NAZLY DEHGANIAZAR

Abstract

This study examines the concept of integration by moving away from an analysis of

the failure or success of integration in the Netherlands, towards one which identifies the ways

in which the concept of integration is constructed and re-constructed by members in Dutch

society, with a main focus on Iranian immigrants. Additionally, this piece examines the ways

in which the politics of integration affect sentiments of inclusion, identity and belonging of

this particular immigrant group. Through analysis of the ways in which Iranian immigrants in

the Netherlands cope with politics of integration, this piece argues for the adoption of new

perspectives and approaches to the integration discourse in the Netherlands. Rather than

using sentiments of exclusion and unbelonging of immigrant communities as an affirmation

of their ‘failure to integrate’, policy-makers are urged to move away from this one-sided

approach. By re-thinking this policy’s priorities and points of focus, we might find alternative

means by which to stimulate a more inclusive approach towards members of Dutch society.

Table of Contents

Memoirs ................................................................................................................................................. 1

Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................................... 5

The Research ......................................................................................................................................... 5

1.1 Research Question ...................................................................................................................... 6

1.2 Research Population .................................................................................................................... 7

1.2.1 Enghelabe Eslami ........................................................................................................................ 8

1.2.2 The Participants .......................................................................................................................... 9

1.3 Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 11

Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................................................. 15

The integration concept ...................................................................................................................... 15

2.1 How is it Defined? .................................................................................................................... 17

2.1.1 Integration or Assimilation?...................................................................................................... 21

2.1.2 What Should Integration Be? .................................................................................................... 24

2.2 ‘Culturespeak’ ........................................................................................................................... 26

2.2.1 Survival of the Individualist ...................................................................................................... 29

Chapter 3 ............................................................................................................................................. 31

Collective Identity ............................................................................................................................... 31

3.1 Identity ...................................................................................................................................... 32

3.2 ‘Feeling Dutch’ ......................................................................................................................... 36

3.3 Allochthony and Autochthony .................................................................................................. 40

Chapter 4 ............................................................................................................................................. 44

Roots, Soil and Belonging ................................................................................................................... 44

4.1 Rootedness and ‘Home’ ............................................................................................................ 45

4.2 Iranians as Guests ..................................................................................................................... 51

Chapter 5 ............................................................................................................................................. 55

Cause and Effect ................................................................................................................................. 55

5.1 Post 9/11 Sentiments ................................................................................................................. 55

5.2 Radicalization of Muslim Youth ............................................................................................... 59

5.3 Acceptance is the Magic Word ................................................................................................. 60

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 64

Premonitions ........................................................................................................................................ 66

Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................ 68

1

Memoirs

An instant sense of familiarity washes over me when I enter Darya’s home. Walking

through her small, yet open and light apartment, there is a strong feeling of comfort and

welcoming warmth. Large Persian rugs cover the living room and dining room floor, and I

am reminded of myself as a small child, tracing the patterns on the rug in my own home with

my hands as if I was creating these incredibly intricate shapes on a blank canvas. The white

walls of her Dutch home are decorated with pictures and colourful paintings, with plants and

flowers bringing the whole room to life. A teapot, glasses and nabaat1 stand on the coffee

table, and I am told to make myself comfortable and have a seat on the sofa. She pours me a

glass of chaii and we make some small-talk about how her family is, how my family is, until

I work up the courage to ask her about her life in Iran.

She calmly proclaims that nobody even knew Khomeini before it all started, “and then

all of a sudden, he was a hero”. As a fifteen year old girl, one day her father, who worked for

the military, shoved a kalashnikov in her hands and gave her the responsibility of guarding

their home and family. Sitting on the sofa with her hands gripped tight around the rifle in the

deep night she would fixate her eyes on the front door, waiting for something to happen. It

was not uncommon for groups of men to charge into people’s homes suspicious of opposition

to the regime’s ruling. Especially after Mohammad Reza Shah had been overthrown and

Islamic rules were implemented, Khomeini’s army would repeatedly incarcerate those who

disagreed with the new regime, whether they had been supporters of the Revolution or not.

The days before the Enghelab2 were complete chaos, I am told. She clenches her fist

tight above her head, illustrating how she had joined a group of roughly twenty thousand

Iranians in support of Bakhtiar in the streets of Tehran, shouting “Bakhtiar, Bakhtiar,

sangareto neghar dar3” in unison. Evidently there was also a large opposition to the Shah. For

a brief period the country was split in two, and even though at the time they opposed each

other both parties were to suffer the same violent fate.

Fear. Faith. Mistrust. Shock. Suspicion. Hope. Disbelief. Aspiration.

1 Rock sugar 2 Word most often used in Farsi to refer to the Revolution. Enghelab Eslami literally translates to Islamic Revolution 3 The last Prime Minister of Iran during the ruling of Mohammad Reza Shah. “Saghareto neghar dar” is a symbolic statement, urging Bakhtiar not to give up his position. Literally translates to: Hold your trench (like in war)

2

Though all of these sentiments might not be exclusively shared amongst members of

the Iranian community in the Netherlands, the first-generation political refugees that

participated in this research commonly share this amalgamation of contradictory sentiments

in their recollections of the Enghelab. This was a Revolution with an outcome that was

unexpected, perhaps more so for those who had eagerly participated in pursuit of promises of

democracy and equality. After several years of fighting for democracy, Iran had become an

Islamic republic instead. What followed was a sense of betrayal for both the supporting and

opposition parties of Mohammad Reza Shah’s monarchy after the introduction of the new

regime.

“Everything fell apart once he left”, Darya tells me, “and then the executions

started...” Families anxiously had their ears glued to the radio, which would broadcast the

names of the executed prisoners daily. Although the executions had started with those who

had opposed the Revolution, soon enough even the supporters of the Enghelab would be

apprehended, tortured and killed by the Pasdaran4 – an army intended to protect Iran’s

Islamic system. A child, coming home to find his or her mother missing, only to hear her

name on the radio several weeks after her disappearance. A father, called in to pick up his

daughter from prison, only to be handed a bag of dismembered limbs. According to

informants, scenes like these had become part of everyday life in Iran.

“And the next day they would publish pictures of the bodies in the newspaper”

The experiences of Leila, a middle-aged working class mother of two, who was then a

young woman in a religious province south-west from the capital, paint a similar picture.

Though she was very cautious about her anti-regime ideology, the Pasdaran would wreck

Leila’s home and photography business constantly, demanding Leila and her husband to

develop people’s photographs in the middle of the night. Coming home to find their furniture

and personal belongings spread and destroyed in the garden was a fact of life for her;

mattresses sliced open with knives, cupboards completely shattered, photographs from

personal albums strewn across the grass – but nothing taken. “They gave us the illusion that

we were at liberty to move freely among political activities of our choice.” Her expression

saddens as she admits that she lost many classmates and friends at the time. These were

4Sepah-e Pasadaran-e Enqelab-e Eslami – Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, also called Revolutionary Guard.

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young girls aged twelve or thirteen, executed brutally for spreading flyers for the People’s

Mojahedeen of Iran5 or the Fadaian-e-Khalgh6.

After the loss of lives and freedoms following the Revolution, the threats had not

ended for the Iranian people. Whilst having to deal with the troubles people now faced in

their country, suddenly the Iran-Iraq war broke out, which endangered the majority of the

Iranian people for another eight years. “It was unclear why the war had even started”, Naser

tells me. A man in his early fifties with a working-class background and father of two, who

arrived in the Netherlands in the mid-1980’s, continues by saying; “and it became even easier

for the regime to execute us, by calling people traitors, or spies of Saddam”. Iran had now

become a country in which the majority of the population’s lives were in constant jeopardy.

Those who had had hope, faith and aspiration during the 1979 Revolution, now shared a

common state of fear, shock and mistrust that the opposing group had held from the start.

Despite the varied political positions that any individual refugee in the Netherlands might

have held during the Revolution, this remains a group of immigrants that are uprooted,

nostalgic for their homeland, and many are convinced that they might one day return.

The first group of Iranian refugees arrived in the Netherlands in the early eighties,

eager to rebuild their lives in a country known for its tolerance and freedoms. Having arrived

during a time in which the Netherlands highly welcomed immigrants for use of labour –

semi-skilled workers from Morocco in particular – I am told that there was not much

difficulty in settling down and making contact with the non-immigrant community. Naser

tells me that even though the impression was given that “they [Dutch people] did not have

much knowledge of Iran, people made a conscious effort to get to know where you came

from”. Niloufar, who was born in Iran but grew up in the Netherlands from the age of four in

the mid-1980’s, tells me that “things are different now”, and that the Dutch government is

implementing policies which restrict the inclusion and acceptance of immigrant communities

in Dutch society. Here she adds that the integration policies in particular are now used in

order to hold the immigrants completely responsible for their own position within society,

and to penalise them when societal issues arise. Hereby she uses the ‘Marokkanen probleem’

as an example, in which the increase in crime among youth of Moroccan descent is claimed

to be the result of the ‘failed integration’ of this community. I am told that at present time,

there exists a feeling that one has to constantly prove to be actively part of society in the

5Also known as MKO, the Mojahedeen-e Khalq initially participated in Revolutionary activities that overthrew the Shah. At present day, it is an opposition movement in exile (currently in Iraq). 6 The Organization of Iranian People's Fadaian, or Sazman-e Fadyan-e Khalgh-e Iran is the largest socialist party of Iran.

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Netherlands. Paradoxically, Keivan, a second-generation Iranian who was born and raised in

the Netherlands, tells me that he feels “less and less eager to be part of Dutch society, or

being proud of being born in the Netherlands”. Nonetheless, having to face problems with

exclusion, a sense of unbelonging and discrimination, does not appear to get the Iranian

community down, because as Darya often puts it, “we know how to deal with this with pride

and positivity, and we teach our children the means by which to do so”.

From here on many questions arise with regards to the socio-economic and political

developments in the Netherlands over the past thirty years, and in which ways the Iranian

community in the country interacts with the changes that participants note throughout the

course of this study. The following chapter will illustrate the significance of the Iranian

community in examining the topic of integration, and the approaches used for the

examination of conceptualisations and perceptions of this community.

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Chapter 1

The Research

This study examines the concept of integration by moving away from an analysis of

the failure or success of integration in the Netherlands, towards one which identifies the ways

in which the concept of integration is constructed and re-constructed by members in Dutch

society, with a main focus on Iranian immigrants. Additionally, this piece examines the ways

in which the politics of integration affect sentiments of inclusion, identity and belonging of

this particular immigrant group.

Several theoretical writings on this topic point towards the normative and theoretical

misconceptions present within the integration discourse. Bertossi argues that the integration

models should not be considered “homogenous and stable cultural entities” (2011:1561), and

acknowledges that a variety of social agents develop a multiplicity of conceptions of identity,

equality and inclusion in national contexts. During the research it became apparent that

identity here plays a large role in the ways in which Iranians in the Netherlands interact with

politics of integration, and deal with sentiments of belonging – or rather, sentiments of

unbelonging. These themes will be further explored in chapter 3.

Research done by Poppelaars & Scholten, who analyse the ways in which immigrant

integration is framed differently by local and national governments, illustrate how the

national level governments work from a more individualistic approach when it comes to the

integration discourse in which policies accommodating needs of specific communities have

become more unpopular, whilst local governments continue to approach this issue from a

group-based perspective (2008). Banafshe’s experience with local municipalities provides

further evidence for this, in which she often states that her local municipality in fact provides

and organises many activities aimed at bringing immigrant communities into contact with

non-immigrant communities in her city, adding:

“[...] that’s what integration is all about – having contact with others.

Contact between and among different communities is extremely

important.”

Throughout this study it has become apparent that the Iranian community is under the

impression that the ways in which they deal with the integration concept varies greatly from

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the ways in which other immigrant communities approach this discourse. Most respondents

claim that Iranians in the Netherlands are in fact not greatly concerned with integration, and

according to Sara, a second-generation immigrant who was born in Iran but grew up in the

Netherlands, Iranians take no initiative in actively integrating, “whatever that might mean”. I

am told that rather, Iranian immigrants are more concerned with dealing with issues that have

come forth out of the integration discourse itself, in which discrimination and exclusion are

the problems most often stated.

Bertossi adds to this by discussing how models of integration “do not impose on

actors ready-made ways for deciding what to do and how to do it” (2011:1572), and

emphasizes that a range of social actors construct national models not only in politics but also

in the public sphere. Ultimately, we revert back to the idea that integration models are not

appropriate for examining its success and failure, but it is perhaps even more important to

study the ways in which people construct and re-construct these models, and ways in which

the models of integration play a role in developing conceptions of identity, inclusion and

belonging. Here, the study of Iranians seems particularly appropriate due to the

abovementioned motivations for their immigration and statistical evidence which illustrates

high levels of success both academically and professionally compared to other immigrant

communities in the Netherlands (Dagevos & Gijsberts 2009). If evidence is found that this

concept is constructed and dealt with in a variety of ways, we may start questioning such a

government policy which does not take into account the diverse experiences with and

interpretations of the policy itself by different immigrant groups. Through analysis of the

ways in which different immigrant groups might interact with politics of integration, we may

come to the conclusion that by re-thinking this policy’s priorities and points of focus, we

might find alternative means by which to stimulate a more inclusive approach towards

members of Dutch society.

1.1 Research Question

Based on the theoretical framework of my study and the research population and

setting, the main research question is as follows:

In which ways do first –and second-generation Iranians in the Netherlands conceptualize and

interact with politics of integration?

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Several sub-questions are formed to serve as a guide to answering this research question,

and also to clarify several key concepts that stand central to the research as a whole:

1. In what ways do Iranians in the Netherlands define ‘integration’ as a concept?

1.1. To what extent do they believe this concept to affect their everyday practices?

2. How significant and influential are national integration policies in the discourses of

inclusion and belonging of Iranians in the Netherlands?

2.1. How do people define notions of autochthony and allochthony?

2.2. In what ways do these notions shape ideas of identity, inclusion and belonging in the

Netherlands?

3. In what ways do Iranian families feel that the rise of Islamophobia (and populism) has

manipulated perceptions of immigrant communities, including their own?

1.2 Research Population

For this particular study I decided to focus on citizens of Iranian descent, as they do

not appear to conform to more ‘stereotypical’ accounts of the non-integrated immigrant in the

Netherlands whilst they are subject to and experience the same type of policy-making and

immigrant perceptions as other immigrant groups. Iranians in the Netherlands distinguish

themselves from other immigrant communities not only due to the fact that they are more

often highly educated and successful in the labour market, but also due to the non-economic

nature of their migratory motivation; the majority of first-generation Iranians are in fact

political refugees.

The research population in the study consists of two generations within sets of

families. Whilst the research includes approximately four respondents who did not have

either their parent(s) or child(ren) interviewed, for the most part I was able to interview a

parent and their child. The total number of participants in this study ultimately consists of six

first-generation Iranians and six second-generation Iranians. The aim here is to gain insights

into differences and similarities in perceptions and experiences of those that are closely

related, and yet have experienced Iran and the Netherlands under completely different

circumstances.

It is noteworthy that the majority of the participants of the research were female. With

a total number of twelve participants, merely four males expressed interest in participating.

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Persis Karim provides an explanation for this in her introduction to the first anthology of

Iranian American women’s writing, Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been, stating that “the

dramatic increase in the number of women writing and publishing outside of Iran is an

outgrowth of Iranian women’s specific experience; they have felt compelled to respond to the

view of Iranian women purveyed by both the Islamic republic and the western media [...] they

have found themselves having to reshape their identities to fit the new reality of their lives”

(cited in Nasrabandi 2010:488). This corresponds to statements made by male first-generation

respondents such as Omid, who often claims that “Iran hasn’t changed much for us men” and

that “the rights are not as bad as people think they are”. It could be speculated then that this

research was better received amongst women, because it would give them more of an

opportunity to ‘set the story straight’. Apart from this, being female myself might have

influenced gendered attitudes when it comes to openness of telling one’s personal story to a

stranger.

