internet resources. For the same reason there was decided to select the articles that where analysed using one concept: asylum seeker. From the Lexis-Nexis data-bank every article in the selected period that contained the word ‘asylum seeker’ or ‘asylum seekers’ was included in this analysis. Specifically this word was chosen because this study focusses on this specific group, it is directly connected to the procedure that is linked to border crossing and it refers to
24
the BCI’s before they have been categorized in different groups like refugees or ‘illegals’; it includes a great range of BCI’s . For de Volkskrant the research turned in 1732 in articles in the period between 1995-1999 and in the 2000-2004 period 2159 stories were found. For the Telegraaf this 201 articles were found in the 1995-1999 period as the newspapers digital archive only is available from the year 1999. In the period between 2000 and 2004 Telegraaf newspaper covered 867 stories on the topic of asylum seekers. Due to time and resource limitations, it is decided not to include the analogous archive in this study. As the newspaper covered a sufficient amount of stories on the studied topic in the 1999-2004 period, this decision is not expected to have substantial effects for the outcome of the analysis. For both newspapers the most relevant were chosen for more thorough analysis and a randomly designated selection was analysed based on headlines. This resulted in a thorough analysis for de Volkskrant of thirty-three articles and for the Telegraaf for thirty-six and a headline selection of respectively 286 and 237 articles. After reading the articles both the headline articles and the thoroughly studied where coded on the basis of content (of the headlines). This means, they were categorized by similarity in subject (e.g. the political debate, statistics and numbers, crime, humanitarian etc.). Totally 523 articles were included of which sixty-nine were studied thoroughly.
Interview
To formulate an answer to the second sub-question ‘how do municipalities experience and how do they deal with national domopolitics on the issue of asylum seekers?’ five interviews were conducted of which four with municipal officials: Roos Van Gelderen (alderman in Leiden municipality), Marijn Willemen (policy advisor at Arnhem municipality), Seppe Raaphorst (policy advisor in the The Hague municipality) and Jan Braat (policy advisor for the municipality of Utrecht). The fifth interview was conducted with Josephine Maasland, an employee of the Dutch Local Government Association - the VNG. The VNG was included because of their authority to speak on behalf of all Dutch municipalities. Furthermore, the VNG is an actor that actively resides in the dynamics between municipalities and the national government. As this study is aiming at the understanding of these dynamics, the VNG is an interesting actor to involve in this study. Because of limited time and means, it was decided to limit the research to municipalities that decided to heed to the COA’s call in the fall of 2015 to open an emergency shelter for asylum seekers. This way the municipalities that decided not to open an emergency shelter are excluded from this study. This decision directs the research towards governments that were somehow willing to participate in the issue. Furthermore, the municipalities were selected on at least one explicit expression on the issue of the sheltering of alyssum seekers in either regional or national media. From these municipalities two big cities - Utrecht and The Hague - and two middle size cities – Leiden and Arnhem - were selected to conduct an interview with.
