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Ethnic labeling among pupils
with migration backgrounds
‘Turks’, ‘Moroccans’, and ‘foreigners’
in the Netherlands
Pomme van de Weerd
Maastricht University |Université Libre de Bruxelles
This paper analyzes ethnic self-labeling among pupils of a secondary school
in Venlo, the Netherlands. Pupils with migration backgrounds, born in the
Netherlands, referred to themselves as ‘Moroccan’, ‘Turk’ or ‘foreigner’, and
to others as ‘Dutch’. Ascription to these ethnic categories is oen understood
as an expression of national (un)belonging. Based on nine months of lin-
guistic ethnographic eldwork, I argue that ethnic labels functioned to
manage everyday interpersonal social relations and did not necessarily
express feelings of (un)belonging to the nation. Rather, pupils used ethnic
labels to associate social personae with particular styles and behaviors and
to construct local social hierarchies. The paper contributes to the investiga-
tion of ethnic labels as signs with locally contingent meanings, which never-
theless retain indexical links with wider discourses about social categories
and belonging. It furthermore emphasizes the necessity of investigating the
local meanings of ethnic categories.
Keywords: ethnic labeling, membership categorization, classroom
ethnography, ethnicity
1. Introduction
This paper analyzes the use of ethnic category labels by pupils with migration back-
grounds in a secondary school class in Venlo, the Netherlands (henceforth class b
of South High School).1These pupils, almost all of whom were born in the Nether-
lands, referred to themselves as Marokkaan ‘Moroccan’, Turk ‘Turk’ or buitenlan-
der ‘foreigner’ and referred to others (but not themselves) as Nederlander (‘Dutch’).
https://doi.org/10.1075/dujal.19033.van |Published online: 12 November 2020
Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics issn 2211-7245 |e‑issn 2211-7253
Available under the CC BY 4.0 license. © John Benjamins Publishing Company
1. The names of the school, the class, and the pupils are pseudonyms.
I explore the meanings of those categories in their local context, and in doing so,
take issue with research that understands the use of ethnic labels for self-reference
as an indication of a lack of national belonging (e.g. Azghari, Hooghiemstra, & Van
de Vijver, ; Verkuyten & Yildiz, ). Instead, the pupils of b used these labels
as part of the formation a local, intra-national social order. Building on the close
analysis of talk-in-interaction, I explore ethnic labels as signs with locally contin-
gent indexicalities (Silverstein, ), which nevertheless retain indexical links
with wider discourses about social categories and belonging.
In the rst part of the paper, I suggest that the pupils treated the categories
Marokkanen, Turken, and buitenlanders as kinds of people within the Nether-
lands. When prompted by the researcher, pupils discussed categories in relation
to the countries to which they refer, but when pupils used categories on their
own initiative, they highlighted locally embedded characteristics such as physical
appearance, language, and style (e.g. clothing). The paper thereby emphasizes
that labels need to be understood in terms of how they are contextualized by their
users, and that they can index dimensions of social dierentiation other than eth-
nicity (Chun, ; Nørreby, ).
Thereaer, I examine how pupils negotiated social hierarchies through cat-
egory references, in particular by reversing the conventional pecking order of
widely known categories. Thus, although categories like buitenlander, Marokkaan
and Turk usually carry negative associations in the Netherlands, these categories
carried prestige in this school. I argue that this enabled pupils to comment on
stigmatization of people with migration backgrounds in Dutch society. The labels
had thus acquired locally contingent meanings, but they also retained indexical
links to discourses in Dutch society at large.
In order to understand how pupils’ use of categories is embedded in wider
social structures, it is necessary to rst review the context of, and discourses sur-
rounding, immigration in the Netherlands.
2. Frameworks: Ethnic categories in public discourse and research
Twenty-four percent of the Dutch population has a migration background
(Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, ). Approximately twenty percent of those
people – almost ve percent of the Dutch population – have a migration back-
ground in Morocco or Turkey. Although their presence can be traced back over
y years, and over half of those with a Turkish or Moroccan migration back-
ground were born in the Netherlands, much popular, political, and media dis-
course in the Netherlands continues to represent these groups as national ‘others’
(e.g. Roggeband & Van der Haar, ). Terminology used to refer to people with
[2] Pomme van de Weerd
migration backgrounds plays an important role in this othering. An illustrative
example of this in the Netherlands is the word allochtoon. When introduced in
, allochtoon was conceived as a factual and objective way to refer to all people
with migration backgrounds in the Netherlands. It was used in research, statistics,
and policy and later also in popular discourse, but increasingly became associ-
ated with people who were positioned as problematic – particularly young men
with Moroccan and Turkish backgrounds (Roggeband & Van der Haar, ).
Aer years of public discussions, allochtoon was abolished from ocial usage in
and was replaced by ‘person with a migration background.’ Like allochtoon,
this category continues to be divided into ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’. This divi-
sion is not based on geography but on the supposed cultural similarity of a coun-
try to the Netherlands, which leads to the curious categorization of, for instance,
Japan as ‘Western’ and Aruba as ‘non-Western’ – although Aruba forms part of
the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Van der Haar & Yanow, ). Other terms, like
‘Moroccan’ or ‘Moroccan Dutch’ are also common in media, political and public
discourse to refer to people with migration backgrounds.
