Ethnic labeling among pupils with migration backgrounds
‘Turks’, ‘Moroccans’, and ‘foreigners’ in the Netherlands
This paper analyzes ethnic self-labeling among pupils of a secondary school in Venlo, the Netherlands.
Pupils with migration backgrounds, born in the Netherlands, referred to themselves as ‘Moroccan’, ‘Turk’ or ‘foreigner’,
and to others as ‘Dutch’. Ascription to these ethnic categories is often understood as an expression of national
(un)belonging. Based on nine months of linguistic ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that ethnic labels functioned to
manage everyday interpersonal social relations and did not necessarily express feelings of (un)belonging to the nation.
Rather, pupils used ethnic labels to associate social personae with particular styles and behaviors and to construct
local social hierarchies. The paper contributes to the investigation of ethnic labels as signs with locally contingent
meanings, which nevertheless retain indexical links with wider discourses about social categories and belonging. It
furthermore emphasizes the necessity of investigating the local meanings of ethnic categories.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Frameworks: Ethnic categories in public discourse and research
- 3.Ethnographic fieldwork in class 3b
- 4.Data analysis
- 4.1Labeling selves and others
- 4.2Labels and local social hierarchies
- 5.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References