Rubén Gómez Morán – 11125241 ruben.g.moran@gmail.com Msc. Sociology: Urban Sociology Supervisor: Yannis Tzaninis
Second Reader: Evelyne Baillergeau June 30th 2016
The performance of the second generation
of migrants in the labour market of
Amsterdam
A comparison between Zuid-Oost and
Noord-Amsterdam districts
1
1. Introduction ... 2
1.1 Research Question ... 4
2. State of the Art ... 5
2.1 The TIES project ... 7
3. Methodology & Operationalization ... 8
3.1 Quantitative Methods ... 8
3.1.1 Model A ... 9
3.1.2 Model B ... 10
3.2 Qualitative Methods ... 10
4. Data analysis & Findings ... 12
4.1 Model A. Results: Current job prestige ... 12
4.2 Model B. Results: First Job Prestige ... 13
4.3 Data from interviews ... 15
4.3.1 Education & Ethnic composition ... 15
4.3.2 Neighbourhood perception ... 22
4.3.3 Labour market and urban economy ... 28
5. Conclusion ... 43
6. References ... 48
2 1. Introduction
Nowadays, one of the greatest challenges for the European Union is to create the proper conditions to make its economy grow and generate jobs. Unemployment has become a serious social problem all along the EU, and one of the most affected collectives is the migrant one and, more specifically, the second generation of migrants category (Eurostat, 2016). Apart from economic variables, there are other many sociological reasons to be considered if we want to know why the second generation of migrants have such difficulties to find good opportunities at the labour market. In this study I looked at the second generation of migrants’ performance from the perspective of urban sociology by comparing urban economy, urban space and different city districts as variables to determine the labour market performance, as Hedberg & Tammaru (2012) did in their investigation for newly arrived migrants. As many scholars have been reporting (Crul, Schneider & Lelie, 2012), by investigating the labour opportunities of the second generation of migrants we are also measuring how integrative a society is. Actually, some authors remarked the importance of the second generation of migrants’ socioeconomic context by using the MIPEX-D, an index which measures how the legislation helps to guarantee an equal society in economic and social terms (Ibid. p. 169), concluding that the second generation of migrants have significantly less opportunities in some countries such as Austria, Switzerland of Germany in comparison with others as The Netherlands, Sweden or France.
In addition, these authors highlighted the second generation of migrants’ situation all across the European Union (Ibid. p.170) and in this sense, in order to show to which extent the second generation of migrants is a disadvantaged category in socioeconomic terms, they used some investigations which described their situation in certain European countries: in Austria the second generation of Turks has difficulties to get highly skilled jobs (Herzog-Punzenburger 2003); in Germany the descendants of Turk migrants have a poor match between their educational level and the job position (Kalter & Granato, 2007) and in The Netherlands the second generation of Turks has a high unemployment rate and they experience difficulties during the transition to the labour market (Crul & Doomernik 2003).
3 As I understand the object of research, thinking of alternative explanations beyond labour market legislation, helps us to grasp additional factors affecting to the second generation of migrants’ performance. Therefore, geographical and self-experience aspects were relevant during my investigation in which I took into account the role played by the district or neighbourhood in order to assess the labour market outcome, as well as interviews in which the respondents could explain what they thought about their transition to the labour market.
This research was carried out in the biggest city of The Netherlands, Amsterdam. This country is well-known for its multicultural composition and, in addition, is the shelter of many unemployed Europeans who arrive at the country searching for a job (OECD/European Union, 2014). The relevance of my research object resides in its potential of understanding to which extent “multicultural societies” have to rethink themselves. In addition, I want to contribute to second generation of migrants’ literature from an urban perspective, that is to say, addressing the labour opportunities not only statistically but, as I pointed out above, also geographically through certain neighbourhoods or city districts, as van Ham & Manley (2009) did.
According to the statistics department of Amsterdam, the OIS, unemployment rate for this city on 1st of January ’15 was 12% (see Table 1 in Appendix section). However, taken by districts and age, this rate changes: as shown in Table 1 the younger cohorts are doing better than the older ones and the Noord and Zuid-Oost districts lead the rates with 14% and 17%, respectively. Although those districts are leading the unemployment rates, they differ in the demographic composition: the Zuid-Oost is the district with fewer natives and the second largest district in terms of non-western1 migrants whereas the in Noord district the demographic composition is more heterogeneous (see Table 2). Because of their labour market features and their demographic differences, my goal is to find out, through these two districts, which are the factors that might explain the second generation migrants’ performance at labour market and test if the geographical variable can be one of these factors. Although I developed this concept of the neighbourhood as
1
Although this category is widely used in migration studies, with non-western migrants I mean those whose country of origin is located in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Turkey, except Japan and Indonesia.
4 unit of analysis in the theory section, I’d like to point out that this issue has been addressed by other scholars as van Ham & Manley (2009), in whose research paper they studied the neighbourhood effect on labour market outcomes using longitudinal data, concluding that although there’s a geographical effect on individuals’ labour market performance it is rather a small one, giving ground to individual’s variables to explain the outcome in the labour market. My intention is to expand their findings by adding a qualitative approach to the statistical methods, assessing experiences and discourses as well as numerical variables.
1.1 Research Question
Hence, the main research question will be the following:
· How is the second generation of migrants performing in the labour market and how do they experience it in the districts Zuid-Oost & Noord in Amsterdam? Also, some sub-questions stem from the main one:
·What role does the second generation of migrants attribute to their neighbourhood in their labour market experience?
·Is there a reproduction effect from the first-generation of migrants to their children in terms of labour market outcomes?
To make it clear about the case selection, I base my choice on two factors: both districts have a high unemployment rate according to Table 1 but their ethnic composition is rather different –as one can see in Table 2, the amount of natives in Noord almost doubles the natives in ZuidOost. Therefore, if I find that the 2nd G.M. have a poorer outcome than natives even in those neighbourhoods predominantly inhabited by natives, the causal mechanism will be related with other assumptions -which we see in the theory section.
5 2. State of the Art
There have been many papers showing that the second generation of migrants’ integration is a relevant indicator about society’s integration capacity.