Such labels are not only coined by outsiders or powerful institutions, how-
ever. Labels such as Marokkaan or Turk have been observed to be used as terms
of self-reference throughout the Netherlands as well as in other countries (Bozay,
; Jaspers, ; Slootman, ). This phenomenon has entered research in
dierent ways. Much quantitative scholarship has interpreted it as an indicator
of a strong identication with, and orientation to, the country of origin (e.g.
Ersanilli & Koopmans, ; Huijnk & Dagevos, ), which, in turn, is oen
thought to form an “[obstacle] to integration into Dutch society” (Bouras, ,
p.). Anthropological and sociolinguistic studies have challenged such inter-
pretations, arguing that ethnic categories are context-specic, discursively con-
structed, multi-faceted, and negotiated in interaction, and that they can therefore
have a variety of meanings (Bucholtz, ; Cornips & De Rooij, ; Lee, ;
Nørreby & Møller, ). Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that ethnic cat-
egory labels can be “locally recongured to do non-ethnic work” (Nørreby, ,
p.). Nørreby (), for instance, describes how a group of Copenhagen school
children equated the labels ‘araber’ (for ‘Arab’) and ‘perker’ (a controversial term
for immigrants, particularly from Middle Eastern countries) with academic and
social failure. Chun () notes that ethnic or racial terms can be used to pro-
vide ideological commentary on authenticity, but also on gender and class per-
formance. With this paper, I aim to follow that scholarship and complement it
with a case in the Dutch context by arguing, rstly, that the categories buitenlan-
der, Marokkaan, Turk and Nederlander must be understood in their context of
use, and that they cannot simply be interpreted as indexing non-belonging to the
Ethnic labeling among pupils with migration backgrounds [3]
Netherlands. Secondly, I argue that these labels do not necessarily signify ‘ethnic
identity’ but may (also) have other local meanings and functions.
To investigate labels as resources with local meaning potential, and as a
resource that participants use to interact, I build on membership categorization
analysis (MCA). MCA focuses on how people ‘do’ person descriptions and rec-
ognize them in interaction. Categories come with associated characteristics and
activities, which are largely shared between people in a same community or cul-
ture. This makes them inference rich: “[t]hey are the store house and the ling
system for the common-sense knowledge that ordinary people – that means ALL
people in their capacity as ordinary people – have about what people are like, how
they behave, etc.” (Scheglo, , p.). In other words, categories have social
meanings, and labels connotate indexical elds that may be dierent across con-
texts. Interactants negotiate and shape those indexicalities: they can contest, rein-
force, alter, or discredit them by tying existing categories to new characteristics.
Using MCA as a tool of analysis enables me to focus on participants’ orientations
to, and negotiations of categories in interaction. One MCA principle is that mem-
bers can “allude to the category membership” (Scheglo, , p.) by merely
mentioning category-bound characteristics. In this paper, I use ‘labeling’ to refer
to explicit mentions of membership category labels, and ‘categorization’ for more
implicit categorization contexts.
In line with Brubaker’s approach to ethnicity “not in terms of substantial
groups or entities but in terms of practical categories” (Brubaker, , p.), I
analyze ethnic categories as a discursive construct, and ethnic labeling as a prac-
tice. Ethnic categories are “a key part of what [I] want to explain, not what [I]
want to explain things with; it belongs to [my] empirical data, not to [my] analyti-
cal toolkit” (Brubaker, , p., emphasis in original). Hence, I do not use cat-
egories to interpret interactions, but I investigate them as a resource with which
participants interact. Although I refer to the categories used by the pupils in this
study as ‘ethnic’, they did not use the term ‘ethnicity’. If anything, they spoke about
aomst ‘descent’. What, then, justies my characterization of those categories as
ethnic? Firstly, I could have chosen ‘national’ or ‘ethno-national’ as a descriptor,
but I agree with several authors that ethnicity, race, and nationhood can be con-
strued as “a single integrated family of forms of cultural understanding, social
organization, and political contestation” (Brubaker, , p.; see also Wimmer,
). There is not much sense in drawing boundaries between ethnicity, race,
and nationhood, when taking them as a perspective on, rather than a thing in, the
world. The question of interest here is not whether categories such as ‘Moroccan’
or ‘Dutch’ are ethnic or national categories, or what denes them, but rather how
the idea that there is such a thing as ‘Moroccanness’ or ‘Dutchness’ is reproduced,
and how the meanings of those categories are negotiated. I use the term ‘ethnic
[4] Pomme van de Weerd
categories’ to clarify the connection to research that refers to those categories as
such (although they have also been termed ‘national identities’ (Koole & Hanson,
)).
