by Helena Nascimento
source: unsplash
The imminence of the Balanced Internationalisation bill being passed has caused much uncertainty among the international community of university students and faculty members across the Netherlands. It em
erges among a surge of anti-immigration sentiments that have been gaining traction throughout Europe. As a Brazilian scholarship student, watching these events unfold is particularly frustrating.
Myself and many others came to this country in search of better opportunities than those that are offered in our home countries. That is precisely where the irony lies: European countries that have century-long histories of invasion, occupation, and colonization are the same ones that are closing their borders to immigrants and coming up with strategies to impede internationalisation. Stick with me.
First: What is the Balanced Internationalisation Bill?
The Balanced Internationalization Bill (a.k.a ‘WIB’) is a bill that aims to limit the entrance of international students into Dutch universities, mainly within bachelor’s programmes. Accompanying the bill is the “Test for Other Language Education” (TAO), which will essentially only allow a select few study programmes to fully operate in languages other than Dutch. This will significantly affect the number of international students that even decide to apply to universities in the Netherlands, not to mention current students and staff whose first language isn’t Dutch.
While the intention behind the bill is stated as balancing the ‘international talent’ in the Netherlands and ‘maintaining the quality, accessibility and efficiency of Dutch higher education’, it seems that measures such as the TAO will ultimately only serve to drive out present and potential future international students and faculty members from the country.
As a Brazilian scholarship student, I can confidently say that my admission to the UvA and selection for this year’s Amsterdam Merit Scholarship has fully changed my life for the better. I will be eternally grateful to the University of Amsterdam for granting me this opportunity. Still, I know that, because of the WIB and the budget cuts for education, there are hundreds of students like myself spread across the globe that will be denied the same opportunities I was lucky enough to receive.
At the end of the day, there is much beneath the surface of the Balanced Internationalization bill in terms of the anti-immigration attitude brewing all throughout Europe. And I find this a bit hypocritical.
source: unsplash
The Irony in European Measures Against Immigration
I was born and raised in Brazil, living there for over nineteen years before moving to the Netherlands to pursue my Bachelor’s. While I love my country as much as any other Brazilian, I still feel that most of us dream of getting out. Education is one of the most feasible ways to guarantee this.
Therefore, knowing that the only way for me to afford studying abroad would be through a scholarship, I made sure to overachieve academically in every possible way. I scored among the top 3% of over 100,000 International Baccalaureate candidates in my year. I committed myself to over a dozen long-term extracurricular activities all throughout High School. I knew that if I wanted to get a scholarship, I had to earn it.
Yet the barriers were still immense. I grew up around people who were just like me and worked just as hard to take charge of their future, but still were forced to stay in my hometown because of how difficult it is to make it out. For the longest time, I was nearly certain that I’d meet the same fate, regardless of my efforts.
But why, if I love my country so much, did I want to leave Brazil in the first place? The answer is simple: it is a nation plagued by centuries of corruption, inequality, and economic instability, dating back to one key event that happened on April 22nd, 1500.
Portuguese (and eventually also Dutch) colonizers invaded my country and stripped it of its natural resources and wealth. They left an interminable legacy of an agrarian-based economy that we are still reliant on after 500 years. They created a slavery-based society that, even after its abolishment, left a system that continues to disproportionately abandon Afro-Brazilians in cycles of inescapable poverty. To our colonizers, our colonial history may seem far in the past, but it shapes every facet of Brazil’s current social, political and economic climate.
This is the case for most countries in the Global South. Brazil is one that has fared surprisingly well. Yet, any potential we could have had to be considered ‘developed’ nations by now was taken away from us centuries ago because of foreign invasion. Now, our vision for the future is impaired, it seems nearly impossible for countries like mine to ever reach true stability and eradicate poverty.
For this reason, many of us work tirelessly to become so-called ‘highly-skilled’ immigrants, so that we can have the slim chance of experiencing what many in this continent take for granted. But if legislative decisions continue following this current path, even those who are most qualified will be denied access to the lives they have worked hard to earn.
How ironic is it to celebrate a history of invasion and occupation (calling it a ‘Golden Age’), but then actively try to deny access to quality life to those who suffer the effects of your historical exploitation? Perhaps this is harder to fathom for me as a Brazilian, being from a country that has historically opened its doors to immigrants from all countries and continues to do so.
Of course the massive influx of immigrants cannot be sustained in small countries like the Netherlands (especially when compared to Brazil in terms of scale). But this immigration crisis is ultimately just another symptom of colonialism. You made your bed, now lie in it. Hold yourself accountable.
What could be done instead?
Measures like the Balanced Internationalisation bill, aside from being fundamentally quite hypocritical, will only reduce the diversity and the talent that the Netherlands takes pride in.
It is not a solution to the institutional challenges universities currently face. The problem of overcrowded classrooms that is underlined can be fixed by simply instating numerus fixus policies for programmes that require them. The lack of Dutch language proficiency among international students can be improved by offering mandatory Dutch lessons as part of the Bachelor’s programme. The Balanced Internationalisation bill proposes too many unnecessary measures that are far too extreme and won’t come close to ‘solving’ these problems.
As Anouk Tso, the UvA’s Director of International Affairs stated on a podcast about the WIB and the Budget Cuts, “public universities are [being] accused of societal problems.”
In the end, it won’t lead to any kind of ‘balance’, it will only close the doors to talents that the Netherlands once embraced, actively contradicting the ideals of openness and acceptance that make this country great. Think about that next time you lie so comfortably in the bed my ancestors helped build.