First of all, it should be said that the current theories about the second generation of migrants’ integration in Europe draws upon assimilationist theory from United States (Crul, Schneider & Lelie, 2012). The assimilationist theory has been the wide-consensus between scholar during decades and it treats the integration as a linear process in which the migrant acquires the culture of the host country in detriment of his or her country attitudes, which were considered even inappropriate or maladaptive (Miller, 1982). According to this theory, the ascendant progression in the labour market would be given by the cultural value assimilation (Suro, 1998). This theory, however, does not fully fit nowadays because of the economic changes2 that have taken place since its formulation (Portes & Rumbaut, 2005). Because of that, during the 90s two theories emerged to explain the phenomena from a new point of view based on the mentioned economic changes. These two perspectives were the “second-generation decline” and theory of “segmented assimilation” (Crul, Schneider & Lelie, 2012). The first of them, theorized by Gans (1992), poses that the children of post-1965 immigrants would experience certain economic difficulties due to their ethnicity and questions the validity of the linear process integration suggested by the assimilationist theory. The second theory, segmented assimilation, frames my research paper since European studies have been focusing on it:
“The focus has particularly been on the theory’s two alternative ‘modes of incorporation’: downward assimilation and upward mobility through ethnic cohesion. In some ways, this reflects the growing disparity between, on the one hand, immigrant youth who are performing well and, on the other, the relatively high numbers of low-educated immigrants in unstable employment conditions.” (Ibid. p. 22)
Taking the “two-models” perspective, we could appreciate some examples of migrants succeeding and other not doing that well: for instance, the highly skilled first generation
2
6 of immigrants who stablished their lives in a wealthy neighbourhood because of their educational –and so that income- level. In opposition to this, the downward assimilation could be exemplified in the 2nd Generation of Migrants who are living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and, as we’ll see afterwards, end up in less-opportunities-contexts. At this point, we should address an important question that has been causing struggles within social science. In order to determine the probabilities of being employed/unemployed, scholars have been using what is known as “neighbourhood effects theory”. This theory assumes that “where you live affects your life chances”, but, as Slater (2013) argues, the causal effect is the main weakness of this theory because, conversely, one could argue that where you live is just a self-selection phenomenon based in your available resources in the moment of making that decision. Indeed, in this sense Clark & Ledwith (2007) enlarged neighbourhood-choosing theory by arguing that income and education are key variables to explain how do we make such decision but, surprisingly, the ethnic variable plays an important role, making people with more income choose a low-income neighbourhood because of the ethnic composition of it – they give the example of a high-income Hispanic choosing a low-income neighbourhood-.
Thus, it wouldn’t be the neighbourhood but rather the structural effects –and structural inequalities- the explanatory variables of “why you live where you live”, affecting therefore to your life chances. Some scholars were aware of this theory weakness and as van Haam & Manley (2010) did, suggested the usage of longitudinal data instead of cross-sectional data, in order to know what the previous situation was of each person interviewed was. In general, the neighbourhood effect papers end up with a similar conclusion: the more you zoom into the neighbourhood and reduce the scale of your investigation, the more the individual variables displace the neighbourhood as the best quantitative explanation for the labour market outcome. One of these examples is the investigation carried out by Hedberg & Timarau (2013) analysing the performance of newly arrived immigrants, in which they found the neighbourhood effect less explanatory than both what they call “city effect” and the individual context.
In general terms, although some resilient-effect cases about 2nd G.M. trying to avoid social reproduction have been documented, the outcomes aren’t as positive as theories predicted (Ibid. p. 166). In fact, the 2nd generation of migrants living in the Netherlands
7 and whose parents were born in Turkey experience more difficulties than any other ethnic group in the transition to the labour market.
There are many research papers on the socio-economic living condition of the 2nd G.M. Two of them focus on the labour market performance and the causes/mechanisms explaining the outcomes. Silberman, Alba & Fournier (2007) applied the segmented assimilation ideas to the French case and they find out that the individuals coming from former French colonies didn’t have the same opportunities in the labour market as the natives; in addition, some of these individuals reported to suffer from discrimination due to their last name rather than the skin colour. Although the authors wanted to address the causal mechanism in the educational level, they reached the conclusion that the discrimination processes were far from being explained by the educational attainment.
In a similar vein, Tasiran & Tezic (2007) investigated the 2nd generation of migrants performance in the labour market of Sweden. Through quantitative analysis, the authors found out that the parental resources were crucial to understand not only the educational level of their children but also the labour market success. In comparison with their native counterparts, the 2nd generation of migrants in Sweden have fewer opportunities.
2.1 The TIES project
Important research has been done about 2nd G.M. performance in the labour market. An important one is the TIES project, which objective was to set a large socioeconomic dataset about 2nd G. M. conditions all across European countries and cities, such as Brussels, Barcelona or Berlin among others (Crul, Schneider & Lelie, 2012).
The TIES project not only focuses on The Netherlands, but also in other countries such as Austria, Spain or Sweden. This project is, as I outline in the methodology section, an important part of my research paper given that it already analyses the labour market outcome of Turkish and Moroccan 2nd G.M. Its approach is based in quantitative techniques, the questionnaire being the main one, composed by twelve different modules covering different socio-economic variables. Regarding the city of Amsterdam, amongst the most relevant findings we see that the Turkish women rate of economic activity compared with the control group –composed by natives- is different in terms of
8 statistical significance (Ibid. p.177)3 . This means that less Turkish women than native ones are active in the labour market and is supported by statistical analysis.
In addition, the results also are quite high in terms of unemployment rates: for the Turkish 2nd G.M. the unemployment rate is 16.6% whereas the comparison group is corresponded with 2,6%. Even more striking if we look at the results by age cohorts: for the Turkish 2nd G.M. below 20 years-old, the unemployment rate is 12, 9% in contrast with the comparison group, which is 0,0% (Ibid. p. 183).
Due to these facts, we could think about discrimination processes taking place in the job selection processes. In fact, 24,9% reported “Incidental” discrimination experiences while job-seeking, in contrast with 66,9% of the Turkish 2nd G.M. reporting “None self-reported experiences of discrimination”, being Amsterdam the city with the highest rate in this sense. The rest 8.2% declared to suffer “Systematic” discrimination situation during job-seeking processes.
So far, we’ve framed the research object through the contemporary theory as well as getting an idea about the scope of existent projects investigating the 2nd generation of migrants. Since there are two research objects in the literature, namely 2ndG.M. performance in the labour market and geography of unemployment, my aim is to carry out a research in which I can merge both elements and determine, as far as possible, which are the most relevant variables to my case in which I also include experiences on the transition to the labour market and the role played by the place of residence.
