Cultural clash in the Netherlands? exploring Dutch college students' attitudes toward Muslim immigrants

This paper investigates native Dutch college students’ perceptions of Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands. There is discussion in both scholarly and popular realms alluding to Muslims in the Netherlands as a threat to Dutch identity and culture. To determine the students’ perceptions of Muslim immigrants, I surveyed 163 students at a number of universities across the Netherlands and conducted 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews. Items such as economic threat, safety threat, cultural threat, and endorsement of multiculturalism were measured in the survey, as well as specific attitudes toward Moroccan and Turkish immigrants. Results from my field research indicate that, although discussion of immigration in Western Europe and the Netherlands is prominent in the political arena, Dutch college students do not feel that Muslim immigrants pose a threat to Dutch identity and culture. Dutch college students support the idea of multiculturalism in the Netherlands but want immigrants to integrate as soon as possible.