Uncivil Engagement and Unruly Politics

Disruptive Interventions of Urban Youth

Femke Kaulingfreks

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137480965
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the significance of riots and public disturbances caused by marginalized youth with a migrant background in France and the Netherlands, and how their demands for recognition, justice and equal opportunities are voiced in uncivil, yet politically meaningful ways.

1

At the Threshold between Politics and the Political

The debate about the difference between “politics” and “the political” forms the theoretical background of this study. It offers the opportunity to speak about the political significance of uncivil, illegal and disruptive agency that is not embedded in an institutional political context and often explicitly confronts or challenges such institutional politics. I look at this debate through a postfoundationalist lens and discuss the position of various authors who have played a crucial role in defining this “political difference” (Marchart 2007). They have done so by focusing on the role of the political as a dynamic in human interactions that escapes a “static” organization of politics, both in the sense of a state-induced management of political issues and in the sense of immobilizing or capturing human interactions in a certain prescribed order. The idea of a political element in human interactions that is not already fully captured within politics as an institutional model of organization is important to me in formulating my own understanding of the practice of “unruly politics.”

1.1. The threat of a democratic deficit

Western European societies are currently shaped under the influence of various, divergent developments. While societies are becoming more diverse due to a continuing influx of migrants and the fading away of nation-state borders in the increasingly globalized dynamics of political governance and economy, Western European nation states also seem to feel the need to return to a certain original, stable, homogeneous and uncontested sense of community. These seemingly oppositional tendencies often reinforce each other. The interrelatedness between diversity and openness as a consequence of globalization, on the one hand, and sidedness and protectionism as a consequence of a nostalgic longing for a unified nation state, on the other, has an impact on political attitudes and strategies. Where various belief systems and ways of life were previously given public space under the pretext of liberal politics, liberal values and principles are now presented as a core aspect of the Western European identity, which needs to be subscribed to by all citizens (Joppke 2004). In various Western European countries, an enforcement of new nationalisms and right-wing populist party politics is nourished by a quest for authentic cultural heritage and xenophobic sentiments (Modood & Werbner 1997; Holmes 2000; Brubaker 2001; Gingrich & Banks 2006). In this climate, societies are often becoming more plural, while at the same time less tolerant. A lifestyle, religious conviction or social attitude that deviates from the norm is often met with xenophobic reactions in which “otherness” is readily associated with “undesired strangeness.” This alienation of the other can be perceived in a variety of societal developments and is not only aimed at ethnic minorities. The process of alienation ranges from the criminalization of radical left-wing activists and second- and third-generation immigrants to the moral containment of religious minority groups and lower-class youth culture.

At the same time, the political process has become more complex and diffuse under the influence of globalization and the dominance of neoliberal governance. International relations, power plays and governing bodies have an impact on the political decisions of national governments. Within neoliberal governance, the political and economic spheres have become more closely entwined, and civic organizations have entered the domain of political governance. Within this setting, the recent economic crisis has further complicated the relationship between citizens and political institutions. In these times of economic crisis and social uncertainties, Western European citizens feel that their governments have failed on the promises made during the heydays of the welfare state. While citizens demand that the government secures their basic needs, the government is urging citizens to assume their own responsibility in creating an economic and social safety net. There seems to be a mismatch in the logic of supply and demand within the political organization of society (Norris 2011). At the same time, the whereabouts of citizens are closely monitored by the state in order to prevent them from conducting certain activities – ranging from underground economies to civil disobedience and terrorism – which could undermine the current neoliberal, democratic governance. A gap seems to be emerging between the domain of political governance and the worries and interests of citizens:

the institutions of secular liberal democracy simply do not sufficiently motivate their citizenry. On the contrary, at this point in time, the political institutions of the Western democracies appear strangely demotivating. There is increasing talk of a democratic deficit, a feeling of the irrelevance of traditional electoral politics to the lives of citizens, and an uncoupling of civil society from the state, at the same time as the state seeks to extend ever-increasing powers of surveillance and control into all areas of civil society. I think it might be claimed that there is a motivational deficit at the heart of liberal democratic life, where citizens experience the governmental norms that rule contemporary society as externally binding but not internally compelling.

