Belonging in the Kinkerbuurt : a qualitative study on feeling at home and place making in a gentrifying neighbourhood

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Belonging in the Kinkerbuurt

A qualitative study on feeling at home and place making in a gentrifying neighbourhood

Nathalie Sijbrands 10553789 Master Sociology, Track: Urban Sociology 08-07-2019 Word count: 18889 Supervisor: mw. dr. L.J. (Linda) van de Kamp Second reader: mw. dr. O.A. (Adeola) Enigbokan University of Amsterdam Master Thesis Urban Sociology

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Belonging in the changing Kinkerbuurt

This qualitative case study on the gentrifying Kinkerbuurt in Amsterdam West explores how residents of the neighbourhood experience belonging in various ways. Studies on belonging in changing neighbourhoods show that even though there is not so much physical displacement of people due to gentrification in the Netherlands, long-time residents can still feel cultural displacement, which can reduce their feelings of belonging. Belonging is for this case divided into two subcategories. Firstly, the passive feelings of home, for which ‘home as a haven’, ‘home as a heaven’ and safety are found to be important elements. Secondly, the more active practices of community and place that shape people’s views of (spaces in) the neighbourhood. In-depth interviews, short conversations and observations give insight into feelings of

belonging of residents of the Kinkerbuurt and have found that even though the

neighbourhood is changing, interviewees do still feel very much at home. The Kinkerbuurt offers a huge variety of places that people feel at home at and it seems like the street scene and it stores, cafes and restaurants are still mixed enough for everyone to feel like they still belong there. The question for future research is if this will stay this way.

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Photo 1: Kinkerstraat in the 1900’s. © SERC.

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Photo 3: De Clercqstraat in 2019. © N.Sijbrands

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1 Introduction

The Kinkerbuurt used to be a quiet working-class neighbourhood with tall trees and people playing music on the streets. Today, the neighbourhood is characterized by busy traffic in the main streets and houses a diversity of people, shops and restaurants. The Kinkerstraat, one of the main streets of the area, is an eclectic mix of telephone stores, hipster clothing stores, Turkish bakeries, expensive coffee bars and a branch of the Dutch retail chain HEMA. The traffic can be chaotic and busy and there are bikes everywhere on the sidewalk. Turn right or left anywhere on the Kinkerstraat and you find small streets behind all this hustle and bustle: almost like an oasis of peace where many people from all sorts of classes, ages and ethnicities live together in a small space. Generally speaking, houses in this area are small and rents have skyrocketed over the past years, especially in the private sector (Pinkster, 2014; Savini, et.al. 2016). What used to be a shop for cheese and milk became a Moroccan delicacy store and has now turned into a hip coffee bar selling matcha lattes with soy milk for four euros, as one of the long-time residents described it (Jan, 01-05-2019; see further below).

The city of Amsterdam has been dealing with increasing gentrification over the years (Hochstenbach & Van Gent, 2015). Gentrification is the economic and cultural appreciation of city areas that were formerly disinvested and devalued by the affluent middle class (Lees, 2008). For this reason, increasing numbers of young urban professionals and students with a higher socio-economic status have come to live in the neighbourhood over the past decade, changing the imagery of the neighbourhood (Butler, 2007; Zukin, 2009). Gentrifying processes go hand in hand with processes of reinvestment of capital, changes in landscapes and displacement of people. Very striking about the Kinkerbuurt is that the average duration of residence of its inhabitants is now about four years, which makes it one of the

neighbourhoods with the shortest duration of stay, compared to an average of 8,7 years in the whole city of Amsterdam (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2019).

Gentrification nowadays is as well-documented as it is debated. A key concern in these debates is the literal displacement of long-time residents from the old working-class by middle- and upper-class residents. Since the Kinkerbuurt is changing so much in terms of residents and consumption spaces, it is an interesting setting to study the impact of gentrification. Little research has been done on the Kinkerbuurt, even though it can function as an example of a neighbourhood that is gentrifying quickly, making it an academically relevant topic at this stage. The Kinkerbuurt is at a turning point of gentrification, according to urban geographer Cody Hochstenbach, and residents start to revolt (Van Bergeijk, 2017).

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The Kinkerbuurt provides an example of how gentrification works out in different ways. Not only the changing scenery is interesting, but the ‘new’ people in the neighbourhood have a huge impact on the look and feel of the neighbourhood as well, changing its whole imagery. This change in imagery is at least partly caused by the advent of new residents with a higher socio-economic status (Butler, 2007; Zukin, 2009).

This study has been conducted to gain a better understanding of how the residents of the Kinkerbuurt experience their own neighbourhood, and to show how long-time residents experience the transformation of the area. Neighbourhood belonging can go beyond the social meaning of place and is often related to environmental attributes as well (Pinkster, 2016). The same place can evoke varied forms of feelings of belonging to different people. When the physical environment succeeds to make different groups of people feel at home, the physical environment does not have to be changed (Van der Graaf & Duyvendak, 2009). However, in this case the physical environment is changing quite a bit which makes the case of the

Kinkerbuurt an interesting one. This research focusses on residents’ feelings of belonging in the Kinkerbuurt. Such a rapidly transforming neighbourhood raises questions about how different people relate to places (Devine-Wright, 2009) and who then belongs in the

neighbourhood, who might have never felt to belong there, and who might not belong there anymore at this stage (Duyvendak, 2011). Increasing mobility and migration within and to the city also sparks questions about the identity of place (Massey, 1995).

The societal relevance of this study is also higher than ever. The Kinkerbuurt is under a lot of pressure due to high numbers of tourists visiting the neighbourhood, causing a

decrease in social cohesion, rising property prices and growing inequality according to local

political parties1_{, causing a prohibition of Airbnb’s in the near future. These concerns about}

rising property prices and further segregation are shared by residents of the neighbourhood. Social rental houses are being sold to housing associations to sell in the private sector and people have started protest actions against this, because it is becoming increasingly difficult to find an affordable house in the neighbourhood; accessible housing on the ground floor for the

elderly has become especially hard to find.2_{Besides working on this research about the}

neighbourhood, I am a resident of the Kinkerbuurt and as I see all these changes happening right in front of me, I find it’s important to me to contribute to the discussion as an insider with a sociological perspective.

1_{https://www.parool.nl/nieuws/airbnb-verbod-voor-wallen-kinkerbuurt-en-haarlemmerbuurt~b16cdd11/.} 2_{https://www.at5.nl/artikelen/188871/loes-81-voert-actie-tegen-verkoop-sociale-huurwoningen.}

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This study will address the issues mentioned above – gentrification, segregation and possible displacement – by examining people’s experiences of belonging in the changing Kinkerbuurt and answering the following research question: “How do residents in the gentrifying Kinkerbuurt experience belonging in various ways?”. In this study belonging will be approached from different angles. For this reason, the research question is divided into two sub-questions. Firstly, “What elements of ‘feeling at home’ play a role in residents’ feelings of belonging in the Kinkerbuurt?” and secondly, “How do the urban practices of ‘community’ and ‘place’ interact with feelings of belonging as experienced by residents of the

Kinkerbuurt?”.

