Constructing difference, contesting exclusive citizenship in the classroom

Over the past twenty years a major challenge facing Western European nation-states has been to integrate ethnic minorities, which has resulted in often heated debates about how much and what sort of cultural differences are to be allowed in the public domain. Schools, and more importantly teachers, are expected to carry out the twofold task of, on the one hand, reproducing national structures and routines and, on the other, managing cultural differences and socio-cultural inequalities on a day-to-day basis.0In the Netherlands this task has become increasingly difficult in these new realist times in which it has become acceptable to voice one's discontent with the presence of certain ethnic 'groups' and frame them as maladjusted, inherently different from the 'dominant culture', and potentially dangerous. This study is based on ethnographic research conducted at an 'ethnically mixed' secondary school in the city of Amsterdam offering education for the higher levels (havo and vwo).