After the Second World War, the Dutch government wanted a modern economy with more industry. Labor productivity also had to increase: fewer people had to make more products in a shorter time. The government wanted to achieve this by, for example, cutting back on wage costs. After the reconstruction, the economy did well. Wages rose. Production and demand continued to grow, creating a shortage of workers for heavy and unskilled work. Around the same time, unemployment was high in Turkey and Morocco. The work and higher wages in the Netherlands attracted Turkish and Moroccan people and people from the countries around the Mediterranean. The Dutch government concluded treaties with these countries. And in the 1960s, people from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia and Yugoslavia came to work in the Netherlands. They were called guest workers.
What has changed for the guest workers since they came to the Netherlands?
1960s: The guest workers come to the Netherlands. They are housed in barracks and boarding houses (see front page). They think they will only stay in the Netherlands for a few years. Because the Dutch also think that they will not stay, the government does not pursue an integration policy (the guest workers are not included in the Dutch population).
1970s : The supply of work is declining due to the oil crisis and the growing number of working women. The economy in Turkey and Morocco is not improving, so many guest workers remain in the Netherlands. At the end of the 1970s, many women and children of guest workers came to the Netherlands: family reunification. The Dutch government still thinks that the guest workers will return to their own country and they believe that the guest workers should preserve their own culture.
1980s: The Dutch government now notices that guest workers who have continued to live in the Netherlands no longer want to return to their own country. Foreigners who stay in the Netherlands must integrate.
What do the foreigners who are now in the Netherlands have to do with the guest workers?
Many Turkish, Moroccan, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek and Yugoslavian people are children or grandchildren of the guest workers who came to the Netherlands in the 1960s. The Surinamese and Antilleans in the Netherlands have nothing to do with the guest workers. When the economy in the Antilles was bad, they immigrated to the Netherlands as fellow citizens. Many foreigners in the Netherlands are asylum seekers. They flee to the Netherlands because there is a war in their country, for example. They usually go back when it is safe in their country again.
What changed for the Dutch with the arrival of guest workers?
Until 1947 there were few foreigners in the Netherlands. 1.1% of the Dutch population, approximately 90,000 people, had a non-Dutch nationality. Between 1945 and 1964, a quarter of a million Indians came to the Netherlands. And from 1956 the guest workers came.
In the 1970s, guest workers brought their families over or made relationships here. Marriages between a foreign man and a Dutch woman were seen as a problem. Working groups were set up to, for example, provide leaflets to girls. The leaflets stated that they should think ten times before marrying a foreign man. When it was certain that the guest workers would not return to their own country, they had to adapt to Dutch culture. Schools were established for foreign children.