Segregation through Anti-Discrimination: How the Netherlands Got Divided Again

Abstract

In the autumn of 2003, SV Blerick, a local amateur football club in Limburg, in the south of the Netherlands, made headlines when the news broke that young players with ethnic minority backgrounds were temporarily being barred from becoming members of the club. The club’s chairman explained that it was virtually impossible to get club members from minority backgrounds, or their parents involved with the club as volunteers. Nearly all the work in the club was therefore left to a dwindling number of native Dutch members. If the number of club members from immigrant backgrounds were to increase any further, then it looked likely that the few remaining board and committee members would quit. If that were to happen, the club would fall victim to its own success. At that time, about 30 per cent of the total membership of SV Blerick was from an ethnic minority background–far more than at most other football clubs in the region. In 1997, the club had won the Fair Play Award, precisely because of the large number of players from ethnic minorities.2