3. Ethnographic eldwork in class 3b
I collected the data for this paper during nine months of ethnographic eldwork
between January and March , with one school class in Venlo, the Nether-
lands. Thanks to the accommodating attitude of the school administration, and
with consent from pupils, teachers, and others involved, I accompanied one
group of pupils during their third and fourth school years. I attended class
hours, leading to daily eld notes, hours of audio-recordings, and hundreds of
pages of transcribed interactions. At the beginning of the eldwork, most pupils
were een years old. They followed the ‘basic vocational track’ (vmbo basis),
where pupils with migration backgrounds are overrepresented (Inspectie van het
Onderwijs, ). Therefore, this is a fruitful place to study how youth with and
without migration backgrounds engage in local negotiations of ethnic categories. I
observed thirty-seven pupils in total, of whom eight had a migration background
in Morocco, ve in Turkey, and four in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Gabon, and the
Dutch Antilles, respectively. All these pupils, except two, had been born in the
Netherlands. The remaining twenty had no (known or recent) migration back-
ground. Most pupils had lived for most of their lives in or nearby Venlo, a middle-
sized city in the Southern province of Limburg.
In my data collection, I built on linguistic ethnography: “an interpretive
approach which studies the local and immediate actions of actors from their point
of view and considers how these interactions are embedded in wider social con-
texts and structures” (Creese & Copland, , p.). Initially, the aim of the
research was not to study ethnic categorization, but to understand the role of
pupils’ multilingualism in a school with a monolingual Dutch policy. The fre-
quency with which participants labeled themselves and each other caused catego-
rization to be one of my main foci. I gathered, transcribed, and coded ethnic
label references, amounting to almost two references for every hour of recording
(excluding some that were unrecorded or inaudible on the recording). I avoided
asking participants to label themselves, in order to see how and when they would
bring up labels on their own accord. Oen, categories came up eetingly during
all kinds of daily activities, such as gossiping or making fun (see Van de Weerd,
). The interactions that I analyze in this paper were selected because they are
representative examples of common interactions in this context.
Ethnic labeling among pupils with migration backgrounds [5]
4. Data analysis
4.1 Labeling selves and others
Pupils with Turkish migration backgrounds in class b referred to themselves as
Turk (‘Turk’), pupils with Moroccan migration backgrounds called themselves
Marokkaan (‘Moroccan’), and the umbrella term that all pupils with migration
backgrounds used for themselves and each other was buitenlander (‘foreigner’).
I did not observe the four pupils with migration backgrounds in countries other
than Morocco or Turkey employ labels for themselves that were more specic
than buitenlander. Pupils without migration backgrounds rarely categorized
themselves: being Nederlander seemed unmarked, but as I will argue later, this
category also lacked local prestige. Other pupils did use the label Nederlander
‘Dutch person’ (or its alternatives, Hollander and tatta)2to refer to them. Pupils
without migration backgrounds rarely used the labels ‘Turk’, ‘Moroccan’ or ‘for-
eigner’, especially not in the presence of pupils who categorized themselves as
such, as this raised the specter of discrimination. All pupils treated the existence
of these categories as a given, but they also constantly negotiated what it entailed
to be a member of a category.
When I spoke to pupils who labeled themselves Marokkaan or Turk about
Morocco or Turkey, they signaled that they enjoyed taking their holidays there,
but that it was ‘too dierent’ to live there permanently. Example () demonstrates
such an interaction. It occurred during class, while Dounia and Yildiz worked on
an assignment. The teacher was at the other end of the classroom, so the two (who
were good friends) engaged in informal conversation. They had just been dis-
cussing the city in Morocco where Dounia’s family is from when I ask the question
in line , whether they would ever consider actually living in Morocco. The inter-
action shows that the pupils’ labels for self-reference – Dounia referred to herself
as Marokkaan, and Yildiz as Turk - did not seem strongly related to feelings of
belonging to Morocco or Turkey.
2. In Limburg, Hollander commonly refers to a Dutch person from outside Limburg. Outside
Limburg, Hollander refers to people seen as somehow prototypically Dutch. The pupils of b
used it in that latter sense. The word tatta comes from ptata or tata (‘potato’ in the Surinamese
language Sranan Tongo) where it is used to refer to a stereotypical image of a (white, potato-
eating) Dutch person (Cornips & De Rooij, ).
[6] Pomme van de Weerd
Example .3‘I will not live there either’
May . Participants: Dounia (D), Yildiz (Y ), and the researcher (P).
1 P maar zou je wel eens (.) denk je wel eens dat je een keer
but would you ever (.) do you ever think that you will go
2 te- in Marokko wil gaan wonen? of niet.
b- go live in Morocco? or not.
3 Y I::[:L:]
E::[:W:]
4 D [wonen? ( ) niet.]
[to live? ( ) not.]
5 Y [wonen (kan gewoon) niet]
[to live (simply can) not]
6 P nee? wat dan?
no? how come?
7(1.0)
8 D want ik ben hun di- dingen niet gewend, hoe hun doen
because I am not used to their thi- things, how they4act
9 daarzo, [is wel apart].
there, [is kinda strange].
10 Y [( )] (.) ik (ga) daar ook niet wonen.
[( )] (.) I (will) not live there either.
