PhD defence
Shadowboxing: Legal Mobilization and the Marginalization of Race in the Dutch Metropole, 1979-1999
- A.L. Fischer
- Date
- Thursday 18 September 2025
- Time
- Location
-
Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden
Supervisor(s)
- Prof.dr. M.A.H.van der Woude
- Prof.dr. R.M.A.L. Hoefte (UvA)
- dr. E.S.J. Captain
Summary:
Why does racial discrimination remain a problem in the Netherlands, when the practice has been criminalized since 1971? Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva advises that the key to understanding why racism persists is to investigate the 'mechanisms and practices ... responsible for racial domination.' This research follows that advice. Through an in-depth case study of the Landelijk Bureau Racismebestrijding (1985-1999), the dissertation examines legal mechanisms and practices responsible for creating and maintaining racial hierarchies in the Netherlands. Using a mix of methods from critical historical and legal scholarship, it traces the evolution of racializing practices from their origins in Dutch colonial history, through the present day. The results show that during the colonial period, laws in the overseas colonies divided people into explicitly racial categories. The Dutch state approved these categories and used violence to enforce them. Racial categories generated wealth for people racialized as white, at the expense of people racialized as non-white, primarily through colonial conquest and slavery.
After World War II, the legal approach to race changed. Laws and policies prohibited 'racial discrimination,' but defined the practice as motivated by irrational, individual prejudice; they ignored material interests, structural practices and the history of racialization in the Dutch context. Furthermore, institutions and individuals responsible for enforcing laws against racial discrimination rarely did so. The combination of an ahistorical definition of racial discrimination and a lack of law enforcement contributed to concealing the history of racism and the ongoing and persistent racial inequalities in Dutch society during the postcolonial era.
PhD dissertations
Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.
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