To find an answer to these questions, observations were done in the streets of the Kinkerbuurt and interviews were held with residents of the neighbourhood. This fieldwork is accompanied by literature on gentrification, belonging, feeling at home, community as a practice and place making, which will all be discussed in the following chapter two. Following this, I will discuss the methodology employed in chapter three, including a discussion of the research population, research methods, data analysis, a reflection on my own role in the research and the

limitations of the study. Subsequently, the results will be divided in two parts: one focussing on the more passive feelings of belonging (chapter five), and one being concerned with more active ways of belonging, namely community and places as urban practices (chapter six). I will end with a conclusion and discussion.

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2 Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework of this study is divided into two parts. The first part primarily serves as a background to the transforming neighbourhood. This part explains what

gentrification is, mostly focusing on state-led gentrification in the Netherlands. Important for this study is the role that consumption plays in gentrification, as a lot of new consumption places have come into existence in the Kinkerbuurt and this affects both the look and feel of the neighbourhood and the people that live in it.

Photo 5: “Building on satisfaction” – De Hallen. © N.Sijbrands.

2.1 Gentrification

The word gentrification was coined by Ruth Glass in 1964, when she described an ‘influx of gentry’ who were buying and renovating old mews and cottages in London inner-city neighbourhoods. The word itself is derived from ‘gentry’, which describes people more affluent and educated than their neighbours from the working-class. Glass believed that once the process of gentrification has started, it goes on rapidly, displacing all or most of the original working-class inhabitants of the district or neighbourhood (Shaw, 2008).

Nowadays, the concept of gentrification is seen as something much more

comprehensive, described by Shaw (2008, p.1698) as “a generalized middle-class restructuring of place, encompassing the entire transformation from low‐status neighbourhoods to upper‐ middle‐class playgrounds”. Gentrification now also extends beyond just the housing and has its impact on workplaces, shops, bars and all sorts of retail and commercial precincts.

Gentrification is not only visible in big cities, but can also occur in rural townships and small villages.

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State-led gentrification and social mixing in Amsterdam

The Netherlands has traditionally discouraged income segregation by having a mixed housing supply with a big share of social rental-housing. Strong tenant rights are embedded in law and strictly enforced. The bulk of municipal land in Amsterdam is owned outright by the city and leased to users (Savini, Boterman, Van Gent & Majoor, 2016). This means there is not that much direct physical repression of people in The Netherlands and Amsterdam (Van Gent, 2013; Vermeij & Kullberg, 2015).

Even though Amsterdam’s housing market has increasingly been liberalized, the city’s housing policy is still very strict on having mixed housing in the various neighbourhoods. This means there is a share of housing that is rental, a share that is for sale and a share of about forty percent of housing that is social-rental (Hochstenbach & Van Gent, 2015). In practice this means that in many neighbourhoods in Amsterdam, ‘gentrifiers’ and ‘non-gentrifiers’ live right next to each other. The stable social democracy in the Netherlands has led to levels of segregation that are very low compared to other European cities. Despite trends leading in the opposite direction, the level of social dislocation of people in Amsterdam remains low (Savini, et. al., 2016). Amsterdam represents an example of a city where gentrification proceeds by stealth, rather than by force. The official policy goal in Amsterdam is to create ‘social mix’, and definitely not to capitalize on the full market value of a particular area (Sakizlioglu & Uitermark, 2014). Amsterdam’s population has been predominantly native Dutch until increasing numbers of people from all over the world moved there, which resulted in the fact that since 2011 more than half of the city’s population is of non-Dutch descent, making Amsterdam a minority-majority city (Savini, et. al., 2016). With such a diversity of inhabitants the city of Amsterdam tries to stimulate social mix because policy-makers mistakenly assume that mixed neighbourhoods lead to social interaction between different groups of people (Uitermark, 2003).

The Netherlands and Amsterdam experience a strong economic growth that is combined with a compact city approach, but since the global financial crisis, several other European cities are looking at their urban policies in new ways. More experimental neoliberalist methods are being used to boost the real estate market. Amsterdam has also become a battleground where the old policies no longer manage to reach their original objectives. Even though the bulk of all land in Amsterdam is still owned by the municipality, the economic crisis puts pressure on Amsterdam’s system of direct control of its land (Savini, et. al., 2016).

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Especially since the 1990s, new housing projects, for example IJburg (Lupi, 2008), built on artificial islands, have made it possible for the city’s population to grow by about one hundred thousand individuals over the past decade (Hochstenbach & Van Gent, 2015). More money became available for both the housing market (Van der Veen & Schuiling, 2005) as for home buyers from younger and higher educated households, who also became more attracted to the city or decided to stay, even after having children. Part of this is due to the expanding service economy (Zukin, 1987). A switch from manufacturing industry to more service-based industries took place, which coincided with an increase in white-collar workers that are generally more attracted to urban environments (Hamnett, 2003).

The number of middle-class residents in cities is rising which resulted in rising housing prices (Pinkster, 2014). Current real estate prices are amongst the highest in the country. Consequently, inhabitants of inner-city neighbourhoods are worried that the area will become too expensive for locals, who are increasingly priced out by foreign investors, especially since vacation rental website Airbnb got so popular (Pinkster & Boterman, 2017).

Gentrification in Amsterdam started in the inner-city neighbourhood the Jordaan in the 1980s, but it now affects most neighbourhoods within the A10 highway (Hochstenbach & Van Gent, 2015; Savini, et.al. 2016), including the Kinkerbuurt. For example, Pinkster (2014) describes the Concrete Village in Amsterdam East that is home to a growing number of ‘new’ ‘other’ tenants and experiences an influx of more affluent residents in former social housing. Consequently, long-time residents experience neighbourhood decline and loss of

neighbourhood belonging.

According to residents, the Kinkerbuurt has changed quite a bit over the years, and you can see changes of scenery on old images of the neighbourhood at the Amsterdam city

archive.3_{The changing of places can have an impact on resident’s everyday lives. As social}

geographer Massey (1995, p. 186) says, the identity of a place is very intimately connected with the histories which are told about them and how they are told, and which history becomes the dominant neighbourhood history in the end.

