ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the international, socio-political, linguistic and educational context of ethnic communities and their language varieties in the Netherlands. It discusses policy definitions and current statistics of ethnic minority groups in the Netherlands. As a consequence of socio-economically or politically determined processes of immigration, the traditional patterns of language variation across Europe have changed considerably over the past decades. Ethnic minority groups are often confronted with the task of communicating in the dominant language of a majority environment in order to cope with daily life, and this language is often learnt as a second language. At the same time, the language varieties of the countries of origin are often learnt as a first language in the process of primary socialization, and they are used for in-group communication. A substantial amount of research on language shift derives from periodically collected national population census data which include answers to questions on language use.