11 P nee. in Turkije bedoel je [dan]
no. in Turkey you mean [then]
12 Y [ja in] Turkije
[yes in] Turkey
13 P wil je ook [niet]
you also don’t [want]
14 Y [nee] ik vind het [echt te druk in Turkije]
[no] I find it [much too busy in Turkey]
15 D [je kunt er wel op vakantie gaan]
[you can go on holidays there]
16 maar wonen niet.
but not to live.
In this interaction, Yildiz reacts to my question to Dounia about living in Morocco
with an exclamation (‘Ew!’), signaling shock, or even disgust. Dounia does not
orient to this as an insult, but instead aligns with Yildiz. Although their exact
words in lines – are unclear because they are speaking simultaneously, both
girls state that they would not consider living ‘there.’ ‘Living’ is heard in opposi-
tion to going for holidays, as made explicit by Dounia in line . ‘There’ constructs
an implicit opposition with ‘here in the Netherlands.’ Dounia elaborates on her
reaction in lines –: by explaining ‘how they act there’, she constructs ‘Moroc-
cans’ in Morocco as Other, and thereby constructs an implicit ‘we here’.
In line , Yildiz says she does not want to ‘live there either.’ However, Yildiz
labeled herself ‘Turk’, and we had been talking about Morocco. Dounia’s use of
3. Transcription conventions can be found at the end of this paper.
4. In Dutch, Amira’s use of hun in the subject position (as Meryem’s in line ) is regarded to
be non-standard Dutch. I translate it into a standard English phrase using ‘they’ because its use
is widespread. Translating it as (e.g.) ‘them’ would portray it as more marked than it is in my
view. Furthermore, patterns of ‘non-standard’ language use are not the focus of this paper.
Ethnic labeling among pupils with migration backgrounds [7]
the rather general words them and there, in line , seems to have made the link to
Morocco, specically, irrelevant to Yildiz. There has become a concept, meaning
‘not here in the Netherlands’ – whether that is Morocco or Turkey – and Yildiz
reproduces it to refer Turkey. By constructing a ‘them, there’, they construct an
implicit ‘we, here’, and can be said to produce a kind of shared belonging in the
Netherlands.
As illustrated by Example (), in the case of these pupils the act of labeling
themselves Marokkaan or Turk did not necessarily co-exist with feelings of
attachment to the country to which those labels referred, or at least not as strongly
as oen suggested. The next extracts show some of the category-incumbent char-
acteristics that pupils brought up on their own initiative (instead of as a response
to a question, as in Example ()) in discussions about categories. The character-
istic discussed in Example (a) is physical appearance. During a class in which
I sat next to Amine, he asked me whether I would have guessed that he was
Marokkaan, had I not known him. I was surprised by his question and said I was
not sure. The conversation continued as transcribed below.
Example a. ‘I don’t look like a Moroccan.’
June . Care and well-being class. Participants: Amine (A), and the
researcher (P).
1 P maar Amine, hoezo vraag je dat?
but Amine, why do you ask that?
2 A gewoon (.) omdat ik heel vaak van mensen hoor d-dat ik niet
because (.) because people often tell me th- that I don’t
3 (.) dat ik op geen Marokkaan lijk.
(.) that I look like no Moroccan.
4 P dat je niet op een Marokkaan lijkt.
that you don’t look like a Moroccan.
5 A ja.
yes.
6 P oké en vind je dat (.) f-fijn? of stom.
okay and do you (.) find that g-good? or bad.
7 A maakt mij niks uit (.) ik vin- ik vind dat ik ook
it doesn’t matter to me (.) I thin- I think that I also
8 niet op een Marokkaan lijk maar
don’t look like a Moroccan but
9(0.5)
10 P en hoe zou een Marokkaan wel zijn dan?
and how would a Moroccan be then?
11 A echt zwart haar
really black hair
12 P ah oke, en jij hebt dat niet.
ah alright, and you don’t have that.
13 A ik lijk op zo (0.7) hoe heet dat, Brazilië (en zo).
I look like (0.7) what’s it called, Brazil (and such).
((25.0 seconds omitted))
19 P maar zou je liever meer op een Marokkaan willen lijken dan?
but would you rather look more like a Moroccan then?
20 (0.5)
21 A ik- ik ben wel Marokkaan, maakt echt niets uit hoor.
I- I still am a Moroccan, it really doesn’t matter you know.
[8] Pomme van de Weerd
This extract demonstrates that Amine considered physical appearance important
to being (perceived as) a member of the locally established category Marokkaan.
Although he states that ‘it doesn’t matter’ in line , and that he ‘still is a Moroccan’
in line , and thereby debates the assumption that the essence of category mem-
bership is physical appearance, the fact that he has just asked me about it suggests
that it did matter to him. However, Amine gives short and evasive replies to my
persistent requests for an emotive evaluation of his physical appearance (lines
and ). In trying to elicit his opinion, I never actually respond to Amine’s initial
question. In line , he apparently tries to end the conversation with an evaluative
statement. Then Stefan, who had been sitting next to Amine during the conver-
sation, joins in and introduces another characteristic that could potentially dene
category membership: nationality.
Example b. ‘I don’t look like a Moroccan’
Continuation of Extract a. Stefan (S) joins the conversation.