In my research, I collected histories of inhabitants of the Kinkerbuurt in Amsterdam. These histories include the stories of residents who have lived in the same place for 89 years, as well as histories of people who have spent most of their lives outside the neighbourhood or even outside Amsterdam. As new restaurants, bars and cultural centres come into existence,

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they could also have a likewise impact on this neighbourhood history, because places that were part of someone’s history could disappear.

Role of consumption in gentrification

Gentrified neighbourhoods generally attract a high number of young urban professionals from the new middle-class (Lees, 2008). Hardly any residents are physically displaced because of the policy on social mix in neighbourhoods, yet long-time residents can experience cultural

displacement (Rettberg & Willems, 2019), loss of emotional meaning, and feelings of

estrangement in their neighbourhood (Pinkster & Boterman, 2017). This is especially likely to happen when older residents are used to a more community-based lifestyle. Some restaurants and bars try to offer a “safe and comfortable place to ‘perform’ difference from mainstream norms” to urban consumers (Zukin, 2008, p. 724), but what is safe and comfortable for one person can feel unsafe or uncomfortable for someone else.

The arrival of more students and young urban professionals has led to an intensification of processes of commercial and residential gentrification that are usually encouraged by the municipalities of Dutch cities. Even though Amsterdam still knows many ‘mixed neighbourhoods’, this can lead to experiences of repression for people who have been long-time residents of those areas, even though they are not actually repressed by force. When middle- and upper-class residents come to a part of a city, this usually brings a change of image for the neighbourhood (Zukin, 2009) because the new middle-class residents introduce new lifestyles and promote their ways of living (Rath & Ardekani, 2018). Lifestyle and taste can be of importance for residents of the neighbourhood and their experience of the neighbourhood and whether they feel at home there. Most urban consumption is still very much focused on the fulfilling of everyday needs and the new urban consumption spaces relate more and more to new forms of leisure and culture, but also to new patterns of travel that have to be fulfilled (Zukin, 1998). These new forms of leisure, travel and culture are part of a new urban lifestyle. In Amsterdam, these changes usually include hip coffee bars and yoga schools (Hochstenbach & Van Gent, 2015).

Everywhere in the city, this new middle class presents their new lifestyles and

encourages their ways of living (Rath & Ardekani, 2018). According to Simmel, the metropolis puts an emphasis “on striving for the most individual forms of personal existence” (Simmel, 2011, p. 337). In other words, urbanism promotes individuality and therefore processes of individualization (Karp, Stone, Yoels & Dempsey, 2015). These hip, new, specialized coffee

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bars that come into existence because of their popularity with the new middle class, are an example of how people’s individualized lifestyles are supported in the gentrified city. What these bars do, is offer a place for young urban professionals to work when they do not want to

work from home or at the office.4_{As a creative city, Amsterdam attracts many professionals}

who further promote these new urban facilities because of the high demand of them (Rath & Ardekani, 2018).

Authenticity and branding

New spaces fabricate an aura of authenticity that is based on the history of the neighbourhood (Zukin, 2008). But what happens if these actual ‘authentic places’, that have been in the neighbourhood for so many years, start to disappear? The disappearance and transformation of authentic places is something that is happening right now in the Kinkerbuurt, especially on the De Clercqstraat, Kinkerstraat and Bilderdijkstraat. Berry Shop, a suit store that had been

located in the Kinkerstraat for years, makes place for Mr. Joy Vape Shop5_{. De Hallen is an}

example of a place that was not too long ago transformed from a tram depot to a place for recreation and consumption. The place still looks like a tram depot from the outside and even inside (see photo 6 and 7 below) in an effort to keep its looks authentic, but its function has changed a lot.

4_{Said during interviews by interviewees. See chapter 4.1, 4.3 and 5.3.}

5_{Berry Shop disappearing as a consequence of gentrification, as said in Het Parool, a local newspaper} https://www.parool.nl/nieuws/bewoners-in-geweer-tegen-verhipping-kinkerbuurt~b7855ea5/.

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Photo 6 & 7: De Hallen. © N.Sijbrands.

A particular form of gentrifying a neighbourhood is the construction of new housing,

as happened as well in the Kinkerbuurt. For example, new houses on the Bilderdijkkade6_or

apartments right next to De Hallen. Ouwehand & Bosch (2016) recognise urban renewal areas that make use of ‘branding’. This often includes ‘lifestyle profiling’, which is very

recognisable in the branding of the new houses in the Kinkerbuurt as well. The branding here is very much focussed on De Hallen as a cultural, hip centre, framing it as the perfect place to live in Amsterdam. As you can see in the picture below (photo 8) the houses have a look that is modern but also similarly shaped like old canal houses for authenticity.

Ouwehand & Bosch (2016) have examined how this type of branding helps buyers develop a sense of home in their new houses, as well as in the whole neighbourhood. They found that planning decisions for these projects are usually focussed on enhancing (future) residents’ sense of home, while these people are often limited in their capacity to actually feel at home in the rest of the neighbourhood. According to the study by Ouwehand & Bosch (2016), they limit themselves to getting to know only their very close environment which leads to little social identification with the rest of their environment and also a lack of familiarity

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with the neighbourhood and heaven feelings that will both be discussed in the next chapter. Altogether, this leads to limited feelings of feeling at home in the neighbourhood.

Photo 8: New houses at the Bilderdijkkade. © N.Sijbrands.

2.2 Belonging: feeling at home and doing place

According to Giddens (quoted in Clapham, 2005, p. 137) globalization, associated with the rise in information technology, leads to a “sense of rootlessness and meaninglessness”.

Giddens argues that the pace of change in people’s lives has quickened and that this goes hand in hand with increasing feelings of alienation and a lack of control over all the different forces that have an impact on their lives. Along with this all, there is a trend towards increasing individualism and a decline in the traditional institutions that always used to frame people’s life experiences (Clapham, 2006).

All of this leads to people lacking a sense of belonging and purpose in their lives. Feeling at home in the neighbourhood has become increasingly important as the process of globalisation - process of worldwide integration where places from all over the world are more in touch with each other than ever – goes hand in hand with the process of localisation. There is an increase in mobility and places are potentially starting to be more alike, which also makes it more important to distinguish yourself from others. For this reason it has become

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increasingly important to feel at home in the neighbourhood (Van der Graaf & Duyvendak, 2009). Nowadays, people in cities are on a hunt for a sense of identity and belonging in the private sphere of the home and direct neighbourhood. This also means people increasingly develop attachments to particular places (Clapham, 2005). This is why the neighbourhood is such an important object of study right now. However, the situation is not just negative.

