Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities in The Netherlands

SOCIAL INTEGRATION OF ETHNIC MINORITIES
IN THE NETHERLANDS AND ITS RELATION TO

LABOUR MARKET PERFORMANCE
Maastricht University
School of Business and Economics
Maastricht, 19 December 2010
Richard de Groot (i351873)
Master’s Thesis
Supervisor: Dr. T. Schils
MSc International Economic Studies
Social Economics
ABSTRACT
This thesis deals with the issue of social integration and its relation to the labour market
performance of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. In addition, the attitude towards
minorities of the native population is taken into account to examine whether this attitude is
associated with minorities’ labour market outcomes. The results show that social integration is
indeed significantly related to the labour market performance of ethnic minorities. In addition,
the attitude towards minorities of the native population is positively associated with their
employment level. In turn, this attitude appears to be highly related to a number of social
factors, such as the frequency of social contacts between natives and ethnic minorities.
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 4
2. Migration to the Netherlands .............................................................................................. 6
2.1 Theoretical considerations ............................................................................................... 8
3. Integration in the Netherlands .......................................................................................... 11
4. Hypotheses .......................................................................................................................... 16
5. Data description and methodology ................................................................................... 19
5.1 Data ................................................................................................................................ 19
5.2 Methodology................................................................................................................... 20
6. Descriptive results .............................................................................................................. 23
6.1 Structural integration ..................................................................................................... 23
6.2 Social integration ........................................................................................................... 28
6.3 Preliminary conclusion on structural and social integration ........................................ 32
6.4 The attitude towards minorities of the Dutch population .............................................. 33
7. Empirical results ................................................................................................................ 38
7.1 Labour market participation .......................................................................................... 38
7.2 Employment level ........................................................................................................... 43
7.3 Attitude towards Minorities............................................................................................ 48
8. Conclusion and implications ............................................................................................. 54
References ............................................................................................................................... 56
Appendix ................................................................................................................................. 59
A1. Extra Figures ................................................................................................................. 59
A2. Extra Tables ................................................................................................................... 61
A3. Description of the variable: Attitude towards Minorities.............................................. 64
3
1. INTRODUCTION
Integration is an important topic of debate in the Netherlands. Throughout the past years, the
number of immigrants has increased sharply, resulting in more than a million ethnic
minorities living in the Netherlands today (CBS, 2009).1 When migrants first entered the
Netherlands as guest workers in the 1960s, it was expected that they would leave when their
labour contracts were terminated. However, most guest workers settled in the Netherlands,
because the economic situation in their home countries was especially worse during the
recession in the 1970s, making it unattractive to return home (Jennissen, 2009). In order to be
successful in the Netherlands, migrants needed to adapt to the customs and values of the
Dutch society and in specific, to the Dutch labour market. However, most guest workers were
low-skilled and as a consequence, they enjoyed little job opportunities.
The topic of integration was first considered by the Dutch government in the 1980s, as
former guest workers were now permanently settled and performed poorly in the Netherlands.
At first, integration policy was driven by the concept of multiculturalism, in which each
ethnic minority group was stimulated to participate in the Dutch society, without having to
loose their cultural and social background. However, as of the beginning of this decade, signs
of discontent with this approach emerged as the social relations between immigrant groups
and natives worsened. Unfortunately, this dissatisfaction was specifically based on individual
characteristics of the immigrant and not on the responsiveness or acceptation of the society to
which should be adapted.
In this thesis, the process of integration is considered a mutual obligation of both
immigrants and the host society. Interethnic social contacts seem to be especially important
for an immigrant in order to successfully integrate into a host society. Therefore, this thesis
aims to discuss the empirical relations between measures of social integration and labour
market outcomes, particularly labour market participation and employment level. In addition,
this thesis contributes to the public debate by taking the attitude towards minorities of the
native population into account. More specific, it is examined whether this attitude is
associated with the labour market performance of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands.
Finally, the underlying relations between the attitude towards minorities of natives and social
factors are studied in more detail.
The key findings of this thesis indicate that social integration is highly related to labour
market outcomes. Specifically, having Dutch friends is heavily associated with labour market
1
In this thesis, the terms migrant, immigrant and (ethnic) minority are used interchangeably.
4
participation of ethnic minorities. In addition, being member of an association appears to be
related to the employment level of the migrant. Moreover, a good command of the Dutch
language is significantly related to better labour market participation and a higher
employment level. Furthermore, the self-identification of the immigrants appears to be
positively related to a higher employment level, though negatively associated with labour
market participation.
The attitude towards minorities of the native population is highly related to the
employment level of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands as well. This result is robust across
several specifications. Concerning the social factors that are associated with the attitude
towards minorities, it appears that the more social contact between natives and immigrants,
the more positive is the attitude, or vice versa. Furthermore, when people believe that there
are too many minorities living in the Netherlands, they tend to hold a more negative attitude
towards them. Taken together, the results of this thesis suggest that the social relations
between natives and ethnic minorities are important components of the integration process
and may even influence labour market outcomes of immigrants in the Netherlands.
The thesis proceeds as follows. Section 2 provides background on the immigration flows
into the Netherlands after World War II. Section 3 describes integration in the Netherlands
and Section 4 presents the hypotheses for the empirical part of this thesis. The data and
methodology are described in Section 5. Next, Section 6 examines descriptive statistics on
structural and social integration of minority groups in the Netherlands and the attitude towards
minorities of the Dutch population. The empirical results are discussed in Section 7 and
Section 8 concludes the study and provides implications.
5
2. MIGRATION TO THE NETHERLANDS
In the post World War II era, three important waves of immigration into the Netherlands can
be distinguished, illustrated in Figure 1 (Roodenburg et al, 2003). During the 1960s, labour
migrants entered the Netherlands under the guest workers scheme. At that time, the Dutch
economy was booming and as a result, shortages occurred at the lower end of the labour
market. Employers filled these gaps with guest workers that mainly originated from
Mediterranean countries such as Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Morocco, because low-skilled
and unskilled labour was abundant in these countries. The Dutch government stimulated this
type of migration because it was beneficial for the growing economy and the admission policy
was therefore relatively flexible. One side-effect of this rather ‘flexible’ policy was an influx
Figure 1, Three waves of immigration into the Netherlands (1945 – 2008)
x 1000 persons
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Immigration 1st Wave 2nd Wave 3rd Wave
Source: CBS (Statline)

Note: Obviously, the graph shows more waves than just the three discussed in the text. In the literature, however,
these three are considered the most important for the ethnic mixture of the Netherlands nowadays (e.g. Jennissen,
2009).
6
of illegal labour immigration. Due to the oil crisis in 1973 and several other crises in the
1970s, the Dutch economy stagnated and employers had to lay off their foreign employees.
Moreover, the guest worker scheme was ended by immigration restrictions in 1975. In
particular, the Netherlands introduced legislation that implied an actual freeze on labour
migration, for as long as unemployment remained high (Roodenburg et al, 2003). In addition,
around 10,000 illegal labour immigrants were granted a legal status in 1975, resulting in an
immigration peak shown in Figure 1. The second wave of immigration occurred at the end of
the 1970s and mostly involved family reunification migration from Turkey and Morocco.
Note that these migrants did not migrate with the primary intention of working in the
Netherlands, as opposed to those that migrated during the first wave of immigration. This
family migration substantially increased the proportion of Turkish and Moroccan immigrant
groups in the Dutch society. In the 1970s, approximately 55,000 Turkish and Moroccan guest
workers resided in the Netherlands, together with 20,000 family members. This number has
increased to around 700,000 Turks and Moroccans that live in the Netherlands today (CBS,
2009; also look at Figure A1 in the Appendix). On the contrary, former guest workers from
the other Mediterranean countries chose to re-migrate to their countries of origin. Finally, the
third wave of immigration took place in the 1980s and is referred to as the post-industrial
immigration wave. In the Netherlands, this wave mainly involved family formation migration
of second-generation migrants and asylum seekers (Jennissen, 2009). Presently, especially
refugees and asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, former Yugoslavia and Somalia
determine the nature of asylum immigration. These groups currently represent more than 70%
of all asylum applications in the Netherlands (CBS, 2008).
In addition to these three immigration waves, inhabitants of the former Dutch colonies in
the Western hemisphere were given the possibility to migrate to the Netherlands upon the
acceptance of the Dutch citizenship in the 1950s (Roodenburg et al, 2003). The first
generation of immigrants from the Netherlands Antilles was a generation that migrated to the
Netherlands to gain access to the education system and pursue an academic degree. On the
opposite, more recent immigrants from the Netherlands Antilles are shown to have enjoyed
less education, have bad Dutch proficiency and have limited knowledge of the Dutch society
(Dagevos, 2005). Concerning migrants from Suriname, they were given the choice between
the Dutch nationality and the Surinamese nationality after the independence of the country in
1975. Mainly due to an economic downturn at the end of the 1970s, many Surinamese people
migrated to the Netherlands (Jennissen, 2009). Today, close to 500,000 people from Suriname
and the Netherlands Antilles, including Aruba, are living in the Netherlands (CBS, 2009).
7
The most recent immigration flows into the Netherlands are mostly shaped by labour
migrants from Central and Eastern European countries. Especially workers from Poland,
Romania and Bulgaria are important immigration groups and their number has been
increasing as of 2003 (Jennissen, 2009). While the presence of these immigrant groups is
acknowledged, the focus of this study is on the four largest ethnic groups (Turks, Moroccans,
Surinamese and Antilleans) and the five most important refugee groups (immigrants from
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, former Yugoslavia and Somalia). Figure A1 in the appendix shows
their historical rise in numbers and Table A1 reports the average years of stay in the
Netherlands of these various immigrant groups.
2.1 Theoretical considerations

Economic theory predicts that when immigrants enter a country that has a perfectly
competitive labour market, wages of natives will fall but an immigration surplus is realised
(Boeri and van Ours, 2008). National income of the host country will increase and most of the
surplus will go to employers. The income of natives is affected by migration through three
main channels: changes in wages, changes in employment opportunities and changes in the
tax rate. Changes in wages depend on the skill composition of migrants. If immigrants are on
average less skilled than the native population of the host country, high-skilled labour
becomes scarcer and therefore more expensive and vice versa. In other words, wage
differentials between skilled and unskilled workers will increase when migrants are
proportionally less skilled and will decrease if the majority of migrants are skilled.
Employment opportunities may change for the native population when immigrants are willing
to work for lower wages than natives. In addition, the presence of unemployment benefits in
the host country may not only alter the size but also the composition of migration. This has
been called the ‘negative self-selection effect’; which occurs when low-skilled immigrants
enter a host country with an extensive social security program (Nannestad, 2007). Since the
migrants enjoy the social security and do not contribute to it, they become a burden for the
natives. This higher burden on the working population in the host country will be reflected by
changes in the tax rate of the country.
Although some liberal countries, like the US, have a competitive labour market, this is
less true for the Dutch labour market. In the Netherlands, a minimum wage is installed and
sector wages are heavily bargained by social institutions, unions and employers.
Consequently, an imperfect competitive labour market allows for some unemployment to
exist. The bargaining process reduces the impact of immigration on the previously described
8
fall in wages. In addition, low-skilled immigrants have a minor influence on the
unemployment rate, because wages do not decrease as much as in a perfectly competitive
labour market due to the bargaining process mentioned before. High-skilled migrants
however, tend to increase the unemployment rate, since the increase in high-skilled supply is
not compensated by an equal expansion of high-skilled job opportunities (Roodenburg et al,
2003).
Evidence from the Netherlands suggests that immigrants with similar socio-economic
characteristics as the average non-Western citizen turn out to be a fiscal burden for the native
population (Roodenburg et al, 2003).2 However, this negative perception may not only be due
to a worse labour market performance of immigrants, but may also reflect the generosity of
the Dutch social security system. Contrary to lagging immigrants, those that perform better on
the labour market than the average native worker improve public finances. Therefore, the
entry of such immigrants would positively affect the Dutch budget balance and would partly
compensate for the immigrants that do not perform as well on the labour market. Evidence
also suggests that GDP as well as the amount of redistribution in the Netherlands increases as
a result of immigration. Furthermore, Dutch employees with similar skills as immigrants will
enjoy less employment opportunities, since immigrants are more likely to have lower
reservation wages than Dutch natives (Sinn, 2005). On the opposite, people with
complementary skills will win in the long run, as implied by the economic theory stated
above.
Despite the fact that economic theory may claim that migration is often unfavourable to
the host country, several advantages can be identified that are especially relevant for labour
migrants. First of all, low-skilled migrants can have a positive impact on the Dutch economy,
but only when they return to their home country after completion of their contracts. In
essence, temporary labour migrants can solve shortages in the bottom of the Dutch labour
market, earning a wage much higher than is probably possible in their home country. As a
consequence, Dutch companies benefit from a motivated workforce and the Dutch
government benefits by levying taxes on wages of temporary immigrants. It is important
however that low-skilled, temporary labour migrants leave the country as soon as the job is
done, since the evidence above has shown that permanent low-skilled immigrants do not have
a positive effect on public finances in the long run. This is probably what happened in the
Netherlands in the 1960s during the guest worker period, which resulted in substantial
2
The fiscal impact was measured using net lifetime contributions of immigrants and their effects on future
budget balances (Roodenburg et al, 2003).
9
economic growth, but also led to the permanent stay of Turkish and Moroccan guest workers
of which many became unemployed after termination of their temporary contracts. Second,
migrants, in particular higher skilled migrants, can contribute to the growth of the Dutch
economy, especially when these migrants work in education or research and development.
Third, migrants bring in new methods of entrepreneurship and ways of doing business,
improving the corporate culture and enhancing international competitiveness of the host
country. Finally, skilled migrants are more likely to be net contributors to the public finances,
since the Dutch government did not pay for their education, but does impose taxes on their
labour market performance. In addition, skilled migrants are less likely to become dependent
on any form of social security provided by the Dutch welfare state (CPB, 2007).
10
3. INTEGRATION IN THE NETHERLANDS
This section discusses theory and events concerning integration of immigrants in the
Netherlands. In addition, the strategy towards integration of the Netherlands is placed in a
European context to explain differences in both policies and outcomes.
Assimilation theories probably provide the best leads for the explanation of the
integration of ethnic minorities. Classic assimilation theories stress time as the most important
factor of integration. The first generation of immigrants struggles in the host country, because
they need to adapt to different values, another culture and unknown labour market practices,
resulting in a low socio-economic and socio-cultural status. In turn, the second generation of
the migrant group increasingly becomes part of the host society, mainly due to educational
participation, resulting in similar values and language proficiency to their native counterparts.
Integration even further continues with subsequent generations, leading to a higher socio-
economic status for later generations (Gijsberts and Dagevos, 2007). For example, Nekby
(2002) found that in Sweden, the duration of residence significantly decreases the
employment gap between natives and immigrants. However, some authors argue that although
the socio-economic status of migrants can improve over generations, this does not imply that
these individuals loose their socio-cultural roots. Take for example the Asian population in
the US. This immigrant group usually performs socio-economically better than their native
US counterparts, without loosing their cultural identity, as demonstrated by specific ‘Asian’
quarters in large cities (Dagevos and Gijsberts, 2008). This example does not suggest however
that the integration of immigrants in a host country is unnecessary, as this thesis will show
that more successful immigrant groups in terms of labour market outcomes are highly related
to integration measures. One weakness of assimilation theory is that it assumes a clear and
uniform ‘core culture’ in the host society into which immigrants can assimilate. Zhou (1997)
pointed out that some immigrants in the US remained in a disadvantaged socio-economic
position, despite assimilation, because they assimilated in the American underclass. This type
of assimilation is also known as segmented assimilation and it is particularly present in the
Afro-American population in the US (Ersanilli and Koopmans, 2007; Gijsberts and Dagevos,
2007).
The earliest period in which the Netherlands had to deal with integration, was after the
end of the guest worker scheme in the 1970s. At first, the integration of the guest workers was
of little concern to the Dutch government because of two reasons. First, the stay of the guest
workers was not perceived as permanent and, second, the position of these workers was not
believed to be problematic when their presence in the labour market was required
11
(Doomernik, 1990). However, contrary to these expectations, guest workers continued to live
in the Netherlands, even after their presence in the labour market was no longer necessary.
Unfortunately, the Dutch labour market could not provide sufficient job opportunities for the
low-skilled guest workers, resulting in high unemployment among them and, consequently,
major barriers towards a successful integration in society (Doomernik, 1990).
Starting from the 1980s, the Dutch government began to realize the processes of
integration as described above and formulated policies for the now permanent immigrant
groups, amounting to roughly 600.000 non-Western immigrants in 1982. First of all,
immigrants could obtain a permanent residence permit after five years of living in the
Netherlands. Second, policies regarding family reunification were eased resulting in a steady
increase in the number of immigrants from countries as Turkey and Morocco, as mentioned
above. Finally, as no active remigration policy was enacted by the Dutch government, most of
the Turkish and Moroccan guest worker immigrants remained in the Netherlands (Euwals et
al, 2006). The Dutch policy response in the 1980s is best described by Koopmans’ adaptation
of Berry’s ‘acculturation strategies model’, depicted in Figure 2.
Figure 2, Koopmans et al’s Conceptions of Citizenship
Cultural differences and group rights
Monism Pluralism
Ethnic Assimilationism Segregationism

