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THE William Julius Wilson’s theory of the underclass applied to a neighbourhood in Amsterdam

The Indische Buurt is Zeeburg’s oldest neighbourhood. This part of Amsterdam originated in the beginning of the 20th century. Only one hundred years later its inhabitants talk in 100 different languages. So a lot has happened in only 10 decades! And unfortunately the current reputation of the Indische Buurt is far from perfect. Just recently, i.e., on 21 September 2006, the media and the police reported riots between Surinamese and Moroccan juveniles after the killing of a young Moroccan in front of a call centre.

A fieldwork study completed by
Tom van Greuningen, Arjan de Mari and Anna Lehmann

Contents:

I. Introduction 2
II. Ethnic Composition 2
III. Unemployment 3
IV. Poverty 4
V. Education 5
VI. Crime and Safety 5
VII. Drugs 6
VIII. Neighbourhood Development 7
IX. Conclusion 7
X. Sources 8

I. INTRODUCTION
The Indische Buurt is Zeeburg’s oldest neighbourhood. This part of Amsterdam originated in the beginning of the 20th century. Only one hundred years later its inhabitants talk in 100 different languages. So a lot has happened in only 10 decades! And unfortunately the current reputation of the Indische Buurt is far from perfect. Just recently, i.e., on 21 September 2006, the media and the police reported riots between Surinamese and Moroccan juveniles after the killing of a young Moroccan in front of a call centre. A similar popularity problem was found in 2005 when Amsterdam had realized a research towards its inhabitants wherein the results for the Indische Buurt were unsatisfactory: many citizens were annoyed by criminality, bad state of nature, drug addicts and many more aspects.
  These facts caught our interest and therefore we investigated – to a small extend – whether the Indische Buurt is one of the less fortunate neighborhoods of Amsterdam. We wondered whether its characteristics are similar to the underclass neighbourhoods described by William Julius Wilson (1987).
  Does the Indische Buurt really have inhabitants that may be described as the ‘truly disadvantaged’? What are the differences between the Indische Buurt and Amsterdam’s mainstream population? How has the Indische Buurt changed in the last few years? How can we compare this change to the majority population of Amsterdam? – These were the questions that served as our guidelines for the last few weeks.
  But how could we find out about the supposed ‘urban underclass’ in the Indische Buurt? We decided to look at several kinds of statistics and especially at the discourse within and about the neighbourhood. We wanted to know what the inhabitants themselves thought about their neighbourhood and then compare it to what outsiders say and what statistics tell us. Methods we used were analyzing newspaper articles and letters from readers about the Indische Buurt and interviews with people who are active inside the neighborhood. In addition we went to the neighbourhood personally and made observations. This way we could form a picture and then compare it to Wilson’s theory of the underclass.
  W.J. Wilson (1987) uses the term ‘underclass’ to describe the most disadvantaged part of black urban society. It is a very heterogeneous group outside of the standard American occupational system. It consists of unskilled individuals, unemployed, individuals engaged in street crime, and families that live in poverty and/or are dependent on welfare. Members of the group have only very few opportunities and social mobility is almost not possible.
  Before 1980 blacks with different social backgrounds (lower or middle class) lived together in one neighbourhood and sent their children to the same school. Today this is not the case anymore. Black neighbourhoods are usually inhabited by the underclass only (Wilson 1987).
  In the following we discuss our research results in order to find out if they correspond with Wilson’s (1987) description of the underclass. We will first talk about the ethnic composition of the neighbourhood and find out if there is segregation and discrimination. The second section will be about unemployment. In the course of the text we will go on to talk about poverty, education, crime and safety, drugs and finally about neighbourhood development and urban renewal.

