Talk:Allochtoon

Definition
There is something ridiculous about repeatedly reading the phrase "literally meaning..." in the first paragraph of the arcticle and then being given what is essentially a figurative definition. As noted in the opening paragraph Allochtoon in Dutch has the same Greek origin as Autochthon in English, except substituting the "Allo" prefix for the "Auto" prefix. It comes from the Greek words for "other" (allo) and "land," "soil," or "earth" (khthon). So the word Allochtoon does not "literally" mean "originating from another country," just as Autochthon does not "literally" mean "originating from this country." They literally mean "emerging from another soil" and "emerging from this soil" or even more literally "other-soil" and "self-soil."

This matters because in the ancient Greek sense, the idea of a person who was an "autochthon" was a person who was born from the earth itself with no human parents. It implied something much more essential and tribal than the notion of nationality. This sort of originality, to the land, obviously does not apply to any modern day inhabitants of any European country (and probably didn't apply to the ancient Greeks either). But when in Dutch someone appeals to this idea, they are making a sort of essentialized (and both fictional and biased) claim on the land that is quite profound. So the real prejudicial force of the term is lost by treating it as if it's meaning just draws a technical distinction on the basis of national origin (i.e. on the basis of modern nation states).

And again, in any case, the literal meaning of the Greek word "khthon" is just in no way, shape, or form "country." "Soil" is a better translation, because it does not imply the idea of a nation or country the way "land" might. And "emerging" is a better term for the process implied with the "allo" and "auto" prefixes, since it more literally (!) captures the ancient Greek sense of literally being born from the soil itself, upon which one lives--not simply "originating" in the common sense of a place of birth.

CBS definition
For reference, the exact text from CBS:
 * Iemand wordt tot de allochtonen gerekend als ten minste één van de ouders in het buitenland is geboren.
 * Tot de niet-westerse allochtonen worden diegenen gerekend die hun herkomst hebben in Turkije of landen in Afrika, Latijns-Amerika en Azië, met uitzondering van voormalig Nederlands-Indië / Indonesië en Japan.
 * Alle overige personen die hun herkomst niet in Nederland hebben, worden tot de westerse allochtonen gerekend.
 * De eerste generatie bestaat uit personen die zelf in het buitenland zijn geboren, de tweede generatie uit personen die in Nederland zijn geboren met ten minste één in het buitenland geboren ouder. Iemand die zelf in het buitenland is geboren, maar twee in Nederland geboren ouders heeft, wordt tot de autochtonen gerekend.
 * De herkomstgroepering van de eerste generatie kan worden bepaald aan de hand van het eigen geboorteland, die van de tweede generatie aan de hand van het geboorteland van de moeder (en indien dit Nederland is, het geboorteland van de vader).

Note that the person him/herself does not have to be born in a foreign country. I'll change the arricle accordingly. DirkvdM 07:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Second generation allochtoon
"A second-generation allochtoon is a person born in the Netherlands with at least one parent born in a foreign country. When both parents are born abroad, the 'country of origin' is taken to be that of the mother. If she was born in the Netherlands, it is the father's country of birth. " What if only the mother was born abroad? Phonemonkey 07:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The definition states that the mother's country of birth is used unless she was born in the Netherlands. There is nothing about "when both parents are born abroad."Phoogenb (talk) 16:21, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

CBS definition, in loose translation
A translation of the text above:
 * A person is considered allochtoon if at least one of the parents was born abroad.
 * A non-western allochtoon is one whose origins lie in Turkey, or countries of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, with the exception of the former Dutch East Indies / Indonesia, and Japan.
 * All others whose origin is not in the Netherlands are considered western allochtonen.
 * The first generation comprises those who were themselves born abroad; the second generation comprises people born in the Netherlands with at least one foreign-born parent. A person born abroad, both of whose parents were born in the Netherlands, is considered autochtoon.
 * The origin of the first generation is determined by the person's own country of birth; that of the second by the mother's country of birth (and, if that is the Netherlands, by the father's country of birth).Phoogenb (talk) 16:17, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Color too much emphasized?
I'm Dutch. In my experience and perception the color (or race) has nothing to do with the difference between western allochtoon and non-western allochtoon, the main reason why we make this difference is because western allochtonen don't cause more trouble than the autochtonen while non western allochtonen do cause more trouble than autochtonen. With the word trouble I refer to things like criminality, leaving school without a start-qualification and mayhem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.190.253.147 (talk) 20:04, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Internationalisation
It has to be noted that the term is now used in a similar way in Belgium, where it was first adopted in Flandres, but has from there passed into French (but does not seem to be used in France. NB: The term also exists in German where it is however rarely used, and not in the same way as in the Netherlands or Belgium. Aflis (talk) 17:40, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Merge discussion
In September 2011 this page was nominated for deletion as a dictionary definition. Several commenters in that discussion (including me) suggested merger, most frequently to Demographics of the Netherlands. (Other possible destinations were Dutch nationality law and Immigration and Naturalisation Service (Netherlands), though there were objections to both of those on the grounds that most Allochtoon are not immigrants.) The deletion discussion remained open for more than two weeks, as consensus to merge or keep the article as-is was not clear.

Therefore, I propose merging this page to Demographics of the Netherlands. As noted during the deletion discussion, the topic of the page is a social and legal concept in the Netherlands, similar to those treated in the section Migration and ethnicity. Cnilep (talk) 11:42, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

The concept of Western person here is absurd
Japan is Westernized, who said that? All Latin American (and Caribbean) countries are at least part-Western and the overwhelmingly majority of those which emigrate are Western persons. This is true for Mexicans, Central Americans, Antilleans and specially South Americans (except Peruvian Amerindians that probably are balanced between those which are Hispanicized and those which are not).

In Brazil, for example, at least 85% of our immigration to outside South America is composed of people of majoritarily European, Jewish, Christian Levantine Arab or Japanese descent from urban areas in the Central-Southern half country, from the middle middle, upper middle and upper classes (except in USA, Japan, UK and Portugal cases where you can find "poor" Brazilians too) and everyone knows we are culturally much closer to the Portuguese (despite some xenophobic chauvinism you can find in the internet from both sides...) than to the neighbouring Hispanic countries. How can it be more than half of overseas South Americans being this and still citing Latin American immigration as non-Western but Japanese as Western?

There are African and Asian westernized countries (Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor, maybe someone would cite Angola since it is overwhelmingly Christian and 80% of the population are native speakers of an European language) and Asian countries with native European culture (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Cyprus) but the approach in Wikipedia is that West means a Western European culture and not European one (nevertheless, cite Turkey as a pretty example of non-Western country makes me think if the person know the differences between it and other countries in the Middle East).

Looks like the person which wrote the article (or the Dutch themselves) confuse economic development with culture. Or confuse West with civilization in itself (oh! Japan is so cool, let's say that it is West to confirm what we think about the differences between Westerners and non-Westerners!). Well, it is unscientifical and wrong. And just reflects the prejudice against people from the Global South which we leftists see in the xenophobic right-wing paranoia in contemporary Europe. I'm ok if it is what they think to be written here, the problem is when we actually get it as true. Lguipontes (talk) 04:33, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The point you seem to be missing is that this definition of "western" was not arbitrarily chosen by a wikipedia editor, but is the official definition as used by the Dutch government and their statistics bureau. It might be a flawed, absurd, debatable definition, but an encyclopedia should give the official version nevertheless. Junuxx (talk) 02:51, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Exception
The exception is not correct. Prinses Margriet is born in Canada, ZeaForUs (talk) 02:58, 11 February 2012 (UTC)