The potential of immigrant parties: insights from the Dutch case

Abstract

A new party led by politicians of immigrant background entered Dutch parliament with three seats after the March 2017 national elections. This article investigates the success of DENK-an immigrant party promoting a clear prodiversity agenda-and shows how this success is largely thanks to Dutch voters of Turkish and Moroccan background, using polling data by Ipsos and ScoRE. It also illustrates how these votes disproportionally increased with the number of residents of Turkish and Moroccan background in a neighborhood, using aggregate voting data from the statistical bureaus of Amsterdam and Rotterdam and the Dutch press agency ANP. That said, immigrant background does not fully explain the party's success; DENK voters' distinct ideological profile melds progressive and conservative attitudes in a combination thus far underrepresented among other parties' followers, which is illustrated by additional analyses of the polling data. Similar immigrant electorates exist elsewhere in Western Europe. Meanwhile, mainstream parties have turned sharply to the right on immigration, integration, and Islam, alienating substantial segments of this electorate. Whether these circumstances lead to the rise of more successful immigrant parties depends on how open political institutions are and how mainstream parties behave.

“They Keep an Eye on You”: Minority Pressure and its Implications for Dual Identity Among Six Immigrant Groups in the Netherlands

“…Immigrants from Turkey and Morocco arrived initially as labor migrants during the post-WWII economic boom, and later brought over family members and new partners (Vermeulen & Penninx, 2000). Both groups are characterized by high levels of socioeconomic deprivation (Heath et al, 2008) and, being predominantly Muslims, they are also the most problematized in public debates on diversity (Shadid, 2006).…”

Political participation as transformative reactive mobilization: a qualitative study of voter preferences among Turkish origin residents in the Netherlands

“…While DENK does not exclusively cater to residents of Turkish heritage-38% of the Moroccan Dutch also voted for the DENK in 2017 (Vermeulen et al, 2020)-it is strongly rooted in the Turkish immigrant group: a second-generation and a 1.5 generation Turkish immigrant, both members of Parliament for the PvdA between 2012 and 2014, founded the party because they disagreed with the labour party's views on immigrant integration (a 1.5 generation immigrant immigrated before or during his/her early teens (Rumbaut, 2004). The founders then decided to also involve candidates from other larger minorities, especially the Moroccan-Dutch.…”

“…The lower electoral threshold in the Netherlands (0.7%) than in Germany (5%) is likely to partly explain DENK's success. However, it can also be hypothesized that stronger anti-Muslim discourses, as well as related changes in political debates and integration policies in the Netherlands, have alienated groups of Turkish origin from mainstream Dutch parties (also see Vermeulen, 2020). In the Netherlands, a commitment to multiculturalist policies in the 1980s and 1990s was followed by a more assimilationist, or even exclusionist, turn in the 2000s and 2010s.…”

“…For three main reasons, the Turkish-Dutch constitute a strategic group for a study on transformative reactive mobilization. First, the immigrant group experiences a considerable amount of ethnic and/or religious discrimination (Maliepaard et al, 2015) and has been disengaging from traditional parties more than other immigrant groups (Bahçeli, 2018;Vermeulen et al, 2020). Second, the assimilationist turn has been more pronounced in the Netherlands than elsewhere (Bloemraad & Wright, 2014).…”

Immigrant concentration at the neighbourhood level and bloc voting: The case of Amsterdam

“…Studies on European cities and neighbourhoods are scarcer. However, bloc voting appears to be increasingly consequential for immigrant political mobilisation (Vermeulen et al, 2018) in European urban contexts. It is therefore relevant to study the mechanisms that underpin these dynamics in Europe as well.…”