The Moroccan Community in The Netherlands
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THE MOROCCAN COMMUNITY IN THE NETHERLANDS
INTRODUCTION
In January 2005, 314,699 people of whom at least one parent was born in Morocco were living in the Netherlands, among a total population of more than 16 million. More than 1.5 million people have a nonWestern background. The largest groups are Turkish, Surinamese, Moroccan and Antillean/Aruban, as can be seen from Table 1. Most members of non-Western minority groups live in the major cities, but they are not equally distributed. In both Amsterdam and Utrecht, the number of Moroccans is higher than the number of Turks. But in cities like Rotterdam, Den Haag, Arnhem and Deventer it is the other way round, as illustrated in Table 2. The focus of this article is the Moroccan minority in the Netherlands. It was in the 1960s and 1970s that Moroccan men started to come to the Netherlands as migrant workers. At the time, it was not their intention to settle in the country. However, from the 1980s onwards many workers were joined by their families, and they did indeed begin to settle in the country. In Morocco, approximately 30–40% of the population are Berbers who use one of the varieties of Berber as their mother tongue. Usually, three main groups of Berber languages are distinguished: Tarifit or Rifberber, spoken in the Northern Rif mountains; Tamazight in the Middle-Atlas region; and the variety of Berber in the South is referred to as Tashelhit. The remaining 60–70% of the population speaks Moroccan Arabic, which is the lingua franca in the country. Arabic and Berber differ from each other in many respects, but since they have been used alongside each other for a long period of time, they have mutually influenced each other. In the Netherlands, however, 70–80% of Moroccans originate from the Berber speaking Rif mountains, in the North of the country. Among the first generation, Moroccan Arabic is the lingua franca, as in Morocco, but among the second and third generations, Dutch is dominant. More general introductory information about Moroccans and their languages in the Netherlands can be found in Dorren (1999) and Otten and de Ruiter (1991). Maarten Kossmann published bilingual traditional stories from Berber communities (Kossmann, 2003).
A. Creese, P. Martin and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 9: Ecology of Language, 195–203. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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J A C O M I N E N O RT I E R
Table 1 Some (first and second generation) non-Western minorities in the Netherlands, January 2004, based on www.cbs.nl Total Dutch population
16,258,032
Turkish
351,648
Surinamese
325,281
Moroccan
306,219
Antillean/Aruban
130,722
Table 2 Total numbers of inhabitants and percentages (first and second generation) of people with non-Western, Moroccan and Turkish background in six Dutch cities. January 2004, based on www.cbs.nl Total
% NonWestern
% Moroccan
% Turkish
Amsterdam
739,104
33.9
8.5
5.1
Rotterdam
598,923
34.6
5.9
7.4
Den Haag
469,059
24.6
1.7
3.3
Utrecht
270,224
20.4
8.6
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