Well-Intentioned Yet Ill-Implemented: Migrant Women of Turkish and Moroccan Descent and Their Take On Integration Courses in the Netherlands

In the past decade, the seemingly lacking integration of migrant women of Turkish and Moroccan descent has become a hot issue in Dutch politics. The government has been alarmed since statistics indicate that these “Muslims” migrant women appear to struggle with the Dutch language, fare significantly worse on the labor market than ethnic Dutch and other migrant women, and are socially isolated. Being in this vulnerable situation, the government is concerned that the women are vulnerable to exploitation and oppression (especially by the male family members of their “patriarchal Muslim cultures”). Furthermore, being the primary caretakers of their children, migrant women’s lack of economic, social, and cultural integration might have a negative impact on the integration of their children – possibly perpetuating marginalization and contributing to interethnic tensions. In view of this, the government has launched extensive policies in order to help and even force migrant women to integrate. For example, since 1998, newly arriving migrant women, who were labeled “newcomers” have been obliged to participate in integration courses, a large part of which is comprised of language instruction. 

However, overall, the impact of these measures on the integration process of migrant women seems not as big as expected and hoped for. On the one hand, this might be due to pervasiveness of an “ethnic gender subtext,” which casts migrant women with a real or assumed Muslim background primarily as passive and dependent victims, oppressed by their “Muslim culture.” In consequence, migrant women are primarily seen as “recipients of welfare, but not as contributors to their own welfare” (Ghorashi, 2006). Their agency and their views are not taken into consideration in designing and implementing integration courses. This top-down approach entails that integration courses might not adequately cater to their actual needs when it comes to integration and thus the courses might not be as successful as they could be.  

On the other hand, since migrant women tend to be seen as a homogeneous group (of passive, illiterate victims) despite the inter- and intra-ethno-national diversity (qua age and class/education), integration courses for migrant women tend to follow a “one-size-fits-all” approach (Kirk, 2010). Therefore, these courses might only help a subgroup of women, but might neglect women positioned at varying intersections of age, ethnicity, and class. Following a dialectic intersectionality framework and on the basis of in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and observations that I have conducted during my PhD research, this paper will try to examine these matters as well as alternatives that migrant women and migrant women’s (self-) organizations have carved out for themselves and what the advantages and limitations of these alternatives are. Altogether, the findings hopefully point to answers how integration and language course provisions for different groups of migrant women in the Netherlands could be improved.