Deconstructing the Dutch multicultural model:
A frame perspective on Dutch immigrant
integration policymaking

Abstract Dutch immigrant integration policies have often been labelled ‘multiculturalist’. This article empirically and conceptually challenges the idea of a Dutch
multicultural model. First, it deconstructs the image that Dutch policies would have
been driven by a single, coherent and consistent model, by drawing attention to the
much more dynamic processes of problem framing, frame-shifts and frame conflicts
that characterize Dutch policymaking. Second – and as a result of this dynamic
perspective – it will become clear that Dutch policies were not that multicultural at all.
Adopting a neo-institutionalist perspective, it reconceptualizes ‘models of integration’
as specific discourses or ‘frames’. On the basis of a rigorous analysis of policy
documents and public debate (media records and parliamentary records), as well as an
extensive review of the Dutch and international literature, the article analyzes how
immigrant integration policies in the Netherlands have been framed over the past
decades, and how the rise and fall of specific frames can be accounted for.