Equality of
individual rights
Civic Universalism Multiculturalism
Source: Ersanilli and Koopmans, 2007
The figure has two dimensions, equality of individual rights and cultural differences and
group rights. The first dimension relates to the degree to which immigrants are treated
similarly as the native population with respect to individual rights of the citizens. The cultural
differences and group rights dimension deals with the extent to which the host country accepts
the cultural identity of the immigrant groups and whether the host country stimulates the
formation of ethnic or religious groups by providing special assistance to specific groups or
12
exempting ethnic groups from certain privileges (Ersanilli and Koopmans, 2007). Within this
framework, the initial policy of the Netherlands to cope with the new immigrant groups was
an approach of multiculturalism (Tränhardt, 2000). Ethnic minorities received the same
treatment as the natives in terms of access to social security programs and voting rights to
prevent segregation. In addition, cultural differences between immigrant groups and the native
population were allowed and sometimes even encouraged by means of public subsidies to, for
example, the construction of Islamic mosques. The Dutch method of multiculturalism in the
1980s has been presented as an example of the overall Dutch mentality of tolerance, non-
discrimination and respect for diversity (Tränhardt, 2000; Entzinger et al, 2005).
Neighbouring countries to the Netherlands chose a rather different approach towards the
integration of immigrants after World War II. Germany, for example, also experienced a large
inflow of Turkish immigrants. In contrast to the Netherlands, German policy can be defined
as assimilationism. During the guest worker period, Germany set strict rules for family
reunification migration and made it fairly difficult for immigrants to obtain a permanent
residence permit or German citizenship. Anti-discrimination laws barely exist at the time and
religious or ethnic groups experienced great difficulties to obtain public funding for the
construction of schools or other buildings (Ersanilli and Koopmans, 2007; Tränhardt, 2000;
Entzinger et al, 2005). The absence of support for ethnic diversity, combined with the
inequality of individual rights among different ethnic groups in Germany, corresponds to the
policy of assimilationism in Koopmans et al’s model.
France is another example of a different strategy to cope with the integration of
immigrants. The country has been open to immigration and immigrants can relatively easily
obtain French citizenship. Once citizenship is granted, former immigrants immediately obtain
the same rights as natives. Therefore, policies targeted at only one group of ethnic minorities
hardly exist in France and the republican ideal of individual engagement rather than
integration of different groups is persistent. In addition, France has extensive anti-
discrimination laws, although the prohibition of the Muslim head scarf in 2004 shows that
France is not yet moving towards more pluralism with respect to cultural differences and
group rights (Entzinger et al, 2005; Ersanilli and Koopmans, 2007). Consequently, the French
view of immigrant integration relates to the concept of universalism in Koopmans et al’s
matrix.
Evidence of a comprehensive study among Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands,
Germany and France indicates that the different country policies may not have led to the
anticipated results. For the Netherlands, it is found that the integration of Turks shows more
13
resemblance with segregationism than multiculturalism, as indicated by a strong ethnic and
cultural identity, but weak identification to the host culture with respect to social contacts and
language proficiency. In spite of the universalistic approach of France, the combination of
open access to citizenship and the unwillingness to support and recognize particular ethnic or
cultural groups, has surprisingly been more successful in achieving the multicultural
outcomes that traditional multiculturalism countries have intended to realize (Ersanilli and
Koopmans, 2007). Germany’s integration policies have probably had the anticipated effects of
the country’s strategy. Turks in Germany show considerable signs of assimilation in the
German society, as implied by relative high rates of labour market participation, more
interethnic marriages, higher education levels and better command of the host country
language than Turks in the Netherlands and France (Ersanilli and Koopmans, 2007; Dagevos
et al, 2006; Euwals et al, 2006).
Although the initial response of the Netherlands towards integration was one of
multiculturalism, events during the last decade have altered the public debate on integration of
ethnic minorities. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, the political murders on Pim Fortuyn and Theo
van Gogh and the growing dissatisfaction about the process of integration among natives,
potentially triggered by the rise of certain right wing political parties, have all influenced a
transformation of perspective (Dagevos and Gijsberts, 2008). The weakness of the
multicultural approach that was promoted by the Dutch government was that it expanded the
definition of the immigrant as being ‘the other’ and ‘different’ from the native population.
This process was even taken to a next level when the immigrant groups were labelled
allochthones and natives autochthones in a scientific language (Tränhardt, 2000). In 1998, the
Netherlands was the first country to implement a compulsory naturalisation course for
immigrants, in which newcomers were familiarised with the Dutch language and the norms
and values of the Dutch society. The implementation of this course has been the starting point
for the changed perspective on integration in Dutch politics. Criticism and this shift to a
mandatory policy of individual integration and adaptation to the basic values of the Dutch
society has been characterised as a farewell to multiculturalism as the cornerstone of Dutch
integration policy in the new millennium (Entzinger et al, 2005). This point is further
strengthened by the most recent Integration Note from the Ministry of Public Housing, Spatial
Planning and Environmental Conservation (Dutch abbreviation: VROM). The slogan of this
policy program is ‘Make sure you are part of it!’ and it mainly aims to encourage migrants to
actively participate in the Dutch society (VROM, 2007). In more detail, the notions of active
citizenship and the mandatory newcomer policies are emphasized. The Dutch government
14
furthermore aspires to activate non-Western women, combat discrimination, encourage
cooperation and dialogue between cultures and religions, and prevent and combat polarisation
and radicalisation. Moreover, in a recent communication of VROM, it is suggested that
immigrants are no longer to be called allochtones, but ‘new Dutchmen’ to emphasize that
newcomers are in no way different than the native population (VROM, 2009). This change in
‘labelling’ immigrants can also be perceived as a step from multiculturalism, in which every
minority group is named differently than the native population, towards assimilationism, in
which differences between natives and immigrants should be minimized. Moreover, as of
2006, the government sponsors projects that stimulate activities in which natives and ethnic
minorities can meet on a local level (Oberon, 2009). The aim of these policies is clearly to
support acceptation and increased interaction between natives and immigrants to create a
more cohesive social society in the Netherlands, beneficial to both immigrants and natives.
15
4. HYPOTHESES
As the previous section has described, the integration of minorities has been, and still is, an
important topic in the public debate in the Netherlands. The shift from multiculturalism to a
strategy of assimilation has been caused by the fact that the initial approach was not paying
off for the Netherlands. This thesis will attempt to determine the characteristics of a
successfully integrated immigrant with a particular focus on social issues. More specific, the
relation between indicators of social integration and labour market outcomes will be
investigated. Often, the success of an immigrant is considered solely by a number of socio-
economic measures, such as employment and the quality of a job. This study will make an
effort to contribute to the public debate by including social measures such as language
proficiency and diversity of social contacts into the equation. In addition, the other side of the
medal is taken into consideration. That is, the overall attitude towards minorities of natives
will be used to evaluate whether this has an effect on integration outcomes. In particular, the
less natives accept minorities and the less they are willing to integrate, the more difficult it
might become for minorities to participate in the daily life of the nation.
These considerations lead to a number of hypotheses. First of all, it is expected that there
will be substantial differences between immigrant groups in terms of socio-economic status
and social integration. These differences are most likely the result of variations in migration
background and migration motives. For example, as Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles
have had long-lasting colonial relations with the Netherlands, immigrants from these
countries should be more accustomed to Dutch norms and standards. In addition, the previous
section has described that refugee groups are more likely to have experienced severe obstacles
during and after migration, possibly resulting in different immigration outcomes than the
traditional immigrant groups. These type of effects are common findings in similar studies
and serve as a starting point for a detailed analysis (for example Dagevos et al, 2003;
Dagevos, 2007; van den Maagdenburg, 2004).
Second and highly related, social integration of minorities is anticipated to be considerably
related to the performance of the minority group. For example, an immigrant that has
substantial contact with natives and speaks the local language proficiently will probably enjoy
more chances on the Dutch labour market in terms of participation and employment level. In
this sense, social integration can be a result of successful assimilation practices as immigrants
adapt to and participate in the Dutch society. The previous section has argued that the Dutch
policies of the 1980s led to segregation of immigrant groups, because some immigrants
showed a stronger cultural and social connection with their own country than the Netherlands.
16
On the other hand, it could just as well be that participating on the Dutch labour market
improves ones chances to become friends with natives and learn to speak the local language
proficiently. However, a positive relation between social factors and integration outcomes can
either way support the shift in the public and politic debate of the Netherlands, since there has
been a clear move towards assimilationism according to the discussed literature. The concept
of weak ties, first proposed by Granovetter (1973), may also provide a mechanism by which
the relation of social integration to labour market performance can be explained. Granovetter
(1973) claims that weak ties connect networks of strong ties, thereby increasing ones network
of acquaintances. As a consequence, weak ties may be able to improve a person’s living
conditions to a certain extent because of the amount and value of information that runs
through these networks (Gijsberts and Dagevos, 2007). For example, job opening information
flowing through a network of weak ties, can help a person in finding a suitable job. In this
sense, the social connections with the native population (strong ties) that may be the result of
successful social integration of an immigrant will provide access to information that normally
only reaches Dutch natives (by linking Dutch networks of strong ties through the weak ties of
the immigrant).
Third, it is expected that the attitude towards minorities of the Dutch population might be
associated with the labour market performance of immigrants. A negative attitude may result
in more obstacles for minorities to integrate, thereby reducing returns to integration. On the
other hand, when attitudes towards minorities are positive, integration effects are expected to
be magnified; as such immigrants residing in an area where natives hold a positive attitude
need less effort to integrate than immigrant that do not live in such an area. It could also be
that this relation runs the other way around. More specific, when immigrants show that they
are actively participating in the labour market or occupy a high level of employment, natives
will have a more positive attitude towards them. This hypothesis is driven by arguments from
the field of social exclusion. It is argued that too often the focus of social inclusion has been
on changing the individual and improving a person’s living environment to integrate that
person in society, instead of the structures of the society itself (Ward, 2009). This line of
reasoning indicates that minorities may not be entirely to blame for poor integration results,
but the host society is to blame as well. More specific, a negative attitude towards minorities
may impose important obstacles for labour market participation and employment level.
Finally, the social determinants that drive this attitude are examined to find out on which
mechanisms policy makers should focus to improve the Dutch attitude. In this sense, it is
expected that social factors heavily relate to the attitude towards minorities, since people may
17
think more positively about minorities when there is substantial social interaction between
ethnic groups and natives. This concept is one of the fundaments of the previous discussed
Integration Note of the Dutch government. In particular, the focus of the government is on
active citizenship from both natives and immigrants in order to bring together individuals with
a different backgrounds and living conditions. Active citizens should bridge the gaps between
cultures and cooperate to achieve mutual acceptation in society (VROM, 2007). Also recall
that the Dutch government stimulates activities in which natives and immigrants can meet
each other and generate long-lasting and sustainable social contacts (Oberon, 2009). This
hypothesis tests whether such a social approach is indeed associated with a more positive
attitude towards minorities of natives.
18
5. DATA DESCRIPTION AND METHODOLOGY
This section first describes the three different datasets that are used in this study and continues
with the description of the methodology.
5.1 Data
The key data used for this study comes from two similar surveys. First of all, the Social
Position and Use of Provisions by Ethnic Minorities survey (Dutch abbreviation: SPVA) of
2002 is used to explain differences in the social position, social integration levels and labour
market outcomes of the four largest ethnic groups in the Netherlands (Turks, Moroccans,
Surinamese and Antilleans). The same survey was held in 2003 among the five largest refugee
groups in the Netherlands (Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, former Yugoslavs and Somalis). Note
that the respondents in this dataset are former refugees and all reside legally in the
Netherlands. The data from this survey is used to research social integration and its effect on
labour market outcomes of these groups. Both surveys cover themes like education, labour,
social and cultural orientation, contacts with Dutch natives and the attitude of ethnic
minorities towards the Netherlands and its population, which make the data excellent to study
all immigrant groups in great detail. In order to compare certain statistics between ethnic
groups and Dutch natives, some background information is taken from the Report Minorities
2003, because in both surveys, no Dutch comparison group has been interviewed (Dagevos et
al, 2003).
While it is acknowledged that more up to date information is available, especially for the
four largest ethnic minority groups, the SPVA’s of 2002 and 2003 provide the unique
opportunity to examine both the traditional immigrant groups and the refugee groups
simultaneously. Furthermore, recent data show that the position of immigrant groups has been
stagnating over the last years and therefore few differences exist between data from
2002/2003 and data from more recent years (Dagevos, 2007).
The Attitudes towards Minorities survey from 2002 is used to determine the attitude
towards minorities the native population in the Netherlands. This dataset provides detailed
information on the Dutch attitude towards specific immigrant groups, as well as general
questions on the overall attitude towards minorities. Using 14 statements, a weighted
construct is created to quantify the general view held by the native population towards
minorities. Statements concerning the labour market and social issues weigh heavier in this
19
construct than more general statements, since these aspects are a central theme in this thesis.3
As a consequence, this construct measures the attitude of natives towards minorities with a
specific focus on labour market and social issues. Section A3 in the Appendix provides all 14
statements used for the construct as well as a detailed description of the construction of it. The
scale of the construct ranges between 1 and 4, 1 indicating a very positive attitude towards
minorities and 4 meaning a very negative attitude towards minorities. This construct is linked
to the SPVA datasets on the level of municipalities and included in various analyses of this
thesis to assess whether it has an effect on the integration and labour market outcomes of
minorities. Moreover, the construct is used in combination with the total dataset of the
Attitude towards Minorities survey to study the social factors of natives that are related to this
attitude.
5.2 Methodology
In the reviewed literature, a distinction is made between structural and socio-cultural
integration. Structural integration - or socio-economic integration - is relatively simple to
define and encompasses measures such as participation in the labour market, educational
attainment and welfare dependency. Socio-cultural integration, on the other hand, is subject to
a variety of different description, consists of both social and cultural indicators and is
therefore more difficult to define (Dagevos, 2001). This study, however, only uses measures
of social integration that relate to the extent to which ethnic minorities actively participate in
the Dutch society in terms of social contacts, social associations, dominance of their contacts,
language ability and self-identification.
In particular, this thesis focuses on five measures of social integration: (i) a binary
variable indicating whether an individual has Dutch friends or not (DF); (ii) a binary variable
indicating whether a person is an active member of a social association (SA); (iii) a nominal
variable indicating the ethnic dominance of social contacts (ED); (iv) an ordinal variable
measuring Dutch language proficiency, as determined by the assessment of interviewers (LP);
and (v) a binary indicator of the ethnic self-identification of the respondent (SI). These
specific measures are considered due to the following reasons. First of all, a widely used
characteristic of social integration is the extent to which minorities have social contacts with
natives in their daily lives (Dagevos, 2001). This is called the ‘behavioural component’ of
3
Statements concerning social issues, such as social insurance and access to social services have a weight of 2;
statements concerning labour market issues, such as equality on the labour market have a weight of 3; general
statements are statements that measure the general attitude of the person towards minorities, like acceptation of
foreigners (see Appendix for more details).
20
social integration and describes observable social behaviour of the immigrants. This aspect is
incorporated in this study by the variables DF, SA and ED. More detailed, DF measures the
immigrant’s friendships and therefore strong ties with natives and SA is an indicator of
commitment to local social life. Moreover, ED provides information on the overall ethnic
signature of social contacts that can either be dominated by people from their own ethnicity,
natives, or both equally. A second aspect of social integration is called the ‘attitudinal
component’ and is mainly determined by the willingness to have social contacts with the
native population (Dagevos, 2001). In this respect, LP is a measure of the willingness to get
into contact with the Dutch, as language proficiency is necessary for these social contacts to
exist. Finally, SI is related to the attitudinal component, because if respondents identifies
more heavily with their own ethnic group, this might indicate an aversion to the Dutch
identity or population, as such potentially obstructing integration.
The hypotheses of this thesis will be tested with the datasets as put forward above. First
of all, descriptive statistics of structural and social integration measures will illustrate the
status and differences of the various groups of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. Second,
the effects of social integration will be assessed by means of three specific regression
analyses. The basic specification used in the first analysis to determine the relation between
labour market participation and social integration is the following:
LMPi = β 0 + β1Etngroupi + β 2 SocInti + β 3 AON i + β 4 X i + ε i (1)
where LMP represents a binary indicator for the labour market participation of individual i, β0
is a constant, Etngroup corresponds to the dummy variable of individual i’s ethnic group,
SocInt4 stands for his or her social integration measures as discussed above, AON relates to
the attitude towards minorities of natives in the municipality of individual i, X is a vector of
demographic control variables and ε is the error term. Equation 1 is estimated by a logit
model, as the dependent variable is dichotomous.
The second regression analysis concerns social integration and the attitude of natives to
determine the relation on the employment level of the ethnic minorities. More specific, the
following specification is used:
ELi = β 0 + β1Etngroupi + β 2 SocInti + β3 AON i + β 4 X i + ε i (2)
where EL stands for employment level of individual i and the other variables are identical to
the ones in equation 1. The dependent variable EL is an ordinal variable and therefore ordered
4
In the empirical models of equation 1 and 2, all ordinal social integration variables are broken down into
dummy variables.
21
logistic regressions are used to estimate this empirical model. In addition, a Heckman
selection model is used to control for possible selection bias in the sample.
Finally, a regression is estimated that aims to investigate what social factors may have
an influence on the attitude towards minorities of the Dutch population. Particularly, this
analysis uses the following equation:
AON i = β 0 + β1SocFaci + β 2 X i + ε i (3)
where AON corresponds to the attitude toward minorities of respondent i, measured by the
above described construct on a scale from one to four, where four indicates that an individual
has a very negative attitude towards minorities. For sake of interpretation, however, the
dependent variable is standardized in this regression. Further, β0 is a constant, SocFac5
represents a number of individual i’s social factors that might be related to the attitude, X is a
vector of demographic control variables and ε is the error term. The social factors that are
considered in this thesis include (i) an ordinal variable indicating the number of minorities in
the neighbourhood of individual i, ranging from a majority of immigrants in the
neighbourhood to none are hardly any (NM); (ii) an ordinal indicator of the amount of social
contact with minorities in daily life, varying from often contact to none or hardly contact
(SC); (iii) whether individual i in general feels annoyed by minorities (AM); (iv) i’s opinion
on the amount of minorities in the Netherlands, measured on an ordinal scale from too many
minorities to few minorities (OM); and, (v) an ordinal indicator of the general opinion of
living in the Netherlands, extending from very nice to very awful (LN). The selection of
social factors is in line with the behavioural and attitudinal component of social integration, as
discussed above. More specific, SC measures the behavioural component and AM and OM
measure the attitudinal component. The variable NM is included to assess whether the amount
of minorities in the neighbourhood is related to the attitude towards minorities and if this
relation holds when other social factors are accounted for. LN is included to determine
whether the general opinion of living in the Netherlands also relates to the attitude towards
minorities, as more pessimistic people in general may be negative about a number of aspects
in life. Equation 3 is estimated by OLS techniques, as the dependent variable is linear. Figure
A2 in the Appendix shows the standardized distribution of the attitude towards minorities, as
well as a graph of the standard normal density.
5
The ordinal variables of social factors are broken down into dummy variables before including them in the
analysis.
22
6. DESCRIPTIVE RESULTS
This section discusses the status of the different ethnic groups in the Netherlands. Attention is
paid to both structural and social indicators.
6.1 Structural integration