22 S je moet blij (.) je moet blij zijn zijn met de
nationaliteit
you have to (.) you have to be happy with the nationality
23 die je hebt.
that you have.
24 P maar hij is (.) jouw nationaliteit is Nederlands, toch?
but he’s (.) your nationality is Dutch, right?
25 A ja
yes
26 (0.7)
27 A maar ik ben gewoon Marokkaans.
but I am simply Moroccan.
28 (0.5)
29 P en Nederlands
and Dutch
30 A ja
yes
31 P of vooral Marokkaans?
or mostly Moroccan?
32 A vooral Marokkaans
mostly Moroccan
33 P ja? voel je je meer Marokkaans dan Nederlands?
yes? you feel more Moroccan than Dutch?
34 A ja ( )
yes ( )
35 P en als je naar Marokko gaat?
and when you go to Morocco?
36 A dan voel ik me (.) dan voel ik me echt Nederlands.
then I feel (.) then I really feel Dutch.
37 P dan voel je je Nederlands ja? hoe komt dat?
then you feel Dutch yes? how come?
38 A ik weet niet (.) ik-ik ben de enige Marokkaan die
I don’t know (.) I-I am the only Moroccan who
39 Hollands kan praten enzo
can speak Hollandish and such
40 (0.8)
41 A ik kan echt niet volle (.)
I can’t speak full (.)
42 ik kan niet echt volop Marokkaans praten.
I can’t really fully speak Moroccan.
Ethnic labeling among pupils with migration backgrounds [9]
In this part of the interaction, Amine and Stefan introduce more factors that, to
them, may dene what it is to be a Marokkaan. In Stefan’s eyes, it seems that
nationality denes a person’s category. I had not heard the pupils talk about
‘nationality’ in relation to category membership before, and in my confusion
seek to conrm with Amine that his nationality is Dutch in line . By stating
that he is ‘just Moroccan’ in line , Amine constructs the category Marokkaan
as something that ‘just is’, regardless of ‘nationality’. Stefan does not further con-
tribute to the conversation, but his one comment seems to be what launched
me into a series of questions (lines , , , ) about ‘being’ or ‘feeling’ Ned-
erlander/Nederlands or Marokkaan(s). Amine produces very short answers: my
insistence on his ‘feelings’ about being or looking like a Marokkaan appears to
make him uncomfortable.
In lines –, Amine engages with my question (of line ) about his ‘feel-
ings’ of being ‘Moroccan’ or ‘Dutch’ in Morocco. He speaks about language pro-
ciency to contextualize feeling Nederlands when in Morocco. When he is outside
the regular context within which this categorization occurs (i.e. the Netherlands),
there is a shi in orientation from the opposition Marokkaan-Nederlander, in
which he identies with the former, to dierent kinds of Marokkaan: one in
the Netherlands (like himself ), and another in Morocco. Similar to Dounia and
Amira in Example (), he constructs these as categorically dierent. Amine’s self-
categorization in line remains dened by the category Marokkaan but is now
complemented with a quality (speaking Hollands ‘Hollandish’).5The other kind
of Marokkaan lives in Morocco and speaks ‘Moroccan’, unlike Amine
(line –). Amine’s lack of prociency in ‘Moroccan’ (it is unclear whether he
refers to Moroccan Arabic or Berber) makes him feel like an outsider in Morocco,
but it does not change his use of the label Marokkaan to refer to himself. Note,
also, that Amine uses the adjectival ‘Dutch’ (Nederlands) rather than the noun
Nederlander in line . In class b, this noun was typically reserved for categorical
use in reference to people without migration backgrounds.
In Examples a and b, Amine and Stefan (and I) negotiate essences of cate-
gory membership. At rst, Amine seems preoccupied with his perceived deviance
from expectations regarding physical appearance, and wonders whether that
makes other people recognize him as a Marokkaan. When in the context of
Morocco, he constructs language prociency as more central to category member-
ship: being there makes him feel more ‘Dutch’ because he does not speak ‘Moroc-
can’. So, in contrast with accounts that suggest that labels such as Marokkaan
5. Rather uncommonly, Amine refers to the Dutch language as Hollands (‘Hollandish’) instead
of Nederlands (‘Dutch’). This had not happened before and did not happen aer, and it is
unclear to the researcher why Amine might have done so.
[10] Pomme van de Weerd
indicate feelings of belonging to Morocco or unbelonging to the Netherlands, the
data discussed here illustrate that label use is much more complex. When pupils
talked about ethnic categories on their own accord, they distinguished between
dierent social categories with the same label, and they highlighted and negoti-
ated category-incumbent features other than national belonging. Categories could
be associated with many locally embedded characteristics, including physical
appearance, nationality, ‘feeling’, or language prociency. The pupils constantly
negotiated the degree to which these or other factors dened category member-
ship, and these essences furthermore shied according to context. Ethnic labels
for self-reference can thus not simply be taken as a measure of national ‘belong-
ing’: their meaning is constructed and negotiated in interactions between individ-
uals and depends on the context of use.
The next section further illustrates the meanings and functions of member-
ship categories among the pupils of b, particularly in relation to local social hier-
archies.
