Making Place for Migrants: Housing Asylum Seekers in the Netherlands

Mid-2015, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the Near East sought asylum in the European Union. At the spike of the influx, over 4,000 asylum seekers, most from war-torn Syria, were landing in the Netherlands each week. The Dutch Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers was overwhelmed: it had to create dozens of reception centers from scratch, sometimes within just 48 hours, and sought to provide beds to all those entering. Anthony Slinkert, one of the agency's regional managers, was charged with finding locations for new centers in the eastern part of the country. His work on the ground was directly impacted by tense political debates in the European Union, in national and local governments, as well as by the ongoing debates in media and in towns across his region, since the arrival of the asylum seeker evoked unrest in local communities- exactly where Slinkert had to carry out his job.