Table 1 shows the labour market participation rates6 of the ethnic groups in the Netherlands
that are subject to this study. In addition, the rates were computed for the first and second
generations of the ethnic groups (see Appendix, Table A2). However, due to a very low
number of second generation individuals for the refugee groups, these results are not
presented in the main analysis of this study. With respect to the four largest ethnic minority
groups (Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese and Antilleans), there seems to be an interesting
dichotomy between Turks and Moroccans on the one hand, and Surinamese and Antilleans on
the other hand. The labour market participation rates of Surinamese and Antilleans are rather
similar to the native population, even when broken down into the different groups of Table 1.
This achievement might be explained by the familiarity with the Dutch society and language
of both groups, due to the colonial past of the Netherlands (Zorlu, 2008). In contrast, Turks
and Moroccans demonstrate considerably lower labour market participation rates than Dutch
workers. Especially the participation rate of Turkish and Moroccan women is shockingly low
as well as the participation rate of 40+ workers. Low participation of these women is probably
caused by the fact that most of them entered the country as marriage or family migrants
during the second immigration wave and therefore did not migrated with the principal reason
to work or look for a job. Furthermore, women from these regions are more likely to hold
traditional norms and values, implying that a woman should stay at home and take care of the
husband and children instead of being employed (64% of the Turkish respondents and 68% of
the Moroccan respondents believed that a woman is the best person to be responsible for the
household, compared to 50% of the Antilleans and 56% of the Surinamese). The participation
rates of these women are of high concern to the Dutch government and actions are therefore
included in the Integration Note to activate Turkish and Moroccan women. The low
participation of 40+ Turkish and Moroccan migrants may be explained by the fact that these
6
In this study, an individual participates in the labour market when he/she has a job for at least 12 hours a week;
when he/she desires a job for at least 12 hours a week, is registered at an employment office, is actively looking
for a job and is available to start a job immediately; when he/she desires a job for at least 12 hours a week, is
actively looking for a job and is available to start a job immediately, or; when he/she desires a job for at least 12
hours a week, is registered at an employment office and can start a job immediately.
23
individuals are possibly former guest workers and their low skills are not valued any longer in
the Dutch labour market (Dagevos et al, 2003).
Table 1, Labour market participation by ethnic group, sex and age (in percentages)
Total Male Female 15 – 24 25 – 39 40 – 64
Turks 49 65 32 37 62 41
Moroccans 46 62 29 41 62 31
Surinamese 71 78 65 46 86 71
Antilleans 68 75 62 46 79 69
Afghans 48 62 22 36 54 46
Iraqis 47 63 22 32 54 45
Iranians 62 73 47 27 71 68
(former) Yugoslavs 67 76 58 36 76 66
Somalis 41 66 19 34 46 34
Dutch 70 81 59 51 87 66
Source: ISEO/SCP (SPVA ’02 and SPVA ‘03); Dagevos et al (2003)
Regarding the five largest refugee groups (Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, former Yugoslavs
and Somalis), only the former Yugoslavs and the Iranians seem to keep up with the native
population to a certain extent. Female refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia
demonstrate even lower labour market participation rates than Turkish and Moroccan women.
The reasons for the low participation rates are different for the refugee groups than the
immigrant groups. First of all, refugees are on average older than regular immigrants upon
entry. Second, refugees often experienced forced migration with uncertain duration from their
home country. In combination with a lengthy migration process this generally results in an
extensive career break for these people. Third, refugees may have experienced violence or
other traumatic events before or during the migration from the home country, resulting in a
psychological disadvantage in the labour market. Finally, the combination of a lack of social
networks and the difficulties brought about by a new language can impose heavy limitations
on the entry of the labour market in the Netherlands (Klaver and Odé, 2004). Additionally,
research has shown that the higher education that refugees have obtained in their home
country does not pay off in the first five years in the Dutch labour market (Hartog and Zorlu,
2009). This effect is predominantly explained by language barriers, the absence of a diploma
and the generally poor health conditions of the refugee.
In line with the relative low labour market participation of ethnic minority groups in the
Netherlands, migrants often occupy low quality jobs. Figure 3 displays the distribution of the
24
employment level7 of the various ethnic groups. As is evident from the figure, Somalis
occupy most often elementary or low level jobs, closely followed by Afghans, Turks and
Moroccans, with all close to or over 70% of the group engaging in these job levels. On the
other hand, Surinamese, Antilleans and Iranians have a distribution that is most similar to the
Dutch population. While the amount of individuals performing in high or scientific level jobs
is falling behind, this is offset by more people in a low or medium level job. Finally, Iraqis
and former Yugoslavs show a rather identical distribution with approximately equal amounts
of workers in all segments of the labour market. Some argue that this relatively poor
occupational level distribution of especially Turks, Moroccans, Afghans and Somalis is
caused by the low educational achievements of the individuals in those groups (Klaver et al,
2005).
Figure 3, Distribution of employment level to ethnic group (percentages)
Turks
Moroccans
Surinamese
Antilleans
Afghans
Iraqis
Iranians
former Yugoslavs
Somalis
Dutch
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Elementary Low Medium High Scientific