1.2.1 Enghelabe Eslami

Sentiments regarding the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which were to change Iran as a

country dramatically, are often very contradictory. There are groups that assert that the rule of

Mohammad Reza Shah from 1941 onwards was both oppressive and incompetent, and claim

him to have been a ‘puppet’ of Western powers (Slocum-Bradley 2008:171). In contrast,

there is also a group – which consists primarily of political refugees – claiming that the Shah

in fact improved Iran vastly on an economical, political and global scale. However, Iranian

political refugees currently residing in the Netherlands include those that both joined and

opposed the Revolution. What tends to go unnoticed is the fact that many of those who had

supported the downfall of the Shah were promised a referendum and more political freedoms.

Seeing their country being turned into an Islamic republic was something that none of my

respondents had ever expected to happen. In conversations with Leila, a first-generation

Iranian refugee, after hearing her comparisons between the country before and after the

Revolution, she tells me that “the country hasn’t changed, it has been broken”.

After thirty-seven years of rule, demonstrations against the monarchy commenced in

support of Ayatollah Khomeini, urging the leave of the Shah as a ruler. Khomeini before this

time had been living in exile after publically denouncing the Shah’s strategies to reform and

modernize Iran. He had gained popularity before and during the Revolution, by claiming that

he wished to preserve ‘traditional’ aspects of Iranian culture and turn the country into a

democracy – arguing that the Shah had been Westernizing the country and caused ‘Iranian

9

culture’ to disintegrate and disappear during his rule. At the same time he had promised more

‘freedom’ and a decrease in costs for certain commodities, stressing that the Shah had

exploited Iranians in relation to electricity, petrol and oil charges in particular.

In 1979 the Revolution had come to an end and the Shah had left the country. Soon

after this, Iran was declared an Islamic Republic, with Supreme religious Leader Ayatollah

Khomeini in place to be Iran’s ‘ultimate political and religious leader’ (Amuzegar 1991).

Surprising to many Iranians at the time, a range of strict Islamic laws were implemented,

prohibiting many aspects of life people had known before, including restrictions on dress,

consumption of alcohol, public displays of affection (holding hands) and women’s

participation within society. Many of those who had opposed the Revolution or had an

affinity to the Shah were swiftly executed. The executions often also included those who had

in fact supported the Revolution, but did not appear to conform to the new laws that were

implemented. Darya tells me the story of her uncle, who had strongly opposed the new

Islamic regime:

“[...] we got a phone call that he would be released. The day of his

release on of the Ayatollah’s went to [...] where he worked and on the

spot they – there were eight of them and they – they executed them

all. All of a sudden we heard his name on the radio. We saw pictures

in the papers too of bodies, which looked like colanders... bodies full

of holes.”

This series of events gave rise to an increasing number of political refugees, including

the participants in this research. It is noteworthy that the majority of the refugees currently

residing in the Netherlands are of the Iranian ‘elite’ and so have an upper-middle class or

upper-class background. This should not only be kept in mind when examining the ways in

which the concept of integration is constructed by this particular community, but also when

analyzing conceptualisations of identity, belonging and inclusion.

1.2.2 The participants

The reason I chose a focus-group of Iranian descent, is because they do not appear to

conform to the ‘stereotypical’ account of the non-integrated immigrant in the Netherlands,

yet, they are subject to and have experience with the same type of policy-making and

immigrant perceptions as those of for example Turkish and Moroccan descent. What is

significant about this community is that the majority are not economic migrants, but in fact

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have migrated to the Netherlands in search of asylum, as political refugees after the

Revolution in 1979.

Out of all groups that have immigrated to the Netherlands, people of Iranian origin are

among the most highly educated in the country; higher even than non-immigrant Dutch

citizens. At the same time, there is also a large number of Iranian entrepreneurs, which

implies high rates of academic and economic success in this immigrant group (Dagevos &

Gijsberts 2009). Furthermore, due to the historical context and nature of their migratory

motivations, the majority of this group does not practice Islam – many people in this

community in fact fled Islamic rule.

These are all characteristics which distinguish Iranians from some of the other

immigrant groups in the Netherlands. Despite this, due to the racialized nature of the

integration discourse in the Netherlands, people are more often distinguished according to

physical characteristics – and this is of vital interest in my research. As a result of a

generalisation of immigrants’ backgrounds, historical contexts and migratory motivations –

and prejudices that come with them – all these communities face the same discriminatory

behaviour. Keivan, a second-generation Iranian, comments on the fact that he is frequently

mistaken for someone of Moroccan or Turkish descent:

“[...] so now especially, they see me as a Probleem Marokkaan. It’s

worse when something violent happens like that referee who got

beaten up by some Moroccan boys. The more these things come up in

the media, the less people treat me like I am a person.”

On the subject of racialization and discrimination, Halleh Ghorashi and Ulrike Vieten

assert that “as the Dutch public space becomes increasingly insulting toward migrants with an

Islamic background, new Dutch citizens feel increasingly out of place and humiliated”

(2012:109). During the fieldwork period, prejudices towards those with an Islamic

background was a recurring theme, in which many participants also stated that they felt they

were discriminated against because they were viewed as Islamic or Arabic migrants who

have come to the Netherlands for economic reasons. It is these types of migrants that are

often viewed as ‘fortune seekers’ and abusers of the welfare system. According to a report by

the Human Rights Watch, Dutch integration policies are actively aimed at reducing the

number of Turkish and Moroccan migrants in the Netherlands (2008). Arguably, these

policies appear to be very ethnicity-specific and racialized, which causes an array of

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immigrant communities to become generalized and discriminated against. On this note, the

concept of integration itself and the policies surrounding it could be strongly challenged,

since it does not take into account the various types of communities and individuals – with

their varied migratory motivations and historical contexts – which are subject to the

integration discourse. The issue at hand then does not lie within the ethnic backgrounds of

these communities, but rather within the concept of integration and its surrounding policies.

The viability and usefulness of the integration concept is thus challenged, from the

perspective of a community which is deemed to be quite successful, but nonetheless has to

deal with discriminatory and exclusionary practices that have come forth from the integration

discourse.

1.3 Methodology

Throughout the whole fieldwork period, I utilized three sets of research activities in

order to gather the information.

SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

Semi-structured interviews mainly aimed to clarify interpretations of the key concepts of my

research, such as the conceptualization of terms such as integration, allochthony and

autochthony, and the significance of ‘identity’ in the conceptualization of and interaction

with politics of integration. It also served to establish rapport between the informant and

myself, and laid a basis for the use of more in-depth and personal life-history accounts.

The semi-structured interviews, usually taking place during the first meeting,

generally followed the sub-questions stated above, although the nature of the interview itself

allowed for further exploration of these themes. Some themes were investigated more in one

conversation than in others, depending on the respondent and their personal interest and

experiences. The questions were posed during the interviews with first –and second-

generation Iranians alike, in order to be able to analyze differences and similarities amongst

those who were and those who were not born in the Netherlands.

LIFE-HISTORY INTERVIEWS

Following these semi-structured interviews, I set up several more meetings with the

informants – approximately two to three for each person – in order to gather life histories to

elicit more detailed, personal perceptions and experiences regarding the theme. For the first

generation, I followed their journey from before the Iranian Revolution, to their lives at this

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point in time, in order to examine the underlying emotional, historical and contextual reasons

for their changing perceptions of and reactions to politics of integration.

The structure of the life-history interviews of the second-generation Iranians remained

relatively similar throughout the respondents in this group. The life histories of this

generation generally did not follow a particular journey from one physical space to the other,

but rather examined what it is like to grow up among very diverse norms and values, and how

this process has influenced their notions of identity and a sense of belonging not only in

relation to Dutch society, but also to Iranian society.

As stated above, the life-history interviews with the second-generation Iranians

examined growing up as an Iranian in the Netherlands. However, within this group I could

distinguish three different categories of Iranians, which caused the life-history interviews to

alter slightly within each category:

Born there, raised here

This category contains second-generation Iranian daughters that were born in Iran but

moved to the Netherlands during their toddler years; Niloufar and Sara. These participants are

among the eldest in this study. As the persons in this category travelled through other

countries such as Turkey or Germany before their settlement in the Netherlands, this would

mean that they were born in the early eighties. None of the Iranians in this category have

visited their country since their arrival in the Netherlands, but all claim they would feel more

‘at home’ in Iran.

Born here, stayed here

Within this category are two second-generation Iranian sons who were born and

raised in the Netherlands, and have never seen their country of origin; Keivan and Dariush.

What is interesting is that they base their idea of Iran almost completely on stories their

parents have told them. Their perceptions of Iran and Iranians are here in a sense imagined

communities. Furthermore, there appears to be an ‘inherited nostalgia’ to their country of

origin. These themes will be explored in chapter 4 of this thesis.

Born here, goes there

The two second-generation Iranian daughters in this category were born in the

Netherlands but have visited Iran regularly from a young age; Baran and Aresu. Incidentally,

they are the youngest participants in this research. They were not raised with ‘stories’ about

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Iran as they experienced the country themselves. What is also interesting is that the people in

this category are the only ones who express that they would have difficulty living in Iran,

whether now or after the fall of the regime. This opposes the view of the other two categories,

who have never returned to Iran, but claim that they would feel much more in place there.

PHOTO-ELICITATION

This method was used in conjunction with semi-structured interviews and life

histories in order to stimulate responses, memories and personal perceptions with regards to

lived experiences of immigrant communities in the Netherlands. An organisation called

Humans of Iran has allowed me to use their photographs in my research. The photographs

used vary from nature and environment, to people engaging in conversation, family portraits

and people in traditional clothing. The informants responded to the use of photographs in the

interviews in different ways. Some focused on what kinds of emotions the photographs would

evoke in them, whilst others would comment on the false perceptions people in the

Netherlands have of Iran due to media portrayals. Photographs of nature and environment

generated a great feeling of nostalgia among first-generation Iranians, which could further be

connected to the literal and figurative sense of ‘roots’ and love for the land. Among second-

generation Iranians who had never visited Iran, it was often expressed that these photographs

accurately illustrated the images that go through their minds when they think about Iran.

Additionally, first-generations Iranians often seemed to recognize the exact location at which

a (nature) photograph was taken – “this is a park in Tehran, this is Isfahan, this is Shiraz” –

whereas second-generation Iranians would merely claim that “this is Iran as I know it”.

Image 1.1 Khajoo Bridge, Isfahan

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It is noteworthy that photographs of nature and environment enticed greater and more

detailed responses than images of people. With the first couple of respondents I had used

many images of people in Iran and fewer photographs of environments (or monuments). Here

I quickly noticed that the participants could identify more with nature rather than portraits of

people. What could possibly serve as an explanation for this is the fact that images of people

in contemporary Iran more often include women wearing headscarves and with fully covered

bodies, and from my understanding this is not the Iran that neither the first nor the second-

generation has in mind when they talk about their home country. This type of dress reminds

them more of the current Islamic regime, even though first-generation respondents have

repeatedly told me that before the Revolution came about, there were also women who

indeed were religious and wore this type of dress. Perhaps the difference here is the fact that

currently there is a lack of choice in this, and seeing this type of clothing reminds Iranians of

the freedom of choice they have lost over the years. Additionally, and perhaps more

importantly so, photographs of environment and monuments are reminders of Iranian history

and culture, which I am told generates the sense of a ‘shared’ or ‘collective’ Iranian identity.

It is these types of imagery that parents pass on to their children through stories told about

Iranian architecture, poetry, art and history.

These methods combined have allowed me to gain insights into a variety of themes

surrounding the concept of integration. Interestingly, the findings do not only illustrate

conceptualisations of the concept itself, but simultaneously introduce alternative approaches

to policy making, much different from those that are perceive to be the norm on political

levels at present day.

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Chapter 2

The integration concept

The Netherlands has a long history of immigration, in which the influx of immigrants

from former colonies and that of “guest workers’’ (gastarbeiders) from the 1960s onwards

has significantly influenced developments in immigration and integration policies in the

country. The first great influx of immigrants occurred shortly after the end of the Second

World War, where a quarter million immigrants from the former Dutch-Indies moved to the

Netherlands, having declared independence from Japanese occupation, and a few years later

from Dutch occupation (Van Tubergen & Maas 2006:19). In the early sixties, in need of

heavy industry workers, the Dutch government drew up an agreement with Turkey in order to

recruit ‘guest workers’, and in 1969 created a similar programme with Morocco (Van

Tubergen & Maas 2006:20). As a result of this increasing ethnic diversity in the country,

several relatively liberal policies were initiated which promoted ‘multiculturalism’ and the

opportunity for minorities to maintain and develop their own cultural identities, which has

given the Netherlands the widespread image of a society which is highly tolerant of

immigration and the expression of diverse identities (Vink 2007).

One major multiculturalist policy which developed as a result of this increasing

immigration was one in which “integration with preservation of own identity” was key (Vink

2007:344). These types of policies seemed much like the longstanding pluralistic traditions of

pillarisation (verzuiling) in which all segments of society were assumed to coexist peacefully,

based on the notion of “creating and supporting separate provisions and institutional

arrangements as a means of preserving group identity and promoting emancipation”

(Entzinger, 2003:64). However, Maarten Vink argues that this perspective portrays a

somewhat idealised and naive picture of the Netherlands as being very ‘immigrant-friendly’

and accommodating, when in reality, this policy was a pragmatic strategy which served to

prepare guest workers to return to their country of origin by integrating them as little as

possible into their host society (2007). Through conversations with Niloufar, a second-

generation Iranian, it appears that this ‘immigrant-friendly’ view of the Netherlands was also

held among immigrant communities. Her take on this is not the idea that Dutch society was

inherently tolerant of immigrants and a variety of cultures, but rather that immigrants served

a purpose at the time, which made them non-problematic to Dutch society:

16

“I think back in the day they really wanted us here still. Especially

because many high-skilled workers like doctors and lawyers were

welcomed here very well. They needed these types of workers [...]

most of us were highly educated so we were welcomed.”

Reverting to the comparison between the pillarisation systems and ‘integration with

preservation of own identity’, Koopmans rightly argues that imposing such a pillarisation

system would prove highly inadequate, remarking that “neither immigrants nor native Dutch

people are helped by applying principles that were originally meant for a native population

with a largely similar socioeconomic status, and common history and political culture, to the

integration of newcomers with a different cultural background” (2007:5). Following

Koopmans’ claim then, one might anticipate that recent developments in government policies

which portray a move towards an ‘integration policy’ based on the idea of mainstreaming –

towards the inclusion of immigrants in mainstream services – would serve as an appropriate

and improved alternative. It is noteworthy that this shift has the underlying assumption that

the aforementioned ‘preservation of identity’ is not possible if a person is obliged to

integrate, as this feature has been completely excluded from the integration policies that have

been implemented since then. Since policy-makers themselves have completely dismissed the

notion of ‘preserving own identity’, it could be said that on a political level it has been

assumed that integration and preservation of own identity are mutually exclusive. Right-wing

politician Geert Wilders has gone as far as saying that being a Dutch citizen means that one

should give up any other nationality one might have (NOS 2010).

Most anthropological writings on the subject of integration in the Netherlands claim

that integration policies have been high on the political agenda ever since the Dutch

government realised that the ‘guest workers’ were in fact here to stay (Van Reekum &

Duyvendak (2012), Hurenkamp et al. (2012), Vasta (2007), Vink (2007). The majority of

these workers had been living and working in the country for years at this point, and if they

had not started a family here, their families had emigrated to be reunited with them. Hence,

new policies were created in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, in order to include the

‘gastarbeiders’ – which would now be named ‘buitenlanders’ (foreigners) – in Dutch society.

An example of this is the Ethnic Minorities Policy, which according to sociologist Jan

Willem Duyvendak and Peter Scholten was one in which “the policy problem was now

reconceptualise in terms of participation and socio-cultural emancipation of ethnic or cultural

minorities” (2009:7). Darya here adds the idea that integration policies in fact came about

17

because “they [the government] realized that second and third generations of these

immigrants would have big issues if they were going to grow up in a society which didn’t

stimulate different groups to move amongst each other”. Whether the move towards

integration policies has taken a different approach from Koopmans' take on multiculturalist

pillarisation, however, could be questioned. The particular and somewhat unique history of

Iranian political refugees currently residing in the Netherlands goes unacknowledged among

a policy-making system which imposes a ‘one’ for ‘all’ approach, and thus fails to yet again

take into account the variety of cultures and their historical contexts, now present in Dutch

society. I thus argue for the acknowledgement of the different histories of other immigrant

communities during policy making and implementation, and henceforth challenge the

viability of the concept of integration itself.

