Ethnic group

This characteristic reflects which country a person has an actual relationship with, given their own or their parents’ country of birth.
The characteristic first distinguishes between foreign background and native Dutch background, and for the former subsequently between western and non-western foreign background. This distinction is based on the large differences in socio-economic and cultural situation of the groups. Within the group of people with a non-western foreign background, four main target groups are distinguished with respect to government minority policy, i.e. people from Turkey, Morocco, Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles/Aruba.