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Abstract
This article seeks to explain changes in Dutch policies regarding the rights of homosexual immigrants. In the period 1945-1992 policies changed fundamentally. As this article will show, existing theories do not fully explain why policies regarding homosexual foreigners changed. The most striking aspect of the policy changes was the casualness with which decisions were taken, and the long time that passed before the consequences of decisions sank in. Although the number of homosexual foreigners coming to the Netherlands was never large, their migration was always highly contested: response to their claims was a key part of how the nation defined itself, both now and in the past. This article shows how discussions about the right to refugee status for homosexual foreigners evolved from debates about the right of homosexual migrants to come within the framework of labour migration or family migration (right to live with your partner). Policies changed - this article argues - because this issue was not at the heart of policy fields (labour migration, family migration, refugee migration) but rather at the points where policy fields intersected, which made foreseeing consequences more difficult.
Introduction
When in 2001, Dutch authorities allowed homosexuals to marry, the Netherlands was the first country in the world to do so. In 1981, the Netherlands also was the first country in the world to grant refugee status to homosexuals.2 Rather surprisingly, the Netherlands was also the first country to move towards 'homonationalism', which means that gay right claims are combined with nationalistic, xenophobic and racist claims.3 In 2001, the openly gay, right-wing Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn started to use this combination. Before him, anti-immigrant or racist parties had not been pro-gay rights. Fortuyn claimed that the Netherlands would have to redo its gay emancipation if 'Islamization' of Dutch society was not stopped.4 Later Geert Wilders (Freedom Party PVV), appropriated this idea and added that also the women's emancipation would have to be redone. Populist, anti-Islam and anti-immigrant parties throughout Europe and in the US copied the idea.5 When in 2016 Wilders spoke in the US at a 'Gays for Trump rally', an American journalist wrote that 'the Dutch pioneered the use of pro-gay rhetoric as a means for bashing Muslim immigration'.6
Since 1945, there have been...