From here, we may start questioning the concept of integration itself, and the

significance of new approaches towards existing notions of integration in the Netherlands.

Rather than adding to a discourse which sets normative conceptions of integration at its core

– as a static government policy imposed on and followed by members of society – I argue for

an approach in which the integration concept is considered as one which is subject to the

creation, conceptualisation and implementation of a range of actors in Dutch society. This

study therefore does not focus on the failure or success of integration in the Netherlands, but

the ways in which the concept might be constructed and re-constructed differently by various

members in Dutch society. In doing so, consequent influences on notions of inclusion,

identity and belonging of immigrants in the Netherlands, are further explored, taking the case

of Iranian political refugees in the Netherlands.

2.1 How is it defined?

“Integration is...een bakkie koffie doen! ”

- Banafshe

The concept of integration is one which seems to have no clear or universal definition.

Not only is the concept itself and its meaning very specific to the Netherlands as a country,

when examining definitions of integration, it appears to be something which is done, rather

than something which is. In other words, there appears to be a general impression that

integration is a process of actions taken by immigrant communities, and is not just something

implemented, apparent and achieved in one day. According to the government, one integrates

through the process of ‘inburgering’, which is stated to mean that “newcomers have to learn

18

the Dutch language, and get to know the Dutch society” (Rijksoverheid). Not only is the

second part of this rather vague, through further analysis of the integration policy itself it also

becomes clear that it consists of a relatively individualistic approach in which the immigrant

holds the responsibility for ‘integrating’ into Dutch society. Whilst the terms ‘integratie’

(integration) and ‘inburgering’ are used rather interchangeably, the most important aspects of

this process appear to be learning the language, actively participating in the economy, and

feeling/being involved within the Dutch community (BZK 2011). These ideals are closely

tied to notions of holding the Dutch ‘identity’, where any failure to do so lies with the

‘problem immigrant’, who is widely perceived as unwilling to integrate.

The ‘inburgering’ itself is structured as a compulsory course which immigrants have

to follow, which consists of “understanding the Dutch traditions, learn how we live and work

in the Netherlands, and how we interact with each other” (Rijksoverheid). You are considered

to be ‘ingeburgerd’ once you have taken the exam to prove that you possess a good level of

written and spoken Dutch, and have passed the inburgeringsexam. Questions to test a

person’s ‘understanding of Dutch culture’ are asked, such as “What do you do when your

neighbour is getting married”7 (IB Groep).This inburgeringsexam only became compulsory

in 2006 however, after the ‘Wet Inburgering’ (Inburgering Law), and thus the first-generation

Iranian political refugees that participated in this research were never at risk of being

penalised for language skills. Nevertheless I am told time and time again, that Dutch

volunteers provided free language classes at the time, and that the Dutch community was also

eager to visit Iranian immigrants at home and give them personal language classes.

It becomes evident that language is a very important criterion in determining the

integration of the immigrant in question. This can further be seen in recent developments

which have attempted to prohibit immigrant communities from speaking their mother-tongue

in public, and the belief that children of immigrants should speak no other language than

Dutch in their homes (Volkskrant, 2000). Interestingly however, Joop Atsma, a member of

the House of Representatives in the year this first became a topic of debate, asserts that he has

raised his own children to speak Fries at home, and that they only learnt Dutch when they

started going to school. Yet, he bluntly claims that “there is an important difference with the

situation of allochthons. If you only read Turkish newspapers and watch Turkish television,

we can no longer speak of integration” (ibid.). Through interviews with respondents it shows

that they describe integration similarly, in which almost all respondents firstly mention

7 Possible answers are (a) Send a card; (b) Bring them a bouquet of flowers and (c) Give them a gift

19

“speaking Dutch”, when asked for the meaning of integration, before going on to talk about

participating in the workplace and not being financially dependent on the state.

When asking Banafshe at the beginning of our conversation what it means to be

integrated, she promptly answered “bakkie koffie doen!” (have a cup of coffee). We both

laughed a lot, and she proceeded by saying that the trick was to learn how to observe the

society itself, adapt your behaviour and take over certain customs. She added however that it

is important to never lose your true self whilst doing so, and that for Iranians this is a very

important characteristic which she tries to teach her own children as well; “don’t forget where

your roots are”. Sara however, whilst acknowledging the necessity of adapting your own

behaviour to others, makes a note on what is implied by doing so, and adds the following:

“Integration means... learn how they behave, and adapt you own

behaviour so that people don’t notice that you were once different.

But that’s impossible. Not only can you not change where you come

from and who you are, they [Dutch people] will also never consider

you the same as them. So no matter how much you want to ‘act’

Dutch, you will never be truly Dutch to them either.”

All add, however, that aspects such as language, taking on Dutch customs and proof

of active participation are the meanings of integration that are held most important by the

Dutch government, and that their personal idea of what integration should be is vastly

different from the perceived norm. Banafshe further comments on this by addressing the

vagueness of these criteria by questioning to what extent a person needs to know the Dutch

language, and explains that for members of her generation language will always remain an

issue, whether this is due to their accent, vocabulary or other problems with pronunciation.

Henceforth, whilst an immigrant might pass the language examinations or is able to hold up

conversations with members of Dutch society, their accents might still betray their otherness

and cause them to be viewed as ‘unwilling to integrate’ and consequently unwilling to be part

of Dutch society. The implementation of the new Integration Act of 2005 imposes sanctions

on those who fail to integrate, in which Vasta claims that these sanctions and fines are not

imposed to improve the situation, but are rather part of the discourse used to support claims

that immigrants “have not met their ‘responsibility to integrate’”(2007:718). Although

Iranian political refugees were not obligated to take an ‘inburgeringsexamen’, I am told that

the majority did go to a language school because they personally wanted to be able to

20

communicate properly in their new country of residence. This does not take away Banafshe’s

point about accents and vocabulary however, and its consequent influences on the

perceptions of immigrants in the Netherlands. Admittedly, the idea that this is attributed to an

unwillingness to be an active member of society seems more so prejudiced when hearing

Leila’s heart-breaking account of her abusive ex-husband:

“He was jealous because I was learning much faster than he was.

Eventually he forbade me to go to Dutch language classes [...] so I

tried to teach myself at home. Now my pronunciation is not good,

there was no one to correct me. I am trying to improve on that now

but at this age it is very difficult.”

She continues by explaining that she has been working since she arrived in the

Netherlands and has an extensive amount of work experience, yet at the present time she

continuously gets rejected during job interviews because she is told she does not have the

appropriate language skills. This has caused her to be unemployed for several years now, and

even though she dedicates her free time to voluntary work, in this way she does not meet the

integration requirement of being financially independent of the state, and is yet again

perceived as a non-compliant and uncooperative immigrant.

As the example of Leila shows, and following Vasta’s research, integration policies

are more based on a ‘citizenship approach’ (Poppelaars & Scholten 2008) in which the

responsibility to integrate lies with the individual in contrast to previous group-based

policies. Arguably, holding only the immigrant responsible renders society ignorant of other

processes which influence the equality and inclusion of immigrants in the Netherlands, such

as institutional racism. Through conversations with Darya it becomes clear that there is a

sense of injustice and also that of exploitation of the integration concept by members of

Dutch society in order to justify the exclusion of immigrants. These sentiments could explain

how it increasingly occurs that Dutch people of immigrant origin claim to be victims of

discrimination when it comes to the high rate of unemployment amongst this group.

Once, when I proceeded to ask Darya what her personal understanding of integration is, and

what being integrated means to her, she briefly stared at the cigarette between her fingers and

responded, “It’s nonsense. The whole concept is nonsense”. I repeated her answer in order to

urge her to elaborate, and eventually she told me the following:

21

‘[…] there have been Dutch people my own clients … speak Dutch,

born in the Netherlands blond hair white skin … that live completely

isolated from society. Are they integrated?’

[brief silence]

‘But if it’s an allochtoon it’s because of their language. But if it’s a

Dutch person I have before me, who doesn’t work or doesn’t want to

have anything to do with their environment well what do I call that

person then?’

Darya’s critique on the concept of integration is closely related to Leila’s account

above. The point she is trying to make here, is that even though a person with a non-

immigrant background might be in a similar position as one with an immigrant background,

the explanations given for the position of each person in society will differ greatly. According

to her personal experiences, whilst an ‘isolated’ or non-employed immigrant is more often

perceived to be “lazy, unmotivated and unwilling”, a non-immigrant Dutch person in exactly

the same situation is more often perceived to be “a victim, like perhaps he is isolated because

he is coping with psychological problems”. In other words, the immigrant’s position is

attributed to his lack of integration – for example poor language skills – which once again

reinforces the rhetoric of ‘immigrant responsibility”.

2.1.1 Integration or assimilation?

“They’re just looking for a clone ”

- Omid

All first-generation respondents and most second-generation respondents claim that

integration should come from both sides. Current policies are perceived to hold a certain one-

sidedness similar to Baumann’s notion of ‘integration into’ a society (2007). Baumann, as

well as several other anthropological scholars (Poppelaars & Scholten 2008; Vink 2007;

Vasta; 2007; Essed 2008) draw significant comparisons between integration policies and

assimilation projects because this ‘integration into’ stands at the core of policies in the

Netherlands. Park and Burgess defined assimilation as “a process of interpenetration and

fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments and attitudes of other

persons and groups, and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them

22

in a common life”(1921: 735). This implies then that old traits and customs would be

replaced by a new type of identity – that of the host society. Van Bruinessen, who is a scholar

of Islam in the Netherlands, furthermore asserts that “the notion that integration demands

adaptations from both sides appears to be submerged” (2006:21). It is important to further

examine this claim, because assimilationism presupposes a cultural superiority, and “sets out

a hegemonic whole that other wholes are subordinated to (Baumann 2007). Thus, it could be

said that the integration policies are indeed rather assimilisationist; evidently, access to

cultural and human capital is central to participation within the host society, but to make it

compulsory and sanctioned is assimilationist. For example, citizens in the Netherlands with

an (non-Western) immigrant background might be declined welfare on the grounds of

insufficient language skills (BZK 2011). Arguably, rather than stimulating, encouraging and

allowing the participation that the government holds so dearly, such sanctions would isolate

and restrict immigrant communities more. Leila for example explains how as a result of

misconceptions and presumptions about her Dutch language skills, it has become increasingly

difficult for her to find employment – even though several years ago her accent had not been

an issue for employers.

The ‘Integration Policy New Style’ of the early 2000’s has arguably been one of the

major contributors to the move towards assimilationism in the Netherlands. Duyvendak

explains this by stating that this ‘New Style’ stressed the ‘common citizenship’ of migrants,

meaning that “the unity of society must be found in what members have in common (..) that

is that people speak Dutch, and that one abides to basic Dutch norms” (TK 20032004,29203,

no. 1: 8. cited in Duyvendak 2009:10). He goes on to state that socio-cultural differences

were from this point onwards considered to be “a hindrance to immigrant integration” (ibid.).

From this it seems that integration policies in the Netherlands are very much assimilationist

in nature, due to the fact that it values socio-cultural commonality rather than differences. In

fact, not adhering to these policies might not only cause the immigrant to be penalized, but

also stigmatized by wider society for their ‘disloyalty’ to the Netherlands as a whole. Such

developments are said to be closely linked to concerns about the preservation of ‘the Dutch

national identity’ and a certain ‘cultural anxiety’, which will be examined later in this

chapter.

Interviews with Iranian respondents illustrate the feeling that present-day policies are

rather assimilationist in their nature due to the fact that they appear to force immigrant

communities to do away with part of their identity in order to take on a ‘Dutch identity’. This

23

notion is often attributed to populist movements and an increase in popularity of right-wing

politics:

“Right-wing political parties, Wilders, and until a few years ago also

the VVD, when they talk about integration they actually mean

assimilation. So they expect me to act 100% like [...]”

Here, Reza, a first-generation Iranian political refugee who has resided in the

Netherlands more or less for thirty years, introduces the idea that the goal of integration

policies are to take on the identity of the host society, moving away from your own culture.

He continues to indicate that this goal is relatively problematic:

[...] well that’s the first problem there... who am I supposed to act

like? What is a Nederlander?”

Several second-generation respondents here also assert that the thought behind

integration policies is to “become someone else” and “be like Dutch people”, reinforcing the

idea that these policies are in fact assimilationist. Many respondents state that they do adjust

their behaviour in the public sphere, for example by ‘pretending to feel Dutch’ through verbal

statements, and indicate that there is a necessity to do so in order to go about their daily lives

happily. Sara for example tells me that in the workplace she will often do this during times in

which the immigrant integration debate becomes very heated, and when she feels like co-

workers are “testing my loyalty by asking for my opinion. In those cases I often tell them

how I am a Dutch person, how I was raised here, and make them think that Dutch identity

stands above my Iranian identity. But of course that’s all for show.” Although these kind of

statements appear to have somewhat of a negative tone to them and imply a continuous

negotiation of identities in the public and private sphere, first –and second-generation

respondents add that they do not find this ‘adjusting’ very problematic, because in the end

they say they manage to retain their Iranian identity, in all their loyalty and pride to their

country of origin. These relationships between integration and Iranian identity will be

debated further in a more detailed manner in the following chapter.

24

2.1.2 What should integration be?

“The only possible road to success is mutual respect,

and that becomes mutual integration.”

- Niloufar

All participants of this research, both first –and second-generation Iranians, assert that

integration as a concept would only be justified if it were to move away from its one-sided

nature, towards one which focuses on an ‘integration with’ – or mutual integration of –

cultures with all members of society despite their place of birth or heritage. Respondents hold

a perspective in which immigrant and non-immigrant communities should focus on what they

could learn from each other, rather than on how differences between social and cultural

backgrounds could be problematic. According to respondents’ accounts on the topic,

conceptualisations of the integration of Iranians with Dutch society and the integration of

Dutch society with Iranians appear to differ, and so we currently cannot speak of a mutual

integration, as Reza here expresses:

“[...] the moment I am open to becoming a part of this society but

Dutch members don’t accept me... well then... that makes me...

pathetic... [laughter]. But that means that I can’t be comfortable, can’t

feel at home. So then there’s no integration either. Integration, in my

opinion, is not just what I do. They can’t expect that I integrate and

the rest of society doesn’t. Dutch society also has to allow me to be

who I am.”

From these types of statements it appears than Iranians do not consider integration to

be a process which is identical on both sides. From the position of Iranians, integration means

to adjust your behaviour in the public sphere to suit certain norms of Dutch society, and from

the position of the non-immigrants it means to allow the Iranians to express their own

identities and be respected as people. In the view of respondents, this creates more of a give-

and-take balance than the one which exists at present day. Banafshe for example tells me that

“you need openness from both sides... if a society doesn’t welcome you... well then... why

would you even want to try to be a part of it?”.

25

Ultimately then, the Iranians that participated in this research do not expect nor desire

non-immigrant Dutch people to adjust and adapt their behaviour or values to members of the

Iranian community in the same way that this immigrant community does to Dutch society.

Rather, they call for a treatment which is righteous and just, instead of the current treatment

which insinuates a Dutch cultural superiority. Here, the majority of the first-generation

respondents share’s Banafshe’s view that “they [Dutch people] do not look at who they are

dealing with, whether they [immigrants] are low or high educated, where they come from, the

nature of their immigration... they [Dutch people] always think they are above you. They

always feel superior”. Interestingly, the relationship between integration policies and cultural

superiority is one which has been acknowledged by a variety of researchers. Henceforth, this

sentiment that respondents often shared with me proves to be valuable in further examining

the nature of integration discourses. Nonetheless, in order to analyse these types of statements

on cultures and the portrayal of the host culture as ‘superior’, these notions must be looked at

in a more critical manner; we may not take for granted how these terms are used both on

political and social levels, and why they are used in such particular ways.

