Bulgarian Immigrants are Often Uneducated Turks
THE HAGUE, 10/07/13 - Immigrants from Bulgaria are often ethnic Turks. They are poorly educated, usually have no work and the majority want to continue to live in the Netherlands, according to a study by the Socio-Cultural Planning Bureau (SCP) presented Tuesday.
The SCP studied Poles and Bulgarians that have emigrated relatively recently to the Netherlands and are officially registered as residents at municipalities. The study shows wide differences between the two groups. On 1 January 2013, 111,000 Poles and 21,000 Bulgarians were registered in the municipal register. Among the Bulgarians, half consisted of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria. Only 47 percent of them have work. Among other Bulgarian, this figure is 59 percent. Labour market participation among Bulgarian women is extremely low at 36 percent. Bulgarian men are much more likely have a job in the Netherlands (67 percent). The Bulgarians with a job however are mostly working few hours. They often work for a Turkish-Dutch employer in the Netherlands. Among the recently migrated Poles, 84 percent have a job in the Netherlands, and 70 percent of them have had an education at least to MBO level. This is seen by the government as the minimum level for having good prospects on the labour market. Among Turkish Bulgarians, only 23 percent reached MBO level, while among ethnic Bulgarians, the figure is 54 percent. One in three Bulgarians has completed no more than primary education. These figures and those for labour market participation have been corrected for the student population, which forms about one quarter of the Bulgarian emigrants. "The educational level of the Bulgarians that come to the Netherlands is clearly lower than the educational level in Bulgaria itself. This means that a selection of lower educated Bulgarian is migrating to the Netherlands,” according to the SCP. Among the Poles, nearly half (45 percent) expect to go on living in the Netherlands. Among the Bulgarians, this applies to one-quarter. Within the Bulgarian group, it is mainly the lowest educated that are planning to stay in the Netherlands (59 percent). Among the Bulgarian study migrants, only one in 10 expects to go on living in the Netherlands. Two out of three Polish and Bulgarian migrants say they cannot understand the Dutch language or cannot understand it well. And where migrants from Poland can generally get along well in English, this is only the case for 6 percent of the Turkish Bulgarians. Poles are also more likely to make efforts to learn Dutch than Bulgarians. |