Migration - Integration - Diversity: Conference

What is the impact of diversity on the democratic constitution of Western societies? Diversity per se assumes an awareness of otherness without necessarily recognizing different access to opportunities between those who consider their citizenship as a birthright and those who consider themselves – in most cases migrants - as lacking voice and equal opportunity in society and in politics.

National constructions of otherness are of basic relevance for this approach since ethnicity cements not only the undesired forms of otherness but perpetuates inequality. By examining primarily two intertwined forms of difference: ethnos/culture and religion, socio-political structures and national discourses will be compared during this conference

The Dutch case will be used here as a prime example of a particular form of multicultural policy, which was more consistently encouraged than elsewhere in Europe. Drawing from this case, we will address theoretical and empirical implications for other Western societies such as Canada and especially Germany.

The event will serve as a preparatory conference to a larger examination of multi-cultural policies, which have occurred over the past 40 years in Western societies. A two-day conference is scheduled for spring of 2010.

Programme

13:00 Registration

13:30 – 15:00 Session One (Chair: Y. Michal Bodemann)
Greetings:
Andreas Poltermann, Director, Domestic Division, Heinrich Boell Foundation;
Y. Michal Bodemann, Director, University of Toronto in Berlin

Claus Offe, Political Sociology, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin
Managing Diversity Through Immigration Tests? Testing Immigrants for their Suitability for Citizenship in EU Member States
Marnie Bjornson, Anthropology, University of Toronto
Language and Multiculturalism in the Netherlands

15:00 – 15:15 Coffee Break

14:45 – 16:45 Session Two (Chair: Marianne Zepp)

Peter Scholten, Sociology, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Beyond the Multicultural Model in the Netherlands? Locating and Reflecting Upon 'the Dutch Multicultural Model' in Academic and Political Discourses.
Randall Hansen, Political Science, University of Toronto
The Road to Nowhere: Multiculturalism as Europe's Future

Discussants:

Ruud Koopmans, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin
Goekce Yurdakul, BGSS

16:45 – 17:00 Coffee Break

17:00 – 19:00 Session Three (Chair: Goekce Yurdakul)

Anna Korteweg, Sociology, University of Toronto
Is Multiculturalism Dead? Policy Approaches to Honor Related Violence in the Netherlands
Ruud Koopmans, Migration/Integration, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin
The Nine Lives of Dutch Multiculturalism: Path-dependent Integration Policies and Their Consequences
Roland Robertson, Sociology, University of Aberdeen
National Identity in Confrontation With Religiocultural Loyalties

Discussants:

Michal Bodemann, University of Toronto
Claus Offe, Hertie School of Governance

21:00 End of the conference

Speakers

Marnie Bjornson is a PhD candidate in Social and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her doctoral research on Dutch ‘integration’ policies focuses on neoliberal language ideologies and citizenship within a governmentality framework. She conducted participant observation fieldwork in the civic integration training programmes between 2002 and 2003. Publications of her findings include: Speaking of citizenship: Language ideologies in Dutch citizenship regimes (Focaal 2007) and Cito-Citizens: Language and exclusion in the Netherlands (TSS 2009).

Randall Hansen is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Immigration & Governance in the department of political science at the University of Toronto. His work covers immigration and citizenship and political history. He is author of Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain (OUP, 2000), Towards a European Nationality (w. P. Weil, Palgrave, 2001), Dual Nationality, Social Rights, and Federal Citizenship in the U.S. and Europe (w. P. Weil, Berghahn, 2002), Immigration and asylum from 1900 to the present [w. M. Gibney, ABC-CLIO, 2005]. Website

Ruud Koopmans, born in 1961, graduate of political science at the University of Amsterdam; senior researcher at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (ASSR), at the Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau in Rijswijk and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin. Since 2003 Professor of Sociology, Chair in Social Conflict and Change, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, since April 2007 Director of the research unit "Migration, Integration, Transnationalization" at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). His research interests include: Immigration and integration politics; Right-wing radicalism; Social movements; European integration; Evolutionary sociology.

Anna C. Korteweg is assistant professor in the department of sociology at the University of Toronto (PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2004). Her current research focuses on the integration of Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands, Germany, and Canada. She has looked at the murder of Theo van Gogh, public discourses on honour killing in the Netherlands and Germany, and the debate over sharia-based arbitration in Ontario, Canada. In this work, her analysis focuses on the centrality of gender in public discourses and policy approaches to the integration of Muslim immigrants. She is currently conducting two research projects. The first one, with Dr. Gokce Yurdakul, Humboldt University Berlin, focuses on media and policy debates on honour related violence in the four major immigrant receiving countries, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, and Canada. The second research project, a collaboration with Dr. Phil Triadafilopoulos, Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, investigates how national identities are formed in debates about immigrant integration. Anna Korteweg has published in Theory & Society, the Annual Review of Sociology, Contexts, Qualitative Sociology, Social Politics, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Gender & Society, and contributed book chapters to Analysing Social Policy: A Governmental Approach and (Edward Elgar 2006) and Migration, Citizenship, Ethnos (Palgrave MacMillan 2006).

Claus Offe teaches Political Sociology at the Hertie School of Governance. He completed his PhD at the University of Frankfurt and his Habilitation at the University of Konstanz. In Germany, he has held chairs for Political Science and Political Sociology at the Universities of Bielefeld (1975-1989) and Bremen (1989-1995), as well as at the Humboldt-University of Berlin (1995-2005). He has worked as fellow and visiting professor at, among others, the Institutes for Advanced Study in Stanford, Princeton, and the Australian National University as well as Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley and the New School University, New York.

Roland Robertson is Professor of Sociology and Global Society, University of Aberdeen; Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of Essex; and Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh. His publications include The Sociological Interpretation of Religion (Blackwell); Meaning and Change (Blackwell); Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (Sage); Globalization & Football (co-author, Sage). He has published hundreds of articles and book chapters on global society, international relations, social theory, religion, culture, and political sociology. His work has been translated into over twenty languages.

Peter Scholten is assistant professor in the sociology of intercultural governance at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Starting from July 2009, he will become assistant professor in public policy and politics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He has a master (with honours) in Public Administration and Public Policy, and defended his PhD Thesis in 2008 on ‘Constructing Immigrant Policies: Research-policy relations and immigrant integration in the Netherlands, 1970-2004.’ His research, publications and teaching focus on issues of governance in multicultural societies. Peter’s currently involved in research projects on 'Research-policy dialogues on migration and integration in Europe', 'Rethinking science-based expertise and political judgment’ and 'States, knowledge and narratives of migration'. Peter is research fellow of the Institute for Governance Studies, senior-member of the Netherlands Institute for Government and affiliated member of the European network of excellence on International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe. Also, he is secretary of the editorial board of the Dutch journal on migration and ethnic studies Migrantenstudies.

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