Interestingly, whilst most participants in this research highly condemned the cultural

superiority of non-immigrant Dutch communities as Banafshe describes above, throughout

the research it becomes apparent that a sense of ‘cultural superiority’ of Iranians is most

definitely present among participants. Second-generation respondents such as Dariush for

example, tell me that “when I experience discrimination, my parents always tell me to not

pay attention to it. They tell me not to care, because we are Iranians, we have a rich culture

and history, so I should be proud to be Iranian... proud to be different”. Thus, when they face

a certain ‘othering’ by Dutch society, they strengthen this ‘othering’ themselves through

which it becomes a coping mechanism, and allows them to deal with sentiments of exclusion

and unbelonging. The ‘cultural superiority’ of Iranians takes form in a second type of

boundary-making: the making of boundaries between their community, and other immigrant

communities in the Netherlands. As previously mentioned, within the integration discourse,

those of Turkish and Moroccan descent stand quite central to the debate on political levels,

and Muslim communities are a large point of focus in present day politics. Possibly, as a

consequence, Iranians in the Netherlands might distance themselves from these as well as

Arab-speaking communities now more than ever before.

26

2.2 ‘Culturespeak’

“There’s this idea that you’re their enemy,

a danger to their society or to their culture ...”

- Dariush

The implementation of integration policies is often said to derive from a more recent

‘cultural anxiety’ (Grillo 2003) in which immigrants are believed to “erode national culture”

(Vertovec 2011:242). The official integratienota8 also states that “time and time again it

appears that many Dutch people do not consider ethnic and cultural diversity as an

enrichment, but as a threat” ( BZK 2011:1). This is a notion that does not only exist in the

Netherlands, but has spread on a global level, appearing in many immigration discourses in

countries such as the United States, England and France among others. Van Houtum and

Pijpers describe the EU as a ‘gated community’ (2007) in which the management of

immigration is to a large extent the product of fear – of losing a community’s self-defined

identity. As a result of this anxiety in the Netherlands, immigrants are now expected to

integrate into the Dutch language, culture and history. The greatest fear here is that the

amalgamation of diverse cultures will cause the original or ‘indigenous’ culture to vanish

completely, as Niloufar expresses here:

“Everyone has to fit in a specific hokje9 because that’s the only way

Dutch people can make sense of things. That’s how they determine

who is their ally and who is their enemy.”

Here she expresses the idea that the immigrant ‘other’ is automatically seen as an

enemy to the culture and society in question because of the label that it can never avoid. It is

important however to note a certain misuse of ‘culture’ in the current discourse about

immigrants and integration. In political usage, culture is portrayed as static, bounded and

uniformly shared between members of a group and arguably used in a racialized manner

(Grillo 2003). Geert Wilders for example, leader of the Freedom Party, argues that Christians

“should be proud that our culture is better than the Islamic culture” (cited in Kaya 2012:401).

This statement does not only hold people with specific ethnic backgrounds as inferior, but

8 Document which states the integration policies and related governmental research data 9 ‘Hokje’ literally translates to cubicle – in English the appropriate terminology would be ‘to be labelled as...’

27

extends its racialization to religion-specific backgrounds. Several respondents assert that

“Muslims are often viewed as underdeveloped or inferior by Dutch people”. These examples

show that the notion of a cultural threat is heavily tied to the idea of cultural superiority, in

this case ‘the Dutch culture’ being one which is superior over others, and more specifically,

‘the Islamic culture’. It is evident that this somewhat limited view of ‘the’ culture of any kind

furthermore dismisses the large array of varieties with Islam as well as Dutch society.

Interestingly, whilst the majority of Iranians that participated in the study are non-religious

and in fact fled Islamic rule, this community is subject to the same type of racialization and

treatment as Muslim citizens in the Netherlands. Darya tells me about her feeling at the

moment of arrival in the Netherlands, during her short stay at a ‘welcome center’10:

“They treated us like we were a flock of animals that had never seen

food in their lives.”

She did add however that at that time (thirty years ago) it was more because of

“unknowing”, in the sense that the social workers were simply not educated about other

cultures or Middle-Eastern countries. According to Darya, at present day, it is not because of

“unknowing” but rather an “unwillingness of knowing”. In other words, she is of the opinion

that immigrant communities are viewed as ‘less developed’ or ‘inferior’ because the non-

immigrant Dutch community does not want to acknowledge that they might be able to learn

from other cultures. As a result, immigrant communities are increasingly ‘put down’ and

discriminated against – although she here adds once more that this feeling is much stronger

now than it was thirty years ago. One could question however why these political and societal

changes are more prominent now, seeing as the political rightist turn and the influx of

immigrants existed long before 2001 (Vink 2007). According to Baumann here, the problem

is not the ‘new’ ethnic minorities, but rather the “fiction of ethnic purity”:

“Integration is not a problem of, for, about, or caused by minorities,

but it’s a conceptual problem shared unknowingly. The most common

problem of integration refers to the term ‘culture’ as the marker of

10 Darya described this location as neither a refugee center nor a detention center. Rather, it was a building “like an old hotel or a guesthouse” where this group of Iranians stayed whilst they were awaiting permanent housing.

28

difference and the borderline between inclusion and exclusion.”

(2007:111)

Interestingly, he further points out that it appears that people in fact want bounded

culture. Here he does not only refer to people in power such as politicians, but regular

members of society in general. Baumann continues by claiming that “they often want it in

precisely the bounded, reified, essentialized and timeless fashion that most of us now reject”

(1999: S11). This feeling also arose in conversations with Iranians of both first –and second

generations. Terms such as “Iranians are like...” and “As Iranians we are...” came up very

regularly during the fieldwork period. Philomena Essed and David Goldberg give insight into

this conceptualization of culture through explanation of the concept of “cultural cloning’’ – a

universal phenomenon based on same-kind preference. Here they assert that “preference for

sameness is historically part and parcel of the social fabric of our societies”(2002:1068).

Keivan, a second-generation Iranian, illustrates his ideas about cultural superiority and

cultural cloning in the Netherlands:

“If you are the same as me, you are safe because then I know who you

are. If you are not the same, if I don’t know who you are, you are

frightening and endangering. That’s what Dutch people think.”

Presently, it has become more common and reasonable in anthropology to view

culture as something which is not static, but rather continuously in construction,

deconstruction and reconstruction under the impact of a variety of processes. From here on

we might question the usefulness of integration policies; if these policies are indeed

implemented in order to ‘guard’ the host society’s culture against the ‘threat’ that is the

immigrant community, how could this be justified when ‘the Dutch culture’ is naturally

constantly changing?

From these statements and the abovementioned developments it might become clear

how and why the Netherlands has shown a move away from multiculturalism, past

integration, and towards assimilationist approaches. For the purpose of this research it is

valuable to further examine, through interviews and personal accounts, why majorities as

well as minorities heavily emphasize an essentialist and racialized understanding of culture in

the current political and social climate.

29

2.2.1 Survival of the individualist

“In a forest fire all animals will trod all over each other

in order to get out, to get fresh air”

- Niloufar

It is important to acknowledge that integration policies are influenced by more than

the “national culture” debate. The policies are subject to a variety of socio-economic

processes and discourses and are imagined and acted upon differently by a range of members

in Dutch society.

Sara, a second-generation Iranian, likens the current situation in which immigrants

become objects of threat to what was happening with the gay community during the sudden

outbreak of AIDS – emphasizing the role that media plays in these circumstances. She

describes to me the way in which the media portrayed AIDS to be caused by the gay

community – resulting in much discrimination against gay people during this time – and the

fact that people were more concerned with staying away from gay people out of fear, rather

than taking care of those that were struggling with the illness. This development is linked to

what is happening with immigrant communities in the Netherlands at the moment, stating that

portrayals of immigrants in the media heavily influence the personal perceptions of Dutch

citizens in relation to these communities. The point that Sara is furthermore trying to make

with her example, is the fact that rather than being concerned with aiding a community which

is suffering, society takes on a protectionist attitude with regards to that particular

community, out of fear of ‘the Dutch culture’ becoming ‘contaminated’.

Apart from the ‘cultural anxiety’ explanation for the development of integration

policies and stricter immigration laws, several respondents determined that during times of

economic downfall, minority groups become victims of social fears and frustrations. Niloufar

tries to explain her take on this through the portrayal of a sinking boat:

“[...] you don’t lift up the person next to you and say ‘here, you

breathe’, no... You push his head down thinking let me breathe. I want

to survive. And that’s what’s happening in the Netherlands at the

moment. Because no one knows which way to look or go so everyone

is just drowning each other in order to be the one breathing.”

30

In other words, the integration policies are putting different communities in the

Netherlands up against each other. Not only do minority (immigrant) groups get “pushed

down” by non-immigrant communities, simultaneously, immigrant communities are also in a

sense competing with each other, or making boundaries, in order to ‘survive’. This idea could

be tied to the aforementioned ‘cultural superiority’ of Iranians in the Netherlands, who

differentiate themselves from non-immigrant communities as well as other immigrant

communities in order to cope with anti-immigrant rhetoric. Heavy statements such as these

were not uncommon during conversations with the participants in this research. In fact, the

majority of conversations gave the impression that this subject very much gives rise to very

emotional reactions, partly because they urge participants to be confronted with questions of

their Iranian identity – something which they take a lot of pride in. Having examined

developments towards and conceptualisations of integration thus far, we move on to explore

how notions of identity, belonging and exclusion play a role in the position of Iranians in

Dutch society, and the ways in which they cope with problems that might arise regarding

these themes.

31

Chapter 3

Collective Identity

The previous chapter briefly touched upon the idea that the notion of ‘identity’ plays a

key role in the integration discourse. When it comes to governmental integration policies in

particular, there appears to be an emphasis on ‘feeling Dutch’ in more recent studies and

debates on the subject. A report by the Central Bureau of Statistics states that “in the public

debate, the question as to what extent allochthons are focussed on the Dutch society plays an

important role. Language skills, the degree of contact maintained with autochthones and

feeling Dutch are indicators of this” (2012:152). From this report, the Social and Cultural

Plan Bureau published a research paper in November 2012, in which they investigate the

extent to which immigrants in the Netherlands ‘feel Dutch’ and ‘feel at home’, with a specific

focus on those of Turkish and Moroccan descent. This information was gathered by asking

participants to what extent they ‘feel Dutch’ and to what extent they ‘feel [insert ethnic

group]’, on a scale of ‘strongly’, ‘a little’ and ‘not at all’ (SCP 2012:87). RTL news

consequently published an article which stated that “merely 28%” of Turkish people in the

Netherlands feel that they are Dutch, whilst “merely 37% of Dutch people with a Moroccan

background feel Dutch” (RTL 2012). This information was not taken lightly by Dutch media,

whom concluded that “the integration of Moroccans and Turks in the last twenty years is

money gone wasted” (RTL 2012). The abovementioned governmental reports and responses

by media indicate the value attached to the notion of ‘feeling Dutch’ when it comes to

immigrants in the Netherlands, in which their use of wording (“merely”) portrays a certain

desire and objective for immigrants to make preference for a Dutch identity as opposed to

identifying with their ethnic background. The findings that the majority of people of Turkish

and Moroccan descent in the Netherlands do not ‘feel Dutch’ and instead assert that they are

Turkish or Moroccan, is then perceived to be a lack of integration and wanting to take part in

Dutch society.

During the fieldwork period, there was an overpowering presence of ‘identity’ as a

topic in conversations with respondents. The conceptualisation of the concept of identity in

anthropology has gone through some significant developments in the last decades of the

twentieth century. Whereas previously, little to no distinctions were drawn between ‘ethnic

identity’ and ‘cultural identity’, at present time it is more accepted to differentiate between

the two. To quote Thomas Erkisen, “while ethnic identity should be taken to refer to a notion

32

of shared ancestry (a kind of fictive kinship), culture refers to shared representations, norms

and practices (2001:43). Throughout this research however, it became apparent that this

distinction was not generally made by respondents, and instead informants would speak of

‘Iranian identity’ – representative of shared ancestry as well as shared norms and practices.

An explanation for this might be the fact that Iranian immigrants in the Netherlands do not

only have ‘shared’ ethnicity, but this particular community of political refugees also have

‘shared’ experiences of fleeing their country of origin, and generally belong to the same

social-class. Either way, to follow through with Benedict Anderson’s notions of nationalism

and identity, we may argue that it is not the “falseness or genuineness” that matters (and so

whether the Iranian’s notion of identity is either ‘cutural’ or ‘ethnic’), but rather “the ways in

which they are imagined” (1991:6). It is this ‘imagined’ Iranian identity which I wish to

explore in this chapter.

From the interviews I gathered that the majority of respondents, and first-generation

respondents in particular, strongly claimed a sense of collective Iranian identity which they

could never do away with. On this topic of Iranian and Dutch identity, Niloufar confidently

told me that she is “yet to meet the person who is going to take the Persian out of me. That

person hasn’t been born yet”. If this sense of Iranian identity is so strong among both first and

second-generation immigrant in the Netherlands then, how come this community is said to do

relatively well when it comes to participation within society, academically, professionally,

and in communication with the non-immigrant community?

In the following chapter the notion of collective Iranian identity is examined further,

and an attempt is made to illustrate how in fact this Iranian identity allows the respondents to

play an active role in Dutch society.

3.1 Identity

Before the fieldwork period I speculated that first –and second-generation Iranians

would have different views on identity, the latter having to negotiate two (separate) identities

in public and private spheres. This speculation was false on several accounts; throughout the

interviews it became clear that parents as well as their children were negotiating their

identities in the public and private sphere, nonetheless having a strong sense of ‘Iranian’

identity which they refuse to ‘give up’. Their ‘adaptation’ to Dutch society should not be

mistaken with the alienation of parts of their identity as Iranians. It seems quite the contrary;

they take such pride in their identity as Iranians that they do not even fear losing this identity

as a result of integration politics, and assert they have a strength and loyalty to their heritage

33

which allows them to adjust their behaviour as seems fit for interactions within Dutch

society, without “losing their true selves”. Additionally, the first-generation Iranians claimed

that the multi-ethnic environment of the Netherlands is not much different from that in Iran,

as Darya illustrates:

“We have Turkish Iranians, Azari Iranians, Kurdish Iranians and

more. Before the Revolution the country was full of different

religions and ethnic backgrounds. But still, we were all Iranians. We

lived in the same land. This is why it’s so easy for us to adapt our

behaviour here in the Netherlands without losing our Iranian-ness. It’s

part of our own culture to live amongst different groups of people in a

single society. The trick is to respect and accept each other for who

they are, whatever differences in history or background they might

have.”

It could further be argued that the collective identity of Iranians in the Netherlands

does not only stem from their attachment to their cultural heritage and country of origin, but

also from their identity as Iranian political refugees. Nasrabadi describes Iranian political

refugees as coming from an “Iran which was doubly lost – through immigration and through

the Revolution” (2011:481). On this note, it could be said that Iranians in the Netherlands

have a sense of collective identity as those who share a country of origin, but also as those

who share a specific history.

As stated above, throughout the fieldwork period it became clear that both first –and

second-generation Iranians in the Netherlands negotiate their identities in the public and

private sphere. However, both generations are of the opinion that a differentiation should be

made between both generations when it comes to politics of identity and interactions with

Dutch society. Banafshe explains to me the feeling that the second-generation has less

difficulty interacting with members of Dutch society, because to them maintaining

relationships with non-immigrant Dutch people comes more ‘naturally’. Additionally she

asserts that even though her children have more ‘autochthonous’ friends, they are still very

much in touch with their Iranian heritage; “they speak Farsi very well and we have been able

to pass on our culture to our children”. She adds however, that even so, “they [her children]

are different. You [the second-generation] are international. You have taken on aspects of

Dutch culture and know how to deal with Dutch people well”. On this subject, Sara, a second

34

generation Iranian, explains to me that she feels the first-generation have more difficulties in

the Netherlands because of their strong sense of pride. She tells me that certain events in her

parents’ lives are more frustrating to them than they would be to her, because it very much

hits them in their pride – this ‘pride’ being closely tied to ideas of Iranian identity. Here she

refers to circumstances in which her parents would be referred to as ‘aggressive’ or ‘problem

makers’ when complaining about the lack of customer care or service in shops – behaviours

which are often interpreted as being discriminatory or racist.