3. Methodology & Operationalization
3.1 Quantitative Methods
From a quantitative point of view, I used the TIES project database focusing on Amsterdam city, which entails more than 371 cases and two groups: second generation of migrants whose parents were born either on Turkey or Morocco and a control group composed by natives4. In the TIES questionnaire there are many questions regarding labour market conditions, such as the job position, the kind of contract –
3
70,6% vs. 89,4%, respectively.
4
Although the 2nd generation of migrants were born in the Netherlands, for this research I consider natives just those whose both parents were born in the Netherlands.
9 fixed/temporary- or the hours per week. I applied quantitative techniques to the variables in order to find out whether there’s a significant statistical correlation between being a second generation migrant and a poorer performance in the labour market. Because TIES also classifies each case by postal code in Amsterdam, I mapped, by each district, the socioeconomic conditions of this category.
Since my intention is not only to look at their performance in the labour market but also to see whether there are entrance barriers in it, I carried out two different statistical models, the first of them contains the “current job prestige” as dependent variable and the second one takes the “first job prestige” variable, both measured by the so-called “U&S prestige scale” used by TIES. This scale was posed by Ultee & Sigma in 1983 and it came to replace the previous Dutch scale which measured the job prestige. As the authors of this scale expressed it5 in their article:
“In this article we present a new occupational prestige scale - the U & S (= Ultee & Sixma)-scale for the Netherlands in the 1980s. The U&S-scale comprises 116 occupational titles. These titles have been ranked by a national sample, on the basis of their social standing. While data were gathered at an ordinal level, the scale itself has an interval level by using one of the Thurstone scaling techniques. (…) In the second part of our article a key is presented which enables a researcher to assign prestige scores to all occupations of the nominal classification of occupations used by the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). By using this key occupational data from national surveys, like surveys on the labour force and on the general situation of life, can be used more intensively.” (Sigma & Ultee, 1986 p. 360)
As independent variables, I used the educational level; a binary variable controlling for the fact of having at least one parent who was born in other country than the Netherlands; sex and age as control variables and in addition I divided district by the postal code given by each case in the dataset.
3.1.1 Model A
As I said above, this model tries to explain the “current job prestige”. After dropping all the missing cases, the sample tuned out to be n=484: 278 cases fell in the category
5
The entire article was written in Dutch except for the abstract, which is the only part I could understand and therefore transcript to this investigation.
10 “Second Generation Migrant” whereas the other 206 cases had native Dutch parents. Since the dependent variable was numerical, I carried out a multiple linear regression. The variables included in the model were described above; the results are available in the “Data Analysis” section of the paper.
3.1.2 Model B
In the second model I set the dependent variable as the “first job prestige” in order to find out whether there are obstacles making difficult the entrance to the labour market in the very first time. Because of the nature of the dependent variable6 and after dropping all missing cases, the sample turned out to be n=371: 215 respondents fell in the “2nd generation migrant” category whereas 156 respondents declared to have native Dutch parents. The variables included in this model were the same as the previous model and the results can be found right after the first model results.
3.2 Qualitative Methods
In addition, I collected data through qualitative research techniques, mainly the interview. I carried out 14 interviews: 8 respondents from Zuid-Oost district and 6 living in Noord7 district. The interview questions were divided in two sections: in the first one, I formulated questions regarding the neighbourhood context and perception; in the second one, I asked about the experiences in the labour market including questions such as the job-seeking process and the job positions in which he or she worked. The questionnaire can be found in the Annex.
The requirements for the respondents to participate in the in the interview were: being between 18 and 30 years old, having Dutch passport and having at least one foreign-born parent. Although the way through which I achieved respondents was a bit rough in the beginning, once I got one respondent, I “snowballed” the rest of the sample. Regarding ZuidOost, I used my university networks to find networks and I succeeded. The interviews were carried out between the 20th of March and the 21st of April,
6
Asking for the first job could be problematic due to different factors: the respondent might not recall which job was it, for instance.
7
However, one of the Zuid-Oost respondents lived also in Noord, so that case could be considered as fitting in both categories.
11 excepting one which was carried out the 23rd of May. I anonymized every interview; therefore every respondent name is changed in order to keep it anonymous.
Regarding the two districts, ZuidOost is composed by 7 administrative neighbourhoods with a population of 84.567 habitants in 2015. As the interviews reflect, the whole district is well-known by its ethnic composition and, in addition, as almost all respondents stated, the district has been criminalized and was named as “the Amsterdam’ ghetto”. The average income per person in Zuid Oost is 25.900€ per year, according to the OIS (2015), which is the lowest right after the district of Westpoort8. The Noord district is composed by 14 administrative neighbourhoods and, according with the data collected in the interviews, it isn’t known by its ethnic composition –at least not more than any part of the city of Amsterdam- but rather by its quietness, open spaces, green areas and, as I’ll show in the data analysis, depending on the neighbourhood is also known by its crime rate. The average income per person in Noord district is 26.700€ per year, which is the third lowest after Westpoort and ZuidOost (Ibid. p. 30).
In both cases, the average income per person per year is below the city’s average, which is 33.100€. As I mentioned in the beginning, both districts have similar economic indicators in terms of income and unemployment but the ethnic composition differs. Therefore, I find pertinent to pick these two neighbourhoods in order to answer the research question posed in the beginning.
The 2nd g.m. concept, as we saw earlier, means to have at least one foreign-born parent. The theory framing this category will be the segmented assimilation theory, which says that there are two differentiated groups when it comes to labour market performance: those doing quite fine and those with low educational attainment and a poorer performance9. Thus, this research will also serve as a test to know to which extent the educational attainment is crucial to understand labour market outcome in those districts.
8
Nevertheless, Zuid Oost could be considered as the district with lower average income per person in the city since Westpoort is statistically problematic due to the scarce population living there.
9This doesn’t imply that those with lower educational level have per se a worse
situation in the labour market; it is rather a division of those who are doing fine in the labour market –including also cases with low educational level- and others with a poorer performance and any kind of educational attainment.
