‘Ordinary Dutchman’
By Sara Ansari | Culture | May 11, 2026
Cover Illustration: Dutch flag on old house during Liberation Day in Culemborg. May 5, 2020. Remy Gieling / Unsplash
Reporter Sara Ansari dissects the socio-politically imagined ‘ordinary Dutchman.’ Who is he? What does he look like? Ansari uncovers his divisive function in political rhetoric as well as his unshakable effects on Dutch students.
Does the ‘ordinary Dutch person’ exist — and if so, who gets to be one? In an increasingly globalized world, Dutch politicians emphasize the importance of ‘the people.’ In election debates last year, various social themes were introduced by a short excerpt or question from an ‘ordinary Dutch person’—the Dutch person supposedly served by politics. This person is usually imagined as white, conservative and vocationally educated.
This figure serves as the personification of an entire nation, a supposedly homogeneous group. Its definition will differ depending on who you ask: Sometimes this mythical Dutchman is imagined as culturally traditional and under threat, other times as hard-working and self-reliant. The ‘average Dutch person’ is not a factual reality, but a symbol with diverse meanings. The notion of ‘true Dutchness’ functions as a selective tool signalling that Dutchness must be proven by some, and comes naturally for others.
As the daughter of an immigrant, this imagery makes me uneasy. I find myself wondering who counts as truly native, and whether I fit into that category. It is frustrating to be born somewhere and still feel as if the right to call it home must be earned. For many Dutch citizens with migrant backgrounds, possessing a sense of belonging depends on public perception. Those who are part of the white, native majority rarely have to question their place—they simply belong. For others who deviate from this imagined norm, being ‘truly’ Dutch can feel like a delicate balancing act between belonging and exclusion.
This article will explore how the ‘ordinary Dutchman’ is constructed in politics and how this narrative shapes the sense of belonging for Dutch students with non-Western migration backgrounds. Drawing on the work of Roxanne Lynn Doty, Emeritus Professor at the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University, I examine the mythical construction of ‘true’ Dutchness and its effects on students’ mentality and lived experiences. Through interviews with Dutch students from non-Western migration backgrounds, I explore how idyllic, and particularly excluding, versions of the Dutch citizen affect their daily lived experiences and mental well-being.
Who is the ‘Ordinary Dutchman’?
Roughly eighteen million people inhabit this small country along the coast of the Northern sea: the Netherlands. They occasionally shop at Albert Heijn, watch raindrops collect on their windows through autumn and winter and celebrate King’s Day with Dutch flags painted on their cheeks. This body of people is heterogeneous. Not every Dutch person is alike, nor do they share the same values or habits. Yet they share one home.
In politics, this nuanced perspective is often rejected. In immigration debates, politicians frequently portray the ‘real’ Dutch people as underdogs, in need of protection and representation. Around 70% of the Dutch population are considered ‘truly’ Dutch: born and raised in the Netherlands without migrant parents.
PVV party leader Geert Wilders is one of the main politicians who claims to speak in the spirit of this ‘true’ nation. Henk and Ingrid, a fictional couple serving as a Dutch archetype, exemplify this supposedly ignored group. Unlike Fatima and Mohammed — an Islamic, non-Western immigrant couple who, in his rhetoric, take money and opportunities from Dutch citizens.
Not all depictions of ‘true Dutchness’ are as polarising. Former VVD leader and Prime Minister Mark Rutte, for example, presents the ‘ordinary Dutchman’ as a hardworking citizen contributing to society, presumably regardless of background. While this portrayal is less explicitly discriminatory, it still illustrates that Dutchness is constantly redefined. The category is flexible—but its very existence signals who is accepted, and who must prove their belonging through labor and capital.
Many Dutch citizens do not fit this nationalist stereotype. Therefore some Dutch politicians are not fighting for, but against those who deviate from this norm. This logic of ‘true Dutchness’ goes beyond a ‘harmless’ Dutch prototype; it is a form of political exclusion.
The ‘ordinary Dutchman’ is a strategic tool, not just political rhetoric. In shaping a ‘belonging’ majority, it excludes groups of people. This fictional ‘Dutchness’ plays a central role in political debate because it creates division and mobilizes people through fear. By imagining the ‘real’ Dutch citizen, politics turns Dutchness into a narrow archetype perceived as ideal for Dutch society– hardworking, familiar, and recognizable– while signalling that others must constantly measure up in order to fit in.
The Unordinary
What happens to those who do not meet this standard? When the ‘Ordinary Dutchman’ is brought to life the unordinary Dutchman must face its unfortunate fate; that of the ‘Other.’ In the book “Anti-Immigrantism in Western Democracies: Statecraft, Desire and the Politics of Exclusion” Roxanne Lynn Doty describes these politics of exclusion as a form of ‘statecraft.’
In this globalized era, floods of people and goods become difficult to control within national borders. This causes troubling binaries of inside and outside, belonging and not belonging, within which desire and imagination does its productive work: “The tendency toward, but never fully accomplished concertization of ‘the state’ is the movement of the desire for an overcoded unity.” Doty sees the desire for ‘the state’ and mythical homogenous unity of ‘the people,’ as a coping-mechanism used during this transition into new global modes of living. People are in search of their identity, their belonging. They find this in shared cultures, languages, religion, ‘values.’
