Liza Mügge

Beyond Dutch borders: transnational politics among colonial migrants, guest workers and the second generation

Despite widespread scepticism in receiving societies, migrants often remain loyal to former homelands and stay active in their politics. Beyond Dutch Borders is about such ties. Combining extensive fieldwork with quantitative data, this book compares how transnational political involvement among guest workers from Turkey and post-colonial migrants from Surinam living in the Netherlands has evolved over the past half-century. It looks at Turks seeking to improve their position in Dutch society, Kurds lobbying for equal rights in Turkey and Surinamese hoping to boost development in their country of origin. Sending-state governments, political parties and organisations are shown to be key shapers of transnational migrant politics both in opposition to, and support of, homeland-ruling elites. Meanwhile, it becomes clear that migrants’ border-crossing loyalties and engagement have not dented their political integration in the receiving societies - quite the opposite. Certainly in this respect, the sceptics have been wrong.

Quotas and Intersectionality: Ethnicity and Gender in Candidate Selection

Gender equality is not fully realised when it is restricted to ethnic majority men and women. This article examines how gender quotas as a form of equality policy affect ethnic minority groups, in particular, the gender balance among ethnic minority candidates for political office. Our analysis focuses on the selection of ethnic minority candidates in Belgium, where legally binding quotas exist, and in the Netherlands, where they do not. Drawing on 23 interviews with central actors in four main parties in each country, we find that the process of ethnic minority candidate selection is highly gendered: in both countries, ethnic minority women are represented in larger numbers than ethnic minority men. But gender quotas play a lesser role in this than the more general concern for diversity on electoral lists, the institutionalisation of gender/ethnicity within political parties and the strategic choices of party leaders.

Dual Nationality and Transnational Politics

This article focuses on two migrant groups in the Netherlands, one in which the majority is naturalised (Surinamese) and one in which the majority has dual nationality (Turks and Kurdish-Turks). It explores the impact of home and host states’ citizenship regimes on: (1) the citizenship choices of individual migrants; (2) their (trans)national political participation; and (3) the transnational political participation of homeland-based non-state actors such as (return) migrant organisations and political parties. I conclude that transnational political orientations are often responses to exclusionary citizenship regimes in sending countries, which deserve greater attention in studies of migrant transnationalism than they have hitherto received.

Intersectionalizing European politics: bridging gender and ethnicity

This Dialogues section brings together research from two hitherto separate interdisciplinary strands of European scholarship on politics: Gender Studies, and Migration and Ethnic Studies. Combining theories, concepts, methods, and findings, the papers demonstrate what each field can learn from the other. By exploring various forms of citizenship and representation of ethnic minorities in Western Europe, this section addresses the key contributions of Gender Studies and Migration and Ethnic Studies: intersectionality and the critique of methodological nationalism, respectively. Intersectionality challenges scholars to cross gender with other categories such as ethnicity. Methodological nationalism refers to the naturalization of national categories; critics dispute the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of contemporary politics. Both approaches are far from mainstream in political science, and despite their potential they are rarely combined. This essay argues that central future challenges for political science are (1) to mainstream intersectional analysis; (2) to be critical of the construction of taken-for-granted categories and the way such “fixed” categories result from our focus on nation-states; and (3) to develop new mix-method toolkits to make this exercise feasible.

Gender and populist radical-right politics: An introduction

Populist parties have become a prominent and permanent feature of contemporary politics. Although populism is not a new phenomenon, it has been on the rise across the globe in recent years. Contemporary manifestations of populism include the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and the Tea Party in the United States. In Europe, particularly populist radical-right (PRR) parties began to appear in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, becoming arguably the most successful ‘new’ political party family in decades. There is no shortage of scholarship on the PRR. The focus is generally on defining it, on why PRR parties are successful, and on their influence on governments, party systems and public policy. Despite this abundant literature, research rarely focuses on the relationship between gender and the populist radical right. To be sure, there are a few important studies on the topic. The most extensive survey of the literature is provided by Cas Mudde in the chapter ‘Männerparteien’ in his 2007 book Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Here Mudde discusses a few studies on the topic, most notably one by Helga Amesberger and Brigitte Halbmayr that, he argues, is one of the few proper studies of the relationship between populism and gender. However, given that the study was published in German, its impact has been limited. More recently, a number of studies have been published that examine how the

Ideologies of nationhood in sending-state transnationalism: Comparing Surinam and Turkey

Why do some sending states encourage continued emigrant involvement whereas others do not? And to what extent does sending-state transnationalism lead to a redefinition of borders? Although research on sending-state transnationalism is flourishing, so far it only covers the positive cases and remains silent on states inactive in this respect. This article addresses this lacuna by comparing transnational costs, benefits and strategies of two radically different sending states, Surinam and Turkey, including one that never reached out to its emigrants. The two sending states have very different ideologies of nationhood: one based on ‘unity in diversity’ on one territory (Surinam), the other based on ethnic nationalism (Turkey). Homeland ideologies of nationhood, this article argues, play a significant role in including or excluding emigrants and their descendants. In this way sending states reinforce rather than deterritorialize their national borders.

