Expat-bashing has become a new sport in the
Netherlands
March 8,
2024 Ben Coates
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/03/expat-bashing-has-become-a-new-sport-in-the-netherlands/
Scarcely a
day goes by without someone making sweeping statements about a highly diverse
group of people who happen to live in the Netherlands. The hapless
international resident – or expat – has become a convenient scapegoat, writes
Ben Coates.
When
refugees from the southern Netherlands began flooding into the north in the
late sixteenth century, locals in Amsterdam didn’t always offer a warm welcome.
“This is what it’s like among the people of Brabant, men as well as women”, the
poet Gerbrand Bredero grumbled. “They put on airs like cosmopolitan gentlemen
and ladies, but they haven’t a penny in their purse”.
More than
four centuries later, the complaints are a little different. Talk to people in
Amsterdam (or elsewhere in the country) today and you’ll often hear similar
complaints: expats are overpaid, inconsiderate and antisocial; treating the
Netherlands as merely a convenient base where they can buy up Dutch houses at
extortionate prices in between their trips to Davos.
“They are
parasites”, one Amsterdammer told a focus group last year. “They suck the blood
from the city”. That was an extreme view – but it’s sadly not unusual to meet
people who think all expats are money-grabbing careerists with the cultural
sensitivity of Donald Trump at a Mexican wedding.
Sadly, it
also seems that such sentiments may be becoming more common. In Britain, there
was clear evidence that racism and discrimination increased after the 2016
Brexit vote, as people who held xenophobic views felt emboldened to share them
more loudly.
It seems
the same may now be happening here following Geert Wilders’ election victory in
November. Several expats I’ve spoken to told me they’d felt a marked shift in
local attitudes towards them recently.
And they’re
probably not alone: last month, the Intelligence Group warned that a “Wilders
effect” was making the Netherlands less attractive to foreign workers and
investors. “We don’t have a good image as an attractive country to work in”,
the CEO leading the study said.
In the
media, meanwhile, foreign residents are a regular punch bag, with many
commentators delighting at stories like the recent one about an Amsterdam expat
who asked for the ancient bells of the Westerkerk church to be silenced “so
that we could all enjoy the beauty of the cathedral without the inconvenience
of noise”.
Politicians
also delight in denouncing foreigners who’ve been impudent enough to come and
work or study here. Geert Wilders’ PVV, for example, has complained that big
companies which hire expats “benefit from the beautiful infrastructure, the
well-educated population, and the good care for their expats, but they
contribute nothing [to the Dutch economy]”.
Free movement of labour
Wilders’
election manifesto called for not just a reduction in the number of asylum
seekers, but an end to free movement of labour within the EU. In the
mainstream, Mark Rutte’s VVD party has also veered wildly between trying to
attract foreigners on some days (including paying millions to get the European
Medicines Agency to relocate to Amsterdam) and denouncing them on other days,
arguing that “the inflow is now… too high [and] we therefore want more control
over who comes”.
Even the
ostensibly centrist figure of Peter Omtzigt (one of the power brokers behind
current coalition negotiations) has said Dutch should become the only language
of instruction at Dutch universities and far fewer international students
should come here.
“Expats run
the [housing] market in Amsterdam”, Omtzigt says. There are not many things
Dutch people agree on these days, but talking tough on expats and international
students is about as popular as pancakes and the Efteling.
Some
critiques are valid. Yes, too many expats move to the Netherlands and fail to
learn Dutch or befriend locals, even after several years here. Yes, large
numbers of expats and tourists can distort the economy in some places. Yes, the
so-called “30% rule” (which enables some foreign workers to reduce their tax
bills) may be too generous.
Yes,
there’s sometimes an unfair distinction between “expats” and “immigrants”, with
an Irishman who moves here viewed very differently than a Syrian. And yes, the
expat who complained about the church bells was, as the locals would say, as
crazy as a door.
However,
many of the most popular critiques don’t stand up at all. The most common
complaint about expats is that they drive up house prices, but there’s actually
very little evidence that this is the case. Rapid growth in Dutch house prices
has many causes, including a lack of new homes being built, historically low
interest rates, predatory investing and a shortage of social housing.
Expat
demand for housing probably also plays a role, but not a dominant one. As the
UN rapporteur on housing reported recently: “Highly-qualified expatriates
employed in specific industries or international organisations may pose some
competition which can, in specific areas, drive up housing prices, but this is
not, by all available evidence, the cause of the general housing crisis in the
Netherlands”.
It’s also
notable that the number of immigrants/expats in the Netherlands began rising
sharply in the 1960s and has increased steadily for years – but house prices
only started really spiking more recently. Most expats live in a few big cities
in the west of the country, and saying they’re the reason you can’t afford a
flat in Zutphen or Woerden is like saying Jeff Bezos is rich because I bought a
biro on Amazon last month.
Equally
fantastical is the idea that expats are damaging the Dutch economy. Just last
month, Dutch central bank president Klaas Knot said that “expats bring very
great added value to the Dutch economy… [and] it is up to the government to
make sure the Netherlands remains an attractive place for this sort of economic
activity, which makes a major contribution to our growth and our prosperity”.
There are
currently 114 vacancies in the Dutch labour market for every 100 people without
work, and immigrant labour helps fill the gap. ASML – the giant chipmaker which
is one of the greatest Dutch commercial success stories – recently threatened
to leave the country over difficulties hiring workers from abroad.
“If we
can’t get the people here, we’ll get the people elsewhere and then we’ll move
the operations elsewhere. It’s that simple”, CEO Peter Wennink said. “Be
careful about what you wish for,” Wennink told politicians calling for reduced
immigration. “We will go where we can grow.”
Leaving home
This week,
the maritime engineering giant Boskalis also said it was moving part of its
headquarters to the Middle East and would consider leaving the Netherlands for
good later this year. “We have operations all over the world but the fact we
are building up a regional HQ in Abu Dhabi has more to do with parliament’s
plans to limit the number of highly skilled workers moving to the Netherlands
and the shortage of technical staff,” CEO Peter Berdowski said.
You might
think that forcing a water technology company to go and work in a desert would
be a clear signal that Dutch immigration policy is flawed, but sadly the
protest seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Anyone making the case for expats in
public is about as popular as a Feyenoord fan in the Ajax stands.
To be
clear: The Netherlands is still, on the whole, a fantastically welcoming place,
and many newcomers don’t experience any prejudice. However, media coverage and
political debate has an increasingly ugly undertone, and it seems very likely
that the next government will move to reduce the number of foreigners living
here, including by curbing the use of English in universities and imposing
tighter controls on immigration.
People who
think this strengthens the country are wrong. Many foreigners – expats,
immigrants, foreign students, whatever you want to call them – love this
country dearly. Immigration isn’t always a problem; it can be an opportunity.
And an openness to the wider world is one of the things which made this country
what it is. The Dutch close the door at their peril.
Ben Coates
is the author of the books ‘Why the Dutch are Different’ and ‘The Rhine’. He blogs at ben-coates.com and tweets at @bencoates1
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