Kirsty McHenry | How do you integrate as an international in the Netherlands?
In recent years, Dutch politics has fluctuated between warm embrace and cold rejection when it comes to international students, writes columnist Kirsty McHenry. “This inconsistency makes it difficult for international students to trust that they will ever truly feel at home here.”
After three and a half years of living here, I am reluctant to admit that I have yet to fully understand my place in the Netherlands. However, far from being a personal conundrum, this is the reality faced by many of the former international students who choose to stay here as workers. This is perhaps, in part, because the Netherlands itself appears to be similarly unsure of exactly where in Dutch society internationals are presumed to fit.
While the release of the new coalition’s plans for the internationalisation of education at the end of January brought with it a return to a more positive outlook on the role of international students, it also offered little assurance that a resolution to this dilemma has indeed been reached. After all, with this to be the third official government stance on internationalisation in just a few brief years, the only thing that has remained consistent for internationals is a persistent sense of instability.
Despite the incoming government’s softened attitude towards internationalisation, international students’ experience over the past few years has been defined by regular fluctuations between warm embrace and cold disapproval. This volatility can make it hard for international students to trust that they may ever truly feel they belong. Not only is this disconcerting for internationals themselves, specifically those contemplating staying in the Netherlands long term, it also undermines some of the key points in favour of internationalisation, such as the anticipated “stay-rate” of international graduates. As many international students grow increasingly uncertain of their place here, the internationalised programmes that rely on a specific stay-rate to justify their existence are left in a similarly precarious position.
It can be isolating to leave behind the diverse environment of university, where internationals are united together as outsiders, to enter a new territory where that same outsider status suddenly makes them strikingly conspicuous. That said, as someone who has made the transition from temporary international student to (semi-)permanent migrant worker, I’ve found that this shift has provided me with a stronger sense of place here than I had during my studies. For me, the feeling of rootedness continues to increase the farther I drift from the refuge of university and the more impelled I am to integrate into Dutch society in my daily working life.
However, on the flip side, it’s also true that many international students make the decision to leave before they ever even start to develop the very sense of belonging which would give them reason to stay. For these students, the expectation that they will one day depart weakens what inclination they may have had towards developing a more concrete connection to the Netherlands. Likewise, it’s doubtlessly difficult for the Dutch to whole-heartedly accept international students when it seems as if they already have one foot out the door. Yet, if the integration of internationals is to succeed, then it is crucial that international students are not perceived (by themselves or others) as a separate group that exists outside of the wider Dutch community.
It seems that the best time to start this process of integration is upon arrival. One way to do this is by making resources for learning the Dutch language and culture more widely available and accessible to students from the get-go, which could be done for instance through obligatory university courses or the promotion of local internships (as UvA director Ingmar Visser suggested in an open letter to the new coalition). However, what’s most important is finding a way for internationals to leave university with a more defined sense of their place in the Netherlands and the tools to build a solid foundation here, should they choose to remain.
Kirsty McHenry studied Political Science at the UvA.
