The Ability to Deal With Difference: Turkish-Dutch Professionals as Go-Betweens in the Education Sector

Abstract

Based on sixteen semi-structured interviews, this article examines how second-generation Turkish-Dutch education professionals experience their professional position in the ethnically homogeneous upper echelons of the Dutch education sector. The analysis shows that second-generation education professionals, being newcomers to higher-level positions in the sector, have to engage with diverse cultural repertoires at work. Instead of being stuck in-between these repertoires, second-generation education professionals actively "go-between" repertoires, employing their ability to deal with difference. In the increasingly super-diverse Dutch classrooms, this "go-between" attitude functions as a second-generation advantage and is conceptually better suited than in-betweenness to describe the position of second-generation professionals.