Munira Mirza
posted 10 October 2007

When social scientists set out to use statistics to inquire into social phenomena, they usually end up asking more questions by the end than they can ably answer. Quantitative data about people’s opinions give you a valuable insight into the workings of the public imagination and the subtle contradictions contained within, but they rarely produce comprehensive explanations for why people think the way they do. Interpretations of statistics can close down unsuitable hypotheses (‘a cannot believe this because of a relation with x, because x is not present in this scenario’) but they can also result in a proliferation of new ideas and suggestions for why things may be (‘a may believe this because of x, y or z, because all three variables are present’).

In this book, Paul Sniderman and Louk Hagendoorn turn to statistics to try to get to grips with Dutch values and prejudices and the effects of multicultural policies in the Netherlands. Their study is based on a national survey carried out from January to April 1998 of 2,007 Dutch adults. Sniderman admits that the idea for the joint collaboration came from a conference in which Hagendoorn put difficult questions to him which he could not answer, and therefore they both decided they should try to explore them together.

Their choice of Holland for this survey experiment was apt. More than any other country (possibly rivalled by Canada) Holland has developed institutional multiculturalism to address major demographic changes following the mass immigration since the 1970s of workers from Morocco and Turkey, and former Dutch colonies, Surinam and the Antilles, followed by later arrivals in the 1990s from Iraq, Iran, Sri Lanka, Somalia and other African countries. Some 17 per cent of the Dutch population is of foreign descent. In the 1990s, the multicultural programme took root, with the authorities communicating with minority groups in their own languages and providing separate radio and television stations, separate housing and schooling, funding for places of worship, and even funding to import religious leaders (particularly for Muslims, although not necessarily the most culturally representative ones). This policy of multiculturalism stems in large part from Dutch history and the traditional cooperation between the southern Roman Catholics and the northern Protestants, the latter being further divided between Lutheran, Reformed and Dutch Reformed traditions.

Sniderman’s and Hagendoorn’s study aims to examine the impact of multicultural policies in one country, with the hope that their findings will robustly translate to other contexts; the UK being the most likely candidate for comparison. Although the Netherlands have experienced high-level public controversy about multicultural policies, the strength of this study is that it occurred in 1998, long before the murder of controversial film-maker Theo van Gogh, the rise of the libertarian, anti-Muslim political figure Pim Fortuyn (and his murder) or the loud, brassy statements of the country’s most famous immigrant of recent years, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. What their survey shows is how ordinary people felt about minority groups when these explosive incidents and figures were not ‘distorting’ public debate. They ask, what do ordinary Dutch people feel about multiculturalism in their everyday lives and how does it shape their perception of other groups?

The results, Sniderman and Hagendoorn state, are sobering. More than 52 per cent of Dutch agree that Western European and Muslim ways of life are irreconcilable. About 46 per cent of Turkish Muslims and 37 per cent of Moroccan Muslims agree that Western European culture has nothing to contribute to Islam. Four in ten Dutch believe that Muslims are politically untrustworthy. Added to this, groups showed acceptance of negative stereotypes, particularly about Muslims. They were also more likely to be sensitive to issues relating to cultural identity, more so than economic threats from immigrant groups. At the same time, the authors found that Dutch people were largely tolerant, in the sense that they believed that Muslims ought to be able to live their lives as they choose. This is ‘tolerance’ in the sense that it means people can retain their differences, but also maintain corresponding divisions. Mistrust and suspicion co-exist with a belief that people should live their lives as they choose. The promise of multiculturalism may have resulted in a sense of freedom for minorities to live their own ways of life, but the results are a divided society, uncomfortable with its commitment to tolerance. Ironically, the very conformism which makes people resent minority groups for being different also makes people reluctant to criticise multiculturalism, which is enforced ‘top-down’.

Sniderman and Hagendoorn jump through some pretty impressive hoops to show that they have considered myriad possible interpretations of their statistics, to show that multicultural policies have a distorting effect on people’s perceptions of minority groups. As well as broad historical and cultural factors – most pertinently, the shame and guilt about complicity in the Holocaust and the German occupation, the authors suggest that there are certain factors that heighten people’s hostility and prejudice. The degree to which people value conformity and authoritarian values (admittedly, hard qualities to capture in opinion surveys) also indicate the degree to which they will also have negative views of immigrants. Politicians also have suggestive powers, and by discussing issues of cultural identity, give licence for people to express their own opinions more vociferously.

Inasmuch as this research exposes the subtleties of Dutch opinion, the authors make some valid and useful points. Constant references to difference in Dutch society alienate people from each other and weaken any sense of collective spirit. Even when people do not feel their cultural identity threatened, the merest hint of promoting diversity can ignite the flames of prejudice – Fortuyn’s brilliance was to express Dutch hostility towards Muslim culture in precisely the vocabulary of tolerance for which they are so proud. The authors’ conclusion is that the problem with multiculturalism is that it insists on the positive promotion of difference, which draws attention to divisions in society and makes people sensitive about them. By contrast, they suggest that liberal treatment of difference would allow the freedom minorities need, yet maintain their belonging to society. They also discuss how Muslim and minority groups should be encouraged to express loyalty, to arrest suspicion.

Although I am somewhat sympathetic to their conclusions up to a point, I could not help feel that these could not be ‘proven’ through a survey like this. The book is replete with opinions but lacks a historical dimension and explanatory power for how people have acquired their prejudices over time. At times, the tentativeness of the authors’ conclusions and rather dull, technical discussion about statistical issues also made it unclear what exactly is being argued. If anyone wanted to understand Dutch society, it might be better to read this in conjunction with Ian Buruma’s Murder in Amsterdam, which is a journalistic treatment of similar issues, yet gives far greater sociological insight into how the recent political and social history of Holland shapes its (over) reaction to immigrants.

What is most absent from this study, however, is the potential for social and cultural change at a more fundamental level. This is not the authors’ fault – they are working within the terms of a debate which presumes that minority/Muslim culture is relatively static and stable, and will always be ‘different’ from mainstream culture which is itself fixed and stable. However, is there a possibility that Dutch society might develop a political vision of set of values which transcend the cultural and religious differences between groups? The ‘Purple Coalition’ of the 1990s, between the Social Democrats on the left and the Liberals on the right, effectively brought to an end more meaningful social and political debates about ‘the good society’. In this context, cultural issues come rushing to the fore as a focal point for discontent and frustration. Unless these deeper underlying issues are discussed, the perceived threats of minority groups in Holland will remain a problem to be managed, rather than understood as what they properly are; a cipher for the disorientation of Dutch society. This is a point that Buruma captures wonderfully well, when he shows how Theo van Gogh’s outrageous protestations about Islam were probably more to do with the failed revolutionary spirit and iconoclasm of his own generation than the silly ranting of imams about sex, women and homosexuality.

What Sniderman and Hagendoorn show is that prejudice is not constant, but develops in a social and political context. What’s more, this context can be changed dramatically through public debate. Whilst it may not produce clear answers, the book exposes the limitations of debates about multiculturalism and suggests a more subtle reading is needed of why and how divisions develop.