Among the first-generation respondents in the study, all claimed that a great part of

the upbringing of their children is to teach them the importance and value of their Iranian

identity, and to be strong in maintaining this identity. However, through conversations with

second-generation participants it becomes clear that there are different sentiments among

them when it comes to identity. In the introductory chapter a differentiation was made

between three categories of second-generation Iranians in the Netherlands, and discussing the

theme of identity in particular, this categorisation appears to be justified. Niloufar, who was

born in Iran but has never returned to her country of origin, proudly asserts that “I know

where I come from and who I am. I was raised to be proud of where I come from”, and

emphasizes her strong sense of Iranian identity, which often contradicts with her ideas about

a Dutch identity. Baran however, who was born in the Netherlands but travels to Iran quite

regularly, tells me that she is neither ‘completely’ Dutch nor Iranian; “I am a bit in between”.

She further notes that this does not cause any identity issues for her in the sense that she does

not know who or what she is part of, and claims that “I have the best of both worlds”.

Keivan, who was born in the Netherlands and has never returned to his country of origin, tells

me that he very much hold on to his identity as an Iranian, and does not identify himself as

‘Dutch’. However, he does admit that when he was younger he would often tell people he

was Dutch initially rather than Iranian, which is something he expresses shame for at present

time; “it was just easier to tell people I’m Dutch. It’s what they wanted to hear. Now I feel

like I betray my identity if I claim to be Dutch, although I do think I balance Dutch and

Iranian culture in my behaviour [...] like expressions and language that I might use in

different environments”. Interesting here is that both second-generation Iranians who were

born in the Netherlands greatly acknowledge the fact that they negotiate Dutch and Iranian

cultural aspects, and recognize that their personal identities are moulded by an amalgamation

of both. Sara however, who is incidentally the eldest second-generation participant in this

study, more strongly holds on to the idea that it is her Iranian upbringing which has shaped

her identity, and notes that having to negotiate Dutch and Iranian identities would cause

35

issues and clashes in a variety of ways. Nevertheless, she does admit to adjusting her

behaviour in certain ways when communicating with non-immigrant Dutch people in for

example her work environment. She indicates for example that she takes on a certain copy-

cat behaviour: “I figure out what they always want to talk about, and then I behave like that.

Like you always have to open up with small-talk about the weather that day [laughter]”. To

give a more clear idea about the main difference here between the two who were born in the

Netherlands, and the respondent that was born in Iran, I illustrate answers that were given to

the question of in which ways the participants might interact differently with non-immigrant

Dutch people:

“I can’t really give you an example of how I deal with autochthons... I

guess I don’t really think about it, it just happens. I know there are

certain behaviours that are inappropriate or misunderstood by Dutch

people so I interact with them differently without really thinking

about it.” (Keivan)

“I know exactly how to act around Dutch people in order to go

through as little issues and frustration as possible. For my personal

defence, I know how to manipulate them into thinking that I feel

Dutch [...] because that’s what’s important to them you know, if you

feel Dutch then you’re not an enemy. But I would never say that I am

Dutch, because I am not, but my behaviour gives them a different

impression. That’s how I cope.” (Niloufar)

From these statements it becomes clear that for Keivan, born in the Netherlands, the

ways in which he interacts with non-immigrant Dutch people is a behaviour which is ore or

less internalized, whereas that of Niloufar is more deliberate and a conscious effort.

Nevertheless, the fact that respondents up until this point have continuously stated

that they are able to cope and live happily in the Netherlands, and do not have ‘identity

issues’, does not necessarily mean that they do not face any problems whatsoever on this

subject. When asking Sara for the main differences between the ways in which first –and

second-generation Iranians in the Netherlands negotiate their identity in the public and

private sphere, she responds by saying that “the first generation can be very proud of

themselves at the end of their lives. That’s what I think. And maybe I’ve lived an easier life

36

than they have, but I have little bit more regret”. Urging her to further explain what is meant

by this ‘regret’, I am told that she regrets letting go of some parts of her ‘Iranianness’,

knowing that the generation after her (her children) will be letting go of even more of their

culture, norms and values, “out of fear (of not being accepted)”, she adds. Sara explains to me

that at some point in life you have to make compromises, between who you can be, and who

you have to be, “otherwise you will have to lead a very difficult life”. Parents however, seem

confident in the idea that children will be able to balance these sentiments of being or not

being ‘who you are’ in certain contexts. Banafshe for example tells me that she has often told

her children that they will never be fully accepted by the non-immigrant Dutch community,

“but you just have to be aware of certain characteristics and behaviours, and then it’ll be

easier to cope”. Omid gives an example of this is by expressing that certain mannerisms or

behaviours might come across as ‘arrogant’ or ‘rude’ to his children, which according to him

are more often described as “Dutch people being very direct in their way of speaking”. In

these cases, he will tell his children not to take such behaviours too seriously, but dismiss

them instead. He further explains that by informing her children of the fact that they

ultimately belong to Iran, it allows them to cope with any exclusionary or discriminatory

practices that they might have to face in their lifetime in the Netherlands.

3.2 ‘Feeling Dutch’

As previously mentioned, within the integration discourse at present day, a great

emphasis has been put on the ‘feeling Dutch’ aspect of integration. During the research

period, this notion of ‘feeling Dutch’ and its value with regards to society in general was

further examined. Both generations of Iranian immigrants in the Netherlands ultimately

agreed that expecting immigrants of any origin to feel like a Dutch person is unrealistic and

unfair. Additionally, it remains extremely unclear what is meant by having to ‘feel Dutch’, or

‘feeling like a Dutch person’. Is it a verbal statement that immigrant communities have to

make in order to prove that they want to play an active role in Dutch society? Or is this term

merely used as an argument by which to explain societal issues among immigrant

communities, as is done by the Central Plan Bureau as mentioned above? If the former is the

case, such statements could still be very untruthful, as most respondents claim they would be,

and in fact the desire is not for immigrant communities to genuinely ‘feel Dutch’ – whatever

this might mean – but rather to be able to put on a façade of ‘Dutchness’. If the latter is the

case, we may relate this to Vasta’s statement on sanctioning those who have ‘failed to

integrate’, and consider the possibility that this ‘feeling Dutch’ aspect of integration is widely

37

understood to be unrealistic, and used exactly for this reason to be able to hold immigrant

communities once more completely responsible.

Although it was widely agreed by participants that there is no possibility that an

Iranian person could ever truly ‘feel Dutch’, one single respondent claimed that he does

consider himself a Nederlander. An Iranian professional is his fifties, Reza asserted the

following:

“I have Iranian heritage. I have my Iranian ways of thinking,

philosophy, culture, but alongside that I also have my Dutch culture

and habits [...] when the Queen steps down it does leave an

impression on me. So it that respect I cannot detach myself from the

Netherlands. I am a Nederlander. At the same time I have an Iranian

ancestry.”

This statement being his initial answer to questions of identity, the impression was

given that it is in fact possible for some Iranian immigrants to truly feel like that through

immigration and citizenship they may become Nederlander. Interestingly however, as shown

above, second-generation participants express similar sentiments in which they claim to take

on certain aspects of Dutch culture, although they never step away from their ‘true’ identity

as Iranians. Reza’s statement was contradicted by him later in the interview however, in

which he stated like all the others that it is both unclear what is meant by ‘feeling Dutch’ and

impossible for an Iranian immigrant to change their identity. Confronting him with the first

statement he had made, he was slightly taken aback, and continued to assert that he is an

Iranian at heart, and this could never change.

These contradictory sentiments very much intrigued me, and I took the opportunity to

explore these types of answers further with the other participants in this study. When

discussing this further with other informants they answered that such a person would be

giving sociaal wenselijke antwoord (socially desirable answers) – politically correct

responses. Sara here explains the reasoning behind this type of answer, by describing it as a

type of coping mechanism in order to “avoid all the hassle”. She claims this to be a tactic

mostly used by professionals, and tells me that at her work place she also feels like she has to

profile herself differently to ‘get through the day’. She continues however by claiming that

the generation of her parents would never accept to having to do that, because they have too

much pride as Iranians to ever claim to be other. On this notion of pride, Darya shares with

38

me a personal story about her father’s reaction when he found out she was leaving Iran in

order to seek political refuge:

“[He told me that] being a refugee means being a slave. So dont think

that if you flee you will have a better life because they will try to take

everything away from you. Just promise me that when they have

taken everything, you don’t let them ever take away your pride.

Because that’s what they will try to do.”

Here, taking away ‘pride’ is closely tied to taking away her identity as an Iranian,

because the two appear to get paired together when it comes to conceptualisations of Iranian

identity. Respondents further assert that no matter how long they have lived in the

Netherlands, they will always have Iranian roots, and this extends to second-generation

Iranians too. Parents claim their children do not call themselves Dutch, and children of these

parents also tell me they will always call themselves Iranian first. Baran here adds that it is an

unreasonable ambition to want immigrants to ‘feel Dutch’, because this way one forces

people to change their identity. She further explains that feeling at home in a certain place is

possible, but ‘feeling Dutch’ should not ever be equated to feeling at home. Her mother,

Banafshe, further adds that she doesn’t hesitate to introduce herself as an Iranian, “and

alongside that I try to adjust myself a little bit. Because that way I can feel at home here”.

With regards to her own children, she said this notion is slightly different. Although they

might always introduce themselves as Iranians, they do tend to add that they were born in the

Netherlands. Thinking about this subject further I started analyzing my personal behaviour

when I was growing up in the Netherlands, and realised that I approached the question of

“where do you come from” in a similar way. I am proud to tell people that I am Iranian, that

my parents are from Iran, but rarely do I forget to mention that I was born in the Netherlands.

Perhaps these are that type of compromises that Sara speaks of, and that Keivan has been

ashamed of, in order to avoid certain confrontations or discriminatory behaviours with the

non-immigrant Dutch community. If this is the case, the same explanation could be given for

Reza’s first statement. Nevertheless, it appears that it is generally deemed more acceptable

for the second generation to mention their additional ‘Dutchness’ than for the first generation.

When asking Baran for example what she would think if she ever heard an Iranian person call

themselves Dutch, she replied that she believes those who say they are Dutch are in fact

betraying their own identity. This sentiment was very common among other participants in

39

this study, both first and second-generation. Aresu, a second-generation Iranian who was

born in the Netherlands but regularly visits Iran, expresses the same sentiment, and adds that

it would be more common for the first-generation to say that they are Iranian, yet living in the

Netherlands, “but maybe that’s also because they feel like they will go back at some point”.

This return to country of origin in relation to Iranian pride and identity is an interesting one,

and will be explored further later in this chapter.

Although many conversations on the topic of ‘feeling Dutch’ revolved around

governmental initiatives and ambitions to employ these kinds of (unrealistic) approaches,

Darya approaches this issue from a different perspective and confronts the immigrant

community instead with their behaviour towards these kinds of policies:

“I also see–… it’s not just the government or politics that’s to blame.

It also the allochthon himself. In my environment I also see many

allochthons that pretend to be Dutch but as soon as they leave the

workplace they say [sticks up middle-finger] screw it! I’m a– I do

what I want in my free time. But in the workplace they are … well ..

how would you call it … extra Nederla– no … that’s not what you

call it … More Catholic than the Pope himself is that what you call

it?”

From this we come to understand that she feels that the immigrant community needs

to be more honest in asserting their own identity rather than ‘trying to belong’ by

‘pretending’ to be and feel Dutch when they are not. According to Darya immigrant groups

reinforce an image of the ‘problem-immigrant’ who does not want to belong to Dutch

society, because some pretend that they do feel Dutch. This can also be found in Sara’s

account of her behaviour in the workplace, in which she notes that at times she feels like she

has to do so, in order to avoid confrontations in her professional life. On the other hand,

Darya explains that as the allochtoon at work she always felt like she was the one that had to

prove herself to the rest of her environment, which brings back the notion of ‘immigrant

responsibility’ as discussed by Vasta.

Analyzing the respondents’ opinions on the subject of ‘feeling Dutch’, there appears

to be a general consensus that this aspect of the integration policy is both unrealistic and

unnecessary. Not only does it urge immigrants to do away with their identity, its underlying

assumptions equally reinforces the notion that when immigrants do not claim to feel Dutch, it

40

means that their integration has failed, and that they do in fact not want to be part of society

in the Netherlands. On the other hand, there exists a feeling that this persisting mentality is

part of the immigrant’s lack of resistance to it. As statements of participants show, a certain

behaviour is adopted in which Iranian immigrants do claim to ‘feel’ or ‘be’ Dutch through

verbal and non-verbal communication, or ‘copy-cat behaviour’. Nevertheless, these types of

behaviour are justified by claiming they are ‘tactics’ or coping mechanisms. It is important to

note however that certain contradictory feelings exist, in which it appears to be much less

accepted for the first-generation to make these kinds of statements than it is for the second-

generation to do so. A possible explanation for this is the idea that the first-generation is

“much more rooted in Iran”, as Keivan expresses. Iranian parents state on several occasions

that their children’s identities are rooted both in Iran and Netherlands at the same time.

Manijeh Nasrabadi’s study on Iranian melancholia in the Unites States describes this

generation of Iranians as “hybrid subjects with a complex set of affinities rooted in Iran and

America” (2011:493). A similar idea could apply to certain participants in this study, and

more specifically those whose behaviours towards the non-immigrant community are

internalized rather than deliberately exercised.

3.3 Allochthony and Autochthony

Another theme that stands central in my research is the allochtoon and autochtoon

concept. These terms are used in conversations by respondents without any hesitation or

reconsideration of its meanings, because for them, it is very clear who might be referred to.

Though more recently government policies differentiate between Western and non-Western

allochthons as well, the Iranians that participated in this research often assert that the term is

only used in reference to non-Western allochthons, and more specifically Turks, Moroccans,

and other immigrant groups originating from the Middle-East or Northern-African Arab

speaking countries. In relation to this, Keivan expresses the idea that “the word allochtoon

has become almost synonymous with Muslim, and people think Iranians are Muslim as well,

so we are just as much allochtoon”. His father, Naser, further adds that “of course it’s about

how you look, the dark hair and the dark eyes, but if you tell them you are Spanish or

something, that’s a relief, because that’s not a threat. It’s Islam that they see as a threat’.

Today, there does not seem to be an appropriate translation of these terms in English,

as they appear to be very specific to developments within Dutch society. It is noteworthy that

allochthony on a formal level, is based on birthplace and is defined by non-Dutch birth or

ancestry, and in the social and political sphere, it increasingly refers to those of non-Western

41

descent (Yanow & Van der Haar 2012). Arguably, the allochtoon/autochtoon discourse is

henceforth in fact a racial discourse ‘in disguise’. The Netherlands knows no explicit ‘race’

discourse and the term has become somewhat of a taboo in public use since the end of WWII,

because the term ‘race’ is very much mired in Nazi discursive practices. Instead, the

discourse revolves around integration, specifically that of (non-Western) allochtonen, rather

than ethnic minorities.

Geschiere and Nyamnjoh give further insights into the emotional character of these

terms, by asserting they are heavily related to an “intensification of politics of belonging”

(2000:423) and the affirmation of origins as the base criteria of citizenship and belonging (see

also Ceuppens & Geschiere 2005). They argue that instead of promoting national citizenship,

regimes are more interested in producing ‘autochthons’. This becomes apparent throughout

the integration policies – or assimilation policies – in the Netherlands, which urge immigrants

to adopt the Dutch identity, language and culture. These policies could be said to imply a

promise of turning ‘them’ [allochthons] into ‘us’ [autochthons]. However, the meaning of

allochthony, suggests that integration is never possible – an allochtoon can never become an

autochtoon as its identity is tied to ancestry and birth-place. Governments will not be able to

produce ‘autochthons’ as Geschiere argues, because their identity is racialized.

