Individual transnational involvement

Research on individual transnational political involvement began with an inventory of existing studies in the Netherlands. Most statistical information on migrants in the Netherlands is collected to measure their social, cultural and economic position in the country and, in one way or another, to examine their integration. One of the largest surveys is the Social Position and Use of Facilities of Migrants (SPVA), carried out every three to four years since 1988 by the Institute for Sociological and Economic Research (ISEO) of the Erasmus University Rotterdam (see Groeneveld & Weijers-Martens 2003). Only the 2002 survey included two sub-questions referring to migrants’ homeland. One referred to individual remittances and the other to broad collective transnational activities, but the answers were not subsequently analysed.

The data necessary for this project were thus lacking. To fill this gap, I designed and oversaw a survey, carried out by six students and a project assistant between March and August 2004 as part of the MA graduation project entitled ‘Transnational Political Ties’ in the Political Science Department of the University of Amsterdam.

Our respondents were initially selected from a sample the ISEO used for its 2002 SPVA survey, where respondents were a select sampled through the registers of thirteen Dutch municipalities. Individuals were considered Turkish or Surinamese when this person or at least one of his parents was born in the former country of origin. ISEO made available the names and addresses of Surinamese, Turks and Kurds (Turkish respondents who had identified themselves as Kurdish in an earlier interview) in Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, who in the SPVA 2002 had made no objections to further interviewing. As this sample was based on ‘heads of households’, the majority of respondents belonged to the first generation.

Of this SPVA sample, the telephone numbers of 106 Surinamese, 73 Turkish and nine Kurdish respondents were traced via Telefoongids.nl. All Turkish and Kurdish respondents as well as 69 Surinamese respondents were called. To ensure that they fit my minimal profile and were at least eighteen years old, I asked those whom I could reach five basic questions concerning their political interest in the country of origin and in the Netherlands.