This article discusses how Dutch politics of citizenship in the (colonial) past and the present create distinctions, distribute status, rights, opportunities, securities and wealth and how they evoke agency. This process is analysed first by exploring the politics of citizenship in colonial times; second, the implications of political decolonisation for citizenship are discussed; third, present day dynamics around Dutch populism and how they connect to autochthony and Islamophobia are discussed; fourth, a present-day example of the phenomenon termed 'citizenship alienism' will be analysed. These historical and contemporary discourses demonstrate how through the years, Dutch majoritarian politicians have constructed a distinction between 'conditional' versus 'unconditional' citizens through references to a mythical core Dutch nation. The politics of inequality under populism are in that sense not new, but, rather, present-day expressions of a much older Dutch political phenomenon.

Over de discursieve strijd om de betekenis van de ntr-televisieserie De Slavernij 1 guno jones Slavery is (Not) Our History: On the Public Debate and Divergent Meanings of the ntr Television Series Slavery This article discusses the debates that followed the broadcasting of Dutch ntr-television series Slavery (De Slavernij) in 2011. While the series was aimed at informing the general public about this silenced part of Dutch history, the subsequent debates on the series revealed fault lines in Dutch society with regard to ideas on how to know and represent slavery adequately. Although most participants, in line of a positivist epistemology, made appeals to historical facts, these debates clearly demonstrated how knowledge and representations of slavery are positioned in a social and academic field that is always characterised by power relations. Postcolonial critics, whose voices are underrepresented in Dutch academia and media, held very different perspectives on the nature of 'valid' paradigms, 'true' facts, 'proper' interpretations, 'appropriate' historical referents and representations concerning slavery to people who praised the series. These polarised debates pose the question of how to engage with the history of slavery without resorting to (biological) essentialism that is precisely one of its potent legacies 'we' want to overcome. 'Heeft iemand in de zaal ooit goed naar de gouden koets gekeken!? Weten jullie eigenlijk wel wat daarop afgebeeld staat!?' Met woorden van gelijke strekking vroeg Jeffrey Pondaag van het Comité Nederlandse Ereschulden tijdens een door Kosmopolis Utrecht en Debatcentrum Tumult georganiseerd

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