Tom Pepinsky

Category: Asia

  • What Does it Mean to be “Western” in the Netherlands? [Updated]

    Some time ago I wrote about the curious case of Japanese colonial subjects in the Dutch East Indies. The interesting observation is that

    After concluding a Treaty of Trade and Navigation in 1896, the Netherlands and Japan recognised each other as most favoured nations, and subsequently the Tokyo government pressed the Dutch to accord its migrants in their colonies the same legal status as Europeans. In 1899, Japanese citizens in the Indies acquired European status…

    Today I learned two more interesting facts about the regulation of identity in the Netherlands today, and how the Netherlands government conceptualize what it means to be from the West.

    First, when the Netherlands government conceptualizes migrants as being from the West or not, it continues to follow the precedent set in the Indies back at the turn of the last century.

    Due to their socioeconomic and cultural position, people from Indonesia and Japan residing in the Netherlands are considered as having a ‘western’ migration background. These are mainly people born in the former Dutch East Indies and expatriates employed by Japanese companies with their families.

    Not only does the Netherlands government maintain the idea that Japanese are “not like” other non-Europeans, it also applies that standard to anyone from Indonesia. It is somehow meaningful that this principle of “the former colonial subject is Western, like us” does not apply to, say, Suriname, although I’ll leave it to a specialist on Netherlands politics to explain how that has come to be and what it means.

    Second, what it means to be a cultural minority in the Netherlands:

    Student from a cultural minority defined by the Dutch Ministry of Education as someone meeting one of the following criteria:

    • belongs to a Moluccan group;
    • at least one parent or guardian originally comes from Greece, Italy, former Yugoslavia, Cape Verde, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia or Turkey
    • at least one parent or guardian originally comes from Suriname, Aruba or the Netherlands Antilles;
    • at least one parent or guardian originally comes from another non-English speaking country outside Europe, except Indonesia
    • at least one parent or guardian was admitted as a foreigner under article 15 of the Aliens Act.

    Here we see a bunch of knotty problems in distinguishing among former colonial subjects. Someone from the Moluccas (Maluku) is from a cultural minority background, but not someone from elsewhere in what is today Indonesia, like someone from Java. Unless that Javanese person went to Suriname first after slavery was abolished there, in which case that person would be from a cultural minority background.

    In the Netherlands, as in elsewhere, we learn a lot about politics and society from the categories that we use to regulate identity.

    UPDATE

    Another day, another thing learned. There are plenty other ways that peoplehood and citizenship are regulated in the Netherlands (and, of course, elsewhere too, but the Netherlands example is the one that fascinates this Indonesianist). Take, for example, the requirements for obtaining a temporary residence permit to live in the Netherlands. Many migrants have to take a Basic Civic Integration Exam. But not all of them!

    You do not have to take the exam in one of the following situations:

    • You are under 18 or you have reached your AOW pension age. The AOW pension age differs per person.
    • You have a valid residence permit and you want to change the purpose of stay.
    • You have lived in the Netherlands for at least 8 years during the compulsory school age.
    • You have the nationality of an EU/EEA country, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, United States of America, Vatican City.
    • You have the status of a long-term resident EC in another EU country.
    • You have the Turkish nationality or you are a family member of a Turkish national that has lawful stay in the Netherlands…
    • You have the Surinamese nationality and have at least finished primary school in the Dutch language in Surinam or the Netherlands…

    Whereas the examples above show that Indonesians are viewed as having a Western background rather than a non-Western one, when it comes to civic integration, Indonesians are treated like other non-Western migrants—but Surinamese who are educated in Dutch are not!

    There is a fascinating book to be written on the politics of citizenship in the Netherlands and Indonesia. The mutual co-constitution of Dutch and Indonesian ideas of citizenship, from the colonial period through today.

  • Why Aren’t There More Exclusionary Populists in Asia?

    We live in the age of populism, and its global spread has produced a wealth of research and commentary. We now know more about what populism is and how it varies than we did two decades ago, and this emerging body of research is truly global in scope, putting comparativists in conversation with Americanists, theorists, and historians.

    One question that has long interested me is this: why don’t we see more European-style anti-immigrant populists in East and Southeast Asia? Specifically, why is exclusionary populism so rare in East and Southeast Asia, and inclusionary populism the dominant mode of populist mobilization? The answer cannot be “because there are no migrant minorities to target,” because there are; it also cannot be “because there is no ethnic or religious conflict, chauvinism, or bigotry,” because there is. In a new essay, I develop an answer to this question that focuses on the timing and sequence of the emergence of mass politics and the stickiness of the concepts of national peoplehood that followed. Here is the abstract.

    Populists in East and Southeast Asia generally refrain from invoking anti-migrant and anti-minority sentiments as part of their mobilizational strategies. This differentiates them from “exclusionary” populists in Europe and the United States, even though many Asian countries are diverse societies with long histories of migration and ethnic chauvinism. In this essay I propose that Asian populists work within rather than against existing categories of peoplehood that were set alongside the onset of mass politics. Because these categories of peoplehood remain salient today, they constrain contemporary Asian populists’ rhetorical and mobilizational strategies. Exceptional cases such as the Rohingya and Chinese Indonesians, who are vulnerable to populist mobilization, provide further support for this argument about how contested notions of peoplehood make exclusionary populism possible. The Asian experience thus reveals the flexibility of identity, nation, and membership in contemporary populism.

    If you’re reading this and saying “hey wait, what about…?” let me emphasize that I agree that there are exceptions. Those exceptions—instances where we do see exclusionary populism in Asia—-are actually useful evidence that is consistent with my argument about timing, sequence, and membership.