Maarten Peter Vink

Dutch 'Multiculturalism' Beyond the Pillarisation Myth

This article is about the state of multiculturalist politics in the Netherlands. It assesses the popular claim that a paradigmatic change has occurred in the Netherlands due to events such as 9/11 and the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. The article argues that although changes are significant, both in discourse and in practice, they must be viewed as part of a process of rethinking the relation between newcomers and the state that goes back as far as the end of the 1980s. Long-standing claims about the exemplary form of multiculturalism in the Netherlands were always ambiguous at least, or even hard to sustain. The article criticises the persistent idea that Dutch accommodating integration policies since the end of the 1970s are an extension of the historical tradition of ‘pillarisation’. Only by going beyond this myth can we understand why recent changes are much less of a break with the past, and why multiculturalism was never accepted or practised as fully as has often been suggested in more stereotypical depictions of Dutch integration policy.

Not Quite Crisp, Not Yet Fuzzy? Assessing the Potentials and Pitfalls of Multi-Value QCA

This article assesses the strengths and shortcomings of multi-value qualitative comparative analysis (mvQCA), a comparative technique for small- to medium-sized data sets that has been integrated in the TOSMANA software developed by Lasse Cronqvist. The main difference with “crisp-set” QCA is that in mvQCA, the conditions can have more values than just the Boolean values 0 and 1, whereas the main difference with “fuzzy-set” QCA is that mvQCA conditions remain discrete. The major advantage of nondichotomous categorization, according to its proponents, is that it reduces the likelihood of contradictory configurations because of a more homogeneous grouping of cases. We give an overview of existing mvQCA applications, with a detailed discussion of two recent publications, and argue that crisp-set and fuzzy-set alternatives should be less easily discarded, as the mvQCA solution comes with substantial set-theoretical costs.

Explaining access to citizenship in Europe: How citizenship policies affect naturalization rates

In Europe, a variety of national policies regulate access to citizenship. This article analyses how citizenship policies affect naturalization rates among immigrants. Our analysis confirms that favourable citizenship policies positively affect naturalization rates, especially among first-generation immigrants with more than 5 but fewer than 20 years of residence. However, most variation is explained by other factors. Immigrants from poor, politically unstable, and non-EU countries are more likely to be a citizen of their European country of residence. Other important predictors of the citizenship status of immigrants are language, years of residence (first generation), and age (second generation). Explanations of naturalization rates in Europe should not only take into account institutional conditions but also include other destination and origin country factors and individual characteristics of immigrants.

Potentials and Pitfalls of Multi-value QCA Response to Thiem

We appreciate the opportunity to reply to the comment by Thiem (2013) on our article on the potentials and pitfalls of multi-value Qualitative Comparative Analysis (mvQCA) (Vink and van Vliet 2009). Our original article was framed as a reflection on the set-theoretic status of the relatively novel technique of mvQCA, which had been introduced by Cronqvist (2004) to deal with the problem of analyzing multichotomous nominal variables, such as religion or types of welfare states. While recognizing the potential of mvQCA, we were unconvinced by Herrmann and Cronqvist’s (2009) argument that mvQCA would be particularly suitable for ‘‘genuinely middle-sized’’ data sets. Further, we observed with some surprise that insofar as mvQCA had been applied, this has been virtually never done to accommodate the use of multichotomous nominal conditions, as originally foreseen. Most importantly, we argued that in set-theoretic terms, these conditions were different from either crisp-set or fuzzy-set conditions. We observed that mvQCA users had so far applied this new technique in a rather unreflective manner.

A Configurational Analysis of Ethnic Protest in Europe

This article analyzes the conditions under which ethnic minorities intensify or moderate their protest behavior. While this question has been previously asked, we find that prior studies tend to generalize explanations across a varied set of ethnic groups and assume that causal conditions can independently explain whether groups are more or less mobilized. By contrast, this study employs a technique – fuzzy-set analysis – that is geared toward matching comparable groups to specific analytical configurations of causal factors to explain the choice for strong and weak protest. The analysis draws on a sample of 29 ethnic minorities in Europe and uses three group and two contextual conditions inspired by Gurr’s ethnopolitical conflict model to understand why some ethnic minorities protest more frequently than others. We find that two group-related factors have the strongest claim to being generalizable: while territorial concentration is a necessary condition for strong protest, national pride is a necessary condition for weak protest. The contextual factors of level of democracy and ethnic fractionalization, which are often emphasized in the literature, and the perceived political discrimination of a group, are neither necessary nor individually sufficient conditions for either strong or weak protest. Hence, they help understanding some cases, but not all, and only in combination with other conditions. Such causal complexity, inherent in the phenomenon of ethnic protest, underscores the need for a case-sensitive, yet comparative, approach.