More recently, institutions have attempted to abolish the term ‘allochthoon’ in an

attempt to rid society of such ‘Othering’ thoughts and perceptions. This development has

already taken place in governmental institutions and the media in Belgium. But this is a

somewhat naïve way of dealing with the issue; perhaps the problem is not the presence of an

‘Other’, but the way in which this ‘Other’ is conceptualised. Taking away the word

‘allochthoon’ at present time might create more problems than it would solve. Using

Crehan’s argument against the abolition of the concept of class, we may conclude the

following:

[…] getting rid of the concept altogether risks, to use the old cliché,

throwing out babies as well as bathwater. If we abandon the concept

[…] entirely, we can all too easily find ourselves adrift amid a myriad

eddies of difference, all competing for our attention, but at a loss of

ways to talk about certain very large, and very real, systematic

inequalities to be found in the contemporary world.

(2002:189)

42

Respondents also emphasize their lack of faith in abolishing this term, claiming that

“they’ll just make up a different word”. Niloufar further comments on this by saying that “I

wish they would put all the energy they put into creating these terms into getting to know the

people you’re actually dealing with”. According to her this discourse is racialized because

people need to be more educated about the historical and cultural context of the diverse

immigrant communities in the Netherlands. The issue at hand is not the fact that there are

‘allochthonous’ communities, but the notion that these communities are a ‘national and

cultural threat’, and the persistence of an obsession with ‘cultural cloning’ – or ‘same-kind

preference’ (Essed 2008). It is this same-kind preference that is reflected in the integration

policies – the desire for ‘feeling Dutch’ – and the underlying promise that ‘to integrate’

means to be transformed from allochthon to autochthon. Reverting back to the abolition of

the term, respondents argue that there is a deeper sentiment connected to the word allochtoon

and it is this sentiment that needs to be altered. On this subject, Sara states the following:

“No I think people take on what they hear. And unfortunately the only

thing they hear in the Netherlands is the negative stories […] They

don’t try to understand why an allochtoon thinks this way or that way

[…] If you do try, you start to understand why these people think in

the way that they do, and you might learn something from all of them

too.”

The participants in this study furthermore claim that they take pride in being

allochthonous, or more precisely Iranian, and do not feel insulted or isolated by the use of the

word itself but rather by the marginalization that results from the way in which autochthones

view allochthons, and the negative connotations that this term carries, as Darya expresses

here:

“I think it’s silly. I am an allochtoon after all. And to get rid of– to

get rid of a word doesn’t change people’s opinions. I have black hair

and black eyes after all and I am happy. I don’t want to be white.

Because for that that means giving up my own identity. I don’t want

to do that. I am an Iranian woman.”

43

Despite these statements that argue the pointlessness of the abolition of this term,

there remain immigrant communities which support the move to get rid of the word.

Questioning this in the interviews during the research period, several respondents explain this

by arguing that this is most prominent among second-generation immigrants in the

Netherlands, because “the new generation has seen that as long as they get that label their

opportunities are limited and that’s why they don’t want to be labeled with that word”.

At this point we start to gain an understanding about the critical ways in which

Iranians in the Netherlands approach the integration discourse, and a lack of trust in the

viability of the concept itself. Nevertheless, as previously suggested, this does not take away

issues that both generations are confronted with on a daily basis, such as discrimination,

sentiments of unbelonging and exclusion. From here on we do not merely question in which

ways the participants might deal with such problems, but also to what extent they themselves

consider these as ‘problems’.

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Chapter 4

Roots, Soil and Belonging

When discussing themes of identity of Iranians in the Netherlands, the concepts of

roots and soil often dominated the interviews. There was a very determined use of

‘rootedness’ and “love for Iranian soil” in respondents’ explanations about their sense of

identity and belonging. There were many accounts in which informants would bluntly tell me

that “we are very proud”, “we are nationalists” or “our roots are in Iran”. The photo-

elicitation method clarified much on this topic. Informants would respond more strongly (and

emotionally) to images of nature and environment, often evoking sentiments of nostalgia,

particularly with first-generation Iranians. It was also found that the second-generation,

especially those who had never visited Iran, related their country of origin to imagery of

nature. Dariush for example, who was born in the Netherlands and never visited Iran, tells me

that “this is what I think of when I hear the name Iran”, when he is shown Image 1.1.

Image 1.1 Zayandeh River, Isfahan

It becomes clear that relating ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ to images of nature and

environment is something which parents attempt to pass down to their children, bringing

about a certain ‘imagined nation state’ of Iran based on beauty and serenity of environment.

45

Transmission of such imagery of nature, monuments and environment is closely tied to

passing on Iranian history, literature and culture to children. It is these images that are

perceived to accurately represent “the richness of our culture”, according to many first-

generation respondents. Omid, an Iranian male in his mid-fifties who moved to the

Netherlands after the Iran-Iraq war, father of two, tells me for example that “I think my

children will see this picture and will be able to identify themselves with it. Sure there are

places in the Netherlands which are very beautiful, but I don’t identify myself with them.

When I look at this picture I can feel the warmth, I can smell the air”. Sara, who has not re-

visited Iran since her move to the Netherlands at the age of five, explains to me how this

sentiment is often passed on from parent to child:

“They [the first-generation] love their soil. In Iran, the first thing

people do when they arrive is take a deep breath of the air and say ‘I

am home’, ‘this is my soil’. They take a little bit of this feeling with

them when they come to the Netherlands. That’s why we are always

Iranians first and that will always be our country, because that’s

where our roots are. And that’s how we’re raised too.”

4.1 Rootedness and ‘Home’

As Ghorashi and Vieten note; “public discourses on citizenship, identity and

nationality, which link geographical borders and the political boundaries of a community, are

infused with tensions and contradictions” (2013:725). The notion of rootedness has been

questioned much within the study of anthropology. According to Liisa Malkki, there has been

a tendency to tie identities and senses of belonging to particular spaces and within particular

boundaries (1992). This tendency for a ‘sedentary bias’, according to her, presumes that

‘rootedness’ in a specific geographic territory is considered “the natural order of things”

(Malkki 1992:26), in this case deeming it evident for Iranian immigrants in the Netherlands

to relate their metaphoric sense of ‘roots’ and ‘home’ to the physical ‘soil’ of the nation state

that is Iran. Malkki here argues for an approach which takes into account the fact that in the

current globalising word, more and more people find themselves in a “generalized condition

of homelessness” (Said 1997:18, cited in Malkki 1992:25). Relating this to Deleuze and

Guattari’s view, this causes these displaced peoples to de-territorialize and re-territorialize

‘homes’ in new spaces and places, where ‘home’ then “becomes a space in which one is able

46

to find satisfaction by improving oneself, or in which one can express oneself freely. The

sense of belonging refers then to a particular positioning in which different places overlap”

(in Ghorashi & Vieten 2012:27).

Interestingly, interviews with first –and second-generation Iranians show that the

notions of ‘rootedness’, ‘belonging’ and ‘home’ differ between the two generations, and that

the abovementioned sedentary and non-sedentary approach are in fact not mutually exclusive.

Conversations with informants do suggest than an attempt is made to ‘feel at home’, although

this attempt is one-sided, because according to respondents, no effort is made by non-

immigrant Dutch communities to make them ‘feel at home’. Statements made by participants

illustrate that they themselves try to find comfort in living in the Netherlands by adapting

their behaviour and ‘way of being’ in the public sphere, as abovementioned examples show,

in order to limit any problematic issues that other immigrant communities might have to face.

It remains unclear and in certain cases contradictory however to what extent ‘feeling at home’

or ‘feeling included’ is equal to ‘feeling like you belong’. On this topic, Anthias argues that

“belonging and social inclusion (rather than cohesion) are closely connected, although this

does not mean that belonging itself brings about social inclusion (or cohesion). It is, however,

through practices and experiences of social inclusion that a sense of a stake and acceptance in

a society is created and maintained” (2006: 21). Interestingly, the research on Iranians’

interactions with politics of integration show that Anthias’ argument also works the other

way around; though participants might have a sense of social inclusion in the sense that they

maintain relations with non-immigrant Dutch communities, whilst simultaneously ‘finding

satisfaction by improving and expressing oneself’ as Ghorashi and Vieten state above, this

does not automatically bring about a sense of belonging to the Netherlands.

As stated above, the sedentary and non-sedentary points of view are in the case of

Iranian immigrants in the Netherlands not mutually exclusive. There appears to be a

difference between the degree to which the first and second-generation participants have a

sense of belonging in the Netherlands. Baran for example claims that “I went to school here, I

have my own world and no matter how great I feel there [in Iran] and how much I feel at

home, here is home for me too and I can’t give up either”. Thus, she feels that she equally

belongs in the Netherlands as she does in Iran, and interestingly enough further asserts that

she would not live in Iran because then she would have no incentive to revisit the Netherlands

– whereas by living here, she has an equal amount of opportunities to visit Iran regularly,

mainly due to the fact that her family resides there. The first-generation however more often

strongly asserts that they do not belong in the Netherlands, and will never truly do so.

47

Reza for example claims that “that’s to do with the fact that my roots are there. I have

memories of Iran as a child so I can’t break away from those either. But why would I? I

could, but I would become ill, I would become someone who – part of my roots would be

gone”. Malkki acknowledges this feeling too and expresses that “people are often thought of,

and think of themselves, as being rooted in place and as deriving their identity from that

rootedness” (1992:27). Naser in this case directly relates his identity as an Iranian to his

rootedness in Iran, with which he also explains that therefore, he would never be able to ‘feel

Dutch’ or ‘completely belong’, because ultimately he feels Iranian, and belonging to Iran.

Omid however acknowledges the idea that this sense of rootedness is different for his

children, and continues by saying that “My children are rooted there too but much less than I

am. We did make a conscious effort to inform our children about where they come from”.

The statement above made by Omid brings us to the idea of the creation of an

‘imagined nation state’, evoked from the ways in which the country of Iran is portrayed by

parents to the children who have never visited or re-visited the country. Much alike Benedict

Anderson’s theory on imagined communities, the nation state of Iran as imagined by the

second-generation Iranians in the Netherlands, and in particular by those who have never

returned or re-visited, is imagined because they “will never know most of their fellow-

members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each live the image of their

communion” (1991:49). In other words, the sense of community or conceptualisations thereof

are not based on everyday face-to-face interaction between its members, but rather solely

based on the stories transmitted by parents to their children – and more accurately, accounts

of Iran before the Revolution. This became very much apparent when using present-day

photographs illustrating citizens in Iran, which were often dismissed as “not the Iran that I

imagine when I think of my country”, to take the example of Keivan and Niloufar. Though

Keivan was born in the Netherlands and has never visited Iran, and Niloufar was born in Iran

but left as a toddler, both strongly assert that photographs such as Image 2.1 and 3.1 do not

accurately represent Iran as they ‘know’ it.

48

Arguably, there are a number of reasons why these second-generation Iranians might

not identify with these photographs. The notion that their ideas about the country are based

on pre-Revolutionary accounts of Iran has already been explored. In their minds, they

separate the political situation in Iran from the ‘soil’ of Iran. Image 2.2 then is a reminder of

the current oppressive Islamic regime rather than the country of Iran itself. Additionally it

would be useful at this point to note once more that the majority of participants of this

research are of the upper-middle class, and originate from some of largest cities in Iran, such

as Tehran and Isfahan. This could explain why they did in fact identify themselves with

photographs of people in Iran, unless they were deemed to be “modern”, as Dariush put it,

such as in images 3.1 and 3.2. These images furthermore illustrate the opposition and protest

against the current regime (this can be seen by the manner in which the headscarf is worn),

which second-generation Iranians can identify with more easily. Here we may differentiate

between responses of second-generation Iranians who have not returned to or re-visited the

country and first-generation Iranians. The first generation, in contrast to their children, do in

fact consider images such as 2.1 and 2.2 as ‘the country of Iran’, because as Naser explains to

me, “back in the day people were free to dress how they wanted, and there were always a lot

of different people, so seeing an Afghani family, or seeing a woman in a chador was an

everyday thing. We’ve always had that”.

Image 2.1 An Afghani family in Shiraz Bazar

Image 2.2 A mother and child in Valiasr Town

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Image 3.1 Skater girls in Vanak Square, Tehran Image 3.2 Girl seen in Isfahan

Although second-generation Iranians appear to struggle much less with a ‘sense of

unbelonging’ in the Netherlands than their parents do, both generations give similar to

explanations for why this community might feel like they do not belong:

1. Increased anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic sentiment

Respondents often argue that Dutch society is becoming increasingly insulting towards

immigrants with an Islamic background (or those that are assumed to have an Islamic

background, such as Iranians), making these immigrant groups feel increasingly out of place.

Ghorashi here notes that “paradoxically, new Dutch citizens are thus losing the sense of

belonging they once had precisely at a time when they are being forced more than ever to

assimilate” (2010:109). Additionally, Banafshe adds that a person with an immigrant

background in the Netherlands will never be able to ‘belong’ because such notions are very

much racialized. This means that due to her physical characteristics, she will continually be

seen as an ‘outsider’.

2. No desire to ‘belong’

Closely related to ideas of ‘rootedness’ in Iran, several first-generation respondents claim that

they could never truly belong in the Netherlands, because in order to do so, one would have

to give up (part of) their identity. Related to this, Malkki states that “motherland and

fatherland, aside from their historical connotations, suggests that each nation is a grand

50

genealogical tree, rooted in the soil that nourishes it. By implication, it is impossible to be a

part of more than one tree” (1992:28). Following these conceptualisations of rootedness and

belonging then, it would be impossible for Iranians to ‘feel Dutch’ or even ‘become Dutch’.

In the end they belong to the ‘Iranian tree’ rather than the ‘Dutch tree’.

Ultimately, it seems then that there is not only a sentiment of unbelonging due to the

ways in which members of the non-immigrant Dutch community might exclude immigrant

groups, but also due to the fact that the immigrant community has no true desire to ‘belong’

within Dutch society and the idea that their strong sense of ‘rootedness’ does not allow them

to do so.

Iranian immigrants in the Netherlands acknowledge that integration politics feeds

discriminatory and racist practices, and generates isolation and a sense of alienation from

Dutch society. However, the respondents further assert that they do not struggle with this and

don’t take these sentiments to heart. I am told that even though they might not have a strong

sense of belonging to Dutch society, this does not mean their lives are void of belonging

altogether. There is definitely a sense of belonging present in their lives; belonging to their

land – the land of Iran. This sentiment is further passed on by parents to their children:

“Ultimately we all return to our roots. To Iran. And even though our

generation is unlikely to outlive the current regime and return to our

homeland, we know that our children will. And when our children

return, we will return with them in spirit.”

As this statement shows, this nostalgia and ‘inherited nostalgia’ produced as a result

of parents’ stories passed on to children, causes a deeply ingrained feeling that Iranian

immigrants will return to their country of origin some day. Possibly, it is these stories that

reinforce a sense of ‘rootedness’ in Iran for children who have not returned to nor re-visited

Iran. It is these second-generation Iranians who more often claim a sense of Iranian identity

and rootedness which is much stronger than their Dutch sense of identity. Those who have re-

visited Iran however, adopt a much more balanced view in which they claim their feelings of

‘home’ and ‘belonging’ are equal in both countries, and they would not be able to do away

with either. Nevertheless, as the abovementioned examples show, Iran as a geographic space

and place is most definitely important for both first –and second-generation participants in

this study. Those who appear to have a much less strong ‘sense of belonging’ to the

Netherlands, appear to ‘make up for this’ by reasserting a belonging to one particular place at

51

least, in this case the Iranian soil. It becomes evident at this point that feelings of nostalgia

are very much present among both first –and second-generation Iranians in the Netherlands.