12 4. Data analysis & Findings
I carried out a double phase methodology: in a first step I ran a linear regression and conducted 14 interviews. In the second phase, once I had both quantitative and qualitative data, my intention was to contrast the statistical analysis with the interviews and therefore find out what the relevant aspects amongst the discourse were. In this section the reader will see the data in the following order: first, the linear regression results with the coefficients that turned out to be statistically significant as well as the interpretation of those results; second, the contrast of these statistical results with the data collected through interviews, that is to say, the elements found in the interview analysis that turned to support what I found in the statistical analysis.
4.1 Model A. Results: Current job prestige
Table 3. Current Job Prestige. Multiple
Linear Regression results.
Variables Coefficients 2nd G.M. -2.506628 Educational Level 1.853233** Sex (0=Male; 1=Female) 1.046721 Age -.9305436** Districts (Dummy variables) Centrum -6.915621 Nieuw-West -3.013604 West -3.012963 Zuid -5.665883 Oost .4873602 ZuidOost -5.824927 R2 N 0.3828 484
Note: the reference category for the dummy variable is the "Noord District". Statistical significance: **p<0.01
Model A aims to explain the current job prestige from the variables described above. As shown in Table 3, two variables turned out to be significant: the educational level and the age. The correlation is positive in both cases: the higher the educational level gets
13 the more prestigious the job becomes; for each year passing by, the job prestige increases. There’s no significant effect on the district and the sex is not relevant in order to explain the job prestige in this sense. As the R2 shows, the model explains 38,3% of the dependent variable’s variance. Since our comparison is between Noord and Zuid Oost districts, I created dummy variables for each district except for the reference category, which is Noord district.
4.2 Model B. Results: First Job Prestige
The performance in the labour market takes also into account which obstacles and to what extent the entrance to it varies amongst different social categories. In Table 4 the dependent variable is set on the first job prestige, controlling for the 2nd generation of migrants category.
Table 4. First Job Prestige. Multiple Linear
Regression results. Variables Coefficients 2nd G.M. -5.673129** Educational Level .9461507** Gender (0=Male; 1=Female) 2.409783 Age 1.161614** Districts (Dummy variables) Centrum -4.733097 Nieuw-West -6.995429** West -2.220285 Zuid -4.980397 Oost -1.810747 Zuid-Oost -9.388388* R2 N 0.3203 371
Note: the reference category for the dummy variable is the "Noord District". Statistical significance: **p<0.01; *p<0.05
In contrast with the Model A, in Model B five variables turned out to be statistically significant. The first of them, the “2nd
14 correlation with the first job prestige, which means that having at least one foreign-born parent makes your first job prestige decrease in -5.67 points in the U&S scale. As in the previous model, the educational level seems to be significant in order to explain the first job prestige, thus, for each point educational increases, the first job prestige increases in 0.95 points. As well as the educational attainment, the variable which measures age was also significant in the model, with a positive relation which says that for every year one gets older the first job prestige increases 1.16 points. As I’ll show through the qualitative data, far from being a strange phenomenon, the age at which one gets the first job will determine the prestige of it.
In the district dummy variables and in contrast with the Model A, two districts turned out to be statistically significant. The first of them, Nieuw-West, has a negative correlation with the dependent variable so that those living in this district have almost seven points less in their first job prestige compared with living in Noord10. The second district is Zuid Oost, which also has a negative correlation with the dependent variable -stronger than the Nieuw-West correlation- which says that living in Zuid Oost entails 9,39 points less in their first job prestige. It goes without saying that these statistical correlations apply on both 2nd generation of migrants and those whose parents are Dutch natives, however, it must be said that the worse scores on the dependent variable come from those i. who fall in the 2nd generation of migrants’ category, ii. don’t have an high educational level, iii. are young and iv. live either in the Nieuw-West or in Noord. Finally, in Model B the R2 indicates that around 32% of the dependent variable’s variance is explained by the independent variables included in the model.
Taking both models, we see that in statistical terms the main obstacle is set in the first job and not in posterior jobs. This means that the entrance to the labour market, for the second generation of migrants, entails a complex social context in which the opportunities they have aren’t the same as the native counterpart. Nevertheless, the fact that after the first job –which can be supposed as an experience gaining- the job prestige remains equal for both categories is quite remarkable.
15 4.3 Data from interviews
As I explained before, my intention was to find out the factors affecting second generation of migrants’ performance through qualitative research, given the statistical results. For that purpose, first I’ll show an overview of these 14 interviews with age, educational attainment, current job position, first job position, district, self-perception of social class and neighbourhood perception11.
Table 5. Interviews Overview
Zuid-Oost Noord Total
No. Interviews 8 6 14 Male 2 3 5 Female 6 3 9 Educational Level MBO 1 - 1 HBO 5 3 8 University (Bch.) 1 1 2 University (Msc.) 1 2 3 Age (average) 21,9 23.7 22,64 Social Class (Self-Perception) Low 1 2 3 Low-Middle 4 1 5 Middle 2 1 3 Middle-High 1 2 3 High - -
4.3.1 Education & Ethnic composition
As table 5 shows, the educational level is rather high: just one respondent is studying the lowest category in the table. However, according to two respondents who have the Master level, the university level atmosphere is too much white and one of them even compares it with gentrification:
11Interviews’ questionnaire can be found in the Annex, but with neighbourhood
perception overview I’ll just show the question which says “describe your neighbourhood in three words”.
16
“I: Why do you think they would be happy…people consider gentrification process being a good/bad thing?
R: I think a lot depends of safety, I think it’s difficult, most people are very positive about gentrification, people start renovations, to make public places more beautiful…that’s a positive thing, but the negative thing is that…different sound disappear from the neighbourhood, and the world where we’re living now it’s not a white world, we’ve to accept that there are a lot of a…you see with gentrification the racism and discrimination in society. I do History –UvA- and in the last course they are only male and only white. University is like you see what happens with discrimination and racism because not a lot people have chances to…it’s not because they’re not smart! It’s because they don’t have the opportunities. I think that’s the same with gentrification, it expresses the discrimination and racism a lot.” (Nika, Female, Swiss background, Zuid Oost)
Another respondent tried to address the reasons why universities are white and she put the focus on the primary school examination processes:
“I: We’re going to talk about the school, where was it? Was it in Utrecht? R: Yeah
I: Do you remember the name?