In addition to a worse labour market position, poverty is more prevalent among ethnic
minorities than among the native population. The average household income of the four
largest ethnic minority groups was found to be up to 24 % lower than Dutch households at the
7
The classification of the job level that is used is developed by Statistics Netherlands, which differentiates
between elementary, low, medium, high and scientific. The required skills, knowledge and abilities necessary to
perform in a particular job define the classification to which a job belongs.
25
beginning of this century (Vrooman and Hoff, 2004). However, these differences in
household income cannot be explained by the social characteristics of an ethnic group, but are
mainly caused by the level of education, command of the Dutch language and belonging to
the second generation of the immigrant group.
Figure 4, Educational achievement by ethnic group, for ages between 15 and 64
Turks
Moroccans
Surinamese
Antilleans max. bao
Afghans vbo/mavo
Iraqis mbo/havo
hbo/wo
Iranians
former Yugoslavs
Somalis
Dutch
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Figure 4 shows the highest attained educational level for all ethnic groups and for a
Dutch comparison group. A distinction is made between maximum basic education (max
bao), basic advanced education (vbo/mavo), medium advanced education (mbo/havo) and
higher education or university (hbo/wo). The figure only includes individuals between the
ages of 15 and 64, since immigrant groups are on average younger than the Dutch population
(Dagevos et al, 2003). The data in this figure does not distinguish between education attained
in the Netherlands or in the country of origin. It is however noteworthy that immigrants that
have only pursued education in their home country have very low educational achievement,
compared to individual from the same immigrant group that are educated in the Netherlands
(Dagevos et al, 2003). There seems to be an interesting relation between origin of education
and labour market participation of minorities. For example, Table A3 in the Appendix shows
that immigrants that obtained basic education in the country of origin demonstrate higher
labour market participation rates, compared to individuals that obtained this education in the
26
Netherlands. It might be that the first group has less knowledge about the Dutch labour
market and is therefore willing to work for a lower wage than the second group, making them
more attractive for employers. This relation is only present for persons with maximum basic
education, since for all the other groups, education in the Netherlands appears to be more
beneficial for participation in the labour market. Though interesting, it is beyond the scope of
this study to go further into the details of this effect.
Concerning Figure 4, Moroccans, Turks and Somalis appear to have attained the lowest
level of education; about 60% of the people in these groups only achieved basic education.
Only a very small fraction of the migrants from these countries has obtained the highest level
of education. The Iranian group seems to do best when it comes to educational achievement.
Although their distribution shows more people with only basic education than the native
comparison group, it also shows a slightly higher amount of people having obtained higher
education or a university degree. This holds to a certain extent for the Afghans and Iraqis as
well. Although many migrants from these groups have only attained basic education, a decent
proportion of them holds a higher education or university degree, comparable to the Dutch
population. The differences between the distributions of the Turks and Moroccans on the one
hand and the Antilleans and Surinamese on the other hand, again demonstrate that the
traditional ethnic minority groups in the Netherlands can be divided in two sets. The Antillean
and Surinamese groups have considerably less people that only attained basic education and
more individuals that enjoyed advanced or higher education degrees than Turks and
Moroccans. Finally, the immigrant group of former Yugoslavs shows a respectable proportion
of higher educated people and a distribution that is most similar to that of the Antilleans and
Surinamese.
One can argue that the distribution of Turks and Moroccans is complementary to the
educational distribution of the Dutch population. Many low-skilled workers from Turkey and
Morocco can do the work that the higher educated population of the Netherlands refuses to do
or is too highly qualified to do. However, the labour market participation of these immigrant
groups appears to be very low, as indicated above, partly offsetting the benefits from the
complementary distribution. Furthermore, higher educated or more skilled workers contribute
more to the public budgets in terms of taxes than low skilled workers, who use more public
services and pay lower taxes. As a consequence, high skilled immigrants pay off more to any
host country in the sense that the immigration surplus will be larger when the immigration
flow is composed exclusively or dominantly of skilled workers (Borjas, 1995).
27
6.2 Social integration
This section discusses a number of descriptive statistics for the social integration of minorities
in the Netherlands. One important indicator of social integration is the number of native
friends and the dominance of contact with natives, compared to contact within the ethnic
group (e.g. Aguilera, 2002; Dagevos et al, 2003). Table 2 provides an overview of the fraction
of the minority groups that has Dutch friends, or, if not, would like to have Dutch friends.
Table 2, Dutch friends or the desire to have Dutch friends per minority group (in percentages)
Yes, Dutch No, but would like to No, but does not like
friends have Dutch friends to have Dutch friends
Turks 79 15 6
Moroccans 67 16 17
Surinamese 90 5 5
Antilleans 91 6 3
Afghans 69 27 5
Iraqis 71 24 5
Iranians 83 15 2
(former) Yugoslavs 88 10 2
Somalis 65 27 8
Source: ISEO/SCP (SPVA ’02 and SPVA ‘03)
Immigrants from Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles have the most Dutch friends,
followed by former Yugoslavs and Iranians. The immigrant groups with the least Dutch
friends are the Somalis, Afghans and Moroccans. While Turks and Moroccans appeared very
similar in terms of socio-economic factors, they show a remarkable difference with respect to
having Dutch friends or not. Also note the fact that as much as 17% of the Moroccan group
would not even like to have Dutch friends, quite an alarming figure. The Turks, Iraqis and
Iranians have a substantial amount of Dutch friends. In addition, most of the immigrants
belonging to these groups that do not have Dutch friends yet, desire to become friends with
natives if given the opportunity. This fact also holds for the groups with the lowest amount of
Dutch friends. Interestingly, the groups that perform relatively well in socio-economic terms
also show higher rates of Dutch friends, indicating that there is probably a link between social
contacts and socio-economic factors. This line of reasoning is further evidenced by a positive
significant correlation (.241) between having Dutch friends and having a job, and a negative
significant correlation (-.144) between having Dutch friends and being dependent on welfare.8
In other words, if you are an immigrant and you have Dutch friends, you are more likely to
8
Both correlations are significant at a 1% significance level.
28
have a full-time job and, as a consequence, you are less likely to be dependent on welfare.
Consequently, it could be that minorities that are employed have more contact with natives
and have therefore higher chances of becoming friends with them. On the contrary, having
Dutch friends could be helpful for acquiring information about job opportunities and as such,
minorities with these friends have higher chances to become employed. This last
interpretation might support the ‘weak ties’ theory, as proposed in the hypothesis section. The
link between native friends and employment will be further evaluated in the empirical part of
this thesis in Section 7.
In addition to having Dutch friends, it is interesting to assess the intensity of the contact
of minorities with natives. Table 3 presents information about the dominant social contacts of
the minority groups. Specifically, it shows whether they have most social contacts with
individuals from their own ethnic group, with natives or with both groups equally.
Table 3, Dominance of social contacts per minority group (in percentages)

Contact with both
More contact with natives and ethnic More contact with
own ethnic group group equally natives
Turks 52 37 11
Moroccans 41 46 13
Surinamese 27 46 27
Antilleans 20 37 43
Afghans 36 35 29
Iraqis 43 32 25
Iranians 25 36 39
Somalis 51 31 18
Table 3 mainly confirms the findings from above. For groups that have few Dutch
friends, such as the Afghans and Somalis, social contact within the own ethnic group
dominates. Furthermore, Iraqis and Turks are also found to have more contacts within the
ethnic group. The opposite is true for Antilleans, Iranians and former Yugoslavs who have
proportionally more social contacts with Dutch people than with their own ethnic group.
Finally, most immigrants from Suriname and Morocco have indicated to spend social time
between their own ethnic group and natives equally.
Besides the presence of Dutch friends and the intensity of contact with natives, the
Dutch language proficiency of minorities can be used as an indicator for social integration.
Table 4 therefore shows to what extent respondents speak Dutch with their partner and
29
children. As expected, Surinamese and Antilleans are the groups that use Dutch most often
when talking to their partner or children, though Antilleans score considerably lower than
Surinamese. As mentioned before, this result can be explained by the historical colonial
relation between these countries and the Netherlands. The refugee groups appear to use the
Dutch language considerably less in conversations with their partner than the major
immigrant groups, except for Moroccans. This finding is probably explained by the fact that
the refugee groups have spent on average less time in the Netherlands (see Appendix, Table
A1). Also note the fact that the largest proportion of Turks and Moroccans never speaks
Dutch with the partner, although Moroccans even use less Dutch than Turks in this regards.
This might be due to the large inflow of female migrants during the second immigration wave
of family reunification in the 1970s, causing that many Turks and Moroccans were reunited
with their partner from Turkey and Morocco respectively. The fraction of people in the
refugee groups that speaks Dutch to their children is higher than the share that speaks Dutch
to their partner. This might indicate that the second generation of the refugee groups is raised
with a better command of the Dutch language. This effect can also be a spill-over effect of the
Dutch education of the children. Unfortunately, Turks and Moroccans still do not speak very
often Dutch to their children, yet more often than to their partner. The ability to speak Dutch
properly is the central theme in a recent government campaign. At the start of 2009, a
governmental television commercial and website aired with the slogan: ‘It starts with
language’, encouraging foreigners to learn the Dutch language. The campaign stresses the
importance of the Dutch language in daily social life, for example at doctor’s visits and when
looking for employment.9
Table 4, Dutch language use per minority group (in percentages)
Speaks Dutch with partner Speaks Dutch with children

Always Sometimes Never Always Sometimes Never
Turks 23 32 45 18 50 31
Moroccans 15 34 51 26 47 27
Surinamese 82 15 3 91 8 1
Antilleans 58 23 19 63 29 7
Afghans 6 37 57 17 39 44
Iraqis 7 32 60 18 40 42
Iranians 14 36 50 24 40 36
(former) Yugoslavs 17 37 45 30 41 29
Somalis 10 35 55 23 44 34
9
For the campaign website, look at http://www.hetbegintmettaal.nl/
30
To provide more insight in the command of the Dutch language of the different minority
groups, Table 5 shows whether people experience difficulties when reading Dutch newspaper
articles, books or magazines. Moreover, the table shows an average grade for the command of
the Dutch language per immigrant group, constructed using the assessment of the language
abilities of the respondent by the interviewer. Not surprisingly, Surinamese and Antilleans
score highest on the assessment, although almost 20% of the Surinamese still has difficulties
reading Dutch. Turks and Moroccans have the worse command of the Dutch language, both
implied by the high fraction of these groups that has considerable trouble reading Dutch
texts and by the relatively low score on the assessment. Concerning the refugee groups,
Iranians and former Yugoslavs have the least trouble with reading, and therefore the highest
score of all refugee groups on the evaluation of the interviewer. These are also the groups that
are more likely to have Dutch friends (see Table 2). The positive significant correlation
between Dutch language ability and being employed (.309)10 furthermore suggests that
immigrants that have a better command of the Dutch language have more chances on getting a
job. Or, the other way around, having a job improves ones proficiency in Dutch. The Afghans,
Iraqis and Somalis have better language skills than the Turks and Moroccans, but are lacking
behind to their Iranian and Yugoslavian counterparts.
Table 5, Difficulties reading Dutch (in percentages) and average assessment of the command
of Dutch by interviewers (scale 1 to 10)
Difficulties reading Dutch Assessment of

Always/Often Sometimes Never interviewers
Turks 48 45 7 7.1
Moroccans 49 41 10 7.9
Surinamese 19 34 47 9.8
Antilleans 7 44 49 9.5
Afghans 24 41 35 8.1
Iraqis 29 36 35 8.0
Iranians 17 28 54 8.9
(former) Yugoslavs 18 25 58 8.9
Somalis 27 34 39 8.3
Another commonly used indicator to measure social integration of an immigrant group is

the self-identification of the immigrant. This variable assesses whether an immigrant
identifies more heavily with his or her own minority group or with the native population.
10
This correlation is significant at a 1% significance level.
31
Table 6 shows the relevant percentages for the groups in this study. Due to differences in the
specific question in the SPVA of 2002 and 2003, a category ‘other’ is added for the refugee
groups. Respondents in this category identified most with a particular subgroup within the
minority group and not with the minority group itself. For example, if a former Yugoslav
identifies more with Kosovo because he was raised there, this respondent is included in the
‘other’ category. Turks and Moroccans identify strongest with their own group, considerably
more than Surinamese and Antilleans. Of the refugee groups, Iranians and former Yugoslavs
identify the most with the Netherlands, followed by Afghans, Iraqis and Somalis.
Table 6, Self-Identification of minority groups (in percentages)

