Origins: A History of Race-Ethnic Classification in the Dutch Governmental Data Ontology

In this article, categorisation based on origins is investigated in the Dutch census reports produced between 1899 and 2018. Through this analysis, I will argue that the conceptual pair of autochthon and allochthon (until 2017 used to describe ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ Dutch people) is not a social construct, but rather a sociotechnical construct. Through this analysis, it becomes clear that where the category of the ‘foreigner’ at the beginning of the twentieth century was mainly related to a passport and place of birth, later national origins became a racially tainted concept. Pre-1980, coun... Mehr ...