Research Outline

Irina and I plan to do an exploration into immigrants on their experiences with adapting to the culture and society of Amsterdam as well as differences on oppression and discrimination felt between natives and immigrant populations. We would particularly like to see if there are changes in attitudes that have changed over time between generations. What we can do is do in-depth interviews with a couple families with 3 generations in Amsterdam. We can also compare that to parallel native families for 3 generations and see if attitude changes are by era or there are unique factors that affect feelings of oppression and attitudes on society that are unique to the immigrant experience.

Our general outline right now consists of doing statistical research before leaving for Amsterdam to find out percentage of immigrants, top 3 or so immigrant populations, the socioeconomic conditions of immigrants, and where they are often concentrated. Once at Amsterdam we hope to go to centers where immigrants frequent and gather information from the immigrant population groups we would like to focus on. We might take note of other groups as well for comparison. One of our major goals we would like to at least try is to find a couple families with 3 generations living in Amsterdam and do in-depth interview sessions with them. We would like to cover Amsterdam and also some rural areas to get a balance.

Some problems we might encounter is the difficulties of narrowing down immigrant populations especially if there are quite a few significant groups in the Netherlands. The most critical problem we might have is finding 3 generation families however, if that doesn't work out we can limit to 2 generations or collect as much data as we can on individual interviews and piece the information together.