Winter shows up early in Amsterdam. Along the quays of the outer canals, cyclists wearing gloves and scarves pedal about, unfazed by the puddles. Underneath rainbow flags, hunched-over coffee drinkers brave the bitter cold and breathe fog between sips. Far from the boisterous and tourist-infested anarchy that is the city centre, this place is orderly, understated and, so it seems, alluring.
While it’s no Australia or Britain, the Netherlands has established itself as another place putting out the welkom mat to Kiwis seeking an OE. According to data from the Ministerie van Justitie en Veiligheid (Ministry of Justice and Security), which regulates migration in the country, the number of New Zealanders applying for working holiday visas and work permits in the Netherlands nearly doubled between 2016 and 2023 to about 500 a year. Add these newcomers to those who have pitched up over the past two decades and you’ll get quite a sizeable Kiwi community.
But, under the surface of this charming progenitor of progress, change is brewing. On November 22, the Dutch gave far-right Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) 23.49% of the vote – more than any other party in the notoriously fractured parliamentary system.
During his campaign, Wilders spelt out his desire to tear up environmental regulations, used the words “zero tolerance for street scum” and spoke of bans on mosques, Islamic headscarves in public buildings and possession of the Qur’an. Even if Wilders’ place in government is far from a given (the PVV was the largest party with 37 seats but needs support from other parties to form a coalition government), his electoral success indicates that much of the population is vehemently opposed to how things have been going.
The prospect of change doesn’t appear to have shaken the resolve of the New Zealanders who are already settled. They seem to think the Netherlands, and in particular Amsterdam, has quite a lot going for it.
Brown bar blues
Tucked away just west of the centre, Café le Pels has sold coffee and provided reading material to Amsterdam’s journalists since the 1970s. Just after midday on a Wednesday, it was deafening inside. The waiter behind the bar looked at me strangely when I ordered a long black. “You mean an Americano?” she replied, eyebrows furrowed.
One of the city’s famous “brown bars” – named because of their distinctive dark wooden interior – the place claims it will give €50 of chocolate to “anyone who knows a cafe – anywhere in the world – with more quality daily and weekly newspapers per square metre of user space”.
It is also a dying breed. “Brown bars have very quickly disappeared over the past few years,” says Jake Barnes, 31, an advertising copywriter and screenwriter from Auckland, who has lived in Amsterdam for a decade.
While Café le Pels will likely survive, its contemporaries have fallen victim to a trend Barnes has observed over the past 10 years: the process of Amsterdam distinguishing itself from the rest of the country. The presence of a large and diverse range of expats – some 100,000 of them – has diluted the Dutchness of the place. “Amsterdam is a bit of a bubble; it’s like a cosmopolitan village,” says Barnes.
This process – the bubblification of Amsterdam, if you like – is to some degree a function of policy designed to entice people just like Barnes. The country has the highest level of English outside of the anglosphere because of generations of education policy; skilled migrants have a tax exemption over 30% of their income for the first five years they spend in the country.
The cosmopolitan nature of the city also makes for easier integration. Unlike a city dominated by the home culture – like Paris or Barcelona, where people have already made their minds up on who they want to spend time with – Amsterdam is more forgiving. “We all replaced our friends and families with each other,” says Barnes. “The make-up of my friend group is Russian, Italian, French, Spanish, British … there’s such a multitude of different cultures. It’s endlessly fascinating.”
Barnes originally moved when he was 21 for an internship at a global ad agency’s Amsterdam office, which became a permanent role (he has recently resigned to pursue screenwriting).
He had considered his initial move a stepping stone to an eventual position at the firm’s HQ in Portland, Oregon. But he promptly fell in love with the low country and gave up his American dream. “After two months of being here, I remember going to Prague for work and feeling homesick for Amsterdam, not New Zealand.”
Compared with London, Barnes says, it’s a no-brainer to choose Amsterdam. “Every time I think about moving to London, I’m like, ‘I’m going to get paid less and going to have to live with other people again; I’m going to have to be on the tube for hours with people with armpits,’” he says.
“Whereas here, I cycle seven minutes through paths by the gorgeous canals and I’m at the office.”
This last point, the size of the city, comes up a lot. Perhaps even more so in a post-Covid world, people are unprepared to sacrifice large parts of their lives to get places – especially on cramped public transport. With a population of about 900,000, Amsterdam is large enough to have everything you might want and small enough to make it all accessible. “People here think 20 minutes on a bike is too far away,” Barnes says.