R: Uhm…”De Carousel”, but I think they changed the name by now… it could also be that it was the worse in my province not in the country, for the first eight years in my school life I had one Dutch white person in my class, or maybe two…For me it was kind of bad, my last two years which were very important I didn’t have classes because they didn’t have teachers, so we’d have Monday morning lecture, we would do self-study and we’d finish our lectures… I was quite good at school because I always had a passion for reading and because I read a lot my Dutch was well developed and because my languages skills were good I could understand what the assignments were asking for me…it was bad and it was for my disadvantage because I had the highest score in the end and I was supposed to be placed at the highest level which would give you direct access to the university because that’s determined at 11 years old, but because I was from that neighbourhood I was placed in lower levels… and they said “yeah
17
her test results were good but she probably guessed well” or something…it’s terrible, but then I mean I’m not the only one to which this happens, that’s one of the reasons why people of colour in the Netherlands are underrepresented in high school…it’s not intentionally by the teachers it’s just the way we think of each other and is also the other way around, I have friends who come from really wealthy families with doctors and lawyers we were talking the other day and she said “my exams at primary school were really bad, I’d to go to the lowest and then my director came and told me “You must have been sick that day you should take a re-test, I did a re-test and it was even lower, then he wrote a letter to my high school saying somehow I couldn’t make the exam but I’m very very smart enough to do the highest” and then she got a place in the highest… so this is the other way around. These are not exceptions but that’s okay…that was my school a bit shitty but yeah…” (Beatrix, female, Turkish
background, Noord)
This kind of statements contrast with the fact the three respondents who studied until master level were white and at least two of them were critical with the ethnic composition of universities, whereas none of the other respondents mentioned the ethnic variable as a key factor to reach a higher educational level. However, it must be said that several respondents made statements remarking the ethnic composition of their primary school, sometimes with negative connotations:
“I: In general terms, was it a good or bad school?
R: I don’t think people really know about the school and the reputation… well, I think if you compare with other schools in Amsterdam it was a black school, they always have this kind of picture of “I won’t send my child to a black school” and there’s a specific reason for that because you wouldn’t just say it, I don’t know why… There’s a kind of reputation about the school… because they know…they were only people from outside of Holland so maybe people outside of ZuidOost would think “people are afraid of the unknown”, I think is more like that, their children would influence they in some way…they could bully them… probably the fact that it was a black school would give it a bad reputation”
18 In Deborah’s opinion, her school probably had a bad reputation because of its ethnic composition. Since I asked to each respondent the school’s name, I’ll show afterwards the school’s ranking according to the Dutch score, so that the reader will be able to appreciate whether this reputation came from a subjective perception or actually it had an objective12 bad reputation. The following respondent considered her school as “not enough mixed”, in this case it was a completely white school and she appears to disagree with this kind of education:
“I: Okay, do you have any remarks about your school? Can you describe briefly your experience?
R: Uh…really small school, nice thing is that it had green areas, football field, basketball field, we could just play around, I could go by bike, 10 minutes, yeah, the only thing is that…there weren’t a lot of migrants, I didn’t appreciate that much, the choice of my parents, it wasn’t really mixed.” (Emma, female,
Argentinian background, Noord)
However, comparing these two quotes we see that actually the fact of being educated in a white school wasn’t a matter of reputation for Emma, whereas being educated in a black school meant bad reputation according to Deborah. Other respondents, as Liam, mentioned the ethnic composition of its school as something positive:
“I: Some questions about your primary school… Where was it exactly?
R: In Venserpolder, “Het Klaverblad”, there’s where I used to go to school, it was a nice school, it was mixed, Moroccan people, Surinamese people, white people…everything, I liked that, multicultural.” (Liam, male, Surinamese
background, Zuid Oost)
Beyond positive or negative remarks, other respondents made remarks in the line that Beatrix made, that is to say, putting together the ethnic composition and the school performance or school ranking:
12It goes without saying that by “objective” I mean the setting of it in an institutional
indicator, but actually depending on the goals one has, the subjective perception could be more helpful. In this case I just want to address the fact that some respondents could see themselves as “educated in bad reputation schools” and contrast this with the available institutional information.
19
“R: It was in the same neighbourhood, I started from 1999 up to 2004 and then my mother said “you have to go to other school”, it was in Oost, so I’ve had a little mix of neighbourhood, my first school was a fun time but also a rough time because of the fact that there were a lot of black people of the school and the educational level was low, when I moved to Oost I noticed the people were different.” (Ulrike, female, Surinamese background, Zuid Oost)
Not all the respondents living in Noord went to school in Noord. However, those who did, gave different visions of the district which led me to think that actually there’s a huge contrast between neighbourhoods in the same district. First we’ll see Emma’s perception of her neighbourhood –Nieuwendam- and afterwards a brief comparison with Sanders’s –who comes from Banne’s neighbourhood- perspective:
“I: Do you think that actually it makes a difference to live in other parts of Noord?
R: In terms of what?
I: Like if it’s quiet for instance
R: I don’t know! I think there are some places which people can perceive safer, I don’t know if you know Noord very well but you have for instance the “nieuwendammerdijk”, which is really…for another stage of people, richer, I think more tourism… and then where I live, just flats, I don’t live in a flat, you have houses…Well yeah, it makes a difference, I don’t know…” (Emma, female,
Argentinian background, Noord) Now Sanders’ quote:
“R: Yeah…the people are very different where I live now, so it’s a little bit…a lot of people from different ethnicity, from I lived first there were a lot of original Dutch people so…yeah, that was different you know? And all the neighbourhood was quiet and where I live now it’s alive, you know?
I: Can you describe it? R: Like how?
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I: The people living there…the perception you have on your neighbourhood, is it good or bad, safe or unsafe…
R: Well, like for me I grown up with this kind of people where the crime of rate is pretty high, yeah… So it’s…yeah, it’s quite dangerous if you are not from there.
I: Why is it dangerous?
R: A lot of people of my age, they rob things you know, rob stores, rob houses, they sell drugs, they do…a lot of people hang just in the street late in the night, they make a lot of noise, you know they just do things like…yeah, you know how a bad neighbourhood is, right? People do things that are just not normal”.
