Anouk de Koning - Urban Citizenship and Amsterdam’s Welfare Landscape

Openresearch editorial board

As Urban Citizen Fellow, I hope to develop my thinking about urban citizenship in the context of welfare provision, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the impact of anxious politics of nation among policy makers, professionals and residents in Amsterdam’s Diamantbuurt (2011-2012), and more recent research on state-citizen relations in the practice of Amsterdam’s Parent and Child Teams. I argue that the local welfare state is an important site in which state-citizen relations are enacted, and explore what such relations look like in a time of ongoing welfare reforms and the contentious diversification of Dutch society.

During the fellowship, I aim to work on the outlines of a book on these issues. I also look forward to discussing the questions that my work on urban citizenship raises with municipal policy-makers and politicians. For instance, how does one go about strengthening the social fabric or stimulating particular forms of urban citizenship? How does one create more horizontal, democratic relations with clients and residents, while also ensuring policy goals are met, and costs are kept down? And how does one address everyone equally as a citizen, while engaging with a diverse and unequally positioned population?