The Conditions of ‘Savages’?
supports people in precarious positions. 82 They put a sign on the tent that read:
‘De kerk slaapt buiten’ (‘the church sleeps outside’). The purpose of the tent was
not only to take shelter, but also to make visible the predicament in which they
found themselves: their asylum requests had been rejected, but they were unable
to return to their presumed home countries, mainly because these countries (such
as Somalia) were not safe or because the embassies or consulates of these countries
would not cooperate with their return. 83 Living in the Netherlands after receiving
an administrative order to leave, they had become targets of the Dutch state’s
‘discouragement policy’ (‘ontmoedigingsbeleid’), which seeks to make the lives
of irregularised 84 people so difficult that they will find some way to return to their
country of origin on their own, and to discourage others from coming to the
Netherlands in the first place. Initiated in the 1990s with the 1991 connecting of
social security numbers to residency status, which made it impossible for
irregularised people to work legally; the 1993 Wet op de Identificatieplicht
(‘Compulsory Identification Act’), 85 which requires anyone from age fourteen to
show a valid identification card when asked by police; and the 1998
Koppelingswet (‘Linkage Act’) 86 that links the ability to enrol in health insurance
plans and claim social benefits to legal residency, the discouragement policy also
seeks to prevent people whose presence has been delegitimised by the state from
moving freely (particularly through frequent arrest and detention) 87 and from
taking shelter (in 2007, the Secretary of Justice concluded an agreement with the
Association of Dutch Municipalities that tied a one-time amnesty that gave legal
residency to a limited group of irregularised people to a stipulation that
municipalities would stop providing emergency shelter to irregularised adults;88
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
The diaconate was founded in 1578 to provide shelter for orphans and elderly and sick people.
It is currently part of the Protestant Church of Amsterdam, and still supports and initiates
projects for people in precarious situations: ‘Vluchtelingen zetten tentje op in centrum’
[Refugees Set up a Tent in Center] AT5 (online, 5 September 2012)
<http://www.at5.nl/artikelen/86273/vluchtelingen-zetten-tentje-op-in-centrum>.
For
a
timeline of the first two years of the We Are Here group (in Dutch), see: Jasper Piersma,
‘Tijdlijn: de lange tocht van de vluchtingen in Amsterdam’ [Timeline: The Long Journey of
the Refugees in Amsterdam] Het Parool (online, 29 August 2014)
<http://www.parool.nl/amsterdam/tijdlijn-de-lange-tocht-van-de-vluchtingen-inamsterdam~a3731269/>. The best introduction to We Are Here is: Jonas Staal, We Are Here
(eds), New World Academy Reader #2: Collective Struggle of Refugees. Lost. In Between.
(Basis voor Actuele Kunst 2013) 22–23 <www.bak-utrecht.nl>. This reader is an excellent
introduction to We Are Here. See also Juan Amaya Castro, ‘We Are Here! Undocumented
Migrant Activism and the Political Economy of Visibility’ in Yolande Jansen, Robin
Celikates and Joost de Bloois (eds), The Irregularization of Migration in Contemporary
Europe: Detention, Deportation, Drowning (Rowman & Littlefield 2016).
For a juridical discussion of these reasons, see Thomas Spijkerboer, ‘Wij zijn hier’ [We Are
Here] (2013) 1204 NJB, and the response to this article by Ernst Hirsch Ballin, ‘Wie zijn wij?’
(2013) 1205 NJB. See also Sinead Wendt’s meticulously researched and theoretically
sophisticated Master’s thesis, “No More Bla Bla Bla” (Masters Thesis, University of
Amsterdam, 2016) (unpublished).
I use this term instead of ‘undocumented’ to indicate the fact that these refugees have a
specific relation to the law that has been actively produced through their exclusion. On this
term, see also Jansen, Celikates and de Bloois (n 82).
Wet op de Identificatieplicht [Compulsory Identification Act] (Netherlands) Law of 9
December 1993, art 2.
Koppelingswet [Linkage Act] (Netherlands) Law of 1 July 1998.
See Martijn Stronks, ‘The Paradox of Visible Illegality: A Brief History of Dutch Migration
Control’, tr Renée in der Maur, in Staal and We Are Here (n 82) 65.
Michiel Kruijt and Map Oberndorff, ‘Akkoord over pardon asielzoekers’, De Volkskrant
(online, 28 April 2007) <www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/akkoord-over-pardonasielzoekers~bbe38481/>.
209