Publications

This book explores the Dutch post-colonial migrant experience within the context of a wider European debate. Over 60 years and three generations of migration history is presented, while also surveying an impressive body of post-colonial literature, much of which has never reached an international audience. While other research focuses on one or, at most, two groups, post-colonial migrants are treated here as a distinct analytical category with a unique relationship to the receiving society. After all, over 90 per cent were Dutch citizens before even reaching the Netherlands, as they did in huge waves between 1945 and 1980. Together they constitute 6 per cent of today’s Dutch population. So, how did they form their identities? What were relationships with locals like? How have second and third generations responded? Post-Colonial Immigrants and Identity Formations in the Netherlands offers the germane scholarship on one particular country with a particularly rich history to readers worldwide.

Contents

1 Introduction: Post-colonial immigrants and identity formations in the Netherlands
Ulbe Bosma

2 Dutch politicians, the Dutch nation and the dynamics of post-colonial citizenship
Guno Jones

3 Representations of post-colonial migrants in discussions on intermarriage in the Netherlands, 1945-2005
Charlotte Laarman

4 Group-related or host state-related? Understanding the historical development of Surinamese organisations in Amsterdam, 1965-2000
Floris Vermeulen and Anja van Heelsum

5 Post-colonial migrant festivals in the Netherlands
Marga Alferink

6 Closing the ‘KNIL chapter’: A key moment in identity formation of Moluccans in the Netherlands
Fridus Steijlen

7 Tjalie Robinson (1911-1974): A mediator between East and West
Wim Willems

8 History brought home: Post-colonial migrations and the Dutch rediscovery of slavery
Gert Oostindie

9 Cultural memory and Indo-Dutch identity formations
Pamela Pattynama

10 Why is there no post-colonial debate in the Netherlands?
Ulbe Bosma