A sense of home is a deep emotion that is difficult to describe and is shared by many. Research has found that we only feel at home with certain people and under certain

circumstances (Duyvendak, Wekker, Mamadouh & Van Wageningen, 2016). We are able to feel at ease with quite a lot of people and in many situations, but these will not always feel like home. Our sense of home, trust and security can be spoiled when ‘certain people in certain places’ are present, and precisely these encounters with these people are the ones that can undermine feelings of belonging. For this reason, it is proposed that a good sense of home requires lighter relationships than policymakers would like to cultivate.

In gentrifying and rapidly changing neighbourhoods, both newcomers and residents who have lived there for years can feel ‘out of place’ in the area. In changing neighbourhoods, new immigrants often become homesick for their places of origin, while native residents become nostalgic for the good old days (Duyvendak, 2011, p. 25). These are things that could also be happening in the Kinkerbuurt. All of the changes in the gentrifying Kinkerbuurt might have an impact on people’s feelings of belonging.

Definitions of belonging

Belonging is a sociological and geographical concept that has been used with numerous different meanings. It is often used as a synonym for place attachment, sense of place, identity, social cohesion, and citizenship (Hoekstra & Pinkster, 2017), and even though these words are linked to belonging, they are probably more a couple of elements of belonging instead of a pure definition of what it is to belong. The definition that Hoekstra and Pinkster (2017, p.224) use for belonging is “the affective relationship between individuals and their environment”. In this definition, belonging depends on an individuals’ social location in terms of their own social identity and categorization by others, but also as their attachments to different places.

According to Duyvendak (2011) belonging relates to people’s feelings of home in specific places and around specific people, as well as people’s identification with places

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Pinkster’s (2017) definition.

Other researchers use different focusses when they speak about belonging. Davis, Ghorashi and Smets (2018) say that feelings of belonging start to exist when there is a sense of inclusion or exclusion. Belonging is a relational phenomenon: “it becomes activated when people experience inclusion or exclusion in their interactions with others” (Davis, et. al., 2018, p. 292).

Another definition sees belonging as the sense of identification with particular places in a neighbourhood, occuring through particular symbolic and physical attributes (Devine-Wright, 2009; Benson & Jackson, 2013). A specific sense of belonging used in research is ‘elective belonging’ that involves choosing a place to live based on the people that live there (Duyvendak, 2011, p. 11). In this type of belonging, people decide to move to a certain area or neighbourhood and claim moral ownership over the place that they live in, because they feel they can claim belonging as a result of having chosen to move to that specific area, that is in a functional or symbolic way important to them. This theory also shows people’s preference of living amongst people that are similar to them, people from their ‘own kind’. As a result, local friends become a ratification of people’s places of residence.

This sense of belonging is slightly different from the focus Blokland and Nast (2014) place when talking about belonging. They emphasize the importance of public familiarity when they speak about belonging. Public familiarity is all about recognizing and being recognized in local places and will be discussed in the next chapter.

As you can see in the section above, belonging is an overarching term that includes various elements and different senses of belonging. Even though there are so many different definitions of belonging, in this study the choice was made to focus on people’s experiences of belonging in their neighbourhood by looking at feeling at home and the practices of

community and place. Belonging is all about social relations and physical relations to place. Although there are many more different definitions of belonging, in this study the concept will be broadly divided into four different aspects that will be discussed in the next part of this chapter: home as a haven or a heaven; public familiarity and amicability; community as an urban practice; and the physical attributes of belonging that can be described as place making. The choice for these four categories was made because they support what respondents of this study said during the interviews I conducted. Therefore these categories provide the most complete picture of belonging in this particular case. All of these categories play a role in this research and are in some ways interlinked. Feelings for a place can change but they always

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refer to a place that is less variable. The neighbourhood serves as the defining environment to which people relate in particular ways in this study.

Home as a haven or a heaven, public familiarity and amicability

Duyvendak, in his book on home, belonging and nostalgia (2011, p. 38), elaborates on the sense of home that people feel and distinguishes between home as a haven and home as a heaven.

Home as a haven is more concerned with physical and material security and with feeling mentally safe in a place. A place feels more mentally safe when it is predictable. Home as a haven is a place for “retreat, relaxation, intimacy and domesticity” (Duyvendak, 2011, p. 38-39), a safe haven. This idea is often more linked to the micro level of the house in the material sense, but these feelings can be felt in other places and situations as well.

On the other hand, home as a heaven is connected with people’s public identity. Home as a heaven can be a particular place, for example a neighbourhood. A heaven is a public place where “one can collectively be, express and realize oneself” (Duyvendak, 2011, p. 38). It is a place where someone feels publicly free and independent. Home in this sense embodies a shared history with people, a place with people you know, your ‘own people’ and your own activities. A heaven is a place where individuals can be, develop and express

themselves collectively (p. 39), where residents can connect with each other, often through the creation of communities, which will be discussed more thoroughly in the upcoming part of literature on feeling at home.

Another important aspect of home according to Duyvendak (2011) is ‘familiarity’. Familiarity is concerned with knowing a place. This idea assumes that people who have lived in a place for a longer period of time will probably feel more at home. This is linked to the concept of public familiarity (Blokland & Nast, 2014) that characterizes a social aspect of the city in which fluid encounters and durable engagements occur. Residents of a neighbourhood are able to recognize each other and even expect to see certain people in certain places, which increases people’s feelings of belonging (Blokland, 2017, p. 126).

Duyvendak et. al (2016) want to go towards a lighter form of a sense of home and stress the importance of amicability. To obtain that amicability public familiarity is a

necessity, but the way in which Blokland and Nast (2014) define it is incomplete. Familiarity presumably also signifies amicability, which denotes friendly interactions. Amicability is more about activity than identity. In heterogeneous neighbourhoods like the Kinkerbuurt, people often do not have much in common in terms of ethnic, religious and cultural identity, but they

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can still have common activities (Duyvendak et. al., 2016, p. 27). This then forms a foundation for amicability that allows people to feel at home, while also giving others the space to make sure they feel at home as well. When treated amicably by the people you are in contact with, they give you space but also the recognition that you belong at that place. These friendly relationships need time to develop (Duyvendak et. al., 2016).

Familiarity and amicability interlink with home as a heaven as well as with home as a haven. Since amicability increases the feelings of safety as it increases the predictability of situations (Blokland, 2017), it can be linked with home as a haven which is concerned with the safe environment of a home. The link with home as a heaven is even more clear, as

amicability embodies a shared history with people, in which people make the place. More on this will be discussed in chapter ‘4.3 Dimensions of home’ in the findings.

What is mentioned above can help by answering the first subquestion of this study: “What elements of ‘feeling at home’ play a role in residents’ feelings of belonging in the Kinkerbuurt?” One aim of this research is to find out whether or not the Kinkerbuurt is a heaven and a haven to its residents, and what factors this depends on, to see if heaven and haven are applicable to the feelings of home that residents of the neighbourhood can experience or not.