II. ETHNIC COMPOSITION
Although William J. Wilson (1987) uses a liberal perspective in his work, which means he has a socio-economic, class-based way of thinking, he also emphasizes the importance of race many times: it is clear that the truly disadvantaged (in American Ghetto’s) are for a large part the Afro-Americans. This means that in accepting the existence of ethnic minority groups, the first comparison of the Indische Buurt with Amsterdam’s mainstream can be made: the Indische Buurt and Amsterdam do not share the same increase of ethnic minorities (respectively) and on top of that, the Indische Buurt’s concentration of ethnic minorities is larger. It has risen from 45.6% in 1992, to 60.4% in 1998, and to 64.3% in 2005. Compared to 23.7% in 1992, 34.1% in 1998, and 33.9% in 2005 in the whole city of Amsterdam, the figures for the Indische Buurt are constantly much higher and the differences are increasing (Amsterdam Kenniscentrum).
  The Indische Buurt had always been a working class area. Saskia Ploeg and Ahmed el Mesri , our two informants, told us that the first immigrants came to this area in the 1970s in the course of the Dutch guest worker recruitment program. They were of Turkish or Moroccan origin and mostly low-skilled workers. Only after the plane crash in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost in 1992 the first Surinamese came to live in the neighbourhood, making it more ethnically diverse.
  After the 1980s the neighbourhood consisted almost completely of social housing and combined with the housing shortage at the same time, people were placed in the houses that would come available. This way, also a lot of immigrants were placed in the Indische Buurt.
  In 2005 the population make up of the Indische Buurt was 12.9 % Surinamese, 1.1 % Antilleans, 12.1 % Turks, 21% Moroccans, 3.2 % Southern Europeans, 14 % from non-industrialised countries, 5.4 % from industrialised countries and 30.3 % native Dutch (Amsterdam Kenniscentrum).
  Just like in other neighbourhoods that get low grades from their inhabitants, immigrants are seen as one of the problems. Some Dutch inhabitants even expect things to get out of hand like in the French banlieus. Also difficulties between ethnic minority groups are witnessed by some. People with a Dutch origin complain that the neighborhood is not the same anymore. Immigrant children are seen as having a bad influence on the opportunities of ‘white’ children. Some parents, therefore, try to ‘whiten’ a school in the Indische Buurt, while others move to another part of the city, to avoid being forced to sign up their children in a ‘black’ school.
  El Mesri explains that the Dutch are afraid of the ethnic minorities they see on the street, because they look different. He also sees a clear segregation between the originally Dutch and members of ethnic minority groups and even speaks of ‘apartheid’. Black schools play an important part in this. Dutch parents sign their children up at ‘white’ schools, no matter what class they belong to, a possibility that is not an option for people with different origin, who don’t know of the ways to achieve it which increases segregation in education.
  Independent researchers see interesting developments in the Indische Buurt. Turkish migrants have left the neighborhood in such amounts that one cannot speak of a Turkish concentration anymore. Polish entrepreneurs start coming to the neighborhood. The outbursts of ethnic problems in neighborhoods like the Indische Buurt are seen as a cause of the problems that immigrants have in finding a job and functioning in society. One of the solutions mentioned is to support ethnic entrepreneurs and the city as a mosaic.

