Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Migrant integration policies in the Netherlands have become increasingly restrictive over the past two decades. This development has been prompted chiefly by the strong politicization of the subject of integration and, as a consequence, a growing political interference with policymaking. Policy design and construction is predominantly carried out by policy officials in state bureaucracies. Some of these actors, however, have great difficulties with the restrictive turn in integration policies and the associated political discourse. Policy officials use the concept of professionalism to describe how they cope with the ambiguity between their personal convictions and the professional role they are expected to play. Thus, professionalism symbolizes cultural orientations, norms and values that are important in the bureaucratic organization. In this paper, we argue that the discourse of professionalism functions as a disciplinary logic that controls policy officials, but that simultaneously endows their work with meaning and creates a feeling of belonging.
Source: Culture and Organization
Authors: Michiel Swinkels, Toon van Meijl
Institution: Radboud University Nijmegen
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W2804913093