As this chapter illustrates, it appears that those who feel most strongly that they are excluded

and do not belong, are those who reminisce strongly about their time in Iran (albeit before the

Revolution), or the image of Iran that has been passed on to them. Through this, children

inherit the sense of nostalgia of their parents for their country of origin. Although the term

‘inherit’ could be said to imply a certain passiveness of the second-generation in this process,

I am told that this inherited nostalgia in fact motivates this generation to actively be involve

with developments in their ‘homeland’. Keivan for example proudly speaks of the Green

Movement in 2009 – around the time of the Arab Spring – which received incredible amounts

of support from Iranian migrant children worldwide.

Ultimately, Iranians in the Netherlands are able to deal with sentiments of

unbelonging and exclusion by ‘coping through nostalgia’. This coping mechanism reinforces

the ‘certainty’ that they will someday be reunited with their people, with their soil, and with

their original roots. Perhaps the ‘general state of homelessness’ of Iranian immigrants, paired

with increased exclusionary sentiments as a result of developments on both political and

social levels, generates a sense of loyalty and attachment to their Iranian soil, however much

imagined that this nation-state might be. To cite Malkki: “people who are chronically mobile

and routinely displaced and invent homes and homelands in the absence of territorial,

national bases – not in situ, but through memories of and claims on, places that they can or

will no longer corporeally inhabit” (1992:24). This sense of rootedness and belonging to an

imagined nation state, and a certain ‘promise of return’ then becomes a means by which to

cope with sentiments of exclusion in the space which this immigrant community now

inhabits.

4.2 Iranians as guests

The term ‘guest’ has had negative connotations over the past few decades because it

directly implies a form of exclusion of immigrant groups. To cite Ghorashi, “it supposed a

temporary stay rather than permanent settlement” (2010:109). Evidently, this term is rarely

used at present day as the labelling of immigrants as ‘guests’ stems from the notion of ‘guest

workers – a term which was abandoned by Dutch politics in the 1980’s. Interestingly

however, several first-generation respondents used this term to define themselves and claim

that they are guests rather than “Dutch people” or people of the Netherlands, in which

Banafshe most strongly expressed this sentiment. Iranian immigrants in the Netherlands tend

52

to be relatively successful in academic and professional domains, and additionally, the

majority of first-generation participants in this research actively participate in society by

doing volunteer work or holding high-level jobs, and maintaining good contacts with the non-

immigrant Dutch community. Nevertheless, they still assert that they do not feel like they are

truly citizens of the country. Perhaps the use of the term ‘guest’ in order to describe their

position in Dutch society is a way in which they might reclaim agency over their sense of

‘unbelonging’. Banafshe here expresses that “I always say I am a guest here [...] – I will

always be Iranian. I will never truly belong. I belong to Iran”. Despite this sentiment, I was

further informed that this is not necessarily problematic for Iranians in the Netherlands, and

should not be considered as such. They can be happy with their life, be relatively

comfortable, and function well in society overall, but they will always be guests.

This notion of being ‘guests’ in the Netherlands suggests a certain temporality, and

appears to be closely tied to the feeling that if (or when) the regime falls, Iranian refugees

will return to their country of origin, as Aresu pointed out earlier in this chapter. This

nostalgia for their home country appears to be stronger at this point in time and more than

ever before, which might be a consequence of the increased anti-immigrant sentiment

existent in the Netherlands, because “it is only when you are stranded in a hostile country that

you need a romance of origins” (Saidiya Hartman, cited in Nasrabadi 2011:489). In

conversations with Darya, she tells me that she feels mistaken in believing in the democracy

and freedom of “the West”. Comparing privacy laws and the degree to which she feel she can

truly express her own identity without being penalized for doing so between the Netherlands

and Iran, she explains that she does not feel that she has “the freedom to be who I am”. I

continue to ask here whether she would be more free here, or in Iran:

“[...] outside I don’t feel free, neither do I at home because I’m not in

the environment I would like to be in. I am not the person I want to

be, and then I think ok, if it’s like this, I would prefer to be in my own

country. At least then I would have the freedom to – err … to breathe

… in my own country. [Long silence] Do you get it? I breathe the air

of my home country. [I look at her a little confused] Look. If you are

raised it’s better to be raised by your own parents than by strangers.

Do you get it? Because your parents always want the best for you.

But a stranger doesn’t. [Her eyes well up] So, knowing that true

53

freedom doesn’t exist, you might as well live as a prisoner in your

own country, rather than someone else’s.”

This highly emotional account of Darya’s perceptions on her life as an Iranian

political refugee currently residing in the Netherlands illustrates the fact that her move did not

necessarily increase her quality of life, and perhaps made it more problematic on a more

emotional level. In Nasrabadi’s research in Iranian women in the US, she noted an intense

longing for Iran, which has led the women to ultimately return. She further argues that “the

depth of this longing is in direct proportion to how thoroughly each woman’s Iranian identity

was suppressed” (2011:489). This is a similar point to which Darya is trying to make above

with the use of the term ‘prisoner’ – as her identity might be suppressed both in the

Netherlands and in Iran, albeit due to different circumstances, she might as well be

suppressed among her ‘own people’ who have an understanding of this suppression (and are

able to share this sentiment with her) on a more emotional level. Leila similarly explains to

me that since her move to the Netherlands, her life has not necessarily become less difficult,

it is just that she has to deal with a different set of obstacles she did not face in her country of

origin. Her life with an abusive ex-husband and her struggle to live in an environment in

which death is still a fact of life for her – since there is a large suicide rate in her city – leaves

her with little to no control over life-quality, no matter where she resides.

Both generations of informants confidently asserted that if the Iranian regime were to

be overthrown, many of those who have migrated would immediately return. Leila tells me

that she does not miss Iran now, because “I can’t identify myself with what the country has

become. But if the regime changes – you want to be with your own people at the end of the

day”.

Among Iranians of the second generation, and particularly among those who have not

visited the country since their leave, or ever before, there appears to be a strong sense of

nostalgia as well. Although most parents do clearly state that they would leave their children

to make their own decision about a possible return, the nostalgia of return appears to be

passed on to and lived through the second-generation Iranians, as a form of ‘inherited

nostalgia’. The Iran as imagined by second-generation Iranians who have not returned, often

takes the form of a sort of Utopic environment of warmth, comfort, familiarity and beauty. It

is important to remember however that the ideas these people have of their country of origin

stem mostly from stories passed on by their parents, and more specifically, stories from

before the Revolution. It could justifiably be argued that this imagined Iran paints a

54

somewhat of a distorted portrait of the country now, after over thirty years of Islamic ruling.

Even if the regime were to fall tomorrow, the country will have gone through an extensive

amount of change and thus stories of the Iran that existed thirty years ago are unlikely to

accurately represent the country at present day. Baran and Aresu, who have been visiting Iran

regularly since they were children and grew up ‘experiencing’ first-hand rather than

‘inheriting’, are incidentally the only people who are hesitant about returning to the country

to live there. Niloufar, whose year of birth marks her as one of the ‘children of the

Revolution’, further states that “I would at least die there. Yes. I would die there. On my

soil”. Interestingly, the main point of hesitation for return is closely tied to insecurities on the

domain of language capabilities.

Whilst parents of these children state that they would leave their children completely

free in their own choosing when it comes to resettlement in Iran, several respondents

simultaneously claim that the second-generation would have many difficulties living in Iran

after having grown up in the Netherlands. Reza for example, illustrates his thoughts on the

return of his own children:

“They can’t stay there. I notice this when we go on holiday. Look if

you have roots, at first it’s fun, and everyone loves you, and you feel

that. You don’t know them personally but they love you, and you love

them. But these things are enjoyable in the short term. In the long

term, they will get frustrated.”

Ultimately, there remains a strong sense of nostalgia and desire for return among both

generations of participants in this research, although we are still able to differentiate between

those who appear to have a relatively romanticized view of Iran, partly as a consequence of a

certain ‘inherited nostalgia’. The first-generation, ever confident that the fall of the regime

will result in a massive re-migration of uprooted Iranians, also feel strongly that in that case

their children might return, resettle and rebuild.

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Chapter 5

Cause and Effect

Thus far, we have analyzed what understandings Iranian immigrants in the

Netherlands might have of the integration concept, and in which ways they might interact

with politics of integration in order to cope with sentiments of exclusion and unbelonging in

Dutch society. Alongside that, themes regarding anti-immigrant sentiments and responses to

these by immigrant communities were explored further, and will be discussed in this chapter.

As previously noted in Chapter 2, integration policies appear to be a response to an increasing

‘cultural anxiety’, and a fear of the Netherlands of losing their national identity and culture.

With the rise in popularity of right-wing political parties, it seems that this anxiety is felt

more strongly in relation to Muslim communities. It was often noted by respondents that anti-

immigrant sentiments and integration policies are equivalent to anti-Islamic views. Here,

Ghorashi also claims that “a country that had an image of being open, tolerant, and liberal,

seems to be in the throes of fear and protective of its ‘national identity’ fuelled by a tough

rhetoric toward Muslims” (2010:106). Following these kinds of statements, the relationship

between the process towards the implementation of integration policies, anti-Islamic

sentiments, and responses by immigrant communities are further examined.

5.1 Post 9/11 Sentiments

As mentioned in a previous chapter, respondents did not generally differentiate

between a ‘multicultural era’ and a ‘post-multicultural era’ in the Netherlands. Nevertheless,

there was an indication of a kind of ‘turning point’ after which anti-immigrant sentiments

became more noticeable, and after which respondents felt more strongly discriminated

against based on their ethnicity. The 9/11 event is illustrated to be a point at which policy

making towards immigration became more strict, and as Omid explains, “society became

more resentful towards people like us, people with dark features”. Here, Ghorashi

furthermore quotes Ian Buruma’s research on Islam and tolerance in Amsterdam, who states

that his interviewees call 9/11 “a switch” (2010:110). Throughout this research it became

clear that Iranians in the Netherlands feel that from this point onwards, they were perceived

as a greater threat, although it was noted that those of Moroccan and Turkish descent have

more problems with this than Iranians do. Sara, who was working at a discrimination hotline

at the time, tells me that “I started getting calls constantly about people who got verbally and

56

sometimes physically abused because suddenly they were seen as terrorists”. Similarly,

Niloufar illustrates her experiences in the Netherlands within hours after the attack in New

York:

“I was at work and my mother phoned me, telling me to come home

immediately. She told me something disastrous had happened in the

US and kept telling me to come home. I told her to stop overreacting,

and I didn’t go. I just wouldn’t believe that people might look at me

like I am some kind of terrorist because of what happened there. Well,

on my way home I just faced constant verbal abuse and everyone was

looking at me, scared and also infuriated. Suddenly people looked at

you differently because you had dark hair too and looked foreign.”

According to respondents, this anti-immigrant sentiment could easily be translated to

an anxiety towards Islam, which the Iranian community is often identified with. This anxiety

is at this point not only a ‘cultural anxiety’ as illustrated previously, but also a ‘national

threat’ in a more physical sense (Vasta, 2007). The ongoing call for a ‘War on Terrorism’ has

caused societies to associate Islam and Muslim communities with violent threats. Through

use of photo-elicitation, Dariush expresses why he believes that Iranians are now more

discriminated against than before when he is shown Image 4.1:

Image 4.1 Hafez’ Tomb, Shiraz

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“I think this is what people think of when they hear Iran. People in

headscarves. Just another Muslim country. I don’t even think they

know there’s different types of Muslims as well. People ask me all the

time if I speak Arabic [laughter]. And then I give them a short history

lesson, and about the Revolution too, and that most Iranians here are

not really Muslims, or even strict Muslims. And then they stop

holding their breath, you see the sense of relief.”

This statement portrays a variety of presumptions and misconceptions. Firstly,

Dariush acknowledges the fact that Dutch society increasingly views those with a Muslim

background to be a threat to society, and further ignores varieties among so-called ‘Muslim

countries’. At the same time, he implies that assumptions about religious backgrounds are

more often based on physical appearance, or as Omid already pointed out, ‘dark features’.

Dariush illustrates how anti-immigrant rhetoric has an ongoing negative influence on the

ways that the Iranian community is labelled, not taking into account the history of this

particular community whom in fact fled Islamic ruling, and the ongoing anxiety towards

those who are assumed to have an Islamic background.

The media is said to play a very big role in this development. Omid for example

continues by referring to the massacre in Norway in which Anders Breivik killed at least 93

people as an act against “liberal immigration policies and the spread of Islam” (The

Guardian, 2011). He tells me that “the minute it happened they told us that it was a terrorist

act of Islam, they said it was a converted Muslim, and then they realized it was the opposite

and they never mentioned it again”. The example of the Norway massacre was used a number

of times in fact, in order to furthermore shed light on the powerful position of the media in

relation to how certain communities are perceived. Several respondents claim that when

Breivik was found to have far-right motivations, the media moved away from calling this

event an act of terrorism, to murders committed by a mentally unstable person. Evidently, the

September 11 attacks have had a significant influence on the position of immigrant

communities not only in the United States, but also in Europe. The more recent case of the

Woolwich killings in London, which sparked even more controversy on the subject of

immigrants as national threats (The Independent, 2013), gives the impression that this

discourse is in dire need of a different approach; one which moves away from attitudes that

intensify a ‘Clash of Civilizations’ justification for societal issues (Huntington, 1996), which

is arguably something the integration policy – and the ongoing notion of the failure of

58

immigrants’ integration – is culpable of. Instead I encourage an approach which reassesses

the priorities and points of focus of policy-making in the Netherlands, in order to adopt a

perspective which is more inclusive of the diverse and dynamic cultures and interactions

between communities, rather than viewing these as “shut-down, sealed-off entities that have

been purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents that animate human history” (Said,

2001:12).

Interestingly, although the September 11 attacks were repeatedly said to be a ‘turning-

point’, respondents also implied on several occasions that this event was not in fact the origin

of anti-immigrant sentiment, but rather a means by which to justify sentiments towards

immigrants that had previously existed. Niloufar for example asserts that “before 9/11 people

didn’t express how they truly felt. People were thinking it but not saying it because there was

no reason to do so; there was no reason for blame. And I think that event undid something in

people”. Aresu adds to this by saying that before 9/11 “no one was thinking about terrorism

and Al Qaeda and stuff. No one even knew what it meant. Even today no one really knows

what it’s about but suddenly everyone’s an expert”. Thus, there exists a feeling that

discrimination and racism existed long before Islam was seen as a ‘threat’ on various levels,

yet there was no opportunity to express these opinions without being scorned for doing so.

Again, respondents claim that the media plays a key role when it comes to the extent to which

these types of sentiments are publically expressed. Dariush shares with me his personal

experiences in the year 2006, during which time Iran often appeared in the news due to their

nuclear power facilities, feared to be used for “weapons against the West [...] and when I

went to school that week people were joking about me being a terrorist. But you know what

they say, in every joke there’s a grain of truth”. This grain of truth became apparent several

years later, and still has an influence at present day; Iranian students in the Netherlands are

often discriminated against during applications for physics degrees out of fear that they will

use their knowledge gained to build nuclear weapons in their country of origin (NRC, 2013).

Silverstein discusses the characterisation of migrants as nationally suspect and

potentially disloyal, in which Muslims in particular are viewed as “potential enemies within”

(2005:366) – a notion highly influenced by the modern day ‘War on Terror’. Aileen Tom on

this topic notes how it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between anti-

immigrant and anti-terrorist policies – a development from which immigrants will suffer

greatly (2012). Moreover, these concerns allow countries to implement stricter immigration

and integration policies under the veil of ‘national security’. On this subject, Darya brings up

an interesting observation when discussing the idea of freedom in the Netherlands and in

59

Iran, and tells me that “I see in reality there is not much difference in the viewpoints in

politics, they just sell it differently [...] us here, they sell us things that, that … because of the

fight against terrorism we have to take certain measures, internet and phones are monitored

because of crime prevention and things like that. Khomeini did that in Iran too.”