Own group Netherlands Other
Turks 97 3 -
Moroccans 94 6 -
Surinamese 82 18 -
Antilleans 76 24 -
Afghans 59 16 25
Iraqis 61 16 23
Iranians 46 22 32
Somalis 69 13 18
6.3 Preliminary conclusion on structural and social integration

The previous sections have shown descriptives for all minority groups with respect to both
structural and social integration. Taken together, there seems to be interesting systematic
similarities and differences between variables among certain groups. For example, the
structural integration information already showed a dichotomy between the traditional
immigrant groups. Turks and Moroccans have considerably lower participation rates, lower
average job quality and worse educational attainment than Surinamese and Antilleans.
Regarding the five refugee groups, Iranians and former Yugoslavs seem to perform best
considering structural integration. These groups demonstrate decent labour market
participation, employment levels and educational background similar to the Dutch population.
Refugees from Somalia have the lowest labour market participation rates, as well as low
educational levels and low labour quality. However, they perform comparable and sometimes
even better than Turks and Moroccans. Iraqis and Afghans also form some kind of subgroup
within the refugee population, as their structural integration figures are fairly analogous and
32
in-between the numbers of Iranians and former Yugoslavs on the one hand, and Somalis on
the other hand.
Interestingly, the same subgroups can be constructed with respect to social integration.
Again Turks and Moroccans perform worst, as indicated by relatively few native friends,
extensive difficulties with the Dutch language and strong identification with the own ethnic
group. However, Turks seem to show more willingness to improve social contacts with
natives as implied by the fact that a high fraction of Turks that does not yet has Dutch friends,
would like to have one or more. Furthermore, Surinamese and Antilleans have a good
command of the Dutch language, since this is also (one of) the official language(s) in the
respective countries. Moreover, a high fraction of these groups has Dutch friends, and they
identify more often with the Netherlands than other immigrant groups do. Considering
refugees, Iranians and former Yugoslavs seem socially most integrated. For all variables
indicating social integration, these groups perform best of the refugee groups. Afghans and
Iraqis again take the middle position and therefore seem to be moderately integrated in the
Dutch society. Finally, Somalis portray the least socially integrated group of the refugees, but
perform better than Turks and Moroccans.
Overall, substantial differences exist between ethnic groups with respect to structural
and social integration. Furthermore, the relation between structural and social integration
seems apparent as the groups that perform well in a social context, also appear to perform
well with respect to structural measures. The relation is further illustrated by the correlations
between having Dutch friends and having a good command of the Dutch language on the one
hand and employment on the other hand. The empirical results of this thesis in Section 7 will
explore whether these correlations hold in extensive regression analyses.
6.4 The attitude towards minorities of the Dutch population

An important aspect of integration that is often not taken into account is the attitude towards
minorities of the native population. As stated above, the focus of integration is generally on
the minority itself rather than on the underlying structures or responsiveness of the society.
The Integration Note for 2007 – 2011 takes this aspect into account for the first time, stressing
the importance of ‘reciprocity’ in the integration process (VROM, 2007). In this Note, the
Dutch government claims that the mutual relationships between minorities and natives have
become worse over the past decade. Since this thesis uses data from the start of this decade, it
can be assessed whether the opinions of natives and minorities about each other were indeed
negative. Recall that for this purpose a construct was created measuring the attitude towards
33
minorities of the Dutch population. Table 7 shows the resulting mean of the construct for
different sub samples together with the corresponding correlation between the fat printed
variable in the left column of the table and the attitude of the natives.
Table 7, Attitude towards minorities of the Dutch population by different subpopulations

(scale 1 to 4, 1 meaning very positive and 4 meaning very negative)
Mean (SE) Correlation (p-value)

Education -.315 (.000)
Basic 2.71 (.035)
LBO 2.60 (.017)
MAVO 2.49 (.022)
MBO 2.46 (.016)
HAVO/VWO 2.39 (.032)
HBO 2.28 (.017)
WO 2.16 (.036)
Employment .103 (.000)
Employed 2.42 (.011)
Not employed 2.51 (.013)
Number of minorities in neighbourhood -.103 (.000)
Majority of minorities 2.62 (.049)
Numerous amount of minorities 2.53 (.020)
Small minority of minorities 2.41 (.014)
None or hardly any minorities 2.43 (.012)
Social contact with minorities in neighbourhood -.222 (.000)
Often contact 2.12 (.067)
Regular contact 2.30 (.031)
Superficial contact 2.38 (.016)
None or hardly any contact 2.53 (.013)
Total sample 2.45 (.008)
Source: GfK/SCP (BOM ‘02)
Note: The descriptive results obtained when no weight was assigned to the 14 different statements are shown in
Table A4 in the Appendix.
First of all, two socio-economic factors are taken into consideration. The statistics on the
educational level suggest that higher educated individuals perceive foreigners more positive
than people with a relatively low educational background. It is interesting to note that for
every consecutive step in educational level, the construct decreases by approximately .10
(ignoring the MBO level, as the magnitude of the coefficient is comparable to the MAVO
coefficient). Furthermore, the significant correlation between the attitude and educational
level supports the finding that these two variables are related. The employment status of an
individual is also significantly correlated with the attitude towards minorities. At the time of
the survey, people that were employed held a more positive attitude towards minorities than
34
people that were unemployed. This relation can also be explained by the fact that education
has a positive effect on the attitude towards minorities, since higher educated people are more
likely to be employed in this dataset.11
Second, two social aspects are described: the number of minorities in the neighbourhood
and the social contacts with minorities in the neighbourhood. The data indicates that people
living in a neighbourhood that hosts a large number of minorities tend to have a more
negative attitude towards minorities. Interestingly, the attitude appears most positive when a
small number of minorities live in the neighbourhood, implying a kind of U-shaped relation.
Concerning the social contacts with minorities in the neighbourhood, the data suggests that
people having frequent contact with minorities think more positively about them. The
combination of these findings is consistent with the results from a Dutch study that a non-
linear relation between the percentage of minorities in a specific neighbourhood and the
Figure 5, Average of responses to four opinion statements about the Netherlands (scale 1 to 5,
1 meaning very positive and 5 meaning very negative)
former Yugoslavs
Dutch
Afghans
Iraqis
Somalis
Surinamese
Moroccans
Antilleans
Iranians
Turks
2,00 2,10 2,20 2,30 2,40 2,50 2,60

Average score opinion statements
Source: ISEO/SCP (SPVA ’02 and SPVA ’03); GfK/SCP (BOM ‘02)
Note: Due to the scale of the X-axis, which starts at 2, the bars in this graph do not show the relative differences
between ethnic groups. The scale of the X-axis is chosen in such a manner to enhance the illustration of the
variations between groups.
11
For example, about 70% of the higher educated (WO and HBO) are employed, compared to 45% of people
that attained the LBO or MAVO level. Only 9% of the respondents that maximally obtained basic education are
employed.
35
amount of social contacts between natives and minorities (Gijsberts and Dagevos, 2007). The
study claims that an ethnic concentration of approximately 50% in a neighbourhood is most
favourable for optimal social contacts between ethnic groups. In the empirical part of this
thesis, it is examined whether these correlations hold in several regressions.
In addition to the attitude of the Dutch population, it is interesting to compare the views
of the ethnic groups to the views of natives. Fortunately, four identical statements are present
in the three different datasets, covering the following subjects: (i) whether the respondent
believes that a foreigner has many opportunities in the Netherlands; (ii) whether the rights of
foreigners are respected in the Netherlands; (iii) whether the Netherlands is hospitable to
newcomers; and (iv) whether the Netherlands is open to different cultures. The responses to
these four statements are combined in a single, non-weighted average and Figure 5 shows the
results, starting with the ethnic group that is most positive about the Netherlands.12
The first noteworthy aspect of this graph is that most respondents are fairly positive
about the Netherlands, as indicated by the finding that all average scores are below the mean
of the scale, which is 3. However, there are some interesting differences between the ethnic
groups. First of all, the former Yugoslavs are most positive about the Netherlands, even more
positive than the native population. Of all ethnic groups, they tend to disagree or completely
disagree to the four opinion statements the least. Second, it seems that refugees, except for
Iranians, are slightly more positive than the traditional immigration groups, as implied by
their higher position in the graph. Third, of all immigrant groups the Iranian and Turkish
groups are most negative about the Netherlands. They tend to disagree or completely disagree
to the statements more than the other groups. This is rather surprising considering the fact that
the previous sections of this thesis have shown that the Iranians are one of the best performing
minority groups in the Netherlands. In contrast, the former Yugoslavs, also a good performing
minority group, are on average most positive about the Netherlands of groups. One can argue
that if a minority group is performing relatively well in a host country, that group would have
a more positive opinion about the host country than a worse performing minority group, since
the better performing group may have found more opportunities to prosper. It is therefore
surprising to find that while the former Yugoslavs and the Iranians share similar
characteristics when it comes to structural and social integration, these two best performing
groups rate the Netherlands as a host country most positive and most negative to immigrants
12
The rationale of combining these statements in one number is supported by he fact that the answers to the four
statements are highly and significantly correlated (correlations typically range between .3 and .5), regardless of
ethnic group.
36
respectively. Important to note, however, is that the average score of the Iranians is still lower
than the mean of the scale, indicating that they are on average rather positive about the
Netherlands.
37
7. EMPIRICAL RESULTS
This section presents the results of three different regression analyses. First, the effects of the
five social integration variables on the probability of participating in the labour market are
discussed, in combination with the effect of the attitude towards minorities of natives. Next,
the same variables are regressed on the job level of the employed fraction of the ethnic
minorities to evaluate whether differences exist between participating in the labour market
and advancing in the Dutch labour market. Finally, the determinants of the attitude towards
minorities of natives are examined to assess which variables influence this attitude and what
can be done to improve it. Regarding the interpretation of the coefficients, one has to take into
account that all reported results do not necessarily represent causal relations, as all the data
used in this study are cross-sectional.
7.1 Labour market participation

