Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) is an internationally oriented research university with a strong social orientation in its teaching and research. The Department of Public Administration and Sociology aims to develop a deeper theoretical and empirical understanding of the concept of governance capacity. Furthermore, Erasmus scholars seek to develop new strategies and tools for converting knowledge about governance capacity into contributing to governance capacity (knowledge transfer). The Erasmus Public Administration scholars work towards the design of new ways of organising and managing people and processes, improving the functioning of public organisations, public service delivery systems and policy-making processes. Developing its longstanding tradition of internationally well-known research in the fields of governance complexity, public management, policy decision-making and public leadership, the activities and research profile of Erasmus Public Administration contribute to a renewed state of the art of public administration research.
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Prof. Dr. Peter Scholten
Associate Professor in Public Policy & Politics and director of IMISCOE. His research focuses on themes of (migration and integration) governance, comparative public policy, and the relation between research and policymaking. Since 2014 Peter is director of the IMISCOE Research Network and head of the Network Office established at EUR. Furthermore, he is editor-in-chief of the journal Comparative Migration Studies (CMS), member of the editorial board of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, fellow of the Scientific Council for Government Policy and coordinator of the master Governance of Migration and Diversity (a cooperation of Leiden University, Delft University, and Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Ilona van Breugel, Msc.
A post-doctoral researcher at the department of Public Administration and Sociology. Her research focused on the local governance of immigrant integration. Ilona took part in the European comparative research project UPSTREAM (Developing Effective Strategies for the Mainstreaming of Integration Governance (European Integration Fund). She recently published a book ‘Mainstreaming integration governance’ (together with Peter Scholten) on different governance strategies in immigrant integration. Furthermore she taught several courses in the master Governance of Migration and Diversity, International Public Management and Policy, Erasmus Mundus Masters Program in Public Policy and the Public Administration bachelor program.
Country Profile: The Netherlands and Rotterdam
The Netherlands is located in the Northwest of Europe and has 17 181 084 inhabitants. Although the Netherlands is not a traditional immigration country such as the United States or Australia, immigration to the Netherlands has been an important factor over the past decades. Modern immigration to the Netherlands can be characterised in different phases with immigrants coming from the former colonies, including Indonesia and Suriname since respectively the 1940’s and 1970’s, the so called ‘guest-workers’ recruited from Southern-Europe, Turkey and Morocco in the 1960’s, asylum migration from the 1980’s as well as considerable family migration, a flow of labour migration in the form of ‘mobile-EU-citizens’ working and living in the Netherlands since roughly 2004 and more recently refugee migration from mainly Syria and Eritrea. Today, 23% of the Dutch population has a migration background. The diversification of Dutch society is particularly visible in urban areas, such as Rotterdam. As a port city Rotterdam has been an important migration destination since the sixteenth century. Rotterdam is the second city of the Netherlands with 638.181 citizens, of whom 51% have a migrant background, representing over 170 different countries of origin.
The Netherlands typically has a high-degree of volunteering activity. Traditionally volunteering has been strongly embedded in religious organisations, rooted in the polarised organisation of the Netherlands. However the level of volunteering has remained high under the secularisation over the past decades. In 2017 almost half of Rotterdam’s citizens between 13 and 75 years old conducted some form of unpaid work on a voluntary basis, consisting of both informal help and volunteering in an organised setting. Like at a national scale, the latter mainly takes places in sports organisations, religious or faith organisations, organisations helping the elderly, ill or handicapped, educational and cultural projects.
Posts from Erasmus University
-
Volunteering and Coronavirus; Volpower Volunteers Helping Their Communities
"The poetry collection" started at the beginning of the year and is an initiative by Maggie, my project partner in Scotland, who is in charge of...
-
Tmnit on volunteering as community-building – Why do I volunteer?
Volunteering for me is what being a community truly means: to help each other, to connect with each other and to include each other.