4.2 Labels and local social hierarchies
Although much literature and public debate assumes an association between eth-
nic labels and ethnic identity work, these interpretations rarely take stock of the
non-ethnic work that can be done by reference to ethnic labels. Pupils of b
labeled selves and others based on a family history of migration, but they also
oen assigned ethnic labels to cultural signs or personal characteristics that they
could have interpreted in many other ways (Chun, ). For example, in the next
interaction, a pupil relates an activity that appears wholly unrelated to descent to
being a ‘foreigner’.
Example . The polonaise
I ask Naomi and Hatice whether they had a good time at the school
party last night. Naomi says she didn’t like the music much. Hatice says:
‘I danced to all the songs. I even did the polonaise!’ I laugh: ‘You did the
polonaise?’ Hatice, also laughing: ‘Yes, all the buitenlanders [foreigners]
(eld notes, June )did that, only the buitenlanders.’
Interpretation of this short interaction requires an analysis of the connotations of
the polonaise and of ‘foreigners’ in this specic context. Hatice (who commonly
labeled herself Turk or buitenlander) comments that ‘all the buitenlanders’
(thereby including herself ) did the polonaise: a kind of conga line that can be per-
ceived as ‘typically Dutch’, and in this local context also has connotations of Carni-
val celebrations and may index a regionalized identity (Cornips & De Rooij, ).
Pupils who labeled themselves buitenlander generally distanced themselves from
Ethnic labeling among pupils with migration backgrounds [11]
styles or behaviors that they considered typically ‘Dutch’ or ‘Limburgish’. Possibly,
Hatice found it worthy of recounting that buitenlanders did a dance seen as typi-
cally Dutch or Limburgish because to her this was categorically incongruent and
therefore humorous. This short interaction furthermore alludes to the hierarchiza-
tion of categories in class b. Example () is one of many examples in my notes
and recordings that demonstrate how in class b the category buitenlander carried
prestige and Nederlander did not. The incongruence of ‘cool’ pupils doing some-
thing ‘uncool’ may have been another reason why Hatice pointed out this event as
remarkable.
The local prestige in being a buitenlander presents a striking contrast with the
image of those social categories in Dutch society more generally, in which peo-
ple with migration backgrounds are oen portrayed as problematic. Especially the
image of the ‘Moroccan’ in much national media is that of a ‘folk devil’ (Bouabid,
): it is oen associated with nuisance, criminality, or religious extremism. In
b, however, these categories carried prestige: pupils related them to character-
istics and behaviors that they related to status, such as having a good sense of
humor, not (always) subjecting to authority, or being relaxed about money. In
much the same process, pupils linked the label Nederlander to behavior consid-
ered ‘uncool’. Ahmed, for example, drew on the stereotype of Dutch stinginess
during a class discussion about an upcoming school excursion: “That’s a real tatta
right there: ‘My parents have paid so I will go.’” On another occasion, I asked
Amira, Meryem and Dounia whether they had friends who were Nederlanders.
They replied: ‘No, they are so boring. They don’t have the same sense of humor.’
Pupils who labeled themselves buitenlander thus framed prestigious signs and
behaviors as indexical of their category. When Nederlanders performed those
signs and behaviors, they could be judged as ‘wannabes’. This happens in Exam-
ple (), which occurred in the context of an informal group conversation.
Example a. ‘Gucci caps and little bags’
June . Participants: Farida (F), Yildiz (Y), Meryem (M) (categorized them-
selves as ‘Turks’), Amira (A), Dounia (D) (categorized themselves as ‘Moroc-
cans’), and the researcher (P).
1 P ik hoor ook [wel eens mensen die]
I also sometimes hear [people who are]
2 F [heh-heh]
[heh-heh]
3 P bijvoorbeeld (.) mensen die niet Marokkaans zijn
for example (.) people who are not Moroccan
4 A °ja
°yes
5 P eh eh Marokkaanse woorden gebruiken.
eh eh using Moroccan words.
6 A ja:
yes:
7 M JA dat [snap ik ook niet]
YES I [don’t get that either]
[12] Pomme van de Weerd
8 A [hun willen Marokkanen worden]
[they wanna become Moroccans]
9 M aar ja [lukt niet helaas]
but yes [they can’t unfortunately]
10 M [dat snap ik ook niet]
[I also don’t get that]
11 P [heh-heh] snap je niet [eh:]
[heh-heh] you don’t get it [eh:]
12 M [nee]
[no]
13 A of dan gaan ze Gucci petjes dragen
or then they wear Gucci caps
14 M of ze doen zich
or they do as if
15 A [tasje]
[little bag]
16 M [ja ze] doen kleren aan wat [meestal buitenlanders aandoen]
[yes they] wear clothes that6[usually foreigners wear]
((33 seconds omitted))
40 P maar (.) maar waarom doen mensen dat dan (.)
but (.) but why do people do that then (.)