Table 8 presents the results of four specifications of equation 1 on the dependent variable
labour market participation.13 Column 1 provides estimates from a model that includes
dummy variables for the nine different ethnic groups and no control variables, ignoring social
integration for this moment. It appears that there are substantial differences between groups,
as indicated by the significant coefficients of most groups. The results of this model are
broadly similar to the findings of Table 1. More specific, labour market participation among
former Yugoslavs, Iranians, Antilleans and Surinamese is significantly higher than the
reference category of Turks and participation of Moroccans and Somalis is significantly
smaller. Afghans and Iraqis have similar labour market participation rates compared to Turks,
as indicated by their insignificant coefficients. The magnitude of the coefficients points out
that the positive difference in labour market participation, compared to Turks, is the largest
for Surinamese, Antilleans, former Yugoslavs and Iranians respectively. The negative
difference is the largest for Somalis, followed by Moroccans.
Column 2 includes the control variables education, age and sex into the equation. Some
results are similar to Column 1, though there are some changes in significance and magnitude
of the coefficients. That is, labour market participation among former Yugoslavs, Antilleans
and Surinamese is higher than the reference category of Turks, participation of Moroccans is
similar to Turks and Somalis, and Afghans and Iraqis are less likely to participate in the
13
For the definition of labour market participation used in this thesis, see footnote 6.
38
Table 8, Logistic regressions on Labour Market Participation
Dependent variable:
Labour market participation (1) (2) (3) (4)
Ethnic group: ref. Turks
Moroccans -.139** -.090 -.294* .106
(.062) (.078) (.151) (.235)
Surinamese .916*** .816*** .540*** .902***
(.068) (.095) (.179) (.272)
Antilleans .775*** .618*** .040 .653**
(.073) (.109) (.200) (.330)
Afghans -.054 -.220** -.390** .912**
(.073) (.099) (.157) (.374)
Iraqis -.076 -.420*** -.584*** .209
(.074) (.100) (.151) (.342)
Iranians .521*** .161 -.088 .757**
(.077) (.117) (.173) (.357)
Former Yugoslavs .739*** .640*** .386** .883***
(.079) (.110) (.151) (.307)
Somalis -.328*** -.352*** -.877*** -.061
(.083) (.111) (.155) (.347)
Social integration
Having Dutch friends .476*** .557***
(.100) (.168)
Being member of an association .102 -.061
(.105) (.159)
Dominance of social contacts:
ref. both
Ethnic group -.069 -.032
(.091) (.144)
Dutch group -.071 -.177
(.109) (.179)
Language proficiency: ref. bad
Moderate .645*** .218
(.127) (.237)
Good 1.146*** .600**
(.128) (.240)
Identification with own ethnic -.099 -.386*
group (.117) (.203)
Attitude of natives .253 .054
(.467) (.775)
Standard controls a No Yes Yes Yes
Additional controls b No No No Yes
N 12238 8037 3793 2032
Pseudo R2 .0329 .1627 .1937 .2112
Prob > chi2 .0000 .0000 .0000 .0000
Source: ISEO/SCP (SPVA ’02 and SPVA ’03), GfK/SCP (BOM ’02)
a
controls include education, age and sex
b
controls include age squared, working experience, working experience squared, migration motive, years of stay
in the Netherlands, religion, marital status and number of children
Note: *** = p-value < 0.01, ** = p-value < 0.05, * = p-value < 0.10; robust standard errors in parentheses
39
labour market. A surprising finding here is that the participation of Iranians seems to be not
significantly different from the Turks, although Table 1 has shown otherwise. The inclusion
of control variables in the next two models will result in a more decent estimate.
Column 3 incorporates the main variables of interest in the empirical model. The effect
of social integration on labour market participation is measured by the five variables as
discussed in Section 5. The first effect, having Dutch friends, is large and significant,
implying that this variable is highly related to participation in the labour market. It is however
difficult to determine the causality in for this variables, because having Dutch friends might
improve chances on the labour market through the weak ties theory discussed above. On the
other hand, participating in the labour market can result in more contact with the native
population and as a consequence lead to having Dutch friends. Yet another explanation could
be that migrants with Dutch friends share characteristics and values with their Dutch
counterparts and that these traits are related to both labour market participation and having
Dutch friends, and there is no relation between having Dutch friends and labour market
participation per se. Although difficult to interpret this relation, it is important to note that this
finding does suggest that there is some sort of relation between the two variables and policy
makers should take this into account when designing policies to activate ethnic minorities.
The finding also supports the campaign of the government to stimulate projects that improve
social interaction between immigrants and natives.
Second, the membership of an association is taken into consideration. As stated above, it
might be that immigrants that are active in the social life of their community have a greater
chance of being employed. This is an important aspect of the behavioural component of social
integration and being a member of an association may point to a successful integration of an
immigrant. There is, however, no significant relation in the analysis, indicating that this type
of social integration is not correlated with the labour market participation of minorities.
Third, it is assessed whether the dominance of social contact has an important effect on
the probability of participating in the Dutch labour market. In Section 6, it was shown that
social contacts of Turks, Moroccans, Iraqis and Somalis were dominated by their own ethnic
group and that these groups perform particularly poorly on the labour market. However, as it
appears from the results above, there is no significant relation between the dominance of
social contacts and participation in the labour market. In addition, interaction effects also turn
out to be insignificant14, rejecting the notion that the differences among ethnic groups depend
14
Results not reported here, but available from the author upon request.
40
on the dominance of their social contacts. As this variable is also a clear indicator of the
behavioural component of social integration, it appears that this component is particularly
driven by having Dutch friends or not.
Fourth, the influence of language proficiency is examined. As expected, the results show
that greater Dutch language proficiency is associated with a higher likelihood of participating
in the labour market. This is an important finding, considering the fact that language is used
as a proxy for the attitudinal component of social integration. More specific, if language skills
are a proxy for the attitude towards integration, minorities that have put in sufficient effort to
learn Dutch are associated with higher labour market participation than those minorities that
did not put in the necessary effort. In addition, the magnitude of the coefficients shows that
the relation between good language proficiency and labour market participation is even larger
than medium language proficiency, and larger than most of the other variables.15 Furthermore,
language proficiency is also widely used as a measure for the assimilation of immigrants, as
better command of the host country’s language is considered a sign of better assimilation (e.g.
Dagevos et al, 2006; Ersanilli and Koopmans, 2007). The positive relation between language
skills and labour market participation is therefore an important one, since it may also support
the shift in Dutch policy from multiculturalism towards assimilationism. Moreover, this
finding confirms the rationale behind the previously discussed government campaign on the
use of Dutch in daily life. As an additional check, interaction effect of language proficiency
and ethnic groups are included in the regression to determine whether differences between
groups are dependent on language skills.16 All interaction effects, except for one, are highly
insignificant and the main coefficients of the model are virtually unchanged, leading to the
inference that differences between groups are not driven by language proficiency.
The final social integration variable is the identification with the personal ethnic group.
Descriptive statistics have indicated that some ethnic groups generally identify more with
their own group than with the native population. Although this might indicate an important
social obstruction to contact with natives or a negative attitude towards the Dutch society or
population, it is not associated with a higher or lower possibility to participate in the labour
market in this model. Taken together, all social integration variables are jointly significant in
this model.17
15
After the highest educational level and sex, the coefficient of good language proficiency is the largest in
magnitude in the regression results.
16
Results not reported here, but available from the author upon request.
17
p-value < .0000
41
In addition to social variables that can be contributed solely to the individual, this study
addresses the impact of an exogenous factor, the attitude of natives towards minorities, on the
labour market participation of these minorities. This attitude was taken from the questionnaire
‘Attitude towards Minorities’ and constructed as described above and in Section A3 in the
Appendix. The reported regressions use the weighted variable of the attitude which is linked
to the SPVA data on the municipality level. The result in Column 3 shows that no effect can
be found that the exogenous attitude towards minorities has a significant relation with labour
market participation. Therefore, the attitude of natives seems no obstacle for minorities to be
able to actively search for, or have a job in the Netherlands.
The effects of the ethnic groups remain largely similar in Column 3, except for the fact
that Moroccans in this specification perform significantly worse than Turks and Antilleans
perform identical to Turks. These intuitively strange outcomes are resolved after the inclusion
of a wide array of control variables in Column 4. Considering the control variables in Column
3, all have expected signs and magnitude. That is, the probability of participating in the labour
market significantly increases with education, is lower for females than for males and is
slightly decreasing with age. These control variables are jointly significant at all conventional
levels.
The model in Column 4 includes a wide variety of control variables to assess the
robustness of the results in Column 3. All main results hold and most importantly, the
coefficient of the identification with ethnic groups becomes significant, indicating that there is
a relation between self-identity and labour market participation, even when accounted for an
extensive selection of control variables. This finding points to the suggestion that
identification with the own ethnic group indeed seems an important obstacle for participating
in the Dutch labour market, yet the relation is less important in magnitude than having Dutch
friends or being proficient in Dutch. In addition, the coefficients on language proficiency
become somewhat smaller and less significant although individuals with better language skills
still have a significantly higher chance on the labour market than individuals with bad Dutch
language proficiency. Taken together, both attitudinal components of social integration are
significantly associated with labour market participation, indicating that the attitude of
minorities towards integration is highly relevant. It also points to the importance of
assimilation, since both language proficiency and identification with the host population are
clear indicators of assimilation (Dagevos et al, 2006). Similar to Column 3, all social
integration variables are jointly significant at conventional levels.
42
The results for the ethnic groups are consistent with the previous models, except for the
finding that Afghans have a significant higher probability than Turks to be participating in the
labour market, compared to the results of Column 2 and 3, in which this probability is
significantly lower. However, considering the fact that the model in Column 4 accounts for a
large number of control variables, the finding of this model is most plausible. Moreover, most
control variables have the expected signs and they are jointly significant.18 For example, an
inverted U-shaped relation is found for both age and working experience. Perhaps most
surprising is the finding that migration motives only have very small and generally
insignificant effects. One might expect that if an immigrant enters a country with labour
market motives, such as working or studying, the probability of participating in the labour
market may be higher than for an immigrant with different motives. However, such a relation
is not present in the data at hand. Finally, number of children, years of stay in the Netherlands
and marital status are all associated with labour market participation, without impacting the
social integration variables to a large extent. The main conclusion from the above presented
analysis is that having Dutch friends, having good Dutch language proficiency and
identification with natives are positively related to labour market participation. These findings
therefore indicate that there is a relation between both the behavioural and the attitudinal
component of social integration and labour market participation. These results seem robust
across different specifications of the empirical model.
7.2 Employment level

Figure 3 has shown that there is substantial heterogeneity of job level between ethnic groups.
Table 9 presents regression results that can explain these differences. Recall that the
employment level is measured on a five point ordinal scale from elementary to scientific
level. Column 1 shows coefficients of a basic empirical model that solely uses dummy
variables for the different ethnic groups. As expected, there are some significant differences
between ethnic groups. Overall, the magnitude of the coefficients shows that Antilleans have
on average the highest employment level, followed by Iranians, Surinamese, former
Yugoslavs, Iraqis and Moroccans respectively. Turks and Afghans have a statistically similar
overall employment level and Somalis have the worse level of all ethnic minority groups.
Column 2 complements the model of Column 1 by some standard control variables. The
18
p-value < .0000
43
Table 9, Ordered logistic regressions on Employment Level (Column 1 – 4) and a Heckman
selection model (Column 5)
Dependent variable:
Employment level (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Ethnic group: ref. Turks
Moroccans .196** .131 .221 .231 .075
(.086) (.102) (.169) (.204) (.099)
Surinamese .891*** .467** .224 .299 .098
(.079) (.104) (.178) (.213) (.101)
Antilleans 1.132*** .647*** .343* .458* .170
(.089) (.122) (.198) (.251) (.120)
Afghans -.078 -.311** -.517 -.190 -.116
(.108) (.158) (.197) (.302) (.134)
Iraqis .537*** .152 .060 .315 .157
(.126) (.169) (.202) (.301) (.132)
Iranians 1.123*** .265 .401* .625** .276**
(.100) (.167) (.211) (.316) (.135)
Former Yugoslavs .651*** .040 -.025 .170 .071
(.101) (.139) (.190) (.260) (.110)
Somalis -.469*** -.923*** -1.063*** -.815** -.309**
(.142) (.245) (.263) (.353) (.143)
Social integration
Having Dutch friends .188 .067 -.015
(.163) (.171) (.077)
Being member of an association .389*** .495*** .241***
(.110) (.127) (.058)
Dom. of soc. contacts: ref. both
Ethnic group -.131 -.124 -.034
(.111) (.124) (.057)
Dutch group .098 .129 .058
(.119) (.133) (.062)
Language proficiency: ref. bad
Moderate .498* .605** .148
(.270) (.296) (.120)
Good .972*** 1.005*** .332***
(.273) (.299) (.117)
Identification with own ethnic .113 .291** .133**
group (.124) (.137) (.066)
Attitude of natives -1.351** -1.696** -.828***
(.611) (.681) (.299)
Standard controls a No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Additional controls b No No No Yes Yes
N 5625 3214 1706 1408 2219
Pseudo R2 .0241 .0994 .1075 .0999 -
Prob > chi2 .0000 .0000 .0000 .0000 .0000
Source: ISEO/SCP (SPVA ’02 and SPVA ’03), GfK/SCP (BOM ’02)
a
controls include education, age and sex
b
controls include age squared, working experience, working experience squared, migration motive, years of stay
in the Netherlands and religion. Marital status, region and number of children excluded due to insignificance.
Note: *** = p-value < 0.01, ** = p-value < 0.05, * = p-value < 0.10; robust standard errors in parentheses
44
coefficients show that after controlling for these variables, Surinamese and Antilleans have on
average a higher employment level than Turks, whereas Afghans and Somalis have a
significant lower level of employment. Although positive, the coefficients of the former
Yugoslavs, Moroccans, Iraqis and Iranians are not significant, implying that there is no
difference between these groups and the Turks in terms of employment level. Concerning the
control variables (not reported here), it appears that females do not differ significantly from
men with respect to job level, which is a positive finding. Furthermore and straightforward,
employment level increases with age and education.
Column 3 introduces the five social integration variables into the model to examine
whether they are associated with employment level. The previous section has established that
having Dutch friends, language proficiency and self-identification relate significantly to the
probability of participating in the labour market. This part will discuss whether the same
variables also affect job level or whether this aspect of the labour market is associated with
different individual characteristics. First of all, it is found that having Dutch friends is not
related to a higher employment level. Although the sign of the coefficient is intuitively
correct, it does not impact the dependent variable significantly. This suggests an important
implication since having Dutch friends did have a positive effect on the probability of
participating in the labour market. As it turns out, Dutch friends may help an immigrant to
participate in the labour market, but these friends may not influence the employment level of
the same individual. This is partly consistent with the weak ties theory, as job searchers might
benefit from information that flows through a network of weak ties. That is, having Dutch
friends (strong ties) provides access to other Dutch networks of strong ties. As these networks
of strong ties are linked to the immigrant by weak ties, the immigrant has the opportunity to
gain from information that normally only reaches natives. On the other hand, the employment
level of immigrants is more likely to be dependent on past performance on the job and
educational level, instead of information about job availability that flows through a network
of friends and acquaintances. This line of thinking would explain why having Dutch friends is
positively associated with labour market participation, but not with employment level.
Second, being member of an association is significantly related to a higher employment
level. In terms of magnitude, this relation is among the smallest of the five social integration
variables, yet this does not mean that the finding is less important. It might point to the
explanation that migrants that are active in a social association are more committed to society
and that this trait is valued by employers. On the other hand, the relation might just as well be
that when people obtain a higher employment level, it is more likely that they become
45
member of an association. One way or another, it is important to note that this behavioural
aspect of social integration does impact the employment level while not affecting the
participation in the labour market. This strengthens the reasoning above, as commitment
shown on the job is a personal trait that might result in a higher employment level, whereas it
is hard for a job searcher to show commitment when applying for employment. It is, however,
difficult to support this claim with the cross-sectional data at hand. Panel data designed to
follow individuals over time is necessary to prove that the commitment shown by being a
member of an association is valued by employers and can therefore lead to a higher
employment level.
Third, the dominance of the social contacts is not associated with the level of
employment. However, the signs of the coefficients suggest an interesting pattern. Minorities
that have more contact within their own ethnic group are related to a slightly lower
employment level than individuals that have social contacts in both their ethnic group and
natives. Furthermore, minorities whose social contacts are dominated by Dutch people show a
somewhat higher employment level. Nonetheless, similar to the analysis on labour market
participation, no significant coefficients are obtained for this variable. The behavioural
component of social integration is therefore driven by having Dutch friends when it comes to
labour market participation and being a member of an association with respect to employment
level.
Fourth, language proficiency also seems to be an important determinant of employment
level, just as it is important for participating in the labour market. The coefficients of
moderate and good language proficiency are the second-largest and largest of all social
integration variables respectively. This finding is very straightforward as higher levels of
employment generally require good communication skills. Furthermore, the finding suggests
that if language skill is taken as a proxy for the attitudinal component of social integration, it
is not only relevant to the entry of the Dutch labour market, but also to progress in the same
labour market. Moreover, this result confirms that assimilation of immigrants, in terms of
language, is highly relevant for their performance in the host country.
Finally, it appears that identification with the own ethnic group does not relate to the
employment level of minorities. Although the coefficient implies a minor positive relation, it
is not statistically significant in the specification of Column 3. Taken together, all social
integration variables are jointly significant at any significance level.
As stated above, this study also examines whether the exogenous attitude towards
minorities of the native population has an effect on important labour market outcomes. In
46
Column 3, there is indeed a negative significant relation between the attitude of natives and
employment level of minorities. Recall that the attitude is measured on a scale from 1 to 4 and
that a low number indicates a positive attitude towards minorities. Also note that the
coefficient of this variable is among the largest effects in the empirical specification.19 The
coefficient therefore shows that a relatively positive attitude towards minorities in a certain
municipality is associated with a rather higher employment level of minorities, compared to
municipalities where a relatively more negative attitude exists. The coefficient not necessarily
shows a causal relation, so it just as well might be that natives are positive about minorities
only because they have a higher employment level and that they are therefore more accepted
in society. To test whether there are differences between groups that are dependent on the
attitude of natives, an interaction term is included in the model. This term is highly
insignificant20 and it does not change the properties of the model, implying that there are no
differences between ethnic groups that depend on the attitude towards them. In addition,
interaction between educational level and attitude towards minorities is also rejected, as all
interaction terms appear to be insignificant.21 Although causality is difficult to determine, the
finding does show that two exogenous factors are significantly related. This result confirms
the issue of mutual understanding and acceptation in the Integration Note 2007 – 2011, as it
seems that in order to improve the position of minorities on the Dutch labour market; it might
just be that effort is required from both immigrants and natives.
The differences between the ethnic groups remain broadly similar to the findings in
Column 1 and 2, although there is less significance among the coefficients. The Somalis are
still the worse performers when it comes to employment level as the coefficient of this group
is relatively high. In the specification of Column 3, only the Antilleans and the Iranians
perform significantly better than Turks. With respect to the control variables, especially
education has large and significant effects on the employment level of minorities, once more
stressing the importance of schooling in the labour market. Both age and gender are not
associated with higher levels of employment in this model, yet all control variables are jointly
significant at the usual levels.
Column 4 presents the result of a regression that incorporates additional control
variables to test the sensitivity of the outcomes in Column 3. Most of the variables survive
this test, yet the full model is somewhat less efficient than the model in Column 3, as
19
Only the effect of higher education, not reported in the table, is larger in magnitude.
20
Not reported here, but available from the author upon request.
21
Id.
47
indicated by the smaller pseudo R2. Most interestingly, the coefficient of the identification
with the own ethnic group becomes significant. Therefore, it might be the case that the
personality associated with identification with own ethnic group is positively valued in terms
of employment level. In other words, the fact that an individual remains highly committed to
the own ethnic group may be a positive personality trait. It is striking, however, that this trait
is negatively related to labour market participation, but seemingly valued with respect to
employment level. Concerning the control variables, education remains to have the largest
and significant impact on employment level. Length of stay in the Netherlands is also
positively related to the dependent variable, while the other control variables show no
significant effects. The complete set of control variables, as well as the set of social
integration variables is jointly significant at all relevant levels in Column 4.
As the analysis on employment level can only concern immigrants that actually
participate in the labour market, unobserved heterogeneity in the decision to participate may
be a potential problem that cannot be accounted for in de first four specifications of the
model. To control for this possible sample selection bias, a Heckman model is estimated and
the results are presented in Column 5 of Table 9. There seems to be some indication of
selection bias, as Hausman tests reject the specifications of Column 3 and 4 in favour of the
Heckman selection model (p-values < .0000). Furthermore, the coefficients in Column 5 are
slightly smaller than those in Columns 3 and 4, implying that there might be some upward
bias in the estimation of the ordered logit models. Most importantly however, all key results
remain after controlling for this sample selection bias. That is, being a member of an
association, good language proficiency, identification with the own ethnic groups and the
attitude of natives are all significantly related to the employment level of minorities.
Moreover, the order of magnitude of these coefficients remains similar to the previous
specifications of the empirical model.
7.3 Attitude towards Minorities