(Critchley 2007, 7)

Chantal Mouffe speaks in a similar way of a democratic deficit; the democratic system in which we live does not leave room for people to be truly engaged in politics (Mouffe 2005, 4). Politics is too much associated with the institutional realm itself, while the need for people to fortify and defend democracy and its institutions seems to be forgotten. In these times of diminishing interest in the practice of politics, people seem to be most easily mobilized to protect their own feelings of home and safety (Duyvendak 2011). Out of fear of losing voters to new populist parties, traditional parties apply populist strategies in order to motivate the electorate and give it the impression that governance is developed in the interests of the average citizen. To give an example,¹ in 2011, the Dutch deputy prime minister, Maxime Verhagen of the Christian Democratic Party, gave a speech about the times of discomfort in which we live.² People distrust society, and they feel insecure and threatened by strange influences beyond their control. Such feelings of discomfort should be taken seriously by politicians, according to Verhagen. However, only populist parties seem to be able to channel feelings of discomfort in a fruitful way, at the expense of traditional parties such as the Christian Democrats. To regain the support of the electorate, these traditional parties should offer citizens a “founded story” that provides direction. This story should be reassuring to those who “think it is going too fast with Europe, the internet and the world economy” and should speak of “a shared foundation of Western cultural values.” Despite the fact that citizens should assume their own responsibility in designing society, politicians should be at a “distant proximity” in order to provide directions. Larger political issues can only be resolved when people feel safe in their own environment, according to Verhagen.

Paradoxically enough, this rhetoric about the comforting direction provided by the state goes hand in hand with a strong government-supported discourse on the citizens’ own responsibility in keeping society “liveable.” Key concepts such as “participation” and “good and active citizenship” are used to describe the model citizen, who not only passively respects but actively lives up to the founding principles of society and helps others to do the same (Newman & Tonkens 2011). Under the influence of these tendencies, a certain coercive image of the “good citizen” is created that reflects a focus on dominant cultural and moral affiliations. Citizenship refers not only to those with the right papers living within the borders of the nation state but also to those who make up an imagined national community of like-minded people with a similar identity (Anderson 1991). An ascription to the body of “good citizens” increasingly depends on one’s integration into the dominant culture and one’s public exposure to the right kind of “civilized” behavior (Flint 2009). Those who deliberately or unintentionally rebel against the dominant currency of what is understood as “good citizenship” become the object of concerned media reports, extensive monitoring and strict safety regulations. Consequently, those deemed to express “uncivil” behavior are not only looked at with disapproval but also excluded from the national community.

1.2. Earn your citizenship!

The music video accompanying the song “Schuif aan de kant” (Move over), by Dutch rapper Appa, begins with a short fragment from the popular game show “Get the Picture,” dating from 2004. Contestants have to guess a word that matches the description given by the game show host. The game show host asks for a word beginning with the letter “a” which describes someone who is not adjusted to life in society. The contestant, a young blond girl, hesitates for just a second and opts for the word “allochthonous,” the standard, policy-related word for describing someone with an immigrant background who lives in the Netherlands. Nervous laughter by the audience and the game show host follows. The contestant realizes her mistake. The correct answer was “antisocial,” of course … In the following song Appa describes an uncertain life on the streets, full of encounters with crime, unemployment, unpaid fines and a lack of social security. Nevertheless, he describes the streets as his home, because he is often denied entrance in other spaces, due to his appearance. Guys from various deprived neighborhoods will recognize this feeling, while other people might not understand what he is saying, Appa concludes his song. This certainly accounts for the boys I interviewed in Kanaleneiland.