The ecology of immigrant naturalization: a life course approach in the context of institutional conditions

ABSTRACT Traditionally, immigrants’ propensity to naturalize is attributed to individual characteristics and the origin country. Recently scholars increasingly recognise that naturalisation decisions do not take place in a vacuum: they are conditioned both by the individual life course of immigrants, such as the age at migration and family situation, as well as the opportunity structure set by citizenship policies of the destination country. Yet it is less clear what impact specific policy changes have, and to whom these changes matter most. In this paper we address these questions by analysing citizenship acquisition among first generation immigrants in the Netherlands in light of a restriction in citizenship policy in 2003. We employ unique micro-level longitudinal data from Dutch municipal population registers between 1995 until 2012, which allow us to track naturalisation among different immigration cohorts. We find evidence that indeed naturalisation is part of a larger life course trajectory: immigrants who arrive at a younger age in the Netherlands naturalise more often and so do immigrants with a native partner, or a foreign-born partner who also naturalises. Policy also matters: migrants naturalise later and less often under more restrictive institutional conditions, especially migrants from less developed and politically unstable countries of origin.

Three-Level Games in EU External Migration Policy: Negotiating Mobility Partnerships in West Africa

In order to increase the effectiveness of migration management, the EU increasingly enters into agreements with third countries. Such co-operation aims to engage third countries in migration control mechanisms in exchange for enhanced legal migration opportunities, yet this externalization of migration policy is highly selective with regard to both participating Member States and third countries. In this paper we develop a three-level game perspective to explain why Member States and third countries participate in EU external migration policy initiatives. The three-level game links three sets of actors in two strategic interactions: Member States, EU institutions and third countries. We argue that two factors determine the outcome of negotiations: the cost of no agreement and the autonomy of central decision-makers. The model is illustrated by the successful and failed Mobility Partnership negotiations between EU Member States, the European Commission and, respectively, Cape Verde and Senegal.

The Unbearable Lightness of European Citizenship

Ten years after the Maastricht Treaty came into force, it is still unclear what we should make of the so-called ‘Citizenship of the European Union’. Some commentators have celebrated it as an unmistakable step away from the nation-state paradigm: European citizenship as ‘postnational’ membership in its most elaborate form. Others, however, point towards the largely symbolic nature of the new status and argue that it was only introduced to cover up the Unions legitimacy problems. Creating too high expectations could even run the risk of only strengthening the prevalent scepticism about the ongoing process of European integration. After a brief historical introduction, this paper deals with symbolic aspects and identity, with the practical meaning of European citizenship for peoples daily lives, and concludes with some tentative remarks on the outlook for the future.

Anticipating the citizenship premium: before and after effects of immigrant naturalisation on employment

ABSTRACT Can citizenship improve the economic integration of immigrants, and if so, how? Scholars traditionally understand a citizenship premium in the labour market, besides access to restricted jobs, as the result of a positive signal of naturalisation towards employers. While we do not discard these mechanisms, we argue that explanations should also take into account that migrants anticipate rewards and opportunities of naturalisation by investing in their human capital development. We thus expect to observe improved employment outcomes already before the acquisition of citizenship. We use micro-level register data from Statistics Netherlands from 1999 until 2011 (N = 94,320) to test this expectation. Results show a one-time boost in the probability of having employment after naturalisation, consistent with the prevalent notion of positive signalling. However, we find that the employment probability of naturalising migrants already develops faster during the years leading up to citizenship acquisition, even when controlling for endogeneity of naturalisation. We conclude that it is not just the positive signal of citizenship that improves employment opportunities, but also migrants’ human capital investment in anticipation of naturalisation.

‘Precedent’ and Fundamental Rights in the CJEU's Case Law on Family Reunification Immigration

This paper reviews the incidence of precedent-based practices in the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) case law on family reunification immigration. Particular attention is paid to the use of fundamental rights considerations, and the extent to which they guide the Court’s judicial deliberations in this sovereignty-sensitive area of law. Our review of de facto ‘precedents’, and the extent to which they interact with fundamental rights-related concerns enables us to take stock of the long-term development of the Court’s judicial authority. This longitudinal exercise also enables us to transcend the traditional dichotomy of ‘the CJEU vis-A -vis the member states’ that typically characterizes academic discussions on the role of the Court in processes of EU integration. The paper first considers the relevance of reviewing precedent in the context of the EU legal order. Next, we provide a novel dataset of the CJEU’s jurisprudence in the area of family reunification immigration, as it evolved from 1974 up until today. We deal with the methodological implications of studying ‘precedent’ by presenting a model which numerically structures the incidence of precedent-based patterns. This numerical information allows us to organize our data for a subsequent qualitative in-depth analysis of those precedent-based patterns with the strongest discursive influence on the overall evolution of the case law. Our analysis demonstrates that fundamental rights-based arguments exerted a strong influence on the ideational course of the Court’s jurisprudence in this area, albeit in a non-linear manner.