ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the manner in which Amsterdam and Berlin policymakers and policy practitioners deal with youth unemployment among immigrant groups. Unemployment among immigrant youth is an important policy topic in both cities (as it is in most other European cities), and the issue is closely linked to debates about local integration policies. We will argue that local policymakers dealing with immigrant youth unemployment are often confronted with what Frank de Zwart (2005) calls ‘the dilemma of recognition’. This dilemma refers to whether local governments should pursue general or targeted policies to combat group inequality. On the one hand, general policies do not recognise groups as being relevant to the policymaking process, which also means that the policies are seldom effective in combating group inequalities. Targeted policies, on the other hand, recognise groups as beneficiaries for specific policies, yet face the danger of perpetuating group inequalities. In this chapter we hope to explain how, on the local level, policy practitioners working with unemployed immigrant youth have responded to the dilemma of recognition with their own pragmatic solutions, which are considerably independent of the official policy integration framework. Because this independence allows for the possibility of mixing general policymaking on a national level and targeted policy implementation on the local level, we will argue that it is precisely this quality that should be seen as a valuable example for policymakers and practitioners to learn from.
