Marlou Schrover

Niches, Labour Market Segregation, Ethnicity and Gender

The topic of this JEMS special issue is how the formation of ethnic niches is gendered. We combine theories on niching with those on gendered labour market segregation and show that there are similarities in the underlying processes and explanations. The interaction between niching and gendered labour market segregation takes place at four points. In the first place, entrepreneurship is less of an option for immigrant women than it is for immigrant men. Yet, in some sectors, immigrant women have more options for entrepreneurship than they had in their countries of origin. Their participation in the niche, as workers or as entrepreneurs, strengthens the niche and ensures its continuity. Secondly, womens participation in some niches leads to demands for highly flexible child-care and thus the development of a further niche. In the third place, the concentration of immigrant women in domestic work takes shape as a niche, especially as this sector becomes more ethnicised. The domestic sector, furthermore, is divided into sub-sectors, which leads to niching within a niche. Niches—including domestic work—offer an environment that is regarded as safe, and near to the private sphere. Fourthly, earlier studies have shown how the labour market is divided into a primary and a secondary segment. In the first segment, jobs are fixed and there is a career perspective. In the second, work is flexible and there is no career progression. Immigrants and women are more often found in the second segment. Research presented here indicates that work that is generally regarded as womens work proves also to be accessible to immigrant men. This implies that segregation occurs less between sexes and more between the second and the first segment of the labour market.

Introduction: the language of inclusion and exclusion in the context of immigration and integration

Abstract When migrant status and citizenship are defined by means of state categories, the language of inclusion and exclusion is key to an understanding of their contemporary shape and historical transformation. This introductory article provides an overview of some of the most relevant concepts in the discourse analysis of in- and exclusion, specifically with a view to the functioning of nation-state categories. It discusses forms of discursive problematization, such as defining, claiming, legitimizing, expanding, sensationalization and suggestion, and it connects these to the discursive drawing of boundaries discussed by the authors contributing to this issue. They focus on discursive constructions of ‘illegality’, race, class, gender, immigrant integration and transnationalism. We argue that, as state categorizations continuously differ, both the historical analysis of their genesis, functioning and transformation and the contemporary analysis of their effectuation in practices are crucial to an understanding of in- and exclusion.

Spatial concentrations and communities of immigrants in the Netherlands, 1800-1900

Spatial concentrations of immigrants are commonly regarded as a measure for integration of migrants into the host society. The underlying assumption is that concentrations can be equated with communities. By looking at concentrations in Utrecht both over a long period of time (a century) and at the level of individual immigrants we show that the concentrations remained in the same locality but showed a high turnover amongst their inhabitants, and thus little time for any form of coherent group to develop. Concentrations can therefore not be equated with communities, and integration cannot be measured by looking at concentrations alone. In this article we investigate the relationship between space and community. We question the existence of a simple relationship between spatial proximity and community by looking at the immigrants who came to the Dutch town of Utrecht in the nineteenth century. The question we want to answer is how spatial concentration related to the formation of ethnic communities. The assumption that the extent of concentration amongst immigrants can be used as a measure for integration goes back to the 1920s when the Chicago School, including sociologists Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, first used spatial distance as a measure for social distance. Assimilation was judged by looking at the dispersion of immigrants over neighbourhoods. 1 Many recent authors continue to see spatial assimilation as an especially salient dimension of the assimilation

Family in Dutch migration policy 1945–2005

This article looks at how and why the concept of ‘family’ was used in Dutch migration policy in the period between 1945 and 2005. Throughout this period differences were made between migrant women and migrant men. Whereas the migration of men was associated with labour migration, the migration of women was equated with family migration. Migrant women were constructed as wives and mothers (and not as workers). This construction of women was combined with a victimhood discourse in which women were presented as victims of repressive religion (usually Islam), domestic violence, trafficking and prostitution, and discriminatory government policy. The victimhood discourse was successfully used to acquire rights for migrant women (mostly the right to stay), but as a result all migrant women came to be seen as vulnerable and in need of protection. In this article, I show how this combined family and victimhood discourse was used by governments, by (migrant) organizations and, to a lesser extent, in court cases to create differences between migrant men and women. The ‘success’ of the victimhood discourse is not only explained by the fact that it fitted (Western) ideas on femininity. It was also used to give a humanitarian face – albeit beneficial to women only – to an essentially restrictive immigration policy.

History of Slavery, Human Smuggling and Trafficking 1860–2010

This chapter is not about what was trafficking, smuggling and slavery, but about when and why migration was framed in newspapers and in policy papers in the terms of trafficking, smuggling and slavery, and about when, how and why this changed over the past 150 years. Trafficking in women was metaphorically equated with slavery in the nineteenth century. Campaigners found that trafficking of women was a topic that was appealing to a larger public, and as a result to politicians. In 1920s, the definition of trafficking started to converge with that of slavery. Slavery was defined very broadly, as trafficking had before. These very broad definitions served two purposes. First, it meant that the alleged problem was inflated: it touched many people, although it was impossible to estimate how many people precisely, because of the fleeting definition. Second, the very broad and shifting definition, and the linking of other issues to it such as organ harvesting, genital cutting and honour killings meant that the problem could never be solved. It could remain on the agenda endlessly. Precisely that was the gain and the aim of the broad definitions. Trafficking, smuggling and slavery provide leverage for addressing and tackling other subjects, such as justifying restrictions on mobility and control. Rather strikingly, not all forms of assisted travel were labelled smuggling or trafficking, even not when large sums of money changed hands and laws were explicitly and openly evaded.

The Deportation of Germans from the Netherlands 1946–1952

Between 1946 and 1948 Dutch authorities planned to deport all 25,000 Germans from the Netherlands. This article is based on an analysis of parliamentary debates and newspaper reports. It offers a new explanation for why these deportations were stopped. A concerted effort from the press, clergy and charitable organisations provided arguments to change policies, however the Minister of Justice did not defend changes in policy by copying any of these arguments. He phrased his policy in terms of success: policies had been fine-tuned, not fundamentally changed. Within a relatively short period (between 1945 and 1948) the discourse changed from revenge to pity. Papers pointed out that if the Dutch continued to deport all Germans they were no better than the Gestapo.