Sexually harassed by gatekeepers: reflections on fieldwork in Surinam and Turkey

This research note focuses on the intersection of gender, sexuality, and age relations with gatekeepers by concentrating on explicit and implicit forms of sexual harassment and intimidation by male gatekeepers toward the author, a female researcher. Comparing fieldwork experiences in radically different cultural settings (Turkey and Surinam) shows that the general dynamics are strikingly similar: being (seen as) powerless can be both a bane and a boon in getting access in the field and information through gatekeepers.

Transnationalism as a Research Paradigm and Its Relevance for Integration

This chapter reviews the state of the art of scholarship on the transnationalism-integration nexus. It examines the view emanating from the existing literature on the relation between immigrants’ transnational activities and ties to the country of origin, on the one hand, and “integration” in the receiving country, on the other. The review is guided by the popular political question: Can transnationalism and integration be mutually beneficial, or is it a zero-sum relation? The joint reading of the literature on transnationalism in Europe points to two observations. First, transnationalism is costly. Economic transnationalism requires financial capital, for instance, for remittances or investments. Sociocultural transnationalism requires social capital in the form of available contacts, while political transnationalism requires resources to work politics in the homeland. Immigrants who are low on economic, sociocultural, or political resources are less likely to engage in transnationalism. How this relates to integration depends on the type and form of transnationalism being considered. It is relatively inexpensive for immigrants to be involved in country of residence transnational activities, particularly if this is paid for by homeland-based actors such as a political party. Thus, only those who have enough capital—implying a degree of integration in the host country—can afford to engage in transnational activities. Second, many studies show that what happens “there” has consequences for what happens “here”. Feelings of exclusion in the homeland may foster integration in the host county, while factual exclusion may trigger more radical forms of transnationalism to change the situation there.

Transnational diaspora lobbying: Europeanization and the Kurdish question

Turkeys European Union (EU) negotiations are generally believed to positively affect the rights of ethnic minorities in Turkey. Through a detailed case study, this article examines how members of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe aim to influence this process through lobbying, and to what extent ‘Europeanization’ is channelling the organisation and strategies of the Kurdish lobby. We focus on three facets of transnational diaspora lobbying: political opportunity structures (understood as formal institutions), discursive opportunity structures and the organisational flexibility of activists to adapt to new opportunities. Drawing on interviews, EU documents and documentation from Brussels-based Kurdish organisations, we find the growing importance of European institutions to be both a boon and a bane for transnational diaspora lobbying on all three counts.

Introduction: Intersectionality in European political science research:

Power and conflicts over inclusion and exclusion are central themes in political science research. Political scientists systematically describe, explain, and theorize how power is acquired and exercised (Caramani, 2014). Doing so raises common sets of questions: how, why, and when do actors – including individuals, groups, parties, organizations, and nations – obtain positions of power? How, why, and when do they abstain from it? And how, why, and when are actors structurally disadvantaged in the political sphere? Over the past decades, scholars have scrutinized how power structures are gendered. One line of inquiry has sought to understand how to make women more visible in the public sphere. A second has sought to uncover the (hidden) gender biases in the workings of political institutions and processes such as political parties, legislatures, social movements, welfare states, and nation-building projects (Goertz and Mazur, 2008; Waylen et al., 2014). Building upon these lines of inquiry, the concept of ‘intersectionality’ offers a lens to study how political power is mediated by the interactions of diverse positions of privilege with positions of disadvantage. Intersectionality refers to the idea that experiences of inclusion and exclusion are not solely gendered, but intersect with a range of other identity markers such as race, ethnicity, social class, and ability (Crenshaw, 1991; Hancock, 2007). Intersectionality draws attention to the complexity of social relations and to the specific concern that multiple power (in)equalities and (dis)advantages do not operate in isolation but interact and interlock in a complex manner. Intersectionality has been characterized as the contribution from gender studies with the most potential impact for social science research (McCall, 2005). While intersectionality is increasingly incorporated by scholars who study the politics of gender, it has not yet travelled to the wider political science community. The aim of this special section is to introduce intersectionality to a broader political science audience. In this collection of four research articles, intersectionality travels to different corners of the discipline including political theory, comparative politics, social movement studies, and public policy. In doing so, we make two distinct contributions. First, these articles offer insights into how intersectionality can be applied in political science theory and research. Second, this