2.3 Community and place as urban practices

Community

Discussing where someone feels they belong is one thing, but experiencing belonging through practice is something quite different. More and more people do not live where they were born, and the meaning of place for people’s sense of belonging has changed in these times of increasing mobility. The concept of ‘community’ is also changing, and is becoming

increasingly diverse, dynamic and contested (Blokland, 2017).

However, the need for community had definitely not disappeared. Community is still a widely used term in both (urban) research and everyday life. The word community is used to refer to “an entity that is cohesive, hangs or sticks together, and has clear boundaries” (Blokland, 2017, p. 6). In neighbourhood policy, community has become the equivalent of social cohesiveness, that should provide social capital to make problems go away. In research on cities, it has become clear that not every neighbourhood needs to be village-like (although

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they can be), but that for a neighbourhood to remain livable, there has to be some sort of public life of social capital (Lofland, 1989; Blokland, 2017).

Rapid social changes have created a need to rethink the concept of community. Blokland (2017) proposes to look at community through a lens of various different forms of social relations, instead of assuming that certain types of relations, like neighbours or friends, form the backbone of a community. In neighbourhood ‘communities’, it is possible that not all inhabitants are part of this community. However, this is not necessarily a problem.

Communities do not always have to be limited to a residential neighbourhood, but the notion of community does have an important urban dimension. In cities, people are nowadays physically closer to each other and more often confronted with other people’s presence than ever before, which also means it has become increasingly difficult to escape others. We are connected with many different people in a context that engages a larger number of people that we do not know, than people we do know (Blokland, 2017, p. 42). In our daily lives we encounter many people, many of them only once. What happens in neighbourhoods is that we regularly encounter others in the same situations and at the same places, often without establishing any personal contact with these people (Blokland, 2017, p. 89). We interact with people all the time: when we cross the street, when we pay at the cash register at our local supermarket, when we step aside to let someone pass, we always take notice of others, even if it is only in such brief encounters. These interactions can be sources for community, by transaction and interdependency (Blokland, 2017, p. 86).

In her book, Blokland (2017) creates an ideal-typical relational setting of belonging: somewhere between “strong intimacy of bonds on the one hand, and the strong anonymity of mere interdependencies on the other, lies the relational setting of having some more

information” (p. 94) that allows us to experience an urban space as somewhere that we can belong, or something that functions as a comfort zone. In between this realm of strong

intimacy and strong anonymity, a new type of ‘other’ is created. Milgram (1977) calls this type of other the ‘familiar stranger’, someone who you do not know personally, but you do

recognize because of a shared daily path or ambulation. These familiar strangers can be the people you encounter at the supermarket or in the local pub, or anyone else you see on a weekly or maybe even daily basis.

Another factor that is important for the social life in cities, is predictability. We expect behaviour to be ‘normal’ and have a need for normalcy that originates in a desire to

experience daily continuity to enable us to make sense of everyday situations. Our experience of normalcy depends on two things – the first being, how often we experience particular

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performances of people and how frequent they are, the second being, whether we consider these performances norm conforming or not. Normalcy relates to the degree of trust we put in social situations. ‘Trust’ here implies how familiar a social setting is. This trust provides

feelings of home or belonging through a sense of security and predictability (Blokland, 2017, p. 104).

These feelings of trust, especially of trusting other people, are strongest in people who shop locally or visit local pubs, and the more trust people experience, the safer they feel (p. 124). Blokland states that feeling safe is not the same as feeling at home, but that if ‘being comfortable’ equals ‘belonging’, then it can be said that these terms are connected.

This trust in the social environment and in other people is also linked to the public familiarity mentioned in the previous chapter. Recognizing people and places can induce a sense of community. Frequent interactions with the same people, even when they are very short, amplify public familiarity and therefore can increase people’s sense of belonging (Blokland, 2017).

Place making

The practice of community is an active way of experiencing a neighbourhood. Something that is very closely linked to this is the practice of place making, which can help us understand how and in what ways communities are imagined by its participants. Community is not only about relations between people, but also about the interaction of people with places. According to Benson and Jackson (2013, p. 794) people do not select the place they live in to match their habitus, rather, places are made by people through everyday interactions and interventions. These interactions and interventions influence the neighbourhood and the individual. Belonging is not just a feeling: it is the outcome of these practices that take place with and in front of others. It is said that the practice of place is the way to understand how the middle-class experiences belonging. Place making can be considered as the ways in which people relate to and practice place, in other words, the performativity of place and the ‘doing’ of place (Benson & Jackson, 2013) pp. 793-794). This also relates to the processes in which places become valued or devalued, by practice.

The category ‘representations of space’, established by Lefebvre (1991) can also be useful to see space-producing processes at work because it explains how spatial practices are related to the images and representations that people have of specific places (like the

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The second subquestion of this study “How do the urban practices of ‘community’ and ‘place’ interact with feelings of belonging as experienced by residents of the Kinkerbuurt?” relates to what is said above about community and placemaking. The literature above and the

upcoming findings in chapter 4, but mainly chapter 5, will help to generate an answer to this question.

Photo 9: Ten Kate market. © N.Sijbrands.

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3 Methodology

3.1 Qualitative Research

Qualitative methods were used for this study, because I feel like these methods will provide the most information about the topic. Belonging is a feeling that is difficult to quantify, especially because there are so many different dimensions at play. Qualitative methods are desired when a study is concerned with everyday behaviour to provide a deeper understanding of people’s underlying ideas and thoughts (Silverman, 2014), which is definitely the case in this study. This study was conducted both inductively and deductively. Urban theories were collected before starting the research process, but in later stages, after a certain number of interviews were conducted, more theories were gathered.

Epistemologically speaking, this research is positioned as being interpretivist, because its aim is to understand the social through an examination of how the respondents in this study interpret their social world. There is no set reality, instead the reality is constructed by its people. Therefore, the ontological position used is that of constructionism, which implies that social processes are the outcome of interactions between individuals (Bryman, 2012).

3.2 Research population

The residents of the Kinkerbuurt are the unit of analysis in this study. The Kinkerbuurt is the area enclosed by the Kostverlorenvaart, Bilderdijkgracht and Kinkerstraat (photo 10) and is part of city district West, which used to be called “Oud-West” (Old-West). The Kinkerbuurt neighbourhood is subdivided in three smaller districts: Da Costabuurt, Borgerbuurt en Bellamybuurt. Some of these names were interchangeably used as synonyms of the Kinkerbuurt during some interviews, but are in fact all part of the area that is called Kinkerbuurt. One interviewee even corrected me when I asked a question about the ‘Kinkerbuurt’ and said, “We are in the Bellamy-buurt” (Willem, 03-05-2019).