III. UNEMPLOYMENT
Comparing the Indische Buurt in a more Wilson-like approach would be in an economic way. For this comparison we start with unemployment. There are two ways to look at these statistics. If one looks at the figures for the Indische Buurt without comparison, one can be optimistic: unemployment rates are decreasing. In 1992 13.96% of the Indische Buurt’s population was unemployed, this statistics yielded 17.06% in 1998 and in 2005 it strongly decreased to 9.94%. But there is also a negative way of looking at the situation: compared to Amsterdam as a whole, these numbers are still relatively high. Amsterdam’s unemployment rates were lower: 4.6% in 1992, 6.58% in 1998 and 3.01% in 2005 (Kenniscentrum Amsterdam). One might also question whether less unemployment decreases the inhabitant’s disadvantages while the differences in income still increase.
  Saskia Ploeg claims that unemployment is mostly experienced by low skilled workers who lost their jobs due to the closing of factories in the harbour area. Available jobs in the neighbourhood are mostly in the service sector in ethnic shops, restaurants and call shops. These jobs are usually only available for family members. In her opinion the opportunities for the local unemployed are limited to the social networks of migrants. Migrants cannot depend on the networks that are available to native Dutch. They can only depend on the co-ethnic population or on government organisations.
  Low language proficiency further decreases the job opportunities for many migrants. It is difficult to find a job in the service sector if the person does not speak Dutch fluently.
  She also added that not all job opportunities are taken. There are certain low paid jobs that residents of the area often refuse to do. These are done by the slowly growing Polish population.
  As Ahmed el Mesri explains, there are hardly any high educated people living in the Indische Buurt. For Ethnic minorities it is often very difficult to find a job for a long period. If they find work, it is often only for a few months. This forms an obstacle for them to get an organized life.
  Wilson (1987) also emphasizes the importance of what he calls the ‘spatial mismatch’. This is a term that describes the missing coherence between available jobs and employment seeking individuals. Unemployment rates are increasing and chronic because of long distances between residential zones and working zones. In other words: long distances and expensive transportation make it impossible to work, to take care of kids and stay out of debts. But this is not the case for the Indische Buurt: 23.6% of its inhabitants could work in the local city part Zeeburg in 1992 and this rate includes the elderly and juveniles. This rate also increased to 24.1% in 1998 and 39.9% in 2005. Finally, we can also conclude that public transportation in the Indische Buurt is far from being insufficient: local inhabitants rated public transportation between 7 and 8 out of 10 (Kenniscentrum Amsterdam and Onderzoek Leefbaarheid JvdD). This allows us to conclude that a spatial mismatch between job seekers and work does not exist in the Indische Buurt.

IV. POVERTY
The second economic approach is based on income and due to availability of data we use different periods: in 1995 the average yearly income per person in the Indische Buurt was €6.500. This is only about 76% of Amsterdam’s average of €8.575 per person a year. An even bigger difference appears when we compare income in the years 1998 and 2005. These differences in average income were €2.450 in 1998 (avg. income Amsterdam yielded €11.600 compared to €9150 in the Indische Buurt) and €2.950 in 2005 (avg. income Amsterdam yielded € 13.700 compared to €10.750 in the Indische Buurt). This means that absolute differences in incomes between the Indische Buurt and Amsterdam are also increasing.
  Our third economic approach is about welfare dependency which has the same 2-sided characteristic as unemployment: numbers of welfare beneficiaries of the are declining but also still relatively high compared to Amsterdam: numbers in 1992 yielded 14.6% in the Indische Buurt compared to 9.8% in Amsterdam. Differences in 1998 were 14.91% compared to 8.67 and in 2005 10.08% compared to 5.85%.
  The average household in 1992 in Amsterdam consisted of 2.07 persons. Compared to 2.21 in the Indische Buurt this is quite a low number which, once again, shows the lower living standard in the Indische Buurt compared to Amsterdam. This difference declined however in 1998 with an average 2.08 persons per household in the Indische Buurt compared to 1.99 in Amsterdam. Finally the difference yielded 2.05 compared to 1.97 in greater Amsterdam in the year 2005. But this decline isn’t at all optimistic when we compare the small apartments of the Indische Buurt with Amsterdam: while the total amount of households in the Indische Buurt and Amsterdam stayed relatively the same, the former is characterized by almost a doubling in small apartments (consisting of 1 or 2 rooms) between 1992 and 2005. In Amsterdam this same increase only yielded 30% which means a decrease of privacy for the Indische Buurt inhabitants compared to Amsterdam and over time.
  These numbers become more depressing for the inhabitants of the Indische Buurt if they want to change their living conditions by moving out: the average years of habitation in the Indische Buurt is increasing over time: 5.35 years in 1992, 6.3 years in 1998 and 7.1 years in 2005. This means a decrease in spatial mobility. A comparison with Amsterdam, however, was not possible hence many movers in Amsterdam move within Amsterdam.
  The percentages of rental-houses also indicate relatively low income levels: in 1992 the 61.92% of the houses in the Indische Buurt were rented from the government compared to 43.58% in Amsterdam. In 1998 these statistics yielded 59.85% and 44.36% and in 2005 the statistics changed to social housing which even increased their differences with 76.35% in the Indische Buurt compared to 53.11% in Amsterdam.
    Wilson (1987) repeatedly mentions teenage mothers, out of wedlock births and single-parent families, mostly headed by females as indication for an existence of the underclass. The differences between Amsterdam and the Indische Buurt were once again present with the disadvantage for the Indische Buurt. Although the differences are small, they are worth mentioning: of all families in the Indische Buurt in 1992, 8.09% consisted of single-parent families compared to 7.61% in Amsterdam. In 1998 the figures respectively increased to 9.69% and 8.42%, and finally in 2005, they declined in the Indische Buurt to 9.38% and increased to 9.03% in Amsterdam making their differences minimal.
  Politicians in the Indische Buurt all agree that the population of the area is very one-sided regarding social class. They also think that the fact that almost only poor and low educated people live there is a problem which has to be solved to give people better opportunities and to increase the situation in the neighborhood in general. The neighborhood is filled with social housing and the existence of a place for public disbursement of food in the neighbourhood shows that there must be a large percentage of poor families in the area.

