TY - JOUR
T1 - Mainstreaming or retrenchment? Migration-related diversity in Dutch and Flemish education policies
AU - Westerveen, Laura
AU - van Breugel, Ilona
AU - Adam, Ilke
AU - Scholten, Peter
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Furthermore, they would like to thank Xandra Maan for her contribution to the data collection in the Upstream project, and the organisers and participants of the Politicologenetmaal 2016 at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the IMISCOE PhD Summer School 2016 at Princeton University, where the collaboration for this article emerged.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - This article analyses how states adapt generic policies to the increasing diversity that characterises contemporary European societies. More particularly, it zooms in on how migration-related diversity is mainstreamed into education policies in the Netherlands and Flanders and why we observe different policy trends in these two cases. We find that the focus on migration-related diversity largely faded in Dutch education policies in the period from 2000 to 2014. In Flanders, this trend towards ‘migration-related diversity retrenchment’ is less prevalent during this period, even though a similar evolution has started to take place more recently. These findings present a puzzle, as the most evident explanation for diversity retrenchment, namely the increasing politicisation of migration and diversity, cannot account for this difference since the Netherlands and Flanders are characterised by similar degrees of politicisation of migration-related diversity. Our findings thus call for an exploration of underemphasised explanations for diversity retrenchment. We show that the diverging degree of diversity retrenchment can be explained by the presence or absence of a sub-state nationalist project and diverging degrees of neoliberal retrenchment policies. Sub-state nationalism seems to have temporarily offered a buffer against the neoliberal retrenchment of migration-related diversity.
AB - This article analyses how states adapt generic policies to the increasing diversity that characterises contemporary European societies. More particularly, it zooms in on how migration-related diversity is mainstreamed into education policies in the Netherlands and Flanders and why we observe different policy trends in these two cases. We find that the focus on migration-related diversity largely faded in Dutch education policies in the period from 2000 to 2014. In Flanders, this trend towards ‘migration-related diversity retrenchment’ is less prevalent during this period, even though a similar evolution has started to take place more recently. These findings present a puzzle, as the most evident explanation for diversity retrenchment, namely the increasing politicisation of migration and diversity, cannot account for this difference since the Netherlands and Flanders are characterised by similar degrees of politicisation of migration-related diversity. Our findings thus call for an exploration of underemphasised explanations for diversity retrenchment. We show that the diverging degree of diversity retrenchment can be explained by the presence or absence of a sub-state nationalist project and diverging degrees of neoliberal retrenchment policies. Sub-state nationalism seems to have temporarily offered a buffer against the neoliberal retrenchment of migration-related diversity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85135149719&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1186/s40878-022-00308-x
DO - 10.1186/s40878-022-00308-x
M3 - Article
SN - 2214-8590
VL - 10
SP - 1
EP - 20
JO - Comparative Migration Studies
JF - Comparative Migration Studies
IS - 1
M1 - 31
ER -