Neighbour Relations in the Netherlands: New Developments

Because people can cover long distances either online or by travelling to keep in touch with associates relatively easily, some believe that the local has lost its significance. Others argue that community and neighbourhood contacts are still important, for example, as a source of social support. According to Mollenhorst and colleagues, neighbours became more important in Dutch personal networks between 2000 and 2007. I assess how this developed between 2007–2008 and 2013. Next-door neighbours have (again) become more important. Neighbours are predominantly mentioned as associates who are visited and, increasingly, as associates who are asked for practical help. In contrast to Mollenhorst and colleagues, I find that the extent to which the Dutch like and trust neighbours in their network increased while contact frequency (further) declined. For highly educated residents, people without paid work, homeowners, and people with initially small local networks, the size of neighbour networks increased.