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Migrants indeed predominantly express local forms of attachment. They hardly have trouble feeling “Amsterdammer” or “Arnhemmer,” regardless of the degree to which they are active in the public sphere. On the contrary, they tend to feel comfortable with it. They are sometimes outright proud of being inhabitants of the city. At first sight, the functional character of this loyalty appeared to be stronger than the emotional character. Local institutions appeared to be of substantial importance as they kept recurring in the narratives about the degree to which the city was important. Encounters at work or at school, at welfare institutions, but also discrimination at the workplace or at the doctors’ office, would be mentioned as instances of belonging or not belonging to the city. However, there is also a more emotional side to this local citizenship that has most often to do with the family. One belongs to the city because one’s family lives there, because one’s children are born there, and sometimes also because it was the first place where one was welcomed after having fled a country of origin. The new welcoming ceremonies were also perceived as real entries into the city. A letter or even a handshake of the mayor, alderman or alderwoman, or a regular public servant is repeatedly seen as the starting point of an unambiguous emotional connection. “The moments when you feel Arnhemmer are during events and activities that Arnhem has, and other cities don’t, like the remembrance of the Battle for Arnhem, because the city is worldwide known for it. But during Queensday , for instance, which is countrywide you feel more like a Dutchman.” Moreover, the nostalgia as felt by the native Dutch is well noticed by migrants, and makes them cautious to develop let alone express identification with the national scale. The Netherlands as something that primarily has to do with everything “nonmigrant” creates wariness. Aspiring to adhere is in that perspective not the most logical of reactions, as this may invoke rejection (“Who are you to claim you are Dutch?”). This is not to say that national citizenship is a void construction for migrants: apart from institutions such as the royal family and national holidays such as Queensday—on which the entire country is turned into a flea market—popular television shows as Idols and sports events all generate a certain bond. Also, mastering the Dutch language is considered a logical step among all respondents (tautologically, to a degree, as the meetings were held in Dutch). Rather, the issue of ethnic diversity contributes to a straightforward distinction from citizens’ perspectives between the two levels on which one can create citizenship . On the local level, migrants enter public life relatively easily. This emphasizes the national level as a dearly desired identifier of last resort, not necessarily because of the jingoistic character of the native Dutch, but because of the interplay of chauvinism and resentment of that chauvinism caused by immigration. Decisive in the difference in loyalty appears to be the (lack of) positive experiences and direct contacts that confirm or legitimate membership of the national community. Hence, local ceremonies confirming the legal attainment of CULTURALIZATION OF CITIZENSHIP 247 citizenship in city halls (as have been recently introduced) were highly appreciated by those who participated, as they were considered “welcoming.” Hence, calling for more national identity as such is probably meaningless or counterproductive. In short, native Dutch exhibit restorative culturalization concerning the national state—for them, it is the most important scale to emotionally attach to— which leaves migrants very little room to join in. Yet native Dutch do not claim the local level to the same degree, and probably not coincidentally, this is where migrants, necessarily in a more constructivist manner, develop feelings of attachment and loyalty. Conclusion: How to Get Beyond Polarization? How can we understand the current polarization of the immigration and integration debate in the Netherlands? We started off by showing that the actual setting of the current polarization in the Netherlands is not that of several ethnic groups more or less mobilized against one another due to decades of multicultural policies . A more correct picture is that of a sizable moral majority arguing in rather closed, restorative terms of culture. This closed conception of culture is shared by the more orthodox immigrants, even though their idea of the contents of a good culture is very different. Next we argued that this process of culturalization of citizenship can help us to...

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