Allochtonen Weblog Roundup

Allochtonen Weblog is a Dutch language blog that collects news about the immigrant community in the Netherlands. Here’s a few interesting stories they’ve had this week.


Most Belgian immigrants live under the poverty line – Half of the Turkish and Moroccan immigrants in Belgium live under the poverty risk line of 777 euro a month.

Second and third generation immigrants have even bleaker prospects than the original “guest workers”, a result of an economy that does not have much demand for low educated work.


WRR report violated scientific norms - Two researchers from the Ministry of Justice have put out a report saying that the WRR report about Islamic activism violated basic scientific norms and made faulty use of known facts about Islamic terrorism. (the original article includes quite detailed information and analysis, which I can translate if anybody’s interested)


A colum by Martin Bril in De Volkskrant has started off much debate. The column, which talks about Amsterdam’s “bleak future” when it will have a Moroccan majority has been accused of being racist.


Jewish/Moroccan relations - The recently founded Jewish-Moroccan Network Amsterdam (Joods-Marokkaanse Netwerk Amsterdam) has organized a trip to Morocco to understand life there and to see how the Jewish community functions there.


Muslim girls in sports - A new project in Enschede to convince Muslim immigrant girls to do sports. Fedaus El Alouanti, age 17, is the first champion to come out of the project. She’s Moroccan and is a Taikwando champion.

See also here and here (hip hijab) about developing sportswear for Muslim girls.


More discrimination reports - The Discrimination Report Point in Amsterdam (Meldpunt Discriminatie Amsterdam, MDA) received 867 complaints last year, 25% more than in 2004, apparently because more people know of the MDA’s existence.

The more ‘visible’ complaints are those by ethnic Dutch who’s been abused for supposedly being homosexuals and of young women wearing a head cover who have not found a place for internship or work.


Cheaper flights to Morocco and Suriname – Rynair has got to an agreement with the Moroccan gov’t to provide flights from and to Morocco from various European airports.


Non-Dutch to vote for parliament - Minister Pechtold, Dutch Minister for Government Reform and Kingdom Relations, wants to allow non-Dutch citizens who have lived in the Netherlands for more than 5 years to vote in parliamentary elections. He also wants to attract young people by bringing the voting age down to 16. (his speech, in Dutch, can be seen here)

Note: I wonder what the percent of 'immigrant' vote out of the total could be if you take both factors (age and citizenship) into account.

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