Paper short abstract:

Public policy practitioners in Dutch municipalities experience a taboo on the formulation of target groups. Residents who are marginalized by (intersecting) forms of power are expected to be served by mainstreamed policies. Which values and affects do these mainstreamed policies bring into motion?

Paper long abstract:

Local bureaucrats who work for Dutch city administrations to roll out so-called “diversity policies” in municipalities experience a “taboo” on so-called “target group policies.” Because targeted interventions for specific audiences is constructed as irreconcilable with the principle of equality and with the need for social cohesion between groups, such diversity policies—paradoxically—need to be “for everybody.” This means that (what are thought of as) specific interest of (what are thought of as) specific marginalized groups are hoped to be addressed in mainstream policies that apply to all residents. Targeted interventions in "diversity policies" are even framed as being “not inclusive,” and local bureaucrats are anxious to be seen as prioritising certain groups over others. “No more targeted policies” operates as a “mantra” that circulates in city administrations. Bureaucrats are only given permission to go ahead with diversity policies “as long as these policies do not take the form targeted interventions.”

Based on long-term fieldwork in Dutch municipalities, this contribution aims to engage with the interplay between policies and publics in "diversity policies." It examines the bureaucratic imperative to classify and the implications of this imperative for inhabiting institutional identities. It brings forward complexities within within policy practices by investigating the values and affects that mainstreamed policies bring into motion. It demonstrates how intersectionality clashes with policy silos, how the room to maneuver of public administrators is safeguarded by open policy concepts, and how these categories of difference lead to paradoxical and internally contradictory arrangements that bureaucrats and residents ‘dance’ around.