Table 10 provides OLS estimates of regressions on the attitude towards minorities in the
Netherlands. Note that these regressions solely use the ‘Attitude towards Minorities’ dataset
and as such, data is available on the individual level. Also note that for sake of interpretation,
the dependent variable is standardized in Table 10. Furthermore, recall that the attitude is
measured by a construct on a four point scale, where a larger score indicates a more negative
attitude towards minorities. The purpose of these analyses is to show how social factors may
48
Table 10, OLS regressions on Dutch Attitude towards Minorities (standardized)
Dependent variable:
Attitude towards minorities (1) (2)
Social factors
Number of minorities in neighbourhood:
ref. Majority of immigrants
Numerous amount of immigrants .016 -.023
(.087) (.085)
Small minority of immigrants -.121 -.159*
(.084) (.084)
None or hardly any immigrants -.099 -.123
(.084) (.085)
Social contact with minorities in daily life:
ref. Often contact
Regular contact .019 .026
(.057) (.056)
Little contact .091* .080
(.054) (.055)
None or hardly any contact .279*** .219***
(.055) (.058)
Annoyed/irritated by minorities .709*** .692***
(.042) (.041)
Opinion on number of minorities in NL:
ref. Too many minorities
A lot of minorities -.870*** -.802***
(.031) (.031)
Few minorities -1.520*** -1.365***
(.124) (.120)
Opinion on living in the Netherlands:
ref. Very nice
Nice .053* .070**
(.031) (.031)
Not really nice .197*** .223***
(.058) (.057)
Awful .423 .489*
(.278) (.289)
Very awful 1.101*** 1.135***
(.274) (.278)
Controls a No Yes
N 2557 2557
R2 0.4523 0.4841
Prob > chi2 .0000 .0000
Source: GfK/SCP (BOM ’02)
a
Controls include age, age squared, sex, employment, municipality, education and whether the questionnaire
was received before or after the political murder of Pim Fortuyn on May 6th 2002. Income was excluded due to
insignificance.
Note: OLS-estimates, *** = p-value < 0.01, ** = p-value < 0.05, * = p-value < 0.10; robust standard errors in
parentheses. This table presents estimates for the weighted variable of the attitude towards minorities.
Regressions using the unweighted variable provide similar results and are available from the author upon
request.
49
affect this attitude. Column 1 reports the coefficients of a regression without any control
variables and a number of interesting effects occur. First of all, the top panel shows that the
amount of minorities in a particular neighbourhood is not related to the attitude of the Dutch
individuals in that neighbourhood.22 This finding is rather surprising, since one may expect
that the native population might feel threatened by a majority of immigrants in their
neighbourhood. For example, Dagevos and Gijsberts (2008) found that the fast inflow of
minorities in a neighbourhood results in feelings of fear and exclusion among natives and
consequently in a more negative attitude towards minorities. However, such a relation does
not exist in the results above.
Second, it is analysed whether the amount of social contacts with minorities is related to
the attitude towards them. The coefficients indicate that the less contact an individual has with
minorities, the more negative is the attitude. This effect is especially highly significant for
Dutch individuals who have very little or no contact with minorities. More specific, an
individual that has none or hardly any contact with minorities in daily life is associated with
an attitude towards minorities that is almost .3 standard deviations more negative than a
person that has often contact with minorities, all else being equal. It is related to a famous
proverb: ‘Ignorance is bliss’. This correlation would mean that either people with a more
positive attitude towards minorities have more social contact with minorities, or that people
that have more contact with minorities have a more positive attitude than people that
experience less social interaction with immigrants. This finding points to an important policy
implication, because either way, policy makers can influence both ends of the spectrum. First,
they could focus more intensely on the positive aspects of minorities and integration to
enhance the attitude of the Dutch people towards minorities. This point has recently been
made by a Dutch professor who claims that scientists should present more research on the
positive performance of well-integrated immigrants, instead of focusing on the smaller group
of poor performing migrants (Sunier, 2009). Second, policy makers could increase the
opportunities of social interaction between natives and minorities. This issue is also apparent
in the Integration Note of the Dutch Ministry of Public Housing, Spatial Planning and
Environmental Conservation, which provides policy guidelines to prevent minorities into
segregation in low-income neighbourhoods (VROM, 2007). A better mixture of minorities
and natives at the neighbourhood level provides ample opportunities for social interaction
22
The effects are jointly significant at conventional levels, but the most important concern here is that the effects
are not significantly different from one other, indicating that the variation in the amount of minorities is not
related to the attitude towards minorities.
50
between groups and might improve the overall attitude towards minorities. This rationale is
evidenced by the finding that a 50-50 mixture of natives and minorities induces the most
efficient social contacts between the two groups (Dagevos and Gijsberts, 2008). As a
consequence, a policy of mixing neighbourhoods appears to be particularly attractive and
promising. Moreover, the relation between social contacts and attitude towards minorities
supports the stimulation of projects and activities in which migrants and natives can meet and
generate new and sustainable social contacts. It is important to stress that social contacts with
minorities is representing the behavioural component of social integration is this context.
Similar to the analyses on the ethnic minority groups, actual social behaviour seems
particularly essential to achieve constructive integration outcomes.
The next effect shows that if people generally feel annoyed or disturbed by minorities,
the attitude towards them is more negative than for people that not feel annoyed by
minorities.23 This result is relatively large as a person that feels disturbed by minorities is
associated with an increase of .7 standard deviations in the attitude towards minorities,
compared to a person that generally not feels disturbed by minorities, ceteris paribus. This is
not surprising because it seems logical that individuals that perceive minorities as disturbing
generally have a negative opinion about them.
Next, the opinion on the amount of minorities in the Netherlands is found to be very
large and significantly related to the attitude towards minorities. More specific, an individual
who believes that there are few minorities in the Netherlands is associated with a more
positive attitude of 1.5 standard deviations, as opposed to a person who believes that there are
too many minorities in the Netherlands, all else being equal. However, the proportion of
minorities in the Netherlands is relatively small compared to other Western European
countries (see appendix, Figure A3). More detailed analysis shows that more than 55% of the
respondents believe that there are too many minorities in the Netherlands. Interestingly, this
fraction is larger in neighbourhoods that are occupied by a majority of minorities, around
70%, and smaller in neighbourhoods that host fewer minorities, just above 50%. Therefore, it
appears that the closest environment of individuals drives the perception of the total amount
of minorities in the country and consequently shapes their opinion.24 Even though the share of
minorities in the neighbourhood is not associated with the attitude of natives, it might
23
The exact wording of the question used for this analysis (translated from Dutch) is “In general, do you feel
disturbed by the presence of people from another nationality or race in your daily life?” (Yes/No)
24
The two variables are highly significantly correlated (p-value < .0000) and the bottom two categories of the
variable ‘Number of minorities in neighbourhood’ become significant when the opinion on the amount of
minorities is excluded from the regression analysis.
51
indirectly influence the perception of the total number of minorities in the Netherlands and
through this way relate to the attitude. Since it appears that the general opinion of the Dutch
people is that there are too many minorities in the country, policy makers should focus on
informing the population about the positive side of immigrants, as proposed above, and on
comparing the Netherlands to other Western European countries in terms of total fraction of
minorities. Taken together, the two measures of the attitudinal component of social
integration are large and significantly related to the overall attitude towards minorities, once
more stressing that the attitude towards integration of both natives and immigrants is of great
importance for a successful integration outcome.
Finally, the effect of a general opinion on living in the Netherlands is examined. The
results show that the more negative a person thinks about living in the Netherlands, the more
negative is the attitude towards minorities. In particular, people who perceive living in the
Netherlands as most pleasurable are associated with an attitude towards minorities that is
more than one standard deviation less negative than people who believe that living in the
Netherlands is very awful. This outcome might be explained by the fact that a pessimistic
individual is just negative about a number of aspects of life in general. However, since the
questionnaire used for this data dealt solely with the subject of minorities in the Netherlands,
the opinion on living in the Netherlands might be driven by the perception of the amount of
minorities in the country. More in-depth analysis indeed shows that the two variables are
highly correlated25 and that therefore people who believe that there are too many minorities in
the Netherlands, think more negatively about living in the Netherlands in general, or the other
way around. It is hard to tell in what direction the causality runs in this particular context,
since both explanations seem equally plausible.
Column 2 in Table 10 provides OLS estimates for the same regression with a wide array
of control variables. The differences with Column 1 are fairly little, indicating that the social
factors that influence the attitude towards minorities are hardly affected by socio-demographic
characteristics. The only important dissimilarity between Column 1 and 2 is that one of the
categories of the amount of minorities in the neighbourhood becomes statistically significant.
However, there is still no overwhelming evidence that this variable has an essential relation to
the attitude towards minorities. Additionally, one more category of the opinion on living in
the Netherlands becomes significant, but this difference is of minor detail in the overall
analysis.
25
The correlation is significant at all conventional levels.
52
Most of the control variables are significant and have the expected signs. For example,
higher educated individuals have a more positive attitude towards minorities than less
educated people. Interesting to note is the fact that the control variable of whether the
questionnaire was received before or after the political murder on Pim Fortuyn is also
statistically significant. It appears that individuals that have returned the questionnaire after
the murder have a more positive attitude towards minorities. This might be the indication of a
‘shock’ effect, as Pim Fortuyn was one of the first politicians in the Netherlands to openly
question the multiculturalism approach towards immigrants. One explanation could be that
when people are confronted with the reality of being murdered for ones attitude towards
minorities, they adjusted their true opinion to a more nuanced and less negative attitude.
However, more research is needed to find out the actual reasons behind the interesting
difference between the group that have filled out the questionnaire before the murder and the
group that filled it out after the murder.26
26
A quick scan through academic literature reveals that this particular effect has not yet been described by any
author.
53
8. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
This thesis has discussed historical background of immigration and integration in the
Netherlands. Furthermore, it has considered the empirical relations between social integration
of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands and labour market outcomes. In addition, this thesis
examined what social factors are associated with the attitude towards minorities of the Dutch
population and whether this attitude was related to labour market outcomes of ethnic
minorities in the Netherlands. The results obtained in this study point to important policy
implications.
First, both the descriptive statistics and the regression analyses show significant
differences between ethnic groups with respect to labour market outcomes and, as a
consequence, one cannot speak of ‘the minority’ in the Netherlands. Some groups, like
Somalis, Turks and Moroccans seem to be lacking systematically further behind than
relatively well-integrated groups such as the Surinamese, Antilleans and former Yugoslavs.27
Descriptives have shown that the success of these three groups is particularly due to their
good command of the Dutch language and their frequent contacts with the native population.
It is therefore important for policy makers to take these findings into account when designing
policies aimed at ethnic minorities. More specific, it is vital to understand the current
situations of the different groups, how they got there and which characteristics are associated
with positive outcomes in order to create sustainable pathways to improvement. This thesis
provides the essential first steps in this respect, as it presents significant relations between
social indicators and successful outcomes that can be studied in more detail to examine the
causal mechanisms underlying these relations.
Second, it is found that relevant social indicators are related to labour market outcomes
of ethnic minorities. More interestingly, different indicators of social integration seem to be
associated with different labour market results. In terms of the behavioural aspects of
integration, the presence of Dutch friends in one’s social life is associated with a higher
probability on labour market participation, whereas there is no such relation for employment
level. On the other hand, membership of an association appears to be related to employment
level, but not to participation in the labour market. The dominance of social contact did not
relate to either labour market outcome. Overall, social behaviour of minorities is positively
associated with labour market outcomes, suggesting that this type of behaviour should be
stimulated by the Dutch government. Therefore, the current subsidies for activities that bring
27
It is, however, highly likely that the first two groups come from a more favourable background, since the
countries of Surinamese and Antilleans were historically linked to the Netherlands due to colonization.
54
together ethnic minority groups and natives seem particularly appealing and should be
extended. With respect to the attitudinal component of integration, it was surprisingly found
that identification with the own ethnic group was negatively linked to labour market
participation and positively associated with employment level. The importance of language is
confirmed by the results in the sense that it is highly related to both participation in the labour
market and employment level. The effects of language skills were among the most prominent
in the various analyses. The Dutch government was already aware of the importance of
language, as indicated by its campaign on the use of Dutch in daily life. This campaign is also
probably driven by the changed perspective on integration policy which shifted from
multiculturalism towards assimilationism as discussed above.
Third, the analysis on the attitude towards minorities showed that social factors are
heavily associated with this attitude, even when controlled for demographic factors. This
might be an indication that social integration, in particular the behavioural component, is
indeed fundamental in both the labour market outcomes of minorities and the overall attitude
of the Dutch population towards minorities. In turn, this attitude appears to be related to a
higher employment level of immigrants, which suggests that integration effort needs to be
present both at ethnic groups and natives to obtain optimal social outcomes. It has already
been stressed above that there is a need for more positive communication about successful
minorities as well as better information provision about the amount of minorities in the
Netherlands, as natives may have incorrect perceptions about both issues. Moreover, mixing
natives and ethnic minorities in neighbourhoods should improve social interaction between
the two groups, which is in turn shown to be related to labour market participation of
minorities and a positive attitude of natives.
This research is limited by the inability to prove causal relations between the relevant
variables.28 For policy makers, it is crucial to be aware of the causal mechanisms underlying
these relations and design policy accordingly. Although the cross-sectional nature of the data
makes it difficult to establish causality between variables, the study does propose interesting
empirical links, which should be researched in more detail. Moreover, the effects of various
government policies should be evaluated and tested on effectiveness. For example, it is
interesting to study the impact of the recent language campaign on the performance of the
ethnic groups that are relatively lacking behind.
28
Note that this was not the primary intention of the thesis. The aim was to present the empirical relations
between measures of social integration and labour market performance.
55
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58
APPENDIX
A1. Extra Figures
Figure A1, Number of allochtones in the Netherlands, 1972 – 2009

