Everything Is Just Done Away With Now

Contentious Practices of Scalar Brokerage Motivated by Narratives of Welfare Nostalgia in Postcolonial Rotterdam

Bibliographic Data

ID7471815
AuthorsLieke Van Der Veer (0000-0002-3264-7621, Urban Studies Delft University of Technology Delft the Netherlands, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume128
Issue1
Pages108-119
Publication date2026-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/aman.70052
OpenAlexW7117490553
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited54

According to anthropological theories of brokerage, brokers build bridges, close gaps, make connections, and construct shared norms. In this article, I argue that such structural‐functionalist approaches to brokerage do not prove adequate in addressing unsettled and unsettling scale‐making practices of refugee‐led support initiatives in postcolonial Europe. Refugee advocates of long‐term Dutch heritage evoke narratives of nostalgia for a long‐lost welfare state to motivate their commitment to social justice and for the inclusion of refugee‐led initiatives. However, this article demonstrates that the alleged universality of social security in the postwar caring state is a myth and that fantasies of down‐scaled local action cohere with uneasy postcolonial formations. These formations surface in everyday interactions between advocates and organizers with a forced‐migration background. Organizers need the support of advocates in dealing with experiences of intersectional racism, but their dependent relationship with advocates is not devoid of power asymmetries either. Inequalities in these relationships culminate in negotiations over scale: whereas advocates are committed to downscaling refugee‐led initiatives and weaving together local networks of sociality, organizers seek to upscale their initiative beyond the neighborhood and pursue social mobility. These controversies over scale echo social injustices that are bound up with postwar repair and decolonization

Framing (construction · Mythology · Narrative · Negotiation · State (computer science · Storytelling · Welfare state · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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