Sophie de Bievre, a 23-year-old from Hawke’s Bay, moved to Amsterdam 14 months ago to be closer to her Dutch roots. After graduating with a master’s degree in political science from Victoria University of Wellington, de Bievre spent her first year working in a bar, making friends, learning Dutch and having fun. She now wants to use her education to get a job in an NGO and is actively weighing up a daily commute to The Hague if need be (50 minutes by train). Talking to her, you get the impression it has all run rather smoothly. “I love this city, I’ve got a good group of friends, I feel happy, I feel comfortable,” she says.
There are, of course, downsides. Barnes and de Bievre talk about how expensive everything is, particularly rent, food and going out. Rent is more expensive than in Wellington, where she paid just $260 a week for a Cuba St flat. “So, it is expensive, but I’m in Amsterdam … I’m not here to save money.”
As one of the 150,000 New Zealanders with Dutch heritage, de Bievre is entitlted to a Dutch passport. But she says the initial administration to be eligible to work was cumbersome and overcomplicated.
Other Kiwis I talked to, many of whom hold professional qualifications, had a rough time finding work. Some pack it all up and head home without getting settled, while others cannot extend their visas into a second year.
The friend de Bievre came over with, also named Sophie, was effectively deported after 12 months. The UK, by contrast, now offers three years for a working holiday visa with very little red tape.
A week after the election, everyone seemed pleased the sun had made a momentary return after a month of rain, drizzle and thunder. On the opposite side of town from Café le Pels, the lunch rush was winding down at Bakers & Roasters. “The Wi-Fi password is ‘milkshake’, all lowercase,” I heard one of the waiters say in a familiar twang.
Christchurch native Julian Kirwan was living in London and working as an Air New Zealand flight attendant when he came to Amsterdam for the city’s world-famous Pride festival. The following day, perhaps a bit dusty, he came to the conclusion that the Dutch could use some brunch. Ten years on, it appears the Dutch agree with his assessment – he is the co-owner of two very busy Aotearoa-themed Bakers & Roasters cafes. One is in De Pijp, a buzzy area near the centre, and the one I sat down in, near Kadijksplein, more towards the east. “When we opened, we were one of the first brunch places,” Kirwan says. “They didn’t know what poached eggs were; going out for breakfast wasn’t their thing. It all worked out.”
As a business owner, Kirwan says setting up was “simple as”. Compared with New Zealand, where he is in the process of setting up a third business, he says it was “10 times easier … the Netherlands removed obstacles and New Zealand has been like an endless money pit.”
As you might be able to tell, Kirwan, Barnes and de Bievre say they have no real intention of moving home. But just because they’re happy where they are does not mean they’ve forgotten Aotearoa – the taniwha hung on the wall behind the cashier, the lollycake in the cabinet and the long blacks on the menu in Bakers & Roasters are a testament to that.
Kith ‘n’ Kin
With a couple of compatriots, Mark Beker started Kiwis in the Netherlands (KIN) in 2016. Beker is the CEO of Innoseis, a company that builds technology that measures moonquakes – earthquakes on the moon. As someone who misses home (Tauranga and Matamata) a lot, the idea was to create an “organisation that allows Kiwis to maintain a cultural and social connection with New Zealand”. KIN organises activities such as casual barbecues and Matariki celebrations as well as screenings of Kiwi films. Gaylene Preston’s Helen Clark documentary, My Year with Helen, was a popular event.
In many ways, the Netherlands is an unusual place for New Zealanders to end up. Virtually everything is back-to-front. The country is made up of hundreds of densely populated little towns and cities separated by trivial distances and connected by a remarkably efficient transport infrastructure. People don’t just commute into the cities, but from city to city. Then there’s the clogs, cumin Gouda and the national obsession with reclaiming land.
In 22 years, Beker has seen plenty of Kiwis come and go. He says you can roughly divide them – with a bit of overlapping – into three groups: the “younger crowd” who are here for an overseas experience (de Bievre); the “expats” who are looking to boost their careers with next-level jobs or have been relocated by their firms (Barnes); and the “they got stuck here kind of Kiwis”, who perhaps married a Dutch person or have spent so much time in the Netherlands they can no longer be considered an expat. Beker puts himself in this final category.
The ability of our best and brightest to live in the Netherlands is of course not only contingent on their desire to do so. What matters more are the levers Dutch politicians pull, says Beker.
Even before Wilders’ electoral success, the situation was arguably headed towards stricter migration laws – a proposal to significantly cut the tax