Introduction

Whereas the post-colonial condition has been extensively discussed in the Anglophone and Francophone countries, hardly anything of this has resonated in the Netherlands. This book explores how this phenomenon is related to the specific histories and composition of the various post-colonial groups in this country and the peculiarities of Dutch society. The least one can say is that post-colonial immigrants in the Netherlands came from highly diverse backgrounds. Among them were metropolitan Dutch (who were repatriated during and after the Indonesian War of Independence), Moluccan militia, Indo-Chinese, Afro-Caribbeans and Surinamese originating from India, Java and China. This heterogeneity is not specific for the Netherlands, however. In the Dutch case, one could even claim that one can speak about ‘post-colonial migrants’ as a distinct category, because probably more than 90 per cent of these newcomers were already Dutch citizens before their arrival in the Netherlands. Their elites were steeped in Dutch culture and often had had their (academic) education in the metropolis or colonial mother country. One can also point to the agendas of post-colonial migrant organisations, many of which, one way or another, were shaped by colonial issues.

But there are also counterarguments. Almost half of the post-colonial migrants to the Netherlands found themselves in the same dire social and economic circumstances as labour migrants. This was particularly the case for post-colonial immigrants who were not immediate descendants of metropolitan Dutch, were usually lower educated and entered the Dutch labour market in the 1980s. Another objection would be that even if colonialism shaped Dutch culture, it is not something very visible. Again, the Netherlands is not exceptional in this regard. The only pan-European publication on post-colonial immigrants even has ‘invisible’ in its title: Europe's invisible migrants (Smith 2003). This invisibility has been noted by quite a few Dutch scholars, some of whom also contribute to this volume. But this point precisely could be turned on its head, into an argument in favour of discussing post-colonial immigrants as a distinct category. Their identity formations are solidly linked to the erratic and convoluted ways in which the colonial past is rendered in Dutch collective memory: compounded by taboos and silences (Bosma 2009; Oostindie 2010; Van Leeuwen 2008).