The first national coalition meeting of NIEM Netherlands

On July 3, 2017, the first national coalition meeting of NIEM Netherlands was held in Maastricht. Stakeholders in attendance included housing corporations, VluchtelingenWerk, and the municipality of Maastricht. The format of the meeting was a discussion on the research report written by four honours students of Maastricht University, based on the NIEM indicators. The students wrote about the implementation of the national refugee integration policy on the local level, focusing on education and housing for refugees in Maastricht. During the meeting, the speakers first presented the main findings of their research report: refugees are not included in discussions about how to improve integration strategies; privatisation of language courses means that refugees’ progress in learning Dutch is not monitored; and teachers are not trained on cultural differences. Several best practices were identified within the municipality of Maastricht, such as the Match project which seeks to increase the social involvement of students at Maastricht University. Presentation of the report was followed by an interactive workshop, where participants talked about the findings and potential ways of improving the situation. You can download the report here: https://1drv.ms/b/s!As6Q1tuljPJRiV0F4RIyH9K4WZjU