'Migrating' within the Kingdom - Mobility patterns and motives to move in the process of migration from the European Netherlands to Bonaire

Abstract

"This thesis examines an annually-growing migration flow from the Global North to the Global South in general, and in particular from the European Netherlands to the Dutch Caribbean, with a focus on Bonaire. This movement takes place in the specific context of the late-modern Kingdom of the Netherlands. The aim of this thesis is to understand what kind of motives and incentives exist for the European Dutch migrant to move to Bonaire, and what kind of mobility patterns are involved in that movement. Due to the little existing literature about North-South migration within Dutch Caribbean Studies, it has not been clear until now what kind of forces drive, restrict and produce this mobility. The context of this migration offers more understanding of this form of mobility, where a latemodern Kingdom with a long colonial past changed its political structure in 2010. This newlyrestructured Kingdom finds itself in a fast-paced era full of developing global technologies, systems, and policies that connect different parts of the world with each other. The new mobilities paradigm of Sheller and Urry (2006) offers a deeper understanding of this fast-paced era: they argue that new travel and communication technologies have enabled social life at a distance, and that in this new paradigm travel becomes necessary for social life and becomes a lifestyle. Four groups of European Dutch migrants on Bonaire are identified in this research: expatriates, residential tourists, pensionados, and fortune-seekers. All four groups of migrants can be understood by Bauman s concept of a late-modern tourist (1996), but all four have personal motivations and incentives. These migrants from the Global North have a relatively great freedom in their movement and can easily move between the European Netherlands and Bonaire. It is a privileged migrant, with access to time and capital, who experiences freedom in their movement. However, this seemingly privileged position of the European Dutch migrant can alter during a pandemic, which shows the restrictions of late-modern mobility. The effects of the Corona pandemic (COVID-19) in 2020 have shown how the borders function within the boundaries of the late-modern Kingdom of the Netherlands, and have immobilized the ability of the privileged migrant from the European Netherlands to move freely within the boundaries of that Kingdom."