Why moving countries can leave you rich in salary but poor in the local advantages that make life easier
Part of: Belonging, Dutch Economy, Dutch Culture
Moving to the Netherlands can look like a simple economic upgrade: a job offer, a higher salary, a functioning public system. But money is only one kind of advantage. The harder part of arriving is that you may have left behind other assets that took your family, friends, and former life years to accumulate.
Pierre Bourdieu called these different assets forms of capital. In his account, the social world is “accumulated history”: advantages build up, are passed on, and make some paths easier than others. His foundational essay, The Forms of Capital, separates economic, cultural, and social capital.
This is a useful way to understand the expat and migrant experience. You are not arriving empty-handed. You may bring education, money, professional experience, family discipline, several languages, and a dense network elsewhere. But much of it does not immediately convert in the Dutch setting.
Economic capital is the obvious one: savings, property, investments, and income.
An international on a high salary may have more income than a Dutch colleague, while still starting with less local economic security. A Dutch colleague may have parents who can help with a deposit, a family home nearby during a breakup, knowledge of the housing market, an inheritance, or simply years of Dutch pension and housing equity already accumulating. None of that means every Dutch person is wealthy, or that every newcomer is disadvantaged. It means salary is not the whole balance sheet.
This matters especially in Housing. Someone who has been in the Dutch system for twenty years may have bought before prices rose, built equity, and learnt how mortgages, taxes, notaries, and neighbourhoods work. A newcomer often faces the same market at its current price, with no family safety net nearby and less room for an expensive mistake.
Cultural capital is not just having a degree or liking museums. It is the learned ease of knowing which choices look sensible, familiar, educated, normal, ambitious, tasteful, or embarrassing in a particular setting.
The most visible gap is language. Dutch lets you understand a letter from the municipality, notice a joke at work, read a school WhatsApp group, and argue with a contractor without needing translation. But the quieter gap can be larger: knowing what Dutch people mean by gezellig, which neighbourhoods feel like a good fit, how direct a job interview should be, what furniture or clothes look understated rather than flashy, which child name feels ordinary, and which television programme everyone casually references.
These are not superior tastes. They are locally rewarded knowledge. A person raised in the UK may arrive with more familiar reference points than someone raised in Eritrea or Colombia, but neither is starting from zero — and neither should be asked to erase their own taste to qualify as Dutch.
The guides exist partly to shorten this learning curve: Directheid, Doe Maar Gewoon, Dutch Schools, Klussen, and Dutch Food turn some of the country’s unspoken rules into things you can inspect and choose.
Social capital is the network of relationships through which practical help, information, trust, and opportunities move. It is not merely collecting LinkedIn connections. It is having someone who says “I know a good electrician,” explains a letter before a deadline, recommends you for a job, tells you which school parents actually like, or knows who to call when a landlord is being difficult.
Locals often do not notice this capital because it feels like ordinary life: cousins, former classmates, neighbours, parents from school, an old manager, a football club, an aunt who knows an accountant. It is still capital. Bourdieu’s point was that relationships can carry resources.
When you move, the people who know and trust you may be thousands of kilometres away. You can build a new network, but it takes time because a useful network depends on mutual recognition: people knowing not only your name, but that you will show up, help back, and be worth recommending.
Your degree, professional title, and work history do not vanish at Schiphol. But their local value can change. A Dutch employer may understand a Dutch hbo or wo degree immediately, while needing time or evidence to understand a qualification from elsewhere. A Dutch reference can also travel more easily through a local professional network than an equally strong reference from another country.
This is not always fair, and it is not always conscious prejudice. It is one reason newcomers often have to explain qualifications, build a first Dutch reference, or accept a role below their prior level before the local market understands what they can do.
The point of this framework is not that migrants are culturally poor, socially incapable, or destined to stay outside. It is that a move resets the local conversion rate of many assets. You may have enormous social capital in Lagos, Damascus, São Paulo, or Manila and almost none that helps you find a Dutch dentist. You may have excellent cultural capital in your first language and still need time before Dutch humour feels natural.
That takes extra work. It also explains a feeling many newcomers have but struggle to name: doing everything “right” and still feeling one step behind people who seem to move through the country without effort. Often they are moving with accumulated capital you cannot see.
There is no shortcut that turns a newcomer into someone raised here. But there are repeated actions that compound over time:
For the emotional side of building a life before you feel fully of the country, see Belonging.
These guides are written to help you understand the Netherlands — not to replace professional advice. We do our best to be accurate but we make mistakes and information goes out of date. For anything that affects your legal status, taxes, finances, or health, verify with an official source or a qualified advisor.