Redistribution and Ethnic Diversity in the Netherlands

Redistributive policies concerning migrants in The Netherlands bear a striking degree of ethnic specificity. This characteristic seems to follow from the doctrine `integration with maintenance of own culture' that has long informed Dutch minority policies. However, both central and local governments stopped subscribing to this doctrine at least a decade ago, while ethnically specific policy arrangements have continued to grow. This article explains the anomaly from an administrative mechanism: the logic of categorization for policy-making contradicts the logic of policy implementation. The use of what we call `replacement categories' creates an administrative opportunity structure that unintentionally promotes ethnic fragmentation. We examine the workings of this mechanism in a case study of minority policy in The Netherlands.