Flanders: Poor Dutch skills among Turks, Moroccans
Via Het Belang van Limburg (Dutch)
Flemish Turks and Moroccans have poor Dutch, according to a new book by professor Johan Ackaert (Hasselt University) about the integration of immigrants. 25% of Flemish Turks and 20% of Moroccans either don't or barely understand written Dutch. Half the Turks and a third of the Moroccans only speak Dutch now and then. 15% of the Turks and 10% of the Moroccans never do.
Researchers Kris Vancluysen and Maarten Van Craen interviewed 618 Moroccans and Turks from Antwerp, Genk and Ghent about how well they knew Dutch. Moroccans scored better than Turks, but their language skills are not really successful. The most telling response: Just 53% of Moroccans could be interviewed in Dutch, and 21% of Turks. A previous study by the King Baudouin Foundation found that just 21% of Moroccans in Flanders knew Dutch well, compared with 56% who spoke fluent French.
Vancluysen and Van Craen say that Moroccans, men, youth, immigrants who have lived in Belgium for a while, are highly-educated or employed , used a lot more Dutch than Turks, women, the elderly, recently arrived immigrants, lowly-educated and unemployed.
Immigrants from Antwerp and Ghent spoke poorer Dutch than those from Genk. More immigrants from Antwerp said they didn't know Dutch, compared with those from Ghent or Genk. The Limburg city scored higher because immigrants there watched more Dutch-language TV and read more Flemish papers.
