The term “population problem” is frequently used, generally in the sense of a strain resulting from the unbalanced relation between total population and the means of subsistence available to it. Any attempt to find the solution to this problem has to be based on the principle that the population problem cannot be solved in a laboratory.

There is an increasing tendency in contemporary social thought to operate with a concept of reality that is accepted as a working hypothesis, although this hypothesis is but rarely stated and even less frequently analyzed in all its implications. It is often assumed that this reality corresponds to the findings of factual and statistical investigations, and that the methods employed-which are largely quantitative ones-create a picture of this reality which in itself possesses a certain objectivity and does not have to be translated into a theory. The mere fact that certain things occur in a majority of cases is assumed to give them a claim to acceptance as “natural occurrences” which derive their justification from the fact of their existence.

If a certain rhythm can be detected in social thought, the signs seem to indicate that we are at present in a period which shows a strong desire for stabilisation and simplification. This trend has become particularly obvious in anthropology which operates more and more directly with the concept of the human organism as the basic and ultimate force in human society. As all highly generalized concepts, it is an easily misleading one which has semantic implications that are frequently insufficiently realized.

This study is intended to give a limited survey of population problems in the Netherlands. In it, “overpopulation” is taken as the situation resulting from an increase in the population that has produced, temporarily or permanently, an unbalance between the nation’s labour force and its economic potentialities ¹). Or, in slightly different terms, a country may be described as “overpopulated” when “the means of subsistence are no longer adequate to ensure everyone a livelihood commensurate with the standard of living of the population as a whole or of similar populations” ²). The solution to overpopulation must be predominantly through political means, and the economic, social, technical, and cultural aspects of population increase may not be underrated; but this study is concerned primarily with migration as a solution to overpopulation.

Towards the end of the 19th and in the beginning of the 20th century, there raged a bitter epistemological struggle about the distinction between the exact and the social sciences. This conflict has somewhat subsided and the opinion has become prevalent that the difference is one of degree rather than one of an absolute quality. Although this has led to a more unified epistemological approach, certain differences remain which receive perhaps less attention than they deserve.