Valuing flexible citizenship: producing Surinamese Hindu citizens at a primary school in The Hague

Abstract

This article is an ethnographic exploration of flexible cultural citizenship among a Surinamese Hindu community in the Netherlands. Rather than focus on the relationship between mobility and transnationalism, it revisits the notion of cultural flexibility in order to demonstrate how diasporic actors belonging to a transnational moral community construct their position as model citizens. This includes an appeal to aspects of difference rather than notions of sameness or integration. By introducing what the author calls ‘value flexibility’ in asserting a diasporic community’s belonging, this article draws attention to the ways in which citizenship and belonging in diasporic contexts hinges on culturally specific, orientalized notions of what it means to be Hindu. Such notions ultimately translate into flexibility across cultural and moral worldviews. It illustrates this through interviews with Surinamese Hindus across the Netherlands and a case study of a Hindu primary school in The Hague. This article focuses upon discursive constructions of the use of religious images, the circulation of moral stories and the performance of mythological narratives as productive domains of value flexibility.