Jean Tillie, born in Meerssen, the Netherlands, in 1961. Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, University of Amsterdam.
Fellow (1 September 2000 – 30 june 2001)
My major activities at NIAS were developing a theoretical framework for the study of ethnic organisations as civic communities (together with Meindert Fennema) and finalising the editing of a book on “Multicultural Policies and Modes of Citizenship in European Cities” (together with Dr. Alisdair Rogers, Oxford University). With respect to the first, we started to elaborate a theoretical framework in which the notion of multicultural democracy has a proper place. This could only been done by first investigating the relationship between democracy and nationalism. To clarify the relationship between nationalism and democracy we distinguished two variants of nationalism (ethnic and civic nationalism). We found that civic nationalism creates better conditions for democracy than ethnic nationalism, while weak nationalism creates better conditions than strong nationalism. We also distinguished four types of democracy: market -, neo-republican -, paternalistic – and Jacobin democracy. Only after this exercise we could return to our central question: How do the central values of democracy relate to a polity in which the members rely of different national, ethnic or religious identities? We concluded that only the first two types of democracy work in a society made up of ethnic communities. The book entitled Multicultural Policies and Modes of Citizenship in European Cities, is the first major product of the research project “Multicultural Policies and Modes of Citizenship in European Cities” (MPMC) which has been organised under the auspices of UNESCO’s Management of Social Transformation (MOST) Program as one project in the theme of Multicultural and Multi-ethnic Societies. Social scientists from a variety of disciplines undertook research and comparative analyses within selected urban contexts characterised by a substantial presence and activity of immigrant and ethnic minority groups. Working with policy-makers and members of local organisations, their task was to assess the development and interplay of both ‘bottom-up’ (community-led) initiatives and ‘top-down’ (municipality-created) policies aimed at improving the integration of immigrant and ethnic minorities in public decision-making processes.