41 dat vind je dus raar eigenlijk [als ze dat doen]
so you find it weird actually [when they do that]
42 A [ja is ook] raar, iedereen heeft
[yes it is] weird, everyone has
43 toch zijn eigen cul[tuur]
their own culture [right]
44 M [kijk] meestal hebben buitenlanders dat aan
[look] usually foreigners wear that
45 en dan (.) Nederlanders kunnen dat wel aandoen maar hun doen
and then (.) Dutch people can wear it but then they also use
46 dan ook die Marokkaanse woorden enzo gebruiken doen ze alsof ze
Moroccan words and stuff and act as if they
47 buitenlanders [zijn]
are foreign[ners]
48 A [ja:]
[yes:]
49 P oké maar (.)als iemand eh eh als een Turks iemand een
Marokkaans
okay and if someone eh eh if a Turkish person uses a Moroccon
50 woord gebruikt, is dat dan beter? is dat dan
word, is that then better? is that then
51 M ja:: vind ik wel
yes:: I think so
52 Y want [Marokkanen gebruiken ook] Turkse woorden
because [Moroccans also use Turkish] words
53 A [is ande:rs]
[is di:fferent]
54 A is gewoon hetzelfde, Marokkaans [en Turks]
is just the same, Moroccan [and Turkish]
55 M [ja is] bijna hetzelfde daarom
[yes is] almost the same that’s why
My statement in lines -- about people ‘who are not Moroccan’ who use ‘Moroc-
can words’ launches Amira and Meryem into a conversation not about language,
6. I have translated the (non-standard) use of wat (‘what’ ) into standard English ‘that’ for the
reason described in note .
Ethnic labeling among pupils with migration backgrounds [13]
but about ‘people who are not Moroccan’ versus ‘Moroccans’ (line ). Amira and
Meryem construct language as a central characteristic of the category Marokkaan.
The language they refer to is not the same as that which Amine spoke about in
Example (b), however. Amine mentioned not being able to ‘fully speak Moroc-
can’, which made him feel ‘Dutch’ in Morocco. Amira and Meryem refer to the
insertion of ‘Moroccan words’ into utterances that are otherwise regarded as
Dutch as indicative of the category buitenlander ‘foreigner’.
In line , Meryem comments that ‘she does not get it either’, implying that
she and I both do not understand why ‘people who are not Moroccan’ would use
‘Moroccan words’. During my eldwork, however, I observed that Meryem cate-
gorized herself as a ‘Turk’ and oen used Moroccan words: She thus engaged in
the practice about which I asked. Here, she constructs it as something that ‘others’
do, however, and in fact changes the category we are discussing from ‘Moroccans’
to ‘foreigners’ in line – thereby including herself in the imitated category. This
is not marked nor taken up as a change in topic. The practice of ‘using Moroc-
can words’ is thus constructed as a central characteristic not only of the cate-
gory Marokkaan, but of the category buitenlander more generally. This equation
of Marokkanen and buitenlanders in terms of language and dress continues in
the rest of the conversation. In line , Amira stresses that it is ‘weird’ when peo-
ple use language and display signs that she perceives as incongruent with their
category, because ‘everyone has their own culture.’ She constructs the category
Marokkaan as a ‘culture’ that one ‘has’, which is shared (or shareable) between
Turken and Marokkanen and desirable but unreachable to others.
The pupils thus assigned rather generalized ‘ethnic’ meanings to language,
clothing, and accessories: the main opposition built in the interaction is one
between buitenlanders (including and equating Turken and Marokkanen) and
Nederlanders. This might have to do with recipient design (Sacks, Scheglo, &
Jeerson, ): during the eldwork, they had categorized me as a Nederlander
and may have assumed that I was oblivious to dierences between dierent ‘kinds’
of buitenlanders. Another possibility is that, for these pupils, the categories Turk
and Marokkaan were suciently similar with regard to certain locally indexed
category incumbent characteristics and activities that they could use the labels
interchangeably in discussions of those characteristics. Either way, their equation
of Turken and Marokkanen shows that the pupils shaped these categories in a
locally specic way, as embedded in the Netherlands, and related them to stylistic
choices in (e.g.) language and clothing.
A few minutes later, I asked the pupils why they thought people display
such ‘incongruent’ behavior. This brings up the topic of social hierarchies more
explicitly.
[14] Pomme van de Weerd
Example b. ‘Gucci caps and little bags’
Continuation of Example (a).
