The Participation Declaration: Connecting or Dividing Dutch and non-Dutch people?

Abstract

This thesis analyses the role of references to gender and sexuality in the way distinctions are made between Dutch and non-Dutch people in the Participation Declaration and in the official materials of the Participation Declaration Trajectory. By undertaking a critical discourse analysis the hidden assumptions about newcomers in the materials are revealed. These hidden assumptions are based on ideas about gender equality and tolerance of freedom of sexual orientation. By making use of theories of representation, tolerance, othering and gendered citizenship the role of gender and sexuality as excluding mechanism and as absolute norm of difference is revealed. Previous authors have showed how the civic integration exam contributes to exclusion and how it creates hierarchy between the us and the them. This thesis highlights the role of references to gender and sexuality in the creation of this exclusion in the material of the Participation Declaration and Participation Declaration Trajectory. This conclusion adds to the critiques concerning culturalist discourse in integration policies, in which a focus is put on cultural differences.