Media and politicians, get over your pessimism about integration

It’s time for the media and politicians to overcome their pessimism about integration, says Leiden professor Leo Lucassen. 1990s Yet the groundwork had been laid as early as the 1990s by then VVD parliamentary party leader Frits Bolkestein, Fortuyn’s columns in Elsevier magazine and Paul Scheffer’s article ‘The multicultural tragedy’ in the NRC. It predicted a new conflict between ‘western civilisation’ and Islam in the wake of the implosion of the Soviet Union, and generated a generally pessimistic climate with respect to the integration of Moroccan and Turkish migrants and their children in particular Crime Second-generation problems, such as criminality and radicalisation – the murder of Theo van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri, for example – unemployment and school dropout numbers were not only highlighted but also considered as the ultimate proof that the multicultural ideal was a left-wing utopia that has crashed and burned. Over half think that former migrant workers and colonial migrants from Suriname and the Antilles should adopt ‘Dutch cultural traditions’ and distance themselves from their own. Moreover, many Dutch citizens do not share such lauded ideals of women’s and gay rights, as radical right-wing Tweets and Facebook entries demonstrate every single day.