Civilising the ‘Uncivilised’

Race and Class in Integration Policies for Indo-European Migrants in the Netherlands, 1952-1960

Abstract

This article examines the emergence and application of the policy category ‘maladjusted repatriates’ in the Netherlands between 1952 and 1960, focusing on the Dutch integration policies for migrants (‘repatriates’) from the former Dutch East Indies. These policies were embedded in existing integration frameworks for ‘anti-social’ white Dutch families. Based on a case-study of the re-education facility Het Witte Dorp (The White Village), the article shows how postwar Dutch integration policies reproduced colonial racial, classed, and gendered hierarchies. All ‘repatriates’ of colour were subjected to racialising forms of governance, yet the category of the ‘maladjusted repatriate’ made the intersection of race and class particularly explicit. Policymakers framed these families as culturally deficient and insufficiently adaptable to Dutch society, drawing on colonial stereotypes of the ‘Eastern other’. At the same time, the instability of categories such as ‘anti-social’ and ‘too Eastern’ reveals how race functioned ambiguously in practice. Thus, the article contributes to scholarship on the colonial roots of European integration policy.