Paul Scheffer is a Dutch author. He was a professor at the University of Amsterdam from 2003 to 2011 and is now professor of European studies at Tilburg University. He published the article ‘The Multicultural Drama’ that ignited the controversial debate about integration and immigration in the Netherlands in 2000. His 2007 book ‘Het land van aankomst’ was published in English in 2011 as ‘Immigrant Nations’, and deals with the overlaps between multiculturalism in the Netherlands and immigration to the Netherlands. The central idea of this book is that immigration always has been and is a process of alienation for both the newcomers and natives.

Han Entzinger studied sociology in Leiden, Rotterdam and Strasbourg and is now Professor of Migration and Integration Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam. From 1986-2001 he held a position as Professor of Social Sciences at Utrecht University. Earlier, Entzinger worked inter alia for the International Labour Organisation in Geneva and for the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy. He has published extensively on migration, integration policies and inter-ethnic relations and has acted as a consultant on these issues to various governments and European organisations.

From 1994-2002 he was President of the Research Committee on Migration of the International Sociological Association. He now serves on the advisory boards of several research institutes, such as the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), the International Institute for Social Studies (ISS) and Netherlands Statistics, all in The Hague, and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin.

Rinus Penninx has been professor of ethnic studies at the University of Amsterdam since 1993 where he founded the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES). From 1999-2009, he was European co-chair of International Metropolis. In 2004, he coordinated the Network of Excellence IMISCOE (International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe). In 2009 he founded its independent follow up: the IMISCOE Research Network, for which he continues to work. Most of his present research work is on immigrant organisations, on migration and integration policies at the EU level and on local integration policies.

Sawitri Saharso is professor of intercultural governance at the University of Twente (Enschede). She is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she studied sociology and wrote her PhD (1992) on the identity of migrant youth in the Netherlands. Her research fields include the governance of migration, religious diversity and citizenship within a European comparative perspective, the comparative study of European integration policies, gender, migration and health, and gender and education.

Afke van Rijn has an educational background in technical computer science from the Technical University of Delft, from which she also obtained a PhD. Ms. van Rijn studied linguistics and linguistic philosophy and business administration too. She spent her professional career mainly within national ministries, first working for the Dutch ministry of economic affairs and since 2008 for the ministry of interior and kingdom relations. She was director for safety and security until January 2012 when she became director of the integration and society department.

Gloria Wekker is a social and cultural anthropologist (MA: Universiteit van Amsterdam 1981, PhD: UCLA 1992), specialising in gender studies, sexuality studies, African American studies and Caribbean studies. In April 2006, Columbia University Press published The Politics of Passion; Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora for which she received the Ruth Benedict Prize of American Anthropological Association (2007).