(Sanders, male, Pakistani background, Noord )
In contrast with Zuid-Oost, where respondents don’t declare to feel such inner-district differences, in Noord seems to be that even depending on the neighbourhood you live, the crime rate is quite higher and the social class –as Emma said, “rich people, people from other stage”- varies deeply. To confirm this, let’s see another quote from Sanders:
“R: Yeah… well a lot of people outside the neighbourhood think that Noord is like a ghetto or something, in my neighbourhood is true cause the crime rate is high but there are also some neighbourhoods that…with white old normal people like my old neighbourhood… what I see is like their building, new buildings, like a…they are putting olds away and replacing with new homes, it’s actually better, crime rate it’s getting low this way.
I: Yeah so you were grown up there so comparing the past and the present, do you think it has been improved? I mean the neighbourhood safety, is it as dangerous as it used to be?
R: It was more dangerous, you have now more “street-coaches”, they are not like the police, they just bike around the hood and if they see some children laying in the street they say “why are you here, are you still going to school?”, you know and in some kind of way it works cause…it helps like a…because they talk to the parents of the children like “why are you children so late outside?”,
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it works actually, before that there was a lot of youth late in the night.”
(Sanders, male, Pakistani background, Noord)
Sanders ties here three interesting elements: the first of them, the fact that school programmes are not working properly since he says that you can find children around street during school time; second, the perception of school improving through the implementation of surveillance strategies and third the fact that actually this all happens at the same time that old buildings are being demolished and new houses are being built up, just as Nika said about the gentrification processes that took –and are taking- place in Zuid-Oost.
Since the educational level variable included in both statistical models turned out to be significant, I also asked the respondents to talk about their educational level as well as their primary school experience. In Table 6 there’s a brief description of the CitoScore for the schools collected in both districts. If we compare Table 5 and Table 6, we can hardly say that actually it makes a difference on your higher diploma obtained depending on the school you attended since the difference between Noord and Zuid Oost is not that wide. Conversely, we could argue that even when the CitoScore of ZuidOost schools is significantly lower compared with Noord ones, the educational level of those respondents living in the first district is rather high.
Table 6. CitoScore ZuidOost Noord Average 527,4 534,1 SD 3,7 5,0 Max. 534,4 539,2 Min. 523,26 528
Note: Some respondents didn't give the name of their school due to a lack of memory or confusion with secondary school.
In addition, the standard deviation for Noord is higher than in ZuidOost, which could support Emma’s statement about the difference about living in different neighbourhoods in Noord. In order to extract useful conclusions from this section, here I summarize the most relevant findings::
22 ·First, that the ethnic composition is presented in a negative way when is too homogenous and in a positive way when is heterogeneous. The most homogeneous schools, according to our respondents, are located in Zuid-Oost and in general the CitoScore for these schools is lower.
·Second, although the homogeneity in terms of ethnicity is presented as something negative, the educational level reached by the respondents in both districts is rather similar -HBO-, with the exception of one respondent, who has two master diplomas.
·Third, even when the social class self-perception is lower in Zuid Oost than in Noord, the educational level as a result of HBO + Bch. + Msc. is higher in Zuid Oost than in Noord. As I said before, Beatrix said due the reputation of her school, the CitoScore was modified even when the student had high grades and she remarked that that wasn’t something exceptional from her but rather something happening to all her ex-class mates.
·Finally, there were some allusions to the fact that Zuid Oost schools have a bad reputation because of Bijlmer’s bad image to the rest of Amsterdam. In the following section we’ll see where that bad image comes from according to the respondents’ answers.
4.3.2 Neighbourhood perception
In order to find the causal mechanism with entails the two elements, namely labour market performance and neighbourhood, I included three questions about the neighbourhood perception in the questionnaire. The first of them asked about how they saw their neighbourhood, what they thought about it and how their perception is formed; the second asks how they think people in general see they neighbourhood; the third asks the respondents to define they neighbourhood in three words and then explain why they picked those words.
23 Table 7. Neighbourhood Description
Key Words ZuidOost Noord
Safe 2 1 Dangerous 2 1 Multicultural 6 3 Good place 12 7 Developing 1 4 Boring - 3
The Table 7 shows an aggrupation of the raw data in key words, that is to say, the interviewees explained what they wanted to say with those words and because of that I made up categories to join the ones who had the same meaning. Regarding safety, all the respondents from ZuidOost district didn’t report any kind of criminal activity suffered by themselves, except for Tara, who stated the following:
“I: Okay, so we’ll talk about the Noord neighbourhood and ZuidOost. First I’ll ask you about the neighbourhood you live now, what do you think about living there?
R: Well it’s okay, it’s like a ghetto, I live in a student closed space so there’s a lot of police going around, but there have been some burglaries and stuff so…my dad is not really happy with me living there so I probably I’m going to move… but overall it’s okay.
I: Why do you say it’s a ghetto?
R: Well, there’s a lot of…burglaries, a lot happening so we’ve a lot of police so you can take it in a good way or in a bad way, cause if it was a good neighbourhood you wouldn’t need much police but now with the police is getting better, less burglaries, but there were some rapes in my neighbourhood and some…that’s all.
I: Did you experience some of…?
R: No, there was a burglary with the guy next to me, so I put an extra lock, they tried to open it up but I was at home so I opened the door and then he saw I was home and he left, my dad told me to move.” (Tara, female, Surinamese
background, Zuid Oost)
For the rest of the time she lived there, namely 2 years, she didn’t experience any kind of robbery or delinquency. Therefore I asked to each respondent where did they get this
24 image or reputation about the neighbourhood. In the case of Tim, he thinks it is because of the past:
“R: Is not dangerous at all.
I: Okay… so regarding the public or general perception, what do you think it is? What do you think others think about your neighbourhood?
