Dutch diaspora
Emigration from the Netherlands has been occurring for at least four hundred years, and may be traced back to the international presence of the Dutch Empire and its monopoly on mercantile shipping in many parts of the world. Dutch people settled permanently in a number of former Dutch colonies or trading enclaves abroad, namely the Dutch Caribbean, the Dutch Cape Colony, the Dutch East Indies, Surinam, and New Netherland. Since the end of World War II, the largest proportion of Dutch emigrants have moved to Anglophone countries, namely Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, mainly seeking better employment opportunities. Postwar emigration from the Netherlands peaked between 1948-63, with occasional spikes in the 1980s and the mid-2000s. Cross-border migration to Belgium and Germany has become more common since 2001, driven by the rising cost of housing in major Dutch cities.
Arabs in the Netherlands
Arab Dutch ("Arabische Nederlanders"), also referred to as Dutch Arabs ("Nederlandse Arabieren"), are citizens or residents of the Netherlands whose ancestry traces back to the Arab World. Many of them might not actually be ethnically Arab due to the general confusion between the meaning of Arab and other ethnic groups coming from the same area (such as the case of Kurds, Berbers, Turkmen, Assyrians, Roma, etc.); therefore, the exact number of the actual Arab population in the Netherlands may be greatly biased and incorrect.