During the early stages of this research, quite a few people showed an interest in being an interviewee for this study, but when asked where they lived, not all of them lived within these borders. Also, during the interviews some respondents mentioned streets ‘inside’ the Kinkerbuurt, like the Jacob van Lennepkade and Jan Pieter Heijestraat, which by this definition are not actually part of the neighbourhood, as you can see in photo 10 on the next page.

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Photo 10: Kinkerbuurt and its ‘official’ borders. © N.Sijbrands, Google Maps.

As the people living there felt very much connected to the Kinkerbuurt, the decision was made to include a couple of streets located right next to the Kinkerbuurt area as part of the Kinkerbuurt as well. There is also a school located in this area called the ‘Kinkerbuurtschool’, which made the distinction between the Van Lennep neighbourhood and the Kinkerbuurt even more vague for some of the people I spoke to. All this corresponds with what Agnew (2008) discusses in his article on re-framing border thinking: borders can be problematic and they should not be seen as fixed, but as an evolving construction. For this research, there was one interview with someone who geographically does not live in the Kinkerbuurt (Jacob van Lennepstraat) but has lived in the Kinkerbuurt for almost fifty years before moving a little bit outside of its official borders. He said all of his life still takes place on the Kinkerstraat and Bilderdijkstraat, as well as in Buurtcentrum de Havelaar, a community centre within the Kinkerbuurt as defined for this study. He actually thought he still lived in the Kinkerbuurt, until I showed him what was officially considered as the Kinkerbuurt, which seemed to be quite confusing to him. The Kinkerbuurt’s official borders actually appeared to not be clear for more than just this one respondent with, for example, another respondent saying that she did not know if De Clercqstraat - where our interview took place – was still part of the Kinkerbuurt. To avoid vagueness and confusion, I did not actively search for respondents in this area just outside of the Kinkerbuurt’s ‘official’ borders. Also, none of the observations took place there, in an effort to keep the definition of the research population as clear as possible.

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The final sample

Finding respondents turned out to be more difficult than expected. People who were approached in the streets, cafes and the community centre were generally speaking a bit reserved and did not understand why an interview with them was necessary, saying ‘better’ people could be approached because others would know more about the neighbourhood than they did. Others were in a rush and had no time.

The Kinkerbuurt houses such a large diversity of people that it became necessary to talk to a range of people differing in age, class and ethnicity, as that would provide the most complete view of the situation. The aim was to create a sample consisting of roughly fifty percent women and fifty percent men. In the end, interviews were conducted with seven men and ten women, probably because it was easier for me as a female researcher to get in touch with women.

Efforts were made to find people who differed in how long they had lived in the neighbourhood, as that could also have an impact on how they experience feeling at home and belonging in the Kinkerbuurt. Residents who have lived in the neighbourhood for a long time are a particular interesting group to study, because they have experienced all the changes in the Kinkerbuurt firsthand. Six people were interviewed who lived in the neighbourhood for less than five years and are considered short-time residents in this study. The other eleven interviewees had lived in the neighbourhood for a minimum of eight years. A huge effort was made to try to talk to people from non-Dutch descent in shops and stores, outside the mosque and inside the community centre, but people were reluctant to talk to me. Not all of these people were fluent in Dutch or English, which made it more difficult to start a conversation and be clear about my intentions. The Moroccan man and woman I spoke to thought I wanted to talk about their faith, even though I explained what my research was about. As of January 1st, 2019, the Kinkerbuurt houses 6528 residents, of whom 3241 people are between the ages of twenty and thirty-nine, which is more than half of the population

(Gemeente Amsterdam, 2019). For this study, a balance was sought between people from this age group and people who have lived in the neighbourhood for a long period of time, to be able to gather as much information as possible about the area.

Some people’s phone numbers were acquired through acquaintances who knew people in the Kinkerbuurt, and interviews were planned through a phone call or by messages on messaging apps. I also got in touch with someone who works at community centre De

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Klinker, and two interviews were planned through him. After having done the majority of the planned longer interviews, shorter interviews took place on the streets and inside community centre De Havelaar with people that were either standing in the street or spending time inside the community centre. People tended to be more willing to talk if the word ‘interview’ was not used, so therefore I asked these people if they had a couple of minutes to answer some

questions about what they think about the neighbourhood. In this thesis, pseudonyms will be used of the people that were interviewed. A list of details from the respondents can be found on the following page, including the pseudonyms that are used in this study.

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Table 1: Final sample and respondent details.

Nr Pseudonym Gender Age Time lived in the Kinkerbuurt

Descent Long/short interview

1 Archibald Male 23 Almost two years NL Long

2 Amber Female 25 Since November 2018

(6/7 months during interview), but also lived there for a year in 2013

NL Long

3 Denise Female 20 1 year NL Long

4 Stijn Male 20 Almost 2 years NL Long

5 Maxime Female 24 9 months NL Long

6 Valerie Female 34 12 years NL/Indonesian Long

7 Simone Female 40 20 years NL Long

8 Jan Male 89 89 years NL Long

9 Cornelia Female 83 61 years NL Long

10 Willem Male 71 62 years NL Short

11 Denzel Male 58 21 years Surinamese Short

12 Melissa Female 26 3 years NL Long

13 Fatima Female 51 8 years Turkish Short

14 Yasmine Female About

35-40

At least 13 years Moroccan Short

15 Ali Male About

30

At least 5 years Moroccan Short

16 Alberdina Female 78 45 years NL Short

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3.3 Research Methods

Exploration

Short conversations with residents were held before the actual fieldwork commenced. These were held with people in the streets, who were asked if they had time to answer a few

questions about the neighbourhood. This influenced the next research steps, because it

showed what mattered to the people in the neighbourhood. They all enjoyed talking about the Kinkerbuurt, and these conversations showed that practical questions like ‘What are your favourite places in the Kinkerbuurt? And why?’, as well as and short and clear questions like ‘How would you describe the neighbourhood in a few words?’ worked.

It also showed that some other questions needed more explanation or had to be reformulated.

Interviews

After this, a trial interview took place with my housemate who has lived on the Tweede Kostverlorenkade for about two and a half years now. After the trial interview, the final list of interview questions was constructed.

The first three questions are rather general questions about the interviewee. The following six questions are questions about their first experiences of the neighbourhood, and how they experience the neighbourhood now. Subsequently, more concrete questions were asked, such as: ‘What are your favourite places in the Kinkerbuurt? Why?’ and ‘Does the Kinkerbuurt facilitate your lifestyle?’ to link in with place making and urban consumption. Participants were also asked about the changes in the neighbourhood and whether the interviewee experiences any changes, and if so; how do they feel about this? The fourth set of questions is mostly concerned with feelings of home and belonging. The final part of the interview list centres on connections with others, which is linked to Blokland’s (2017) theory on communities.

