8 May 2012
A report to the Dutch parliament from the advisory group on social development (RMO) has recommended the cessation of categorizing residents according to ethnicity and parental birth places, advising instead that only the birth place of the individual concerned be taken into record. The report advocates the elimination of terms such as niet-westerse allochtoon (non-western non-native) which signal heritage as ‘non-native’ for those with a parent born abroad. In response, integration minister Gerd Leers said that he favoured maintaining ethnic registration for the purposes of measuring the effect of government measures, such as interventions in employment and education.
