MPMC Working Paper 3 - Unesco

Foreword
The Amsterdam team has played a key role in the development and success of the MPMC project
since the preparation of the first workshop held in 1997 in Amsterdam. Besides administrative and
organizational leadership provided by IMES, the crucial theoretical and methodological insights of
the Amsterdam research need to be underscored. This is well illustrated by the working paper by
Meindert Fennema and Jean Tillie on the importance of interlocking directorates among Amsterdam
ethnic associations for building up political trust within ethnic communities and for explaining their
political participation.
The Amsterdam research elegantly combines theoretical insights from political science and
governance theory one the one hand, with insights from migration and ethnic studies on the
other hand. It is also based on a sophisticated methodology combining qualitative and
quantitative research.
In paper 3B Jean Tillie, Meindert Fennema and Karen Kraal focus on the creation of
networks within the Turkish community of Amsterdam. They assess the importance of
personal and organizational strategies in explaining the formation of Turkish associational
networks. This paper is largely empirical.
Clearly, the Amsterdam team contributes to the construction of better instruments of analysis
of the Amsterdam context that certainly also have a relevance for other cities included in the
MPMC project.
The Steering Committee of the MPMC project
Dr. Marco Martiniello
Prof. dr. Rinus Penninx
Dr. Steven Vertovec
2