R: Yeah like I said they think is not a good place to live, because it used to be a very dangerous place, in the ‘90s I think but now it’s much better. For example, I come from Pakistan, people outside Pakistan think is a very dangerous place to live but I lived there and is not dangerous, it’s very safe.” (Tim, male,
Pakistani background, Zuid Oost)
Liam, another respondent who lives in Zuid Oost, addresses the importance of social and mass media to set the image given to the neighbourhood:
“R: In my opinion the people who live here think the same as me, they like to live here, but for example in the media there was a kind of interview I saw it on youtube, there were two people and there were walking down the Bijlmer, in Amsterdamse Poort, they were talking to each other but how they act towards the people here was…like animals, like they were on a safari, they made jokes, “hey you can feed the people here”, “don’t look them at the eyes, no no wait!” and in their opinion it was for joke purpose but it’s not a thing to joke about, in the media it is negative…but there are also good parts of the media where they show the good and beautiful things of the Bijlmer” (Liam, male, Surinamese
background, Zuid Oost)
He’s not the only one mentioning the media as the origin of the reputation, for example, Ulrike has a similar opinion:
“R: I think from the news, the media, “there’s always something that is illegal and going on in the Bijlmer, Amsterdam ZuidOost, not always safe there, you don’t be alone there because it’s always scary because of all of the black people living there”, I think that’s the only source to make the Bijlmer like a bad place.” (Ulrike, female, Surinamese background, Zuid Oost)
25 Surprisingly, the Noord district was also regarded in some interviews as one with a criminal past:
“R: Is a very quiet neighbourhood… The Noord of Amsterdam wasn’t always known as a good neighbourhood because of… a lot of criminal activity, bikes get stolen, people get robbed, bus drivers get robbed, so I was a bit hesitant of living there but… I don’t have any complaint, it’s very quiet, nice neighbours, I have accommodation close by the store, shops, yeah, so… And the transportation is very easy the bus stop is in front of my door.
I: So you said it was considered in the past as a bad neighbourhood? R: Yes, some people say still is, but I haven’t noticed yet
I: How do you now this? I mean…somebody told you “this is not a good neighbourhood” or something?
R: Yeah besides it also the media because every time you turn on the news you see something happened, few months ago a mother was murdered by a ex-husband or boyfriend in front of her school, her two little kids... . Sometimes you hear stories like that in the media and you’re like “Uhm…I don’t want to walk the street at night” but I never felt unsafe, it’s only the media, I guess
I: But in your neighbourhood you feel it like the media says or the opposite? R: Huh, from my opinion is more…the media says…is getting blow up by the media because you walk on the street you don’t see anyone! I don’t see gangs, I don’t see a lot of groups of guys hanging around in the playgrounds… So yeah, the part where I live I guess, it’s a quiet neighbourhood.” (Olalla, female,
Surinamese background, Noord)
Another key topic is the ethnic composition of the neighbourhood. In this sense, it fits with the official data given that Noord is not heterogeneous as Zuid Oost. In general, when they were asked to talk about their neighbourhoods and they mentioned the multicultural aspect, it was in a positive way. However, almost all the respondents addressed as problematic the fact that there were some groups of people “hanging out on the corners of big malls” which could harm the image of the district. As Olalla says, she didn’t see those “gangs” and she even attributes this feeling to something rather
26 inducted from the media. Although I tried to find those groups physically to conduct interviews, I felt as if I wasn’t “touching” the real and problematic topics since all my respondents had education, didn’t deal with drugs and as I’ll show afterwards, they had a job. In other words, when the topic “safety” was taken as part of the interview, they always would point out as if there were actually visible groups of people to who you could refer in the everyday life as “dangerous”, however, this groups seem to form part of a deeper part of the neighbourhood, a deeper, too closed network.
To illustrate this, we can see some quotations:
“R: I also see them when I go to the grocery store, I always men like four or five men, sometimes is more depends on the weather, if it’s cold they are not around the mall but if it’s like this [sunny day] there are groups like talking and drinking alcohol smoking something, sometimes I heard from friends and family “yes I saw them standing a little bit funny or drunk” or stuff like that.
I: And how old are them would you say?
R: I’d say…maybe 20, 25? Also grown men, maybe 30-35, depends on the friends and relations between them, sometimes they are with their children…”
(Ulrike, female, Surinamese background, Zuid Oost)
These kinds of remarks were also made by Liam, living in Zuid Oost:
“(…) the negative part of it, in the past, the criminal past, to be honest some parts where I live now, if you go a little bit further it’s completely different as in the people living there, young people hanging in the corner of the street wasting their time to drug for example… is their thing but… maybe is not a good thing to do for the people surrounding you in the neighbourhood because you give a form of fear because of the past of the Bijlmer
I: So… you hang out with those kinds of people? R: That’s not my thing at all [laughs]
I: Is that common in the neighbourhood?
R: In some kind of neighbourhood. Not mine, but if you go few meters further, there it is.
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I: How do you think that affects to the neighbourhood?
R: In a negative way… people are feared because of the past, they think they will rob you, because maybe they are chilling there having fun with their friends but because of the past it gives you a negative feeling…not me, I’m used to it, but people who are not common here or new here…they will get them a negative feeling” (Liam, male, Surinamese background, Zuid Oost)
When he was asked about the age of these groups, he said they would be between 18 and 25 years old, and, since they are also young, as investigator I feel like having the intuition that this groups are the ones who could contribute with essential and key information to this investigation in order to find the factors through which being a 2nd generation migrant makes your first job’s prestige decrease.
As the statistical models shows, both the educational level and being a 2nd generation migrant play a role in order to explain the first job prestige. Therefore, the fact of not having any respondent with low education further than MBO makes the sample a bit incomplete; anyway, I’ve already explained the difficulties to find this profile of respondents, who are considered as “the other” or “the strangers” even for the people living in both districts, as Sanders said:
“R: Yeah I’ve grown up with this people, I’m just a few of them that are still in school, learning in university something like that, much of the people at my age are walking…doing nothing, some doing things that are illegal…” (Sanders,
male, Pakistani background, Noord)
Only one out of 14 had the lowest educational level, MBO. The implication of this during the conclusions extracted from both sources of data should be kept in mind. Further investigation with network-deepening in these districts could shed light on those closed social groups.
To summarize the most relevant findings in this neighbourhood perception section: ·First, it seems to be there are virtually two Zuid Oost districts: the one which is perceived as a nice place with green areas and safe and the other one which is reflected by the media as dangerous, as somewhere where “bad things are happening”. The perception from the respondents living there is the one of a
28 safe, quiet neighbourhood, but when they are asked to think how others think about their neighbourhood the “external” perception comes as something negative.
·Second, for the Noord district things are a bit more different. Some respondents declared this place as “grey, old and without cultural attractions” in contrast with Zuid Oost, which is “alive” and “fun”.
·Third, if both districts have something in common is this bad image or reputation given by external actors, blaming on certain groups which hanging out on corners but, as Liam said, “just chilling”.
