[Anthropgrad] seminar

[Fay castles]

Seminar announcement

Seminar Room D, Coombs Building, Thursday 3.00-4.30p.m.

Thursday 19 March 2009

*Dr. Fridus Steijlen *

KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute

of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies
* *
*Moluccans in the **Netherlands**: from exiles to migrants** *

After the arrival of 12.500 Moluccans in the Netherlands in 1951 their 
identity was dominated by their desire to establish an independent South 
Moluccan Republic (Republik Maluku Selatan) in the eastern part of 
Indonesia. This was the area they originated from. Due to a complicated 
decolonization process of Indonesia this specific group Moluccans were 
send to the Netherlands. Temporarily they thought. Up to the mid 
seventies the Moluccans thought that they were to go back to the 
Moluccas as soon as the RMS was established. Although they integrated 
slowly in Dutch society they developed a politicized and oppositional 
identity towards Dutch society. Most clear this was proven when radical 
second generation Moluccans hijacked trains and took hostages in among 
others a school in 1975 and 1977, causing several innocent casualties. 
More or less after these hijackings the second generation Moluccans 
started to reorient themselves on their relationship with the Moluccas 
and on their position in the Netherlands. In retrospective we see it was 
the moment they, in a way decided to stay in the Netherlands. Part of 
this shifting of positions was an ‘explosion’ of creative and cultural 
projects. These projects varied from magazines to literature, music and 
theater and western emancipation movements. What happened was that the 
Moluccan second generation re-defined their identity along the lines of 
this ‘new cultural activities’ and at the same time bringing their 
identity in harmony with the idea that their stay in the Netherlands was 
not temporarily anymore. In my paper I will explore the shift of 
orientation among the second generation Moluccans using the 
manifestations of the ‘cultural explosion’.