120 P waarom denk je dat ze dat doen
why do you think they do that
121 A (.) om d’rbij te horen
to belong
122 P waar[bij]
to [what]
123 M [ja dat] [is altijd]
[yes that’s] [always that way]
124 A [bij de groep]
[to the group]
125 D wannabe moc[ro]
wannabe moc[ro]
126 Y [ge]woon om bij de buitenlanders [bij] te horen
[just] to belong with the foreig[ners]
127 A [ja]
[yes]
128 P omdat dat stoe:rder is (.) of
because that’s cooler (.) or
129 A [ja:] denk het wel
[ye:s] I think so
130 M ja denk het ook wel
yes I think so too
131 A omdat (.) die (.) Marokkanen en Turken heel veel
because (.) the (.) Moroccans and Turks get a lot of
132 aandacht krijgen denk ik
attention I think
133 (0.3)
134 P wat voor aandacht
what kind of attention
135 A gewoon e:m
just e:m
136 (0.7)
137 A hoe zeg je dat
how do you say that
138 Y ja ik weet wa-
yes I know wha-
139 A hun hebben je weet toch zo altijd dat groepje en dan zie
they have you know kind of always that group and then you
140 je zo een paar Hollanders zo d’rbij staan (.) terwijl hun
see a couple of Hollanders stand there (.) while they also
141 ook in dat groepje willen horen
want to belong with that group
Here, the pupils continue to use the categories buitenlander and Marokkaan inter-
changeably. Yildiz speaks about ‘foreigners’ (line ) and Dounia uses the term
‘wannabe mocro’ in line . ‘Mocro’ functions as a synonym for Marokkaan here
and is associated with youth language in the Netherlands. The use of this word
points to the intertextuality of these categories: discourse about them circulates
beyond this school class, in Dutch society more generally. Together, Amira, Yildiz
and Meryem construct the display of characteristics that they associate with being
aMarokkaan or buitenlander, when performed by a Nederlander, as an eort
to appear stoerder ‘cooler’ – which is the adjective that I oer in line . In the
Ethnic labeling among pupils with migration backgrounds [15]
rest of the interaction, they further position the categories buitenlander, Turk and
Marokkaan as eligible for imitation in order to raise one’s status.
‘Reading ethnicity’ (cf. Chun, ) in class b thus indexed dimensions of
social dierentiation other than ethnicity, as pupils placed categories along a hier-
archy of prestige in reversal of societal discourses. This can be seen as pupils’
commentary on structures of social inequality in the Netherlands, of which they
were very aware: they recounted experiences of being told to ‘go back to their own
country’ and felt that ‘buitenlanders’ had fewer chances at getting a job at partic-
ular supermarkets. Reversing the local indexicalities of those labels enabled them
to comment on, and deal with, the stigmatizing discourses that aected them out-
side school.
5. Conclusion
I argued that pupils who labeled themselves Marokkaan ‘Moroccan’, Turk ‘Turk’,
and/or buitenlander ‘foreigner’, used these labels to engage in local, interpersonal,
and intra-national categorization. Pupils categorized themselves and others
according to their migration backgrounds, but in daily use, the categories had a
number of locally contingent associations. The examples of interaction illustrate
that when pupils talked about ethnic categories on their own initiative, they
highlighted category-incumbent features other than specic countries or national
belonging: they distanced themselves from the country their labels refer to
(Example ), and mentioned physical appearance (Examples a and b), dress
style (Examples a and b), or behaviors such as being stingy. Ethnic labels were
thus “locally recongured to do non-ethnic work as a result of everyday inter-
actional negotiations leading to new common understandings” (Nørreby, ,
p.). As illustrated by Examples (), (a) and (b), non-ethnic work with ethnic
labels in this context included negotiations of social status.
Nevertheless, the labels retained indexical links with wider Dutch discourses
in which people with migration backgrounds are stigmatized, associated with reli-
gious extremism and conservatism, and accused of not ‘integrating’ (Bouabid,
). The pupils of class b sometimes explicitly commented on these discourses,
for example saying it was unfair that it was harder for them to get a part-time job
at the local supermarket. A more implicit but also more pervasive way in which
they appeared to comment on this inequality was that they reinterpreted the cat-
egories buitenlander, Marokkaan and Turk. They linked those categories to signs
and behaviors they considered ‘cool’ and linked Nederlander to less appealing
ways of being. This gave them the status that they were not accorded in most con-
texts outside school.
[16] Pomme van de Weerd
In sum, ethnic labels have a complex and locally contingent meaning poten-
tial, which must be investigated in interaction, while at the same time paying
attention to how they are embedded in societal structures. This paper explored
ethnic labeling in one school class in the Netherlands, but the broader point also
applies to other (international) contexts in which similar labels are used. Lin-
guistic ethnography and analysis of talk-in-interaction can help capture the local
indexicalities of labels, as well as their relation to supra-local discourses.
Funding
Research funded by Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek ()
to Pomme van de Weerd and by Université Libre de Bruxelles to Pomme van de Weerd.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank everyone at “South High School” for allowing me to spend time with them. I
am very grateful for the comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper by Leonie
Cornips, Jürgen Jaspers, and two anonymous reviewers. All remaining shortcomings are my
own.
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Appendix. Transcription conventions
[ ] overlapping talk
(.) intervals within or between talk (measured in tenths of a second)
(.) Pause or gap, shorter than . seconds
. closing intonation
, continuing intonation
? rising intonation
– abrupt cut off of sound
::: extension of preceding sound
underlining emphasis
CAPITALS loud speech
( ) transcriber unable to hear
(word) transcriber uncertain of hearing
Ethnic labeling among pupils with migration backgrounds [19]
Address for correspondence
Pomme van de Weerd
Faculty of Humanities
University of Amsterdam (UvA)
Spuistraat
VB Amsterdam
The Netherlands
p.vandeweerd@uva.nl
Publication history
Date received: August
Date accepted: September
Published online: November
https://orcid.org/---
[20] Pomme van de Weerd