x 1000 persons
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
1972 1975 1978 1981 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008
Morocco Netherlands Antilles and Aruba

Suriname Turkey
Other non-Western
Source: CBS Statline
Note: Data for the different groups of refugees are unfortunately not (yet) available in this data source. However,
as the refugee groups discussed in this study represent a significant share of all asylum applications in the
Netherlands, the graph of ‘other non-Western’ allochtones does provide a decent illustration of their total
number in the Netherlands.
59
Figure A2, Distribution of ‘Attitude towards Minorities’, standardized. (Standard normal
density shown for comparison)
.6
.4
Density
.2
0
-4 -2 0 2 4
Attitude towards Minorities (standardized)
Figure A3, Foreigners as percentage of total population
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Belgium Netherlands Germany Spain Italy

Source: Eurostat
60
A2. Extra Tables
Table A1, Average length of stay in the Netherlands by ethnic group (in years)
Mean Standard error
Turks 19.35 .21
Moroccans 19.17 .25
Surinamese 22.69 .27
Antilleans 15.39 .34
Afghans 7.28 .10
Iraqis 8.34 .09
Iranians 11.11 .14
Former Yugoslavs 12.36 .26
Somalis 10.11 .11
Source: ISEO/SCP (SPVA ’02 and SPVA ’03)
Table A2, Comparing first and second generation labour market participation, in percentages
Total First Generation Second Generation
Turks 49 50 46
Moroccans 46 43 52
Surinamese 71 74 64
Antilleans 68 70 62
Afghans 48 48 31*
Iraqis 47 47 36*
Iranians 62 63 28*
Former Yugoslavs 67 67 60**
Somalis 41 42 17*
Dutch 70 - -
Note: * N < 50; ** N = 83
Table A3, Labour Market Participation and Education
Labour Market Participation N

No education 25.8 % 1275
Max. bao in Netherlands 32.2 % 730
Max. bao in land of origin 40.2 % 1941
Vbo/mavo in Netherlands 62.0 % 605
Vbo/mavo in land of origin 61.8 % 956
Mbo/havo/vwo in Netherlands 73.2 % 657
Mbo/havo/vwo in land of origin 58.8 % 1155
Hbo/wo in Netherlands 90.6 % 287
Hbo/wo in land of origin 62.8 % 656
Total 50.0 % 8262
Source: ISEO/SCP (SPVA ’02 and SPVA ’03)
61
Table A4, Attitude of natives towards minorities by different subpopulations and
specifications, average from 1 to 4, 4 meaning extremely bad attitude
Correlation
Mean of the
with
Mean weighted Correlation
weighted
construct
construct
Amount of minorities in
neighbourhood -.090 (.000) -.103 (.000)
Majority of immigrants 2.58 (.041) 2.62 (.049)
Numerous amount of 2.51 (.017) 2.53 (.020)
immigrants
Small minority of immigrants 2.42 (.012) 2.41 (.014)
None or hardly any immigrants 2.44 (.011) 2.43 (.012)
Social contact with minorities

in daily life .168 (.000) .171 (.000)
Often contact 2.39 (.024) 2.37 (.027)
Regular contact 2.38 (.016) 2.37 (.018)
Little contact 2.43 (.012) 2.42 (.014)
None or hardly any contact 2.55 (.012) 2.55 (.014)
No answer 2.46 (.107) 2.50 (.115)
Education -.283 (.000) -.315 (.000)

Basic 2.64 (.031) 2.71 (.035)
LBO 2.57 (.015) 2.60 (.017)
MAVO 2.48 (.019) 2.49 (.022)
MBO 2.47 (.013) 2.46 (.016)
HAVO/VWO 2.40 (.028) 2.39 (0.32)
HBO 2.32 (.015) 2.28 (0.17)
WO 2.22 (.033) 2.16 (.036)
Monthly income -.127 (.000) -.154 (.000)

< € 2000 2.50 (.021) 2.53 (.025)
€ 2000 - € 3000 2.51 (.018) 2.52 (.020)
€ 3000 - € 4000 2.48 (.015) 2.47 (.017)
€ 4000 - € 5000 2.48 (.017) 2.48 (.020)
€ 5000 - € 6000 2.41 (.019) 2.39 (.021)
> € 6000 2.36 (.017) 2.32 (.019)
Employment .085 (.000) .103 (.000)

Employed 2.43 (.009) 2.42 (.011)
Not employed 2.49 (.011) 2.51 (.013)
62
Table A4, Continued
Correlation
Mean of the
with
Mean weighted Correlation
weighted
construct
construct
Opinion on living in the
Netherlands .173 (.000) .144 (.000)
No answer 2.46 (.096) 2.49 (.123)
Very nice 2.41 (.012) 2.42 (.014)
Nice 2.45 (.010) 2.45 (.011)
Not really nice 2.62 (.025) 2.61 (.029)
Awful 2.70 (.170) 2.76 (.200)
Very awful 3.13 (.145) 3.25 (.155)
Opinion on the amount of

foreigners in the Netherlands -.593 (.000) -.586 (.000)
Too many foreigners 2.65 (.008) 2.68 (.010)
A lot of foreigners 2.22 (.008) 2.18 (.009)
Not much foreigners 1.97 (.049) 1.89 (.055)
Total sample 2.46 (.007) 2.45 (.008)

Note: The columns 3 and 5 provide the correlation between the fat printed variable in the most left column and
the unweighted attitude towards minorities in column 3 and the weighted attitude in column 5.
63
A3. Description of the variable: Attitude towards Minorities
The following statements are used to construct the variable ‘Attitude towards Minorities’. For
the weighted version of the variable, the weight of the answer to the statement is given in red.
Respondents had to rate these statements according to the following scale: 1 ‘Completely
agree’, 2 ‘Agree’, 3 ‘Disagree’ and 4 ‘Completely disagree’. Negatively written statements
are converted to a positive scale to obtain consistent results. Recall that statements concerning
social security issues received a weight of 2 and statements concerning the labour market
received a weight of 3 for the weighted version.
1. It is positive if a society houses people from different cultures (x 1)
2. Those foreign cultures pose a treat for our own culture (x 1)
3. As a foreigner, it is difficult to be accepted in the Netherlands if you want to maintain
your own culture (x 1)
4. The presence of allochtones is a source of criminality and danger (x 1)
5. Legally admitted foreigners should have identical rights on social security as native
Dutch (x 2)
6. Allochtones abuse social security services (x 2)
7. When schools put in effort, the presence of allochtone students can be beneficial for
all students (x 2)
8. The Netherlands houses too much allochtones (x 2)
9. Allochtones are not accepted in the Netherlands (x 1)
10. Some sectors of the economy can only thrive because allochtones work there (x 3)
11. Legally admitted foreigners should be sent home if they are unemployed (x 3)
12. A neighbourhood does not improve if it houses a lot of allochtones (x 2)
13. The inflow of foreigners to the Netherlands threatens our welfare (x 2)
14. The Islam can make a valuable contribution to the culture of our nation (x 1)
64

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Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities in The Netherlands

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SOCIAL INTEGRATION OF ETHNIC MINORITIES

IN THE NETHERLANDS AND ITS RELATION TO

Figure 1, Three waves of immigration into the Netherlands (1945 – 2008)

Immigration 1st Wave 2nd Wave 3rd Wave

Source: CBS (Statline)

2.1 Theoretical considerations

Figure 2, Koopmans et al’s Conceptions of Citizenship

Cultural differences and group rights

Ethnic Assimilationism Segregationism

Source: Ersanilli and Koopmans, 2007

6.1 Structural integration

Figure 3, Distribution of employment level to ethnic group (percentages)

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Elementary Low Medium High Scientific

Figure 4, Educational achievement by ethnic group, for ages between 15 and 64

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Source: ISEO/SCP (SPVA ’02 and SPVA ‘03); Dagevos et al (2003)

Table 3, Dominance of social contacts per minority group (in percentages)

Table 4, Dutch language use per minority group (in percentages)

Speaks Dutch with partner Speaks Dutch with children

Difficulties reading Dutch Assessment of

Another commonly used indicator to measure social integration of an immigrant group is

Table 6, Self-Identification of minority groups (in percentages)

6.3 Preliminary conclusion on structural and social integration

6.4 The attitude towards minorities of the Dutch population

Table 7, Attitude towards minorities of the Dutch population by different subpopulations

Mean (SE) Correlation (p-value)

2,00 2,10 2,20 2,30 2,40 2,50 2,60

7.1 Labour market participation

7.2 Employment level

7.3 Attitude towards Minorities

A1. Extra Figures

Figure A1, Number of allochtones in the Netherlands, 1972 – 2009

Morocco Netherlands Antilles and Aruba

Source: GfK/SCP (BOM ’02)

Figure A3, Foreigners as percentage of total population

Belgium Netherlands Germany Spain Italy

Table A3, Labour Market Participation and Education

Labour Market Participation N

Social contact with minorities

Education -.283 (.000) -.315 (.000)

Monthly income -.127 (.000) -.154 (.000)

Employment .085 (.000) .103 (.000)

Opinion on the amount of

Total sample 2.46 (.007) 2.45 (.008)

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