Samenvatting

Although 'integration with retention of "own" culture' has ceased to be the dominant policy principle in Dutch minority policies for quite some time now, there are still remarkably many ethnically specific policy arrangements in the Netherlands. To explain this contradiction this paper introduces an administrative mechanism: the logic of making policy categories conflicts with the logic of policy implementation. The use of 'avoidant categories' – a particular type of policy category discussed in this paper – creates an administrative opportunity structure that unintendedly promotes ethnic fragmentation instead of integration in policy implementation. We illustrate the working of this mechanism in a comparative perspective; the Netherlands is not unique in this respect and experience in other countries is instructive.