Chapter 6 - Struggling for the Improvement of Community Image

Summary

Introduction

In recent years, certain Danish politicians, comprising populists, liberals, and even social democrats, amplified by their voter constituencies, portrayed inhabitants as refugees and migrants as an alien group of people whose preoccupation with the construction of identity-based parallel societies might undermine Danish society culturally as well as its identity of national homogeneity. Populists have added that such migrant subversive societies emphasize their own specific culture and ethnicity, thereby establishing their own specific traditions and norms. In return, increasingly, it is not just segregating and isolating diverse ethnic communities from mainstream Danish society. Some even suggest that reluctant migrant societies could evolve into positions in which they could pose a national cultural threat to the well-being of society.

Similar cases from studies on Dutch politicians and how they portray migrants in demanding top-down cultural assimilation, Suvarierol (2012) identifies a relational process in which a kind of “nation-freezing” emerges:

The concept of nation freezing best fits the Dutch case. Not only does citizenship material assume a unitary national identity, but it also does not offer any space for divergent practices and, at times, strongly qualifies these practices as unacceptable. The message given to the migrant is that he or she is expected to adjust to the “liberal” Dutch societal norms as defined by the state in its integration material. Not only is the Dutch national identity pictured as a monolithic entity, the migrant and his or her “culture” is also addressed throughout as being traditional and in need of adjustment to Dutch norms.

Even though the contents of the national imagery used in the citizenship packages vary, there is also a major point of convergence: the frozen national imaginary presented to the newcomers is a “liberal” one. This is paradoxical in and of itself because liberalism as an ideology stresses individual freedom in the choice of personal values and behavior. (Suvarierol, 2012)

Although societies have debated the dynamics of cultural belonging or not belonging for centuries, in recent times, following Huntington's well-known thesis of cultural and civilization clash following the end of the Cold War, diverse forms of political identity assertions, formations, and struggles have emerged. In relation to the specific debates on ethnic cultural formation and consolidation—particularly where and with whom migrants belong—the concept of cultural belonging and related images have since attained greater significance and priority in mainstream discourse, including in society.