Families in the Netherlands consisting of individuals falling into a variety of racialized migrant categories, are often the focus of governmental scrutiny and scientific curiosity. These ‘migrant families’ are constructed in a variety of ways, all which make it possible to center them as the object of interventions aiming to address their assumed cultural distance and their ‘traditional’ way of life, often within the discourse of ‘integration’ and within government mandated civic integration programmes. The paradox arises when these migrant families, problematized in their traditionality, their ‘unmodernity’, are seen as a threat to the Dutch ‘modern’ families and what are seen as their own national Dutch ‘traditions’. Embracing ‘tradition’ is therefore simultaneously seen as a sign of a lack of progress when attributed to migrant families, while also seen as something which must be protected, as an inherent characteristic of national identity of the modern Dutch nation state. This paper aims to explore this paradox and the constructions of the modern and unmodern family by focusing on the everyday doing of these families, and how they are studied and described in a variety of knowledge production reports. The everyday, and the description and governance of it, is a site which contributes to the (re)production of the logics of modernity, yet it is often ignored or left unseen, perhaps because of its assumed mundanity. What hierarchical descriptions exist in these reports between migrant and Dutch families on how daily family life is organized, enacted in parent child interactions, in gender roles, in community involvement, in celebratory traditions, and in work/leisure activities? How do these everyday activities, act as signifiers of the extent to which the doing of modern values (such as equality, solidarity, participation, and freedom) are enacted in everyday life in migrant vs Dutch families. Understanding these constructions, and the role that scientific research publications play in (re)producing them, will be explored to better understand how the normalization of these logics set the stage for the further scrutiny and discipline of these migranticized families.
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Frontiers are usually zones of trafficking, and the moving boundaries of knowledge are no exception. There you may encounter the weird and adorable creatures known as paradoxes. One of my favorites is the sorites paradox, or ‘paradox of the heap’.
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Een veel gehoorde klacht is dat de samenleving alsmaar verhardt. Conflicten worden uitvergroot, mensen raken snel in de ‘vechtmodus’ en sociale media zoeken de grenzen van het toelaatbare op. Echtscheidingen worden ‘vechtscheidingen’ met nadelige gevolgen voor alle betrokkenen. Deze verharding gaat samen met een toenemende roep om straffen en repressieve maatregelen. Ook wordt met de mond beleden dat er meer aandacht voor slachtoffers moet komen. De noodzaak van verzoening en heling raakt hierdoor op de achtergrond. Dit boek staat stil bij de spanning tussen verharding, vechten en straffen aan de ene kant, en de noodzaak tot bemiddeling, conflictbeslechting en heling aan de andere kant. Hoe uit zich dat in de mediationpraktijk? Biedt dit soms ook nieuwe mogelijkheden voor mediation? Hoe zou transformatieve mediation hierbij een rol kunnen spelen? Hoe kunnen de slachtoffers worden bijgestaan? Naast deze problematiek worden in het boek ook andere actuele thema’s op het terrein van mediation uitgediept, zoals geschiloplossing in familiebedrijven, het nieuwe ontslagrecht en exit-mediation, nalatenschapsmediation, mediation in de zorg, en het belang van mediation bij de rechtenstudie.
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