The complete list of interview questions can be found in the Appendix (8). These sets of questions were broadly used during the longer interviews that lasted between twenty-five and forty minutes. During some of the interviews, more questions were added on the spot to pick up on something the interviewee mentioned.

The shorter interviews lasted about ten minutes on average. The list of interview questions was not used for this, but they did encompass broadly the same questions. Everyone was asked about their first impressions of the neighbourhood when they moved there, and to

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describe the neighbourhood in a few words and what a ‘home’ is to them. The question ‘Do you feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt?’ always followed. These shorter, less formal interviews were not as structured as the longer interviews.

Observations

Besides the interviews, a number of observations took place on the 10th, 11th and 22nd of May 2019, in De Hallen, on the market in the Ten Kate straat, in game café ‘Twee Klaveren’ and coffee bar ‘De Koffiesalon’. These observations were done to gain a deeper

understanding of the interactions between people in the neighbourhood, mainly to see who they talk to, if people say hello to each other and how they interact with each other in a more general sense.

In some interviews, it was mentioned that different groups of people do live together in this neighbourhood, but do not really interact with each other (more on this can be found in the findings). This was another big impulse for these observations: to see first-hand whether or not this is visible in the interaction on the streets. After having done a couple of interviews and observations, no new information came to the surface anymore and this process was brought to an end, as it had turned out to be too difficult to get in contact with people from a

migration background. This means saturation was reached, at least for the group of long-time and short-time Dutch residents.

Another part of the fieldwork partly took place before this study actually started. I am myself a resident of the Kinkerbuurt and have gotten to know the neighbourhood through my own experiences. During the course of this research, I also spent a lot of time in the

neighbourhood not actually doing research, but these experiences can also provide a source of information for the study. More on this will be explained later on in 4.6 Reflection on own role within research.

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3.4 Data Analysis

For the data analysis, the software ATLAS.ti was used. I started with initial coding, word by word, and sentence by sentence. Codes that were created during this part of the process were for example: café favourite place, village in the city, expensive houses, every group has their own place, Kinkerstraat is busy, home is knowing your surroundings. This was done to find concepts and themes that are mentioned most often. These codes were very close to the data.

After that, more focussed coding took place to find the main concepts for this study (Charmaz, 2014). For this phase of the research ‘smartcodes’ were created, which are like code families or super codes: groups of codes that are related. Codes with the word ‘café’ were created quite a lot in the first phase of coding, so the smartcode café was created. The same applies to ‘Kinkerstraat’ which was also mentioned a lot in many different contexts, so the smartcode Kinkerstraat was made. Two other examples of smartcodes that were created are: opinions about people and opinions about the neighbourhood. The first consisting of codes like ‘people do not care about each other anymore’ and ‘people do not mix’. The second contains codes like ‘multi-cultural’ and ‘I hope it does not get as busy here as in De Pijp’. Out of these smartcodes, the concepts for this study were extracted. For example, the smartcode ‘Home is…’ was used for “What is a home?” in chapter 4.3 and the smartcode ‘Safety’ was used in this same chapter for ‘Safety’.

3.5 Reflection on own role within research

During qualitative research, it is of major importance to be aware of one’s own biases and

preconceptions that may influence what one is trying to understand. (Maykut & Morehouse,

1994). I am a resident of the Kinkerbuurt, and I have lived there for about ten months now. This makes me an insider to the neighbourhood. However, long-time residents can see me as an outsider, and this can have its influence on this research as well.

Insider research means that you conduct research with a population of which you are also a member, sharing an identity, language and experiences with the participants of the study. Respondents are usually more accepting towards the researcher when he or she is an insider and are typically more open towards them, which leads to more depth in the gathered data (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009).

Alongside these positive effects of being an insider during qualitative research, it can be a disadvantage in other ways. The respondent could make assumptions of similarity and this can cause them to fail to explain their own experience fully. Researchers’ perceptions could

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also be clouded by their own experiences and as an insider, they can have difficulties separating their own experience from those of their interviewees (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009).

The insider role can also have its impact after the fieldwork and influence the analysis of the data. This can lead to an emphasis on shared opinions and feelings between the

researcher and the participants of the study, and to de-emphasize factors that are not shared (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009).

As mentioned earlier on, long-time residents can consider me an outsider because I have not lived in the Kinkerbuurt for long. Willem, a long-time resident, called me out on this during our interview saying, “You’re not from here, are you girl.” (03-05-2019) When I told him I was actually born in Amsterdam and live in the neighbourhood now, it felt like he took me a lot more seriously than he did before acquiring that information. This shows how much impact an interviewee’s perception can have on the interview itself. In general, I felt that when I told respondents that I am actually ‘from here’, they felt I could relate to them better, which made them tell me more because I would understand what they were talking about. As Dwyer & Buckle (2009) state, holding membership in a group does not mean you are completely the same, and not being a member of a group does not mean you are completely different from the people inside the group. They therefore plead for a space somewhere between insider and outsider: the insider-outsider perspective that occupies the space between (pp. 60-61). You could say I was in the space between during this research, not being a complete insider or outsider but somewhere in between.

During the interviews, I did not express any of my own opinions on certain issues. When respondents were interested in my opinion or experiences, we talked about this after the interview had ended, to minimize my influence on their opinions. During the analysis of the data, as mentioned in the section above, I have tried to stay as close to the data as possible, and started with coding many different words and sentences to show all things discussed and to make sure I would not forget anything or think it was not important to the study. By doing this, I hope to have achieved my aim to minimize the impact of my role as an insider.

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3.6 Limitations of this study

During the process of this research, it turned out to be very difficult to get in touch with people from a migration background, even though a huge effort was made. This can be linked to the current debates on the Islam and Muslim people in the Netherlands. For example, Dutch political party PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid/Party for Freedom) has gained a big following over the past years and campaigns against the Islam with the first point in their

election program being the ‘de-Islamization of the Netherlands’. 7_{In the end, I was able to}

conduct four short interviews with people from Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese descent. They all told me they felt at home in the Kinkerbuurt, but it still felt like they were not very comfortable speaking to me, as they did not allow me to record the conversations we had. The final sample would have been more diverse and correspond better to the actual population of the neighbourhood, if more people from a migration background had been willing to

participate in the interviews.

Something that also needs emphasis, is that this is a case study focusing on belonging and feeling at home in a specific context: the gentrifying Kinkerbuurt. The object of this study is not to be generalized to the whole city of Amsterdam or to other parts of the Netherlands. It can however serve as an example of issues of belonging in urban neighbourhoods, which can be related to other similar studies about belonging in the city.

