Chapter 2. Ethnic participation in Dutch amateur football clubs 27 Measures Ethnicity The Netherlands is characterized by what Van Sterkenburg, Knoppers and De Leeuw (2012) have described as a layered system of ethnic classification. The basis of this system is similar to other continental European countries, such as Germany or Belgium, wherein ethnic categorizations are not based on the concept of race, as is the case in the United States, but on a primary distinction between an ‘indigenous’ majority population (autochtonen) and a ‘foreign’ minority population (allochtonen) whose roots are believed to lie somewhere else. In this system the notion of background is very important. The vast majority of people who are classified as ‘allochtonen’ have Dutch citizenship. However, they are considered foreign because either they themselves or a past generation is originally from a different place. In the past the ‘allochtonen’ category has often been split into a West and non-Western category, which can then be broken down further into specific national backgrounds. In public discourse and day to day life however, the term usually refers to the non-Western variant, and more specifically four of the most sizable minority groups in the Netherlands: citizens with Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Antillean backgrounds. The first two groups have moved to the Netherlands as part of labour immigration waves in the 1960s and 1970s. The latter two groups have moved to the Netherlands as part of decolonization. People with Indonesian backgrounds are another ex-colonial group, but they are seldom associated with the former four groups. Much more recently a new wave of labour immigrants have entered the Netherlands from Middle and Eastern Europe, most notably Poland. Many of them do not have Dutch citizenship because this not a requirement to live and work in the Netherlands. The majority of them is however registered in the municipality where they live and are thus included in the data. Following this layered system of classification, I distinguish between five single nationality minority backgrounds: Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, Antillean and Indonesian. Normally, the first four of these categories are used in Dutch studies which include ethnic background. People with an Indonesian background were added as a separate category because they form one of the Netherlands’ biggest ethnic minority groups, with a specific colonial history that is clearly identifiable within the Dutch context. Furthermore, I choose to forgo the Western and non-Western minority categories and replace them with a set of six more specified ethnic categories referring to socio-cultural regions of origin,
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