“The movement of human beings across territorialized and coded geographic, cultural, and political space is itself a flow understood as threatening to order, security, and identity. It thus conjures up a broad array of reactions and practices ranging from various forms of racism to overt physical violence to practices of categorization, to the production of symbols, identities, and other meanings. Just as immigration is a significant part of globalization, anti-immigrantism is also global in nature.”
This perceived threat of globalization and the mixing of peoples results in active ‘statecrafting.’ To preserve or rediscover national identity and restore a sense of safety and order, an outsider must be defined. The glorified image of the ‘one’ is defined in opposition to the ‘other.’ For every hardworking Dutch person who is praised, someone on welfare is excluded. For every image disseminated of an idealized white body, a person with dark skin is excluded.
Young, Different, Dutch
What does this game of exclusion do to the ‘unordinary’ outsiders? After examining the rhetoric of populist exclusion, it is crucial to consider the real-time effects this language has on those that do not fit this Dutch stereotype. For the Amsterdammer, I spoke with young Dutch students with a migration background, as well as with those whose parents are first-generation immigrants. I asked them how they experience their sense of belonging in a country that is increasingly embracing a more nationalistic tone in both politics and public debate.
“My great-grandmother had to learn to peel potatoes, as well as other Dutch traditions, immediately upon arriving here from Java to integrate.”
When I asked Gino Punt, a cultural studies student, if he ever felt discriminated against because of his Indonesian roots, he immediately made something clear to me: “I have never ‘truly’ been discriminated against, not like it happens to Moroccans or Turks. Because Indonesia is so connected to the Netherlands through its colonial past, I feel less excluded than people with Middle Eastern or African migration background.”
This is a theme that will come up repeatedly in the interviews. ‘Real’ discrimination is something these young people are often hesitant to claim. As long as you are not beaten or verbally abused, does it count as ‘real’? Non-belonging becomes a fluctuating feeling and a constant need to prove oneself.
“The ‘average Dutch person’ doesn’t exist; everyone is simply a mixture of different identities and cultures, so yes, you just internalize all kinds of things. There isn’t a fixed, stereotypical Dutch person. I adore the Dutch language, which makes me feel very connected to the Netherlands.”
But when he walks down the main street of his conservative hometown, he feels the eyes on him. “I notice that when I walk among that predominantly white crowd with slightly darker skin and darker hair, I sometimes feel like I am being watched. It might be partly in my head, but it does affect how I feel and behave.”
After speaking with Gino, I spoke to Ela Koycu. She was born in the Netherlands, raised by her Turkish family, and is now studying economics in the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. When the topic of ‘Otherness’ came up, her response was immediate:
“No matter how hard you try, you are always going to be different. I was born here, I am a good neighbor, I am a good classmate, I am a good colleague, I am a good person. I do all of that in Dutch; I do absolutely nothing outside the law. Yet, at the same time, it is being suggested that I might be one of the people with an integration problem. How can you lump so many people together? This also undermines the integration process: because if all that effort is for nothing anyway, why bother making the effort?”
When the Becker motion was adopted in parliament, it felt like a slap in the face, she told me. This was a motion introduced by Bente Becker, a Dutch Member of Parliament for the VVD, regarding data-keeping on the subject of ‘cultural and religious norms and values of Dutch people with a migration background.’ Many people with an immigration background were affected by the construction of the ‘integration problem’ and its exclusionary message.
“When politicians say ‘Make the Netherlands the Dutch’ again, I will never consider myself part of the Dutch. I know that as soon as something bad about Turks appears in the news, we are the first to be excluded from the term ‘Dutch.’”
The last person I interviewed, Amira Taydi, is a Dutch-Moroccan girl I met at the University of Amsterdam. Though both of her parents are from Morocco, she herself feels more Dutch at times than Moroccan: “I have been celebrating King’s Day since childhood, know the Dutch school system, and go to a terrace with friends as soon as the sun briefly breaks through the clouds. These are all things that make me feel more Dutch than my mother, who moved from Morocco to the Netherlands at nineteen.”
That being said, Amira clarifies that her love for Dutch and Moroccan culture do not cancel each other out. Because of her mother, she told me, she feels truly Moroccan.
“When I am at her house, I eat with my hands, and she speaks Moroccan to me. When everyone is happy because of a win by the Moroccan football team, I feel proud too.”
Being a child of two cultures with clashing traditions and values in a political climate of intensifying xenophobia is not merely a celebration of diversity. “I feel an enormous need to prove myself,” she told me. “I consciously speak very clearly, use standard Dutch, and move in a different, more deliberate way, so that the other person definitely understands that I am from here. And even then, I feel that I am not entirely seen as a ‘true’ Dutch person.”
A Final Thought
This game of belonging and not belonging is not merely a political phenomenon, as it actively affects the lived experiences of those who deviate from the static norm. It is a stare that lingers on a foreign body, a sense of conditional acceptance that can be withdrawn at any moment. By embracing the romantic, populist idea of one true people, one reinforces violence rooted in nationalism.
The next time a so-called leader waves the Dutch flag for a ‘real Dutchman,’ notice that he does not exist. Instead, look to your existing neighbour, your best friend, the cashier at your local grocery store, the man behind the counter selling the best Turkish delight you have ever had. They move through the same spaces, obey the same laws, yet they are not always granted the same security of belonging. Some are simply seen as Dutch, others are still asked to prove that they are.
Sara Ansari is a university student in Amsterdam. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Amsterdammer.