For this study there was tried to be as transparent as possible by describing the entire research process to make the study as reliable as possible (Silverman, 2014).

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4 Feeling at home in the changing Kinkerbuurt

4.1 Changes in the neighbourhood

This study has chosen the Kinkerbuurt as a research setting, because it is a neighbourhood in Amsterdam that gentrified quickly and yet still has a population that is quite mixed. It is also a neighbourhood that is still very much in transition, with new housing having been built over the past few years and a lot of renovation going on. Also, new cafes and stores open in the Kinkerbuurt on a regular basis. As of January 2019, the Kinkerbuurt housed 6528 people, of whom a little more than half were native Dutch citizens. More information about the make-up of the neighbourhood can be found in Table 2 below.

Kinkerbuurt January 2018 Number of inhabitants Total 6528 Native Dutch 3520 Western 1460 Non-western 1548 Moroccan 401

Table 2: Inhabitants of the Kinkerbuurt categorized by migration background. Source: Gemeente Amsterdam, 2019.

The Kinkerbuurt is a neighbourhood of Amsterdam where many people live on a relatively small number of square kilometres. The tram depot of the GVB (Amsterdam’s public

transport services) used to be located in the centre of this part of the city, but the GVB moved out in the late 20th century. In the past decades, a lot of luxurious apartments have been built in the Kinkerbuurt and the old tram depot was transformed into a cultural centre called ‘De Hallen’ providing shops, a library and a food court. Many new bars, shops and restaurants opened in the Kinkerstraat, De Clercqstraat and Bilderdijkstraat, but based on my

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These are big changes compared to what the Kinkerbuurt was like in the 1940s, starting off as a working-class neighbourhood. Jan (a male participant of 89) elaborated on the history of the Kinkerbuurt as he personally experienced it during the past 89 years. He starts his story with the fact that the Kinkerstraat used to have lots of tall trees, but they were all sawn-off during World War II., when the neighbourhood residents needed the wood to stay warm. He says there were a lot of Jewish people in the Kinkerbuurt until that time. After the war, migrants started to come to the neighbourhood, the first being, in his memory, Italians starting an ice-cream parlour. There were a lot of delicatessen shops spread throughout the neighbourhood at that time, and the market used to be bigger too. He told me that during the past few decades he mostly saw people from Turkish and Moroccan descent moving into the neighbourhood, and that it is now changing again, with more families and young adults moving into the area.

4.2 The Kinkerbuurt as a home

In the end, sixteen of the seventeen interviewees responded with a yes when asked if they felt at home in the Kinkerbuurt. Only Alberdina said she did not feel at home, but she also mentioned that she usually feels like she does not really belong anywhere and that she feels

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like she is a bit of a loner. She said she did feel at home in her own house though, and that she did not think she would ever really feel at ease anywhere in Amsterdam, due to its general busyness and people’s lack of awareness of each other. The sixteen other respondents

mentioned a lot of different reasons to feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt. These reasons ranged from seeing familiar faces every day, to the neighbourhood being a place where you have your memories. Other reasons include: home is being comfortable, home is a recognizable place, home is where my children are, home is knowing people, home is to feel at ease, home is peace and quiet, home is safe. Making the Kinkerbuurt a home to many different people in a lot different ways. Most of the reasons residents feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt will be discussed in the upcoming chapters that discuss feelings of belonging in long-time residents and in the short-time residents who have only lived in the Kinkerbuurt for up to four years.

A sense of belonging becomes very clear when interviewees talk about their neighbourhood compared to the rest of Amsterdam. They feel like they belong in the Kinkerbuurt, and they make a very clear distinction between their neighbourhood and the rest of the city of Amsterdam. The respondents mention how busy the city centre is and how they feel like that centre is not theirs anymore, that they do no longer belong there. The following extract from one of the interviews shows very clearly how a respondent’s life is quite centred around her own neighbourhood and how she feels like a visitor or even not very welcome in other parts of the city. The Kinkerbuurt is where she belongs.

Simone: ‘East is already very far away for me. The city centre I never come. Never in South. It is pretty bad, but my whole life solely takes place here. And if I have to go to East for work once in a while, that feels like a huge project. By the way, the kids have hockey in East and my son goes free running in East. Twice a week I have to be there, but then I really am a visitor.

Interviewer: That does not feel like home?

Simone: No, no, no, then I have really left my own neighbourhood. That is true. This neighbourhood is in that sense very much a home.

Interviewer: In that sense, would you say you belong more in the Kinkerbuurt than in Amsterdam, or could you not formulate it that way?

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Simone: Yes definitely! Because yeah, the centre is not mine anymore. That is where I used to come, when I was young, I used to go out there, etcetera. But now, I have nothing to go there for. Not the Kalverstraat, I hate it all. The Dam. I avoid all that, but that is without any effort because I don’t have… I don’t have to do anything [there]. Unless I have to go to the central station for the train. That is okay. That is not my home. That area belongs to the tourists now I think, that is not really our place anymore. (Simone, 29-04-2019)

She is not the only one who describes the city centre as too busy. When describing the Kinkerbuurt, one respondent notes that “(…) it does not really feel like the city centre Amsterdam or something. Thankfully, because that is too busy.” (Maxime, 15-04-2019). In his book, Duyvendak (2011) states that in changing neighbourhoods, new immigrants often become homesick for their places of origin, while native residents become nostalgic for the good old days. Denzel and Fatima talked about their place of origin when they were asked where they felt most at home. They mention Suriname and Turkey before they mention their homes in the Kinkerbuurt, but they do also say that, even though they refer to those places as home, this does not have any influence on how much they feel at home in the Kinkerbuurt, which they say they do. Yasmine (22-05-2019) tells me that she feels at home here because she sees her children enjoying the neighbourhood. This does not correspond with the feelings of homesickness that Duyvendak (2011) describes in his book. However, it could be linked to what Duyvendak et. al. (2016) say about how feeling at home is very much connected with certain people, in this case Yasmine’s children, and under certain circumstances, in this case when she sees that her children enjoy a place. Home is not just a physically place, home can be found in people as well, which is the case when you see home as a heaven (Duyvendak, 2011, p. 38).

Even though the neighbourhood has changed over the years, people seems to find that these changes are mostly linked to current changes that happen in many places in the western world. For example, Jan describes how decades ago children would play in the streets, even in the evenings. He says that kids do not play in the streets anymore, but that all kids nowadays “always sit inside” and only play with their phones. He attributes this to the current time and general lifestyle of children in 2019 and says that this is not specific for the neighbourhood.

Belonging in the Kinkerbuurt : a qualitative study on feeling at home and place making in a gentrifying neighbourhood