Pitfalls of top-down identity designation: Ethno-statistics in the Netherlands

Many observers of minority issues in the Netherlands picture its present social and political climate as a radical departure from a multicultural past. However, the idea of a break with multiculturalism, and the deterioration of tolerance and ethnic harmony that is often attributed to this break, is deceptive. First, Dutch ‘multiculturalism’ was never more than ethnic targeting in redistributive policies. It served efficiency rather than the philosophy of equal recognition as justice, the core of multiculturalism. Second, ethnic targeting in policymaking continues. There is a break with the past in the sense that targeted policies increasingly serve assimilation and repression rather than redistribution, but there is continuity in the sense that the refined classification machinery that was made to facilitate ethnic targeting is deeply institutionalized in politics, bureaucracy and in society at large. The overall conclusion in this article is that builders of ethnic classification systems, however benign their purpose, should be careful what they wish for – political climates change faster than systems of population classification.