Abstract
Children of immigrants are an increasing share of children living in the Netherlands. At the same time information about the situations in which these children are growing up is generally limited. Despite the wide variety of origins most studies focus on a few origin groups only. The aims of this article are therefore twofold. Main aim is to provide insight into the socio-demographic position of children of immigrants in the Netherlands on six main indicators. I will do so by including the total immigrant population in the Netherlands and separately distinguishing 60 origin groups, as well as, analyzing first and second generation children of immigrants. Data from the population registers of the Netherlands (including the total residing population) are analyzed and in some cases combined with survey sources. Findings show that children of immigrants, overall, have a less favorable position than native Dutch children regarding the socio-demographic position they grow up in. At the same time there is a huge variety between different immigrant origins and different outcome variables under study. Furthermore, the position of first and second generation children is found to vary in several respects. These findings point to the importance of paying sufficient attention to diversity and including the migration history when studying the position of children of immigrants.
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Notes
Some of the data in the StatLine Database are age specific; other information is available in broader age categories in which the group up to age 18 cannot be distinguished separately.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is based on and draws from the Dutch study within the broader project ‘Children in Immigrant Families in Eight Affluent Countries: Their Family, National and International Context’ funded by the UNICEF Innocenti Centre. For more complete and detailed information on the Dutch part of the study I refer to the online available document: De Valk et al. (2009), ‘Children in Immigrant Families in the Netherlands: A Statistical Portrait and a Review of the Literature’, Innocenti Working Paper, no. 2009-16, Florence, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. The study was finalized by Helga de Valk when she was a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) guest professor at the University of Bremen and fellow at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study (HWK). Parts of the current work were presented in a Dutch article based on the study (De Valk and Beets 2009).
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De Valk, H.A.G. Children of Immigrants in the Netherlands: Growing Up in Diversity. Child Ind Res 3, 503–524 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-010-9080-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-010-9080-4