Suchergebnisse

Going beyond the practical obstacles of and facilitators for inclusive government communication, this study stresses the underlying tension between democratic and bureaucratic values in administrative structures and its implication for inclusive communication. The clash between on the one hand efficiency, market-driven patterns, and impartiality and on the other hand individual rights, advocating equal rights and social justice shows that in coming to terms with the reality of superdiverse societies governments need to reconcile these values on the level of actual decision-making and behavior by public communication practitioners.

Meeting is mating: utopia or reality? . The topic of stimulating interethnic contact – especially at schools – is common in the Dutch policy debates since the early 1980s and 1990s. The municipality of Rotterdam, the second largest city in the Netherlands, established
the so-called "friendship school" in 2003 in an attempt to stimulate interethnic contact. The label indicates schools that are situated in homogenous neighborhoods that are either populated with autochthonal groups or immigrant groups. The friendship project means undertaking joint
activities with schools in other neighborhoods with the aim of having pupils meeting pupils from different socio-economic, ethnic or cultural groups. Such contacts are assumed to increase mutual understanding and tolerance, as originally expressed in the so-called contact hypothesis. However,
this hypothesis has not remained unchallenged. The central question in this study was whether policy makers and civil society organizations didn't assume too easily that interethnic contact would lead to success. The results of this study show that children and teachers evaluate and
experience this so-called friendship school both as positive and negative. The most important outcome of this study however is that stimulating interethnic contact at schools does not necessarily mean that all the conditions derived from the contact hypothesis should be met. To set up successful
interethnic meetings at schools, one must above all make sure that children from different groups are not aware of any unequal conditions between them and one must not include cultural and ethnical differences in the activities for children.

Integration of migrants in Dutch society is a continuous political concern. The regulations governing the immigrant integration processes, and the formal demands to the migrants have been revised several times. Inevitably, the process requires the immigrant to engage in bureaucratic contacts. We postulate that these bureaucratic contacts have a reinforcing or a dampening effect on the integration process, hence on its success. We deployed a grounded research approach in order to investigate this assumption. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 51 migrants. We conclude that bureaucratic contacts have considerable impact on many aspects of the migrants' lives. The observed patterns of positive and negative loops with both favorable and unfavorable consequences for migrants demonstrate the systematic reality in which integration processes develop. The bureaucratic contacts – or lack thereof – are constantly used by migrants to evaluate their situation and to decide on new actions. This in turn sets off a chain reaction that impacts both bureaucratic contacts later on and the way migrants integrate in Dutch society.

AbstractDutch immigration and integration policies are being interpreted and implemented by local street‐level bureaucrats. We carried out 28 semi‐structured interviews with integration coaches, integration teachers and client managers in order to understand the dilemmas they face, and to explain their subsequent behaviour. The results show that although organizational characteristics such as the bureaucratic burden made street‐level bureaucrats reluctant to enlarge their discretionary space at the expense of policy rules, their willingness to help clients often transcends these boundaries under a combination of three conditions: high client motivation, extreme personal distress of the client, and negative assessment of existing policies and policy instruments (both in terms of fairness and practicality). Furthermore, street‐level bureaucrats were found to be constantly reinterpreting and revising their roles.

This paper aims to unravel how superdiverse cities re-imagine themselves in response to migration-related diversity. Based on a double case study on the branding strategies of two superdiverse Dutch cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, this paper shows that although diversity is part of the brand identity in both cities, it is not used prominently in brand communications or in urban planning. Place brands are constructed in wider discursive and political settings that affect whether and how migration-related diversity is used in the symbolic representation of places as well as in urban planning. Migration-related diversity is re-defined strategically (as 'cosmopolitan' and 'international') for two reasons: (1) to turn it into an asset that enhances the brand, and (2) to align the brand with existing policies and political discourses on migration and accommodate political pressures. City marketers have depoliticized place branding. Marketing logic pushed migration related-diversity to the background, because according to the city marketers diversity does not help a city to stand out.