From ‘more clients’ to ‘little unrest’: this is what Enkhuizen expects from the arrival of emergency care

The asylum seekers – mainly families – are housed in windproof and hardy pavilions, where they are given a meal three times a day. “The catering has been arranged, but more business is of course what I hope for,” says the snack bar owner. “It remains to be seen what will happen, I have no experience with it.”

According to the fries baker, it is only a logical choice to realize the emergency shelter in the parking lot on Sluisweg. “Otherwise it will be empty all winter.” The pavilions will have to disappear in March next year because the Zuiderzee Museum needs the site itself again to receive guests.

The snack bar owner is happy to have security guards around, but doesn’t expect his new neighbors to be a nuisance. “It concerns people who have yet to apply for asylum, so I assume that their behavior is good.” He compares the emergency shelter in the parking lot with the emergency shelter in Bergen, near Alkmaar. “What I understand is that things are going well there.”

‘Not a word of Dutch’

Further in the city, language cafes are organized in the IJsselzand community center on the Anjerstraat. The initiator of this is Joke Poelsma, thanks to the language cafes she has more experience with Enkhuizers with a non-Western background. “I was shocked when I started this,” she previously told NH Nieuws about her language cafes. “There are women in Enkhuizen who live here between ten and thirty years, but do not yet speak a word of Dutch.”

Poelsma sees it as a ‘great necessity’ that new residents of Enkhuizen can participate as much as possible in Dutch society. “And ensuring that social unrest arises as little as possible, that is the starting point. Fear is often the reason to keep people out. The point is that we, Enkhuizers, also see that the other culture has a right to exist.”

In Poelsma’s circle of acquaintances, the arrival of the asylum seekers has so far not aroused any resistance in Enkhuizen. “I haven’t heard anything negative about this emergency shelter in my area yet.”