(Field note, March 21, 2011)

The promotion of a certain standard of good citizenship, embedded in an imagined political community, is meant to engage people both politically and socially in civil society, and prevent its fragmentation. However, the more ideas of good citizenship are institutionally standardized, the more this leads to a “dividing” thinking about social processes, in which everything that diverges from the norm is deliberately thought to be outside of the “real” society. Dutch sociologist Willem Schinkel (2007) sees this kind of reasoning as symptomatic for our contemporary thinking about society. Society is imagined as a structured whole, with a clear identity and purpose, which allows us to decide who will be admitted as a participant and who can be rejected. In times in which major political ideologies have lost their credibility, or in times of discomfort, as they are described in the speech of Verhagen, a story must be created to unite people. However, a unifying imagination of society is primarily formulated in negative terms, by pointing a finger at that which threatens this unity from the outside. Society has become a hypochondriac body, according to Schinkel, which constantly searches for scapegoats to blame for threatening its health. We develop an obsession with social hygiene³ and continuously imagine viruses and parasites threatening to attack us from the outside. In the light of risk management, strange elements have to be neutralized by integrating them, if they cannot be excluded. A continuously repeated emphasis in the public debate on the need for integration is a consequence of this reasoning. In support of the logic of this call for integration, a certain community of naturally solidary and allied people is envisioned. The bond between those who make up this community is presented as evident in public narratives, while it can only be traced back to the collective imagination. Such “founding fictions” serve to justify the origins, shared values and identity of society (Schinkel 2007, 38).

Society is thus founded on a “confiction,” according to Schinkel. With this neologism, a composition of the prefix “con,” related to the Latin “cum,” and the noun “fiction,” Schinkel wishes to denominate a fiction that legitimizes the origins, shared values and identity of society in order to keep people together – a fiction, which literally has a binding force, tying people together (“cum”). The togetherness of all taking part in society, as members of a club, is constructed as a foundational narrative. This narrative clarifies the connection between those making up a community. However, the term has a double meaning, both implying the above connotation and that of “conviction.” The bond not only presumes a certain natural solidarity within a community but simultaneously convicts, or condemns, its members to support this presumed natural bond, while others are kept at a distance because they are seen as natural outsiders (Schinkel 2007, 38). In a sense, not only strangers are “convicted” as unwanted outsiders but also those who are portrayed as natural members of a society are “convicted” to support the bond, which sustains their identity.

Insiders and outsiders of society thus seem to be convicted to one another. French philosopher Michel Serres (2007) has already emphasized that human relations take the form of the ambiguous relationship between the host and the parasite. This relation is not only abusive but also implies certain forms of exchange. The parasite not only makes use of the resources of the host but also pays the host back with an unexpected currency. The presence of the parasite adds a new dimension to the natural habitat of the host and therefore opens up new possibilities for relationships. Serres’ line of thinking invites us to reconsider who is the host and who is the parasite in a seemingly one-way structured parasitical relationship. It could be the one seen as the parasite, who provides the one seen as the host with new meanings and information, and it could therefore be the host making use of the new input of the parasite. The host thus becomes a parasite in their own way, and the parasite becomes the one making a contribution. This complex interplay between abuse and contribution takes place in every social relationship. It could therefore very well be the parasite who provides society with an account of its own unity, precisely by interfering with this unity. The parasite becomes the scapegoat that justifies society’s self-proclaimed homogeneity and interconnectedness. This ambiguous side of societal relationships tends to be difficult to accept. We rather focus on an undisputed cultural foundation when describing our national community than on a complex relationship with others. Those who are not described as protagonists in the story of society’s natural origin are easily removed from the script of an ideal present-day community. The strong symbolism of such storytelling is not hypothetical, as it is reflected in various narratives we encounter on a daily basis.

In 2010, a commercial was launched for Milner cheese depicting Dutch society in its ideal state.⁴ According to the vision of Milner, the ideal version of the Netherlands would look like an old-fashioned village, where all men are blond and brawny farmers and all women are equally sexy blondes, with Frisian names. The ideal Dutch village in the commercial had one dark-haired female inhabitant, named Fatima, until she was cut out, allegedly because the length of the commercial had to be shortened to comply with television standards.⁵ This omission in favor of a homogeneous image seems to be symbolic for Dutch relations with the “allochthonous,” who can be integrated if sufficient assimilation to national traditions is shown, but who can just as easily be excluded from an imagined national community.

