Crime among young Moroccan men in the Netherlands: Does their regional origin matter?
| Author | Frank Bovenkerk,Tineke Fokkema |
| Published date | 01 May 2016 |
| Date | 01 May 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370815623566 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Criminology
2016, Vol. 13(3) 352 –371
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370815623566
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Crime among young Moroccan
men in the Netherlands: Does
their regional origin matter?
Frank Bovenkerk
University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
Tineke Fokkema
Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI-KNAW), University of Groningen, The
Netherlands; Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract
High crime rates among second-generation immigrants are usually attributed to the ethnic group’s
weak socioeconomic position in the host society. The causes of crime can, however, also be sought
in their native countries or regions. Owing to a lack of empirical data, this has rarely been tested.
The Netherlands is an exception: small-scale ethnographic case studies among young Moroccan
men in Dutch cities suggest that their regional background and culture, particularly if they are
from the less developed Rif Mountains area, may explain their high crime rates. In this article
we examine whether this applies to the results of a quantitative study on all the Moroccan male
juveniles in the Netherlands. At the individual level, our unique dataset is a combination of their
native regions, criminal records (ever suspected of a crime) and demographic and socioeconomic
characteristics. Logistic regression analysis shows that current socioeconomic position is a strong
predictor of ever having been suspected of a criminal offence, and the impact of geographical
descent, directly or indirectly via socioeconomic position in the Netherlands, is negligible.
Accordingly, our findings on Moroccans in the Netherlands do not warrant our questioning
the common explanation of the immigrant–crime connection in criminology and suggest further
research to determine the specific host society’s features that explain the overrepresentation of
ethnic groups in crime statistics.
Keywords
Immigrant–crime connection, integration, Morocco, second-generation immigrant crime
Corresponding author:
Frank Bovenkerk, Willem Pompe Institute, University Utrecht, Boothstraat 6, Utrecht, 3512BW, The
Netherlands.
Email: F.Bovenkerk@uu.nl
623566EUC0010.1177/1477370815623566European Journal of CriminologyBovenkerk and Fokkema
research-article2015
Article
Bovenkerk and Fokkema 353
Introduction
It has now been 50 years since the first Moroccan men came to the Netherlands as guest
workers or labour migrants. Especially after the oil crisis of 1973 and the economic
recession of the early 1980s, approximately half of them had their families come as well,
starting with the Moroccan immigrant community, which, according to Statistics
Netherlands, now (1 January 2014) consists of 374,694 people. A first generation, a 1.5
generation that grew up partly in Morocco and then in the Netherlands, and a second
generation of Moroccan-Dutch persons can now be distinguished. Although the majority
have Dutch or dual citizenship (Loozen et al., 2012: 37), it is still common practice in the
Netherlands to label all generations as Moroccans. About two-thirds come from (a) the
Rif Mountains region along the north coast, (b) the south in the area around Agadir
(Souss) and Ouarzazate, and (c) the cities of Tangiers, Casablanca, Fes, Meknes,
Marrakech and Rabat. In the Netherlands, most Moroccans live in the four large cities of
the Randstad conurbation: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht (Fokkema
et al., 2009).
Ever since the early 1990s, young men from this group are believed to have posed a
persistent crime problem that not only includes disturbing the peace and vandalism but
also high-impact offences such as mugging, burglary and armed robbery. More than half
the 1.5 and second generation of young Moroccan men have been charged by the police
with one or more criminal offences of varying severity by the time they are 23 (Blokland
et al., 2010). Figures in the 2011 Integration Report of the Netherlands Institute for
Social Research (Van Noije and Kessels, 2012: 207) are as high as 65 percent – striking
because the first generation of immigrants had a below-average crime rate.
It initially seemed as if the high figures could be explained by an overrepresentation
of young Moroccan men in the lower socioeconomic segments of society. But, as far
back as 1990, Junger noted on the basis of self-reported data that Moroccan crime rates
for this age group are significantly higher than the average in the lowest socioeconomic
segments of society and those of other minorities. Based on Dutch Police Department
suspect figures (HKS: Herkenningsdienstsysteem, Police Identification Service System)
for 2009, researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Social Research calculated the
extent to which general risk factors (sex, age, educational level, income, urbanization)
determine the level of overrepresentation of various groups of non-Western youths. It
was lowest in the case of Moroccans (Van Noije and Kessels, 2012: 214–5). A second
plausible explanation is that Moroccans’ overrepresentation in crime statistics is the
result of selective policing and discrimination. Recently there has been a heated discus-
sion on the issue of ethnic profiling by the Dutch police. The results of empirical research
are not conclusive so far (Bovenkerk, 2014; Cankaya, 2012; Svensson and Saharso,
2014). However, as Junger-Tas argued about the exceptional rise of Moroccan crime
rates that began to appear in the 1990s: ‘Even if the police is prejudiced this would not
explain the disparities in crime rates between various minorities. Why would the police
discriminate Moroccans more than other ethnic groups?’ (Junger-Tas, 1997: 283).
Dutch ethnic studies researchers often make references to Moroccans’ regional back-
ground and culture. High delinquency rates are assumed to be the result of (1) the primi-
tive conditions in the rural regions most of the immigrants come from and (2) the Berber
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