·Finally, further research could be carried out by deepening in those social networks mentioned by the respondents, mainly composed by second generation migrants whose educational level is quite low.
4.3.3 Labour market and urban economy
One of the things I got from the interviews is the generalized perception of gentrification processes in both districts, perhaps more present in Noord respondents than in Zuid Oost, but not always being mentioned directly as “gentrification”. In this sense the interview with Beatrix was quite productive and extensive:
“I: Can you talk about your neighbourhood? Like what do you think about it… R: Noord?
I: Not the entire Noord but the neighbourhood where you live
R: Is kind of becoming more hipster-like [laughs], you probably know the history of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Noord used to be not-considered Amsterdam because you had to take the ferry and it wasn’t as easy to reach the rest of Amsterdam, there was literally water in between, it was like “well if you come from Noord you’re not from Amsterdam” but you see that it’s been a shift, maybe because the infrastructure it’s getting better and also they are planning this government planning thing for a metro line what makes it even more reachable, as this is also happening you see also that the neighbourhoods and this is also one of my neighbourhoods which was one of the worse
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neighbourhoods like a decade ago, cause there were apparently a lot of migrant families from low social classes, I mean that’s what they say high level of criminality and etc., but you see that that’s been shifting, I think for two reasons, I see much more students living there and what they do is social housing corporations, they are in a phase of rebuilding or renovating the current houses cause they are quite old, all of them were renovated just after the second world war so the neighbourhood the housing itself is pretty old but they are being renovated and they are making new blocks, mostly selling blocks so you see a shift. Initially you’d think is kind of balancing out, so there are more students and starters so people who are recently graduated and have a job they rather buy a house there because it’s still very close to Amsterdam but at the same time is cheaper, so the social class level in the neighbourhood is kind of shifting and when I say is becoming more hipster is because you see these little hum…one man corporation popping up, little shops, coffeshops where you can buy some clothes and do some readings at the same time, hum…clubs, they’re investing in clubs and other cool stuff, but still you also have the families that have lived there for 30 or 40 years and they’re from low social classes and there’s mixing going on if you look at the plans of the neighbourhood community or municipality because they’re making it more free market so to say, I’m afraid that it will become like this rich posh neighbourhood which I wouldn’t like to see happening so…yeah, that’s my neighbourhood. For now quite mix, I mean…I don’t know what else to talk” (Beatrix, female, Turkish background,
Noord)
As I showed before, Sanders, another respondent from Noord, talked about increasing surveillance and old buildings demolishing without mentioning explicitly the word “gentrification”. The effects of this process are not perceived totally positive or negative by the respondents, as we could appreciate from Beatrix’s interview. To support this argument, let us see two more quotations from Noord respondents:
“R: I think now is changing because is a booming neighbourhood, they’re building a lot of new houses, also that’s also getting promoted much in the media so… I think people are more accepted in the neighbourhood and not afraid as much as they used to be.” (Olalla, female, Surinamese background,
30 And now one quotation from Gerrit, who addresses the gentrification issue mentioning it:
“R: Well… I think that the lower class is need to liberate themselves and start fighting for their rights or whatever so I’m proud to live there as part of this lower class…but also is a developing area… Amsterdam is being crowded so there are investors that are coming from other parts that are trying to make this area like to bring this gentrification process up, you know? So that this lower class that exists here would be eventually pushed out because they can’t afford it anymore, the housing prices are growing up already at a very fast pace so yeah…
I: How do you see this in the daily life of the neighbourhood…how do you see this gentrification process?
R: Well there are a lot of building projects around me…there are like new buildings are being erected and in my backyard I can see the guys working on the metro line that is supposed to link the centre of Amsterdam with the North by metro, so like all these things are linked in and like parties and new buildings like hiring buildings renovation projects or whatever they are contributing to this process.” (Gerrit, male, Mexican background, Noord)
In general, Noord’s economy is characterized by the presence of supermarkets but, according to the respondents, other than that there’s nothing more:
“I: Okay! Regarding your daily life, I mean, when you have to do your groceries, taking a walk, hanging out with friends…do you do your daily life in your neighbourhood or you move elsewhere?
R: No, I have to move elsewhere. For my groceries is perfect! I’ve all the services, I’ve organic supermarkets close to my house, Landmarkt, also Turkish supermarkets, Indonesian…I’ve a lot of choices. To do something hang out with friends, cinema or restaurant or beers, I’ve to move to the east side of Amsterdam, is closer.” (Emma, female, Argentinian background, Noord)
31 Emma’s vision seems to be shared by Sanders, who said the following:
“R: Actually in the city, in my neighbourhood you can’t do nothing and there are lot of…yeah…people doing things…I’m not with that, not down with down, I go to school I go to work you know, I don’t find that kind of problems, that’s why rather go to the city better than staying in my neighbourhood.”(Sanders,
male, Pakistani background, Noord)
Nevertheless, this situation seems to be changing since the new metro line will open its doors this year and old buildings are being demolished. Maybe these are the reasons why Beatrix considered Noord as a place being “hipsterized” with similar investments as the ones which were made in other gentrified areas of Amsterdam –as Zuid, for instance-.
Now let’s move to Zuid Oost, let’s see some quotations about the urban economy in this district. As we will see, it differs from Noord since more respondents declared to stay in their neighbourhood to spend their leisure time:
“I: Do you do your daily life here in the Bijlmer… or you move to other parts of Amsterdam? I mean going for a walk, making groceries, going out, hanging out with friends…
R: Oh yeah…groceries there’s this Albert Heijn, if I hang out with friends I stay in the Bijlmer, maybe in my house, maybe here in Amsterdamse Poort and sit in the terrace…” (Liam)
“I: Okay, hum… yeah, and regarding your daily life, do you make your daily life in your neighbourhood or you move to the centre?
R: Actually in my neighbourhood because I only go to school, I work I play football in my neighbourhood…and “Poort” is also in my neighbourhood, like two minutes walking from my home so…almost in my neighbourhood always.”
(Tim)
“R: Lively ‘cause is always something happening like parties or festivals…every culture comes together, you’ve a lot of food bar from other cultures also…and fun as in I can do a lot of things here, meet with friends, go to places to hang out…” (Maartje, female, Surinamese background, Zuid Oost)
