Abstract
This chapter presents the core finding of this book: Local diversity policies pragmatically combine some new ideas on how to approach mobilizations of change in difference as well as some preceding ideas from earlier ‘minorities’ or ‘equality’ policies. It presents such evidence by analyzing the activities conducted under the header of diversity and identifies the ideas they are inspired by. Rather than continuing with the same policies under a new label or wholeheartedly replacing earlier politics with a new approach, we find that ‘diversity’ in fact is a container concept for promoting different approaches to difference simultaneously. Different activities reflect a range of policy ideas and are inspired by paradigms of multiculturalism, assimilation, and diversity. The chapter crystallizes what kind of politics can be found under the header of diversity in European cities, and thereby answers the central question of this study.
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Notes
- 1.
‘piketpaaltje.’
- 2.
In Antwerp, securitization activities were introduced and carried out by a separate and recently installed department of ‘integral safety ’(‘integrale veiligheid’), not by the diversity department.
- 3.
This was reflected in the separate policy document on ‘Cohesion and Integration Priorities 2008–11’.
- 4.
The funding scheme that was put in place was called ‘Announcement Point for Good Ideas’ (‘Meldpunt Goede Ideen’)(Gemeente Amsterdam, 2009, p. 14).
- 5.
In later version of the policy draft the notion of ‘hoffelijkheid’ received an even more prominent position, and it was eventually featured in the final policy text’s title: ‘Civic citizenship and diversity: no civic citizenship without civility’ (‘Burgerschap en diversiteit: geen burgerschap zonder hoffelijkheid’).
- 6.
‘verruwing.’
- 7.
Poppelaars and Scholten (2008) also argued that the national level would be more strongly subject to pressures from the electorate.
- 8.
Pragmatism was introduced by Peirce, Dewey, and James and further developed as ‘symbolic interactionism’ by Herbert Blumer. According to James, pragmatism is an epistemology which does not intend to define concepts but to observe their concrete use (James, 1995). In Blumer’s conception, the meaning of concepts emanates from the interaction of human beings. He says: ‘most of the improper usage of the concept in science comes when the concept is set apart from the world of experience, when it is divorced from the perception from which it has arisen and into which it ordinarily tiles. Detached from the experience which brought it into existence, it is almost certain to become indefinite and metaphysical’ (Blumer, 1986, p. 168).
- 9.
See my explorations in the chapter on developing diversity policy (Chap. 5).
- 10.
In its ‘Development strategy Civic citizenship and Diversity’, the municipality emphasized that different programmes should not lead to separate but rather integrated policy activities, and therefore intended to further strengthen the label of ‘burgerschap and diversity’.
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Schiller, M. (2016). Paradigmatic pragmatism: The Character of Local Responses to Difference. In: European Cities, Municipal Organizations and Diversity. Global Diversities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52185-9_6
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