In this contribution we aim at analyzing the effects of both urban labor markets and spatial segregation on the ethnocentrism of natives¹. In particular, we will try to establish what the relative effects are of labor-market opportunities and spatial segregation on ethnocentrism concerning the distribution of scarce economic resources. Is it first and foremost rooted in job competition? Or is it primarily related to meeting people of different ethnic backgrounds in the everyday life of urban neighborhoods and districts? Or is there maybe a combined effect of these two spheres?

In the field of urban studies, ethnic relations are usually...

In the last decades social mixing programs have become a key ingredient of urban policy throughout Europe. There are important political motives for paying attention to ‘the neighborhood’: neighborhoods of poverty in cities in Western Europe and North America have been the stage of riots and unrest for more than three decades now and recent examples in Leeds/Bradford and the French urban banlieues are fresh in many people’s memories. Consequently, many politicians in France, the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK have become convinced that rigorous transformations of the so-called ‘problematic neighborhoods’ is unavoidable. The aim of the resulting area-based programs...

In this chapter we present our most recent research on the effects of the Dutch urban renewal programs based on two research projects. The first project (Veldboer et al. 2008) searched for the ideal middle class: which members of the middle class were most likely to be tolerant of and helpful to poor residents in urban renewal areas. The second research project (Van der Graaf, 2009) explored the emotional ties of residents in deprived neighborhoods in the Netherlands and the changes these residents experienced in their attachment to the neighborhood when urban renewal programs were operating in their area.

Although...

Concentrations of ethnic businesses in deprived areas were until recently mostly seen as isolated phenomena. Ignored by mainstream consumers, and internally competing for local customers with the same ethnic background, ethnic entrepreneurs had their own culturally determined parallel economies. However, things have changed. The rise of a symbolic economy (Zukin, 1995) has opened up break-out perspectives for multi-ethnic neighborhoods as sites of leisure and consumption. In this context ethnic entrepreneurs have the opportunity to move beyond small-scaled local demand and supply by actively making use of the ‘exotic’ and ‘ethnic’ symbols available to them (Light & Rosenstein 1995). In Anglo-Saxon countries...

On 5 January 2009, Ahmed Aboutaleb was installed as mayor of Rotterdam – the first mayor of the Netherlands with dual Dutch-Moroccan nationality, and also the first Muslim mayor of a large West-European city. His appointment was controversial. Rotterdam is not only the city that has the largest proportion of immigrants of any Dutch city; it is also the place where Pim Fortuyn gained firm support for his populist right-wing party, Livable Rotterdam (cf. Burke 2009). At present, seven years after Fortuyn was murdered, Livable Rotterdam is the second largest party in the city council. When Aboutaleb was appointed as...

In recent years, ‘citizenship’ has become a much-discussed topic in Dutch politics and media (Hurenkamp & Tonkens 2008, pp. 15-16). In public debate – in the Netherlands as well as in other Western countries – discussions often focus on the supposedlack ofcitizenship (Van den Brink et al. 2004; Van der Lans 2005, Van den Brink & Petter 2005; Hurenkamp & Tonkens 2008). In this chapter,¹ however, we will home in on expressions of what we call ‘vital citizenship ’ in the context of Dutch city neighborhoods. We will look at present-day expressions of viable and productive citizenship: initiatives of citizens (inter-)...

Analyzing civic engagement is often a nostalgic affair. Prominent points of reference are either the 1950s and its robust communities of dutiful citizens or the 1960s and the contentious action of rights-aware citizens. In the following, I try to construct a nostalgic-free take on civic engagement in the Netherlands in the early 21^stcentury. Using a dataset of very loosely organized Dutch citizen groups, I demonstrate that the well-behaved practice of the dutiful citizen and the critical practice of the emancipated citizen are both alive and well, and often in the same person or the same community. I argue that...

The past 25 years have witnessed a policy of deinstitutionalization for psychiatric patients and people with intellectual disabilities, both in the Netherlands and abroad. No longer banished to institutions in the countryside, the policy posits that it would be better for these people to once again be a part of society, to live in ordinary neighborhoods in towns and villages. While there would be additional support for these individuals, the idea was that they would live in their own houses (instead of institutions) as independently and autonomously as possible. Since the late 1990s, this policy has broadly been referred to...

Moroccan migrant women in the Netherlands are the objects of heated debate. Their emancipation and social mobility has been the concern of politicians and policy makers for years now and their lives and practices the object of many policy interventions. The social networks of Moroccan migrant women (first generation, that is to say, women that themselves migrated to the Netherlands) often appear in discussions on their social position. On the one hand, many worry that Moroccan women are isolated, on the other, the ties of Moroccan migrants are supposedly many but bonding and restraining. The precarious position of Moroccan women...

This chapter is a reflection on the studies that we have conducted in recent years concerning the relationship between policy governance and front-line governance.¹ Attention to front-line governance is consistent with the re-evaluation of the operational side of public governance that began in the Netherlands and other Western countries in 2000 (Tops 2003; Hill and Hupe 2002). This process of re-evaluation did not come out of the blue; it was a reaction to a crisis in which public administration had landed. In the Netherlands, the name of Pim Fortuyn is associated with this crisis (Cuperus 2003; Pels 2004; Couwenberg 2004;...

National commotion ensued in February 2008 about the ‘handshaking incident’, which occurred in the Amsterdam city district of Slotervaart. While on a working visit, an assistant of an Amsterdam alderman is warned that a Muslim ‘street coach’ would not be willing to shake her hand. This warning is heard by a journalist from a large national newspaper and appears in an article about the working visit the next day (Plaggenborg 2008). There is widespread indignation: how can it be that a ‘street coach’ employed by the local authority does not share a commonly held norm like handshaking as a form...

The active involvement of neighborhood residents in their neighborhood, and their participation in neighborhood improvement programs are important issues for policy-makers and scholars. If we understand the conditions under which neighborhood residents can be motivated to become actively involved in their neighborhood, this may help to create public order at the local level (Sampson 2005). Policymakers invite individual residents to ventilate their ideas on how to improve the quality of the neighborhood, and indeed have funding available for these activities. For example, a recent inventory of ideas from residents in Hoograven (Utrecht) resulted in thirteen small and easy to implement...

Spatial problems increasingly transcend administrative boundaries. Answers to questions regarding new spatial dynamics have to be found in the urban networks, with a multitude of different interests and conflicts. The urban regions, often undefined politically-administratively, are becoming the playing field in which policy-making and its execution should occur (Healey et al. 1997). The fragmentation within the urban regions, the internal competition and the often uneven distribution of costs and benefits, however, often limit the creativity in which spatial developments take place (Levy 1992; Goetz & Kayser 1993; Salet et al. 2003; Stein 2005). A coordination dilemma exists (Scharpf 1997). Attempts to...