5.2 Radicalization of Muslim Youth

During life-history accounts of first-generation Iranian immigrants, several

respondents mentioned in passing that when they first moved to the Netherlands, they did not

observe as many immigrant women wearing headscarves as are seen at present day. Curious

about this development, this topic was examined further in conversations with both first –and

second-generation participants. An increase in the adoption of this type of dress in the

Netherlands is something which has similarly been noted by feminist scholar Leila Ahmed,

who observed a growing visibility of young Muslim women in the United States wearing

headscarves (2011). Whilst this development is easily equated with a loss of emancipation of

Muslim women and an increased male dominance – as Ahmed initially presumed – her

findings, much alike the explanations of my informants, showed a very different reasoning

behind this transition. In an interview with WFPL News, Ahmed states that “the key issue

there is it’s the dress of a minority, and a minority who, after 9/11 in particular, suffered for

the fact that they were Muslim. It’s a way of asserting your dignity against a majority culture

which looks down on you” (WFPL, 2012). Similarly, even though all but one Iranian in my

research were non-religious, they were able to empathize with this development and

interpreted this not as a religious move, but one related more so to identity and heritage as

Niloufar expresses here:

“The minute that they prohibit the wearing of headscarves in the

Netherlands I will be the first one to wear one. As a matter of

principle. I think more people are doing it because the moment you

drive people in a corner – […] their heritage and culture is the only

thing they really own in this country. The only thing that is really

theirs, that they have control over. The minute you try to take that

away you create a big problem. You can take everything away from

me, but don’t put your hands on my culture”

60

An interesting point here is the juxtaposition of veiling and freedom in Iran and in the

Netherlands. As the statement above shows, participants expressed that the increase in veiling

in the Netherlands could be explained because of a process in which immigrant communities

feel that they are less ‘free’ in retaining control over their own culture and identity. The act of

veiling here gives them a sense of power and agency, whereas the act of veiling in Iran is

more often associated with the powerlessness women there have to face. However, it is

important to remember that in Iran women have also attempted to have more control over this

by using veils as a sort of ‘fashion item’, adopting various styles and sometimes barely

covering their hair in protest.

Ghorashi furthermore acknowledges the relationship between the ‘radicalization of

Muslim youth’ (2012:109) and a growing sense of marginalization. She explains that in the

case of Netherlands, it seems logical that migrants would adopt a protectionist attitude at the

moment they sense that their cultural (and religious) background is threatened within the

Dutch public sphere. In other words, this radicalization is an attempt to defend “what they

consider their roots” (2012:109), by strengthening the boundaries of their ‘otherness’. Essed

and Goldberg have also noted that non-dominant groups can be essentialist in choosing for

their own kind, “whether or not as a reaction against exclusion” (2002:3). Although

respondents generally do not consider themselves Muslim, and thus do not ‘radicalize’ in this

sense, the previous chapter does show evidence for cultural essentialism among Iranian

immigrants in the Netherlands. Both parents and most children appear to strengthen the

boundaries of their ‘otherness’ by claiming that they will always be Iranians belonging to the

soil of Iran, in order to cope with their sense of unbelonging and exclusion in Dutch society.

5.3 Acceptance is the magic word

When discussing the personal upbringing of themselves and their children, several

respondents use the word ‘acceptance’ as the key to live comfortably in a culturally diverse

society. An example of this has been given previously, where Darya noted how the Iran that

she remembers has always been rich with different cultures, ethnicities and religious beliefs.

Omid here further notes that “before the Revolution, there were always Christians, Muslims,

Jews, and other religions living amongst each other quite happily”, whilst Darya adds that

“you would see people walking with chador too of course, but they could walk next to a non-

religious person and there would be no judgement from either side”. What it comes down to

for these respondents is simultaneously embracing and accepting the multiplicity of sub-

61

cultures existent in society, allowing the inevitable interdependency of these cultures to

remain stable.

The notion of ‘acceptance’ is further used to point out a healthy alternative to

integration policies in the Netherlands. When talking to Keivan about certain struggles he

faces in his daily life, he speaks to me about the fact that at this point in his life he is having

trouble when looking for jobs for example, and points out that “there is a lack of

understanding and acceptance towards me, towards the fact that I might hold different values

[...] I’m easily the odd one out”. Niloufar adds to this when she explains to me why the

concept of integration is flawed, and the notion of acceptance would be a better alternative:

“Integration should mean... first try to understand who you’re dealing

with exactly, before you try to change that person. Changing people

doesn’t work, and that’s what integration is trying to do – turn you

into something you’re not. It’s like in relationships, everyone know’s

it only brings more problems on the long term when you try to change

your partner. What you need to do is understand the other. If you

understand him and accept him for who he is, you can get the best out

of that person. It’s acceptance, it’s understanding, and especially also

taking the time to first look in the mirror yourself before holding one

up to the other”.

The above statement contains a variety of perceptions. Firstly, present day integration

policies are flawed due to the fact that the ultimate goal is for the immigrant to change their

personality. Here this change differs from aforementioned adaptation, as change implies an

irreversible and absolute modification of one’s identity, whereas adaptation more so allows

the person to maintain agency and control over the extent to which, and at what times, certain

behaviours are adjusted to fit specific contexts. Change is something which is imposed and

desired from external forces, whereas adaptation (and degrees of adaptation) is selected by

the individual himself. Secondly, ‘acceptance’ is here not only presented as an alternative to

the concept of integration, but also as an aspect which integration is currently lacking. This in

a sense suggests that both might exist alongside each other, or rather within each other.

However, as respondents’ perceptions of the concept of integration appear to be associated

quite heavily with loss of identity and obligation to change – and more so likened to

assimilation policies – one might remain sceptical about whether that is a realistic assumption

62

to make. Darya for example critically states that if she were to abolish any word, she would

abolish the word integration. She tells me that instead of integrating, people need to accept.

Society needs to accept that everyone has different identities and learn to embrace these or at

least work among them. Finally, Niloufar’s statement also implies a certain lack of education

with regards to immigrant communities in the Netherlands. She strongly suggests that a lack

of understanding or knowledge of the variety of historical and cultural contexts of migratory

motivations, or in other words, a ‘dressing everyone in the same suit’ approach, is a core

cause of the social issues that exist in the Netherlands today.

According to Theodora Kostakopoulou, “the language of integration represents a

politically dated and normatively deficient approach to ethnic diversity”, and she suggests an

“alternative pluralist mode of inclusion based on respectful symbiosis and the ‘letting be’ of

groups of migrant origin” (2010:829). Her approach draws similarities with the ideas of

informants on the notion of ‘acceptance’, in which the policy of ‘letting be’ appears to give a

more clear explanation of what ‘acceptance’ would entail. According to Kostakopoulou, this

policy is one developing “a non-racialized frame of community that welcomes migrants and

treats them fairly because it recognises that migrant incorporation is a long-term and

multifaceted process that takes place ‘while people are getting on with their lives and are

doing things’, that is, as they become enmeshed in social life and form interdependent

relations” (2010:838). Following this then, this process of ‘letting be’ and ‘accepting’ would

have a more positive effect than current integration policies, which imposes a certain ‘way of

being’ onto immigrant communities. Such impositions would in fact produce an

unwelcoming environment for these communities – as respondents have also repeatedly

suggested – and might actually have “the perverse effect of undermining migrants’

incorporation by delaying or even discouraging the development of forms of allegiance

towards the new society and its system” (ibid.). Darya expresses this sentiment by arguing

that “what they are doing here is like an arranged marriage... like forcing a young girl to fall

in love with a man and marrying him... that’s never going to happen is it? It’s imposing a

certain feeling onto someone, instead of letting it develop naturally and over time”. What is

suggested here is that if political policies refrain from imposing degrees of change and

assimilation into the host society, and rather ‘let them be’, the dynamic relationships between

the variety of cultures and communities than exist in a society will be given the opportunity

to evolve over time. This way, we may move away from the presumption that cultures are

incompatible and inevitably conflicting, towards a view which recognizes that plurality in

fact enriches society as a whole. This is something which informants often suggest, stating

63

that if only Dutch society and political policies would urge members of society to ‘accept’

each other’s differences, one might be able to learn from one another whilst the country as a

whole will simultaneously advance in a globalising world in which interactions with different

communities has become a fact of life.

64

Conclusion

Through exploration and analysis of the narratives of Iranian immigrants in the Netherlands,

this study ultimately contests the prioritizations of integration policies as imposed by policy-

makers, and consequently challenges the concept of integration as a whole. In the spirit of re-

thinking prioritizations, I will refrain from concluding this research by reiterating the totality

of analyses present in this piece. Instead, I will take this final opportunity to clarify why

integration policies in the Netherlands are extremely flawed. Indubitably, it cannot be denied

that discriminatory and exclusionary practices present in Dutch society – which are said to be

a direct result of such policies – are highly present and recognized amongst Iranian

immigrants. However, the ways in which this community interacts with politics of

integration, could provide very relevant insights into new ways of approaching this discourse,

for immigrant as well as non-immigrant Dutch communities and Dutch politics alike.

First and foremost, this research is highly critical of the conditions which immigrant

communities are urged to fulfil in order to become included and accepted members of Dutch

society. It indeed challenges the significance of matters such as ‘learning the Dutch

language’, ‘learning Dutch traditions’, ‘actively participating in society, ‘being financially

independent of the state’ and ‘having contact with non-immigrant communities’, in order to

achieve “inclusion and continuity in Dutch society” and be an “active member of society”,

with the promise of ‘feeling Dutch’(BZK 2011). As becomes evident in this research, all

participants in this study meet these requirements for integration. Yet, the majority still feels

a great sense of unbelonging in the Netherlands. Even first-generation Iranians, who have

spent more years of their lives living in the Netherlands than in Iran, have a persistent

homeland nostalgia. This proves that it is not that ‘immigrants have failed at integrating’, but

rather, that the integration concept and its surrounding policies are incredibly inadequate.

Secondly, the ways in which Iranians in the Netherlands conceptualise and interact

with politics of integration, provides evidence for the fact that integration policies demands

immigrants to distance themselves from their ‘roots’ and ‘identity’, and therefore insist that

immigrant communities assimilate into Dutch society. However, none of the participants are

prepared to distance themselves from their ‘true’ Iranian identity. Henceforth, neither do the

conditions of integration result in a ‘feeling of Dutchness’, nor is not having this feeling an

obstacle for engaging with Dutch society, as the case of Iranians in the Netherlands shows.

Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that the Iranian immigrants in this study belong to a

community which has in fact ‘fled’ the threat of assimilation into an Islamic Republic in their

65

country of origin. Thus, they continually refuse to be assimilated in any place. On many

occasions I was told that freedom to choose to be different is something which stands at the

core of Iranian identity as a whole. The variety of sub-cultures, ethnicities and religious

backgrounds existent in pre-Revolutionary Iran proves to Iranians that ‘cultural cloning’ is

not a requirement for an inclusive and ‘connected’ society – this idea is transmitted by

parents to their children as well. Arguably, the fact that Iranians in the Netherlands are faced

with assimilationist practices causes this community to intensify their boundary-making with

respect to other communities, whilst simultaneously becoming more nostalgic for their

homeland. It could be said then, that the requirements and demands of integration policies in

fact result in sentiments which stand contrary to the stated aims of its policies.

All in all, the case of Iranians in the Netherlands urges us to adopt new perspectives

and approaches to the integration discourse in the Netherlands. Rather than using sentiments

of exclusion and unbelonging of immigrant communities as an affirmation of their ‘failure to

integrate’, policy-makers are urged to move away from this one-sided approach. Instead, the

notion of ‘mutual integration’ is brought forward, in which ‘mutual acceptance’ is the first

stepping-stone towards this process. According to the participants, one thing is certain; if the

Dutch politicians continue to implement its current oppressive and assimilationist approaches

towards immigrant communities, the Netherlands will end up bearing the brunt. Cultural

differences do not have to be considered as ‘national threats’, but should rather be

acknowledged to be an enrichment to society as a whole. To oppress these differences, will

result in losses of insights, talents and knowledge, and also investments that the country has

made in these communities. The question remains whether this is the price that Dutch society

is prepared to pay.

66

Premonitions

During the course of the research, I was confronted with a rather personal, yet highly

relevant matter. My own mother, a fifty-year old successful businesswoman in the

Netherlands, having lived here most of her life, has suddenly made the rash decision to return

to her homeland.

In an open, albeit emotional conversation, she explained to me in great detail her

reasoning behind this sudden urge to return. “I am fed up”, she tells me, “because nothing is

ever enough”. My mother explains to me that after having worked and lived here for 28

years, she still feels incredibly disconnected from Dutch society. Although she speaks the

language flawlessly, has always been very involved with Dutch society, professionally as

well as personally, has continuously engaged with non-immigrant Dutch communities and

has always followed political and social developments in the country, she still feels like she

does not belong. In search for an answer as to why she felt this way, she returned to Iran for

the first time since she fled in 1982. Initially filled with fears of what would happen at her

moment of arrival – would they arrest her? would they question her? – she told me that the

minute she stepped out of the airplane she immediately felt like she was in a place where she

belonged, “and I have never felt that during all those years in the Netherlands”. In reality, it

could be presumed that the Iran of today would be a foreign country to her, after thirty years

of change, but she has not stopped telling me that she felt like ‘a fish in the water’ during her

stay there.

Revisiting her country of origin after having lived in the Netherlands for such a long

time, allowed her to compare her experiences and sentiments, and in a sense place her life in

both countries on a set of scales, in order to measure her feelings. She tells me that upon her

arrival she realized that all the changes that she deemed so important to fight against when

she was young, did not matter much to her now. Living in the Netherlands demanded a

degree of suppression – a degree of assimilation and giving up her identity, and this has been

exhausting for her to deal with, to put it mildly. The only ‘change’ that is demanded of her in

Iran now is external; she merely has to adapt her appearance by wearing a headscarf. But she

doesn’t have to pretend to be someone she is not in order to be accepted. Knowing this, gave

her an extreme sense of serenity, as she tells me that “people look past appearances because

everyone has to wear a headscarf”. This is where the greatest difference lies for her when it

comes to life in Iran and in the Netherlands, as here the change demanded is internal. It is to

give up your own nature, your own identity. She adds that “I don’t just feel disconnected

67

from Dutch society because of my own situation, but perhaps even more so because of the

ways that second –and third-generation immigrant youth are being treated. They are deprived

of opportunities on a daily basis, unless they pretend to be someone they are not. Why should

anyone have to pretend to be someone else? That is not being at home”.

As this revisit allowed her to measure her experiences in both countries, she was

suddenly faced with the fact that during her 28-year stay in the Netherlands, she had not been

able to truly be herself, “and when you talk to people in Iran, you finally feel like you are an

equal”. Here she adds that the country is much different from the one she had left on a

political level, but when it comes down to the people, to the environment, to sentiments of

belonging, nothing has changed for her at all. Perhaps most interestingly, she claims that

“everyone who has settled abroad is slowly re-building a life in Iran by re-visiting regularly”.

Parents are building and buying houses, not for themselves, but for their children. Just in

case. Just in case they want to return, their parents are at least making sure they have that

option, “and that’s what I will do too”.

My mother tells me that during her stay in the Netherlands, she often laughed at her

own mother when she was asked to invest in buying a house in Iran. To her, at the time, the

Netherlands was her new home, and she had no desire to go back. She was determined to

rebuild her life in the Netherlands, “but now I know that I was naive to think that by trying

hard to become someone and give back to the community, this country will accept you”. She

continues by saying that “I know you will laugh at me now, as I did at my own mother, but

time will tell, as well as it told me that you can never feel at home in a country that

assimilates your inner you, and that is what Dutch government is doing”. Ultimately, she

expresses a sentiment much alike the respondents in my research have done, asserting that ‘a

fear of the unknown’ or ‘alien’ – and more specifically, the ‘immigrant-unknown’ – is what is

dominating Dutch politics and society. Additionally, there appears to be a “lack of desire to

get to know the unknown”. In other words, Dutch society in her opinion expresses no fear

towards differences within non-immigrant communities, yet continues to view differences

among immigrant communities as ‘threats’, “and as long as they don’t overcome this fear,

and continue to strive for the production of ‘clones’, immigrant communities might never

truly feel like they belong here”.

68

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