Deconstructing the Dutch multicultural model: A frame perspective on Dutch immigrant integration policymaking

Abstract

Dutch immigrant integration policies have often been labelled ‘multiculturalist’. This article empirically and conceptually challenges the idea of a Dutch multicultural model. First, it deconstructs the image that Dutch policies would have been driven by a single, coherent and consistent model, by drawing attention to the much more dynamic processes of problem framing, frame-shifts and frame conflicts that characterize Dutch policymaking. Second – and as a result of this dynamic perspective – it will become clear that Dutch policies were not that multicultural at all. Adopting a neo-institutionalist perspective, it reconceptualizes ‘models of integration’ as specific discourses or ‘frames’. On the basis of a rigorous analysis of policy documents and public debate (media records and parliamentary records), as well as an extensive review of the Dutch and international literature, the article analyzes how immigrant integration policies in the Netherlands have been framed over the past decades, and how the rise and fall of specific frames can be accounted for.