Introduction

A recent study showed that, alongside religion, colonial history has had an important influence on intermarriage in Western Europe since World War II. Though post-colonial migrants marry out more than other migrant groups (Lucassen & Laarman 2009: 52-68) their relationships had to cope with prejudices too. This chapter will explore how certain stereotypes survived the momentous changes brought about by the dissolution of the colonial empire, and how they followed post-colonial immigration flows. Could it be that some stereotypes and prejudices were such an entrenched aspect of the way migrants and nationals perceived each other that they survived well into post-colonial times? Obviously, migration intensified contact between former colonisers and the colonised, which might have reinforced or challenged existing ideas and stereotypes. Gendered stereotypes on intermarriage turned out to be very persistent, as I argue in this chapter. In the colonies, gendered stereotypes had been voiced in order to exclude native people from power and to justify Dutch hegemony. These stereotypes travelled with the post-colonial migration flows to receive another function in contemporary Dutch society.

I demonstrate this by highlighting some aspects of my own study of post-colonial migrants to the Netherlands from 1945 to 2005. Several groups migrated from former Dutch colonies to the Netherlands in the post-war period. This chapter deals with only two: the Indische Netherlanders (or Indo-Dutch) from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and the Afro-Surinamese from Surinam. I chose to use one case study from each colony, one with an Asian background and one with a creolised African background. Both have to a large extent dominated the image that the Dutch had of Indische and Surinamese people.

The migration and settlement process of the Afro-Surinamese and Indische Netherlanders has already been thoroughly researched concerning issues such as integration in the labour market, the housing market, the educational system and participation in clubs and organisations (see e.g. Kraak 1958; Van Heelsum 1997). This chapter focuses on just one of these fields to make a better and clearer comparison between the two different migrant groups. Many academics regard an increasing level of intermarriage as the best indication that the cultural and socio-economic gap between migrants and nationals is closing.