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This paper analyses the rise of a new kind of urban citizenship in the context of the urban crisis of the 1980s: the vigilant citizen, characterized by a view of citizens as possible victims, who assume and are called upon to take responsibility for social safety. Top-down policy explanations insufficiently clarify why the polarized debate over urban petty crime developed into a consensus by the mid-1980s. Tying in with recent trends in urban police history, this paper shows the diversity of bottom-up actors in Amsterdam that helped to, sometimes unintentionally, further a communitarian “social safety” agenda: vigilantes and victim-support groups, the former based in more conservative circles, the latter partly inspired by women advocacy groups. These actors entered into a sometimes-tense dynamic with the police and municipality, which took up the challenge of providing victim support and of educating the public for neighborhood prevention. This slowly yielded results.

BackgroundClients are invited to play a role in decisions about their care. Collaborative deliberation comprises constructive engagement, recognition of alternative actions, comparative learning, construction and elicitation of preferences and preference integration. Collaborative deliberation between clients and professionals is a process that requires an interest in each other, sharing of views on alternatives and preferences and integrating into decisions. The aim is to gain insight into collaborative deliberation in consultations and the clients’ perception of arranging long-term care.DesignA descriptive qualitative study to explore collaborative deliberation in consultations between clients and professionals. Six organisations providing long-term care were included. Data collection of nine clients involved observations of consultation with field notes and audio-records, interviews with clients and professionals shortly and 3–6 months after the consultation and questionnaires to collect background information. The data were analysed by deductive content analysis.FindingsConstructive engagement was visible in all consultations. Clients and professionals showed respect, empathy and curiosity towards each other. In most consultations, two or more alternative actions are recognised and discussed. Comparative learning appears to be two sided, the client and the professional learn from each other's knowledge and experiences. Construction and elicitation of preference, and preference integration, seems to be present, but difficult to recognise in all consultations.Discussion/conclusionAlthough all propositions could be identified, there seems room for improvement in preference elicitation and integration of these preferences in the discussions on courses of action. Assistance seems needed with preference elicitation, both for the clients and for the professional.

Prisoner’s agency is often marginalized in the Dutch history of the prison. This article concretizes how inmates could influence their own lives and the prison system in the first half of the nineteenth century. By focusing on interaction as an indicator of agency, it is possible to go beyond the traditional analysis of agency as a form of resistance. A multidimensional perspective, in which attention is paid to resistance, negotiation and cooperation enlightens the diversity in which prisoners’ agency is expressed. In this way, this article aims to disprove the persistent stereotype of the powerless prisoner in the historiography of the Dutch prison.

In Dutch, the standard language of the Netherlands and the Flemish region of Belgium, ras (tr. race) is not a word that one can just throw around without raising questions. Ras carries a very heavy ideological weight. As a result, claiming that the social processes by which people of color are stigmatized, marginalized, and delegitimized is raciaal (tr. racial) is often considered imprecise, at best, and a reproduction of racism itself, at worst (see Lo 2019). However, it seems crucial to underscore the importance of studying the social processes that shape racial categories and structures, and the specific position of blackness in relation to whiteness in various contexts. Indeed, a concept like antiblackness becomes deeply resonant, conceptually and experientially, because with its rhizomorphic characteristics (see Ibrahim 2014) blackness reminds Belgium and the Netherlands of their own exclusionary hardened self-image.

Natural history museums have long escaped postcolonial or decolonial scrutiny; their specimens were and are usually presented as part of the natural world, containing only biological or geological information. However, their collections, like those of other museums, are rooted in colonial practices and thinking. In this article, we sketch a political and decolonial biography of ‘Java Man’, the fossilized remains of a Homo erectus specimen, housed in Naturalis, the Natural History Museum, in the Netherlands. We describe the context of Dutch colonialism and the role of indigenous knowledge and activity in the discovery of Java Man. We also follow Java Man to the Netherlands, where it became a contested specimen and part of a discussion about repatriation. This article argues that the fossils of Java Man and their meanings are products of ‘creolized’ knowledge systems produced by Empire and sites of competing national and disciplinary histories and identities.

Shortly after going into lockdown, museums from around the world urged the public to document the COVID 19 pandemic and share it with the institution. In this contribution, ‘Corona virus heritage collections’ as a phenomenon are linked to Francois Hartog’s work on presentism. Based on interviews with several Dutch curators, and an exploration of Corona collections from multiple countries published online, it is argued that the value of these collections lies primarily in the present – for the public as a way to act in uncertain times, and a way for institutions to increase their societal relevance.

A variety of innovative pilot projects are being implemented to improve the life-course resilience of existing and newly built home environments. We refer to these projects as “socio-technical experiments” that embody different kinds of promising futures and provide direction to current developments in the emerging domain of age-friendly homes. To take stock of this diversity within Europe, this paper provides an overview of 53 ongoing socio-technical experiments that are being conducted in the Netherlands, France, Ireland and Poland. We find that, besides the variation between European countries, there is a more important type variation in terms of the character of the experiments themselves and the differences in development direction that they propose. Our findings suggest that most of the innovations tested in these experiments are not primarily material or technical but primarily social or conceptual in character (i.e., new organizational modes or everyday practices that re-arrange social relations or new housing concepts that bridge the divide between ageing in place individually and a nursing home). This variety of innovations tested in the experiments can be categorized into seven distinct innovation pathways: (1) Showcasing Technology, (2) Innovation Ecosystem, (3) Sheltered Elite, (4) Specific Community, (5) Conscious Retrofitting, (6) Home Sharing and (7) Retrovation Challenge.

This contribution investigates the rationale and implementation of an employment policy that envisions the quick insertion of migrants in the labour market through short and intensive language learning. We present an ethnographic analysis of a short and intensive course of Dutch for migrant job seekers developed in the context of Flemish employment policy. Our data show that the policy is framed in a discourse of empowerment and efficiency, but in its implementation focuses strongly on surveillance, the punitive consequences of which are tacitly attenuated by the practitioners implementing it. The drive towards quick and efficient language learning could be seen to conflict with the unpredictable nature of language learning. A focus on short-term language learning and quick professionalisation trajectories moreover seems to push migrants into low-skilled, precarious employment and to have stratificational outcomes along gendered lines. While arguing for the need to raise awareness of the way gender intersects with issues of language learning and professional integration, this contribution also reflects on the limitations of language learning as a strategy for migrants’ empowerment and contends that an exclusive focus on language as the key to integration erases the structural factors that produce inequality on the labour market.