It is almost impossible to overestimate the symbolic value of Ahmed Aboutaleb's career: born in Morocco, moved to the Netherlands as an adolescent, local councillor in Amsterdam, junior minister and, from January 5, mayor of the country's second biggest city Rotterdam (population 583,000).

For many immigrants the Aboutaleb success story must amount to a modest 'Yes we can'. "His position speaks to the imagination," says Andreas Wüst, political researcher at Mannheim University in Germany. "He has to be an example to many immigrants, and not just in the Netherlands."

Aboutaleb will be the first ethnic minority mayor of a major European city, a position which shows the relative openness of the Netherlands' political system for newcomers. In Holland people with an immigrant background are better represented in elected political and management functions than in most other European states. This may be because mayors in the Netherlands are not elected but appointed and because of the system of proportional representation and party lists.

"The smooth political emancipation of immigrants is one of the success stories of the Dutch political system," says Mark Bovens, professor of management at Utrecht University. "The social-economic integration may limp along for some groups, but the political integration is dynamic. Within one generation, immigrants and their children have penetrated all the important political arenas."

Little representation

Immigrant mayors are thinly spread in Europe. There are a number of mayors and lord mayors in Britain with an ethnic minority background but they have largely a ceremonial role. In Germany there is a village with an engineer from India as mayor. In Belgium the socialist politician Emir Kir, who is of Turkish descent, may become mayor of Sint-Joost-Ten-Node. But countries like Sweden and Norway, which have welcomed immigrants for years, have no immigrant mayors.

France is a modest exception. Of the roughly 36,000 local councils, around ten have a mayor of immigrant descent. Most of these are villages of a few hundred souls. The most important is the left-wing politician Eddy Aït, with Berber parents and openly homosexual, who has been mayor of the Parisian suburb of Yvelines-sous-Poissy (population 14,000) since March 2008.

"France's singular position has to do with the fact that its mayors are directly elected," says Laure Michon, who researches the political representation of immigrants at Amsterdam University. "Half of the councils have fewer than 3,000 inhabitants and it's easier to become mayor on the basis of a personal network."

In general the Netherlands is in the vanguard of political participation by newcomers. Bovens says that the 12 immigrant members of parliament, 8 percent of the total, is "a fairly faithful reflection of the population". Most national parliaments in Europe lag behind. Certainly in Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Norway people with an immigrant background are heavily under represented in parliament.

"Political participation by immigrants in Norway is a failure at a national level, but a success at a local level," says political scientist Tor Bjorlund. The electoral system plays an important role in this. Preference votes can be cast at a local level in Norway and this is done far more often by newcomers than by native Norwegians, Bjorlund says.

Local success

Another effect can be seen in Germany, says Edda Currle, a political scientist at Bamberg University. Many immigrants are not eligible to vote at local level because they do not have German citizenship, even though they have lived in a city for years. Dual nationality is forbidden and about half of the newcomers have chosen to keep their original nationality. "Immigrants are under represented at all levels - local, federal and national," Currle says.

There is still too little systematic research into the political participation of immigrants in Europe. Wüst, a leader in this area, does see some general tendencies. Immigrants are more likely to be elected as a member of a left-wing party, if they stand as a candidate in an election where multiple candidates are being chosen and if the electorate has many other immigrants.

Wüst: "Nearly all politicians with an immigrant background pay a great deal of attention to immigration affairs in the beginning. As they progress, the difference with other politicians gradually disappears."