No abstract

Like elsewhere in Europe, a discourse that is hostile to migrants in general and Muslims in particular has emerged in Dutch politics and media. Can we understand this Dutch migrant-hostile discourse as a kind of racism, i.e. cultural racism? The authors studied this discourse (Dutch political and media texts) and its impact on the lived experiences of Dutch Moroccan Muslims in work settings (21 interviews). They found little evidence of the concept of cultural racism as long as it maintains notions of biological or genetic hierarchy, while it becomes redundant once it abandons such notions. Alternative concepts like cultural essentialism and cultural fundamentalism are sufficient to understand this discourse as well as its impact on Moroccan Muslims’ lived experiences. Cultural fundamentalism has become successful because it belongs to a different category than racism.

Racioethnic inequality is a persistent trait of labour markets in countries that receive transnational migration flows. Little is known about the societal factors that influence the production of such inequality. Based on research among employees of the Dutch national tax administration, this article identifies the rise of a migrant-hostile discourse that has come to dominate Dutch politics and media since 2000 as an example of a societal factor that aggravates racioethnic closure in career advancement. It shows that tensions among colleagues triggered by public events that express this discourse fuel the career insecurities of migrant employees in particular. This insecurity has negative career consequences for them. The article argues that the study of racioethnic inequality in the labour markets of migrant-receiving countries needs to include a focus on the impact of (changes in) dominant discourses in the media and the political arena on migrants and migration.

In many countries, migrant/ethnic minority workers earn less than non-migrant/ethnic majority employees. This pay gap is not only attributable to migrant/ethnic minority employees having acquired less human capital or social capital, to the impact of government policies and to discrimination. Based on both qualitative and quantitative data collected in 2010, this case study of the job segregation component of the wage disadvantages of migrant employees in a Dutch public organization identifies several other factors. Migrant workers'/ethnic minority employees' lower levels of participation in work-related communication and the application of socio-ideological labour control also widen this earnings gap. Moreover, migrant workers'/ethnic minority employees' institutional and relational uncertainties, due to their subordinated position in Dutch society, help to explain their lower levels of participation in work-related communication and how socio-ideological labour control works out negatively for them.

Transnational migration flows have revitalised the interest in ethnicity in social sciences. The ethnic boundary approach (Barth, Wimmer) argues for a non-essentialist understanding of ethnicity and calls for detecting the factors that turn migrants into ethnic minorities. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Dutch police officers between 2008 and 2013, this article presents three factors that together constitute a structural framework that produces events of ethnic boundary construction (salient ethnic identity plus ethnic closure) between migrant and non-migrant officers: (1) ethnicised precarity; (2) ethnic conflicts triggered by the ethnicising discourse in Dutch media and politics on migrants and migration; and (3) the quasi-therapeutic management style applied in the police organisation. It further calls for a differentiated understanding of migrants’ precarity, questions explanations of ethnic closure in terms of stereotypes and critically scrutinises socio-psychological approaches of ethnicity and diversity management.