Abstract

Vlaams Belang (VB) voters explicitly ask migrants to “adapt”. Using in-depth interviews, this research analyses how VB voters view integration and what they see as the ‘proper place for the foreigner’. Four strategies are used. First, VB voters advocate a privatisation of differences − the foreigner should keep deviant behavior to himself. Secondly, they argue for conformity in public spaces. Integration is taken as a unilateral imperative in which natives expect the compliance and loyalty of the Other. Doing so they refer to the notion of hospitality, confirming the power relationship between host and guest. The host takes the guest in, but expects something in return. The guest should earn his/her ‘citizenship’ through docile compliance. To confirm the sovereignty and authority of the host, two boundary-making strategies are used: moralisation and culturalisation. On the one hand, the Other is required to be a good, responsible and active citizen. On the other hand, differences are culturalised by referring to Islam as an antagonistic religion. The gradual difference is thus inflated into a non-integrable difference, aborting any realistic possibility for assimilation. The native (“own”) people stand vis-à-vis the stranger, who is confronted with inflating conditions in which, for part of the VB electorate, the conditional integration tips over towards a categorical closure. For our analysis, we rely on in-depth interviews with 37 VB voters, conducted in Antwerp, Brasschaat and Schoten in 2004.

How to Cite:

Abts, K. & Kochuyt, T., (2017) “De gepaste plaats van de vreemdeling: radicaalrechtse kiezers over integratie: gastheerlogica, moralisering en culturalisering”, Sociologos 38(1-2), 78–97. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/sociologos.86937