V. EDUCATION
Saskia Ploeg claims that parents in the neighbourhood also fear little opportunities for their children. The schools in the area are mostly ‘black’ schools and native Dutch parents don’t want to send their children there. Ploeg had recently found out that some schools in lack of professional teachers employ personnel without sufficient training. Combined with the common tendency of teachers to suggest a lower form of education to migrant children this further reduces the opportunities of the ethnic population in the area.
  She also explained that there are rumours about schools depriving bad students from their final exam in order to make the results of the school in total look better.
    Accordingly Ahmed el Mesri complains that the low quality of the schools in the Indische Buurt is the cause for the fact that children lack the possibilities to study. The opportunities for the people belonging to an ethnic minority group are much smaller because of this. This is also the way they experience this themselves. For individuals with a foreign surname it is more difficult to get into a trainee program of a company, which makes it difficult to successfully complete an education and there is also little connection to the business sector. Youngsters often don’t believe in their chances to find a job and therefore get themselves into trouble. They aren’t supported in any way to overcome their difficulties. Circumstances in a lot of schools in the neighborhood are bad. Many classes are cancelled and you can tell by the school a kid is in whether it is going to become a problem child.

VI. Crime and Safety
Crime rates have been gathered since the year 2001 at the ‘Kenniscentrum’. Although these statistics go way back in police files, we focus on this data for our indication due to efficiency. The filed crime reports are ‘stable’ in the Indische Buurt and increasing in Amsterdam. To our surprise the data shows a clearly higher amount of reported crimes in the whole of Amsterdam compared to the Indische Buurt: in the year 2001 one out of seven inhabitants filed a crime report in Amsterdam. Compared to one out of eleven in the Indische Buurt this is relatively high and to the advantage of the Indische Buurt. These differences yielded one out of seven compared to one out of 10 in 2002, one out of eight compared to one out of 10 in 2003 and one out of nine compared to one out of 12 in 2004. These relatively low numbers could be due to low reporting rates of crimes in contrast to high reporting rates in the city centre. But it is also possible that these figures do not support the appliance of Wilson’s theory to the Indische Buurt. The neighbourhood seems to be a comparatively safe one. We do not have the possibility to investigate this further.
  Saskia Ploeg says that apart from drug abuse there is not much crime in the neighbourhood. Youngsters like to hang around street corners which is seen as a problem by many native Dutch, but violence is limited to very rare incidents such as the recent stabbing of a Moroccan by two Surinamese dealers. The most frequently committed crime is shoplifting which is exercised by very poor elderly former guest workers. Many of them came to the Netherlands at a late moment in their biography. This way they only paid social security only for a limited period of time and therefore they do not receive the full pensions or help ones they become unemployed. There are families in the neighbourhood that have to survive with less then 1000 Euros a month.
  The inhabitants of the Indische Buurt give their neighbourhood low grades. They complain about a lack of nature in the area, poverty, noise and criminality. There have been strong complains about juvenile delinquency in the Indische Buurt. A social worker proposed strict treatments for young criminals. They expect more problems with a new youth centre that is to be built in the centre of the neighborhood. Cameras that are placed in the neighborhood have increased the feelings of safety. The population does not have much confidence in the police, as is shown by the example of a shop keeper who removes drug addicts from his property himself because they are bad for his business.
  Politicians also see juvenile delinquency as a big problem in the neighbourhood. The new youth centre is being built to show the kids that the neighborhood is proud of them, instead of seeing them as troublemakers. But it is also being built to keep an eye on them.
  Ahmed el Mesri claims that there are very few facilities for the inhabitants. There are only two neighborhood centres, one for the youth and one for the elderly. Inside the youth centre there is not a single activity available. It is a place where the kids can hang around and smoke. El Mesri is convinced that the fact that there are so little things to do for the youth is causing them to behave badly. However, the Indische Buurt is not unsafe. This is a view created by the media. The cameras that are placed in the area are actually unnecessary. If they have any effect, they do not solve the problem, but cause it to move somewhere else.

VII. DRUGS
Although inhabitants of the Indische Buurt do not feel unsafe because of the large number of drug addicts, they do complain about problems that are related like begging, robberies and noise.
  Ploeg explains that drug abuse is a serious problem in the district. There are many dealers in the area who, in the opinion of the Moroccan population, are mostly of Surinamese origin. This further increases ethnic polarization in the area. The dealers are not independent of bigger organisations but they themselves employ kids that sell a certain amount of the drugs for them. These kids are called ‘runners’ and some of them are as young as 10 years old.
  The consumption of drugs is a big problem of the area, Saskia says. Only recently a help centre for drug addicts has opened in the station of the Salvation Army. But Saskia argues that the mostly Muslim drug addicts reject the catholic help centre.
  Contrary to this, El Mesri claims that there are no more drug related problems in the Indische Buurt then there are in other parts of the city. For a while dealers who were removed from other parts of the city had turned to the neighborhood, but they have mostly been removed from the Indische Buurt as well. Drug addicts are not experienced as a big problem by the inhabitants of the neighborhood.

VIII. NEIGHBOURHOOD DEVELOPMENT
Outsider researchers give a more positive view upon the neighborhood. The situation is improving and one institute (O+S) even pronounces the Indische Buurt to become a yuppie neighborhood. The first signs are already to be witnessed. There is much confidence in the entrepreneurs and high-educated immigrants in the neighborhood who want to solve the problems that are experienced.
      Saskia Ploeg sees the neighbourhood improvement project in the Indische Buurt as part of the gentrification process that can be observed in many parts of the city. Social housing is being renovated and turned into private property. The poor are moving to the suburbs and in a process of ‘white flight’ the inhabitants of these areas move back to the ‘upgraded’ city.
  Politicians develop astonishing creativity when it comes to inventing projects for neighbourhood improvement. One party proposed to allow only people who earn more than 120% of the minimum wage to come and live in the neighborhood to create more diversity.
  El Mesri does not ask for more money for the Indische Buurt, but he wants the money that is available to be spent in a better way. He thinks that the policy makers invest in buildings, instead of investing in the people who need it. The main groups that should be supported more in his vision are the youth and the first generation immigrants. More facilities should be created for these people. Their problems should bet taken seriously. El Mesri has the impression that administrations do not want to invest in the poor population. This means that chances for upward mobility are very small for people that grow up in the Indische Buurt. The youth is left without support, and the Indische Buurt has a relatively large percentage of children.
    El Mesri does not see many things changing at the moment and expects rich people who come and live in the neighborhood will leave again soon if the neighborhood is not being developed further.

