Ethnic Dutch a minority in big cities, so how do they integrate?

Photo: Meredith Glaser via Amsterdamcyclechic.com

Instead of being in the majority in large Dutch cities, the native Dutch have become a minority, according to Maurice Crul of Amsterdam’s VU university.

Crul has been investigating migration and integration for 25 years and has just begun a major new study this year, not of migrant groups but of the ‘white ethnic Dutch’

‘It’s already happening in Amsterdam. Only one in three youngsters under the age of 15 is of Dutch parentage,’ Crul told Trouw.

With a team of eight researchers, Crul is starting a unique €2.5m 5-year study of six large European cities, including Amsterdam and  Rotterdam. Frankfurt, Antwerp, Malmö and Vienna will also come under the spotlight.

If you want to look at integration, you need to look at the ethnic white Dutch, he said. ‘Who adapts to who if there is no majority?,’ he said.

‘The ethnic Dutch are the most unstable factor in Amsterdam. They move in while they are at university, and then leave or move with their young families to the suburbs. Migrant groups sometimes live in the same spot for generations,’ he said.

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