Introduction

In recent years, the Netherlands drew international attention by being the first country to require that family unification migrants pass a language and integration test in their countries of origin before being admitted into the Netherlands. Member of Parliament Rita Verdonk (VVD), who in 2006-2007 would become the Dutch Minister for Immigration and Integration Affairs, in 2005 defended these policies in parliament by linking threats to the stability of Dutch society with assumed differences between Dutch norms regarding family relations and sexuality and those of ‘non-Western’ migrants:

In the context of a debate concerning family migration from ‘non- Western’ nations, Verdonk's message was clear. Unless family migrants could be screened for ‘proper’ norms, values and skills before being granted entry, they posed a threat to the Dutch nation. Migrants’ norms and values are represented as archaic and backwards, whereas the Netherlands, as a ‘Western society’, is deemed a place where emancipation is complete. Opponents dubbed this aspect of Dutch family migration policies as racist, because the Dutch language and integration test requirement applied only to people originating from the less industrially developed nations of Africa, Asia and South America. Human Rights Watch, in a 2008 report, qualified the Dutch policies as ‘discrimination in the name of integration’ (Human Rights Watch 2008; cf. Terlouw 2005; Groenendijk 2011; De Vries 2011, 2012). In more general terms, Dutch family migration policies have been compared to the racist policies that distinguished the rulers from the ruled in the former colony of the Dutch East Indies (De Hart 2003). Other authors have argued that the racial divides of the colonial past are part of the genealogy of current European modes of exclusion (Stoler 1995, 2011; Balibar 2004; Legêne 2011).