In the Dutch public and political debate a tendency exists to speak in exclusionary terms about allochtonous people, who are distinguished from, and at the same time encouraged to adapt themselves to the manners of the autochthonous, those who are already “home,” because they are the “natural” inhabitants of the area; those who are “born from the soil” (Geschiere 2009). The allochtonous individual is expected to make extra efforts to proof their worth as a citizen because they do not naturally share the roots of Dutch history and do not naturally identify with native Dutch culture and traditions. Even when the “allochthonous” person is born in the Netherlands, has Dutch nationality and has lived all their life there they are often still seen as the stranger or other, whose natural position is outside of society.

As I have already pointed out in the Introduction, the exclusionary tendencies applied to youngsters with an immigrant background are of central importance to my research. These youngsters have often been born and raised in the Netherlands and have Dutch nationality, but they are not readily accepted as good citizens because they do not sufficiently identify with native Dutch culture. The term “allochthonous” has come to designate much more than a person with one or more parents born outside of the country of residence.⁶ According to Dutch sociologist El Hadioui (2010), “allochthonous” is not only associated with an ethnic category or a migrant background, but also with deviant behavior. This reasoning particularly applies to youngsters. Teachers and students in high school easily associate the word “allochthonous” with disturbing or violent behavior, a lack of education, street language and a macho attitude – the same deviant elements which are often associated with street culture or “ghetto” culture. An intuitive association is thus developed between the “allochthonous” and the non-participating stranger, and the “autochthonous” and the good citizen. In the Netherlands, this conception has taken a firm root in the political discourse, as illustrated by the following quote from a policy document of the Social Democratic Party regarding the treatment of Dutch-Moroccan criminal youngsters:

The problem is that street culture is more and more evolving into a rock-hard, macho, ghetto culture. Respect for societal institutions, not in the last place the police, is nowhere to be found. Limits to the use of violence are fading. An intimidating group culture, which is detached from society’s reality.

(Policy report of the Dutch Labor Party (Partij van de
Arbeid) entitled De vrijblijvende aanpak voorbij (Beyond
a non-committal approach), November 2008)⁷

The deviant behavior of said youngsters is seen as behavior that already stands fully outside of social reality. In order to become accepted members of the national community, they have to distance themselves from street culture and integrate into the citizens’ culture.

This approach to young people with an immigrant background who live in an urban context is exemplary for a way of thinking in which deviant behavior is not imagined as a contested part of society but rather as external to society. Citizenship becomes “virtualized” in this context, according to Schinkel (2010a). The meaning of citizenship has shifted from a formal and juridical status of those who rightfully live within the borders of the nation state, to a status of moral and cultural acceptance, which can be gained if sufficient integration is shown. One can be in possession of a formal citizenship status, but this does not automatically imply that one is seen as a “good” citizen who is accepted as a part of civil society. Citizenship is “turned into a possibility instead of an actuality, and … a virtue. In this way, citizenship, which is increasingly problematic as a mechanism of in- and exclusion of the nation-state, becomes a state-controlled mechanism of in- and exclusion of society” (Schinkel 2010a). It is therefore no longer sufficient to be a formal citizen – one has to express active citizenship in a moral sense. Since citizenship is seen more and more as an ideal of citizen-participation or a virtue, it becomes a prescription, meant to guide one’s attitude and behavior.

The virtualization of citizenship signaled by Schinkel is complemented by what other social scientists characterize as a “culturalization of citizenship” (Duyvendak, Hurenkamp & Tonkens 2010):

Culturalization refers to the ever more insistent efforts in Dutch society to persuade members of the many different diasporic communities in the country to “feel at home” in the Netherlands – and in the Netherlands only; and to become loyal, active and productive citizens bound to the soil and to the moral economy of a reinvented Dutch nationalism. Hence, the culturalization of citizenship: the increasing anxiety about and problematization of cultural difference in multicultural and multi-religious societies, like the Netherlands, and the growing insistence on the need to educate immigrants culturally and morally, “integrate” them into the moral community, and thus mold them into assimilated citizens.

(Mepschen 2009, 4)

This trend of virtualization and culturalization of citizenship is reflected in a political debate, which is strongly affected by neonationalism (Verkaaik 2010). An obsession with the relationship between “natives” and “newcomers” has caused a shift in traditional political approaches. Issues which were previously explained in terms of class dynamics are now analyzed in the context of what Slavoj Zizek calls “the culturalization of politics,” in re...