Ethnic intermarriage in the Netherlands: confirmations and refutations of accepted insights

Previous studies on ethnic intermarriage have been done mainly in the United States and in other classical immigration countries. This article examines ethnic intermarriage among Surinamese, Dutch Antilleans, Turks, and Moroccans in the Netherlands. From a theoretical and empirical perspective, it is important to examine whether patterns observed earlier in traditional immigrant countries equally apply to the Dutch context. To obtain a sufficiently large sample, this study pools five nationally representative surveys, conducted in the period 1988–2002. In line with findings documented before, it observes that ethnic exogamy occurs more frequently among the second generation, and among those who arrived at a younger age, and who are higher educated. Equally corresponding to previous work, the study reports that ethnic intermarriage is more frequent when the group-specific sex ratio is more uneven and when the ethnic group is predominantly second generation. Contrary to findings observed elsewhere, results show that the black Surinamese and Dutch Antilleans have high intermarriage rates and that there is little evidence for status exchange in mixed marriages.