IX. Conclusion
Saskia Ploeg claims that the Indische Buurt is one of the neighbourhoods in Amsterdam where the existence of an urban underclass is most definitely to be observed. There is a high percentage of poor or low income families which is the cause for the many problems in the neighbourhood. The streets are dirty and the police attention in the tourist city Amsterdam is concentrated in the centre.
  Ahmed el Mesri sees the population of the Indische Buurt as being highly affected by low incomes and unemployment. This as well as bad education is a characteristic of the neighborhood. Comparatively few white people live in the Indische Buurt, which could be seen as a form of racial isolation. Children are born in a disadvantaged position from which they have hardly any chance to be upwardly mobile. People who are successful do not live in the neighborhood. Individuals who do live there lack training and skills. Due to the fact that there is little support for the children they become increasingly isolated from mainstream patterns and norms.
  We agree with our informants, that an urban underclass that is comparable to that described by Wilson (1987) can be found in the Indische Buurt. But contradictory to what Wilson observed, the Indische Buurt is not a neighbourhood that is completely inhabited by members of the underclass. It is not a ghetto in the American sense. The ‘truly disadvantaged’ described by Wilson is in our case the ‘ethnic’ population of the neighbourhood.
  This way our findings do not completely correspond with Wilson’s theory. But we argue that his model can be applied to the Indische Buurt in a broader sense.
  The discourse within and about the Indische Buurt acknowledges that there are many problems related to the existence of an underclass and these problems need to be solved soon in order to prevent them from worsening.

X. SOURCES
Kenniscentrum, City of Amsterdam
  Newspaper articles from De Telegraaf and Het Parool that where printed between November 2004 and November 2006.
  Wilson, W.J. (1987) ‘Cycles of Deprivation and the Ghetto Underclass Debate’, pp. 3-19 in The Truly Disadvantaged. The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  http://www.at5.nl/cms/docs/onderzoek/WIA4_LEEFBAARHEIDJvdV.pdf
  http://www.indischebuurt.nl
  http://www.Zeeburg.nu
————————————————————-
  In the ‘Kenniscentrum’ of Amsterdam one can find many statistics of Amsterdam and its neighborhoods and inhabitants. Although their statistics books start at the year of 1792, we only concentrated on a short period for our statistical indication. We started by collecting three periods of data on Amsterdam and the Indische Buurt (1992, 1998 and 2005) and than aggregated and compared it. Sometimes we used other periods due to inconsistency or incompleteness, but despite this disappointment our findings and conclusions should be clear.
  Ethnic minorities were calculated by deducting native Dutch and immigrants from industrialized countries from the population.
  Saskia Ploeg is a student and has been living in the Indische Buurt for seven years. Until recently she was not involved in any neighbourhood organisation. After the killing of Theo van Gogh she decided to ‘get to know her neighbours’ and find a way of getting involved into community life. She then became a volunteer editor for the communication platform Indischebuurt.nl and afterwards of its successor zeeburg.nu.
  Ahmed El Mesri is the head of the Assaadaaka association, an Arabian word for friendship. The association was founded in 1990 as an association for people who speak the Arabian language. El Mesri himself came to the Indische Buurt first in 1977.



Interessant, maar inmiddels alweer achterhaald door de actuele ontwikkelingen in de buurt. Het onderzoek is gebasseerd op gegevens uit de jaren negentig en inmiddels is de Indische Buurt goed op weg. Veel woningen zijn/worden gerenoveerd waardoor er draagkrachtiger publiek is komen wonen die geen overlast veroorzaakt, niet crimineel is en gewoon een baan heeft. Er is nog een lange weg te gaan voor onze buurt, maar zo negeatief als wordt geschetst in bovenstaand onderzoek is een gepasseerd station. Gelukkig.

Reactie: 1 gepost door:wonder  op  05/04  om  02:24 PM


Goh, ik was dit helemaal vergeten .

wonder, je zegt dat het gebaseerd is op onderzoek uit de jaren negentig, de gesprekken zijn een jaar of wat geleden gevoerd, de krantenknipsels zijn uit 04-06, ik vind twee bronnen wel wat aan de zuinige kant.

Wat raar. Ik weet niet of ik echt gezegd heb dat de meeste verslaafden moslim zijn, dat kan ik me eigenlijk niet voorstellen. de meeste bewoners zijn moslim, dat wel.
Hmm. Wat apart. recent, hmm wat is recent.

In elk geval is in het onderzoek blijkbaar niet meer meegenomen dat het pand van het “salvation centre”  inmiddels door ongeveer alle relevante organisaties in gebruik is en opmerkelijk succesvol is.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Wat is het vreemd om jezelf zo terug te lezen. Nou weet ik hoe politici zich moeten voelen.

Reactie: 2 gepost door:ZaZkia  op  05/04  om  09:55 PM


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