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The Dutch Parliament has two houses, the "first" (higher) and "second" (lower).

How many of the members of each house are ethnically Dutch (for whatever reasonable definition of the term you'd like to use) and how many are of other ethnic groups?

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It's been analyzed in 'The political representation of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands: ethnic minority candidates and the role of party characteristics'. While the article is behind a paywall, I have found an article with a shared author on the same subject which has an explanatory figure (in Dutch). The picture, from socialevraagstukken.nl by van der zwan is printed below:

enter image description here

The title reads (freely translated): percentage of ethnic minorities in the population, among candidates (for the lower chamber), and among MPs (lower chamber only).

Colors:

  • Blue: Dutch adults
  • Red: Candidates
  • Green: MPs

Categories (from left to right) represent the following minority ethnicities (again freely translated):

  • Total
  • Western
  • Turkish
  • Moroccan
  • Former colonies
  • Other non-western.

The article predates the 2017 general election, so I assume the candidates represented in the graph are the candidates of the current parliament. The MPs represented in the graph are the MPs of the previous parliament.

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  • This is very helpful, so +1, but I do wonder about the first house.
    – einpoklum
    Sep 26 '20 at 9:11
  • ... but wait, is this chart saying that "western" people are under-represented by a factor of 4.7/2.7 in the second chamber of parilament? And Maroccans are over-represented by a factor of 4.7/1.5 ?
    – einpoklum
    Sep 26 '20 at 9:48
  • @einpoklum yea but that's partially because Moroccan and Turkish people were the main worker immigrants after world war 2. Of the Moroccans serving in the Dutch chamber most of them are only half Moroccan. Of the 8 the most famous one is Jesse Klaver who is half Moroccan, Quarter Dutch and quarter Indonesian. Another reason for why Turks and Moroccans are high is because they got the party DENK. A party that is supposed to represent middle-eastern, African and Islamic immigrants. But the party leaders are all Moroccan/Turkish. (The party is currently collapsing)
    – A.bakker
    Sep 26 '20 at 12:10
  • @einpoklum Western people aren't necessarily underrepresented if you count regular Dutch ethnicities among them. I assume Western ethnic minorities include those from Germany and Poland as well. Looking at Dutch people with a migration background, those countries are in the top 6 after Turkey, Morocco, Suriname and Indonesia.
    – JJJ ♦
    Sep 26 '20 at 16:48
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I don't know the numbers of the first house but the second house is public information.

The second house has 150 members. of those 150 members 11 were born outside of the Netherlands (Belgium 1, Germany 2, Israel 1, Morocco 3, Turkey 4). (7.33%)

If you want to know how many people that are part of the second house that have foreign parents this would be 18 (Belgium 1, France 1, Ireland 1,Morrcoco 8, Turkey 6, United Kingdoms 1).

You will notice that the 2 Germans are not included in the second list because although they were born in Germany both parents were actually Dutch. (12%)

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  • Thanks, but - I asked about the ethnicity, not the place of birth. A Belgian could be Flemish or Waloonish; and Israeli-born person could be... well, almost anything really, even Ethiopian originally. Also, many Dutch-born are not ethnically Dutch.
    – einpoklum
    Sep 26 '20 at 9:13
  • Ah ok, wel you won't find much information on that. The whole ethnicity thing is a touchy subject here.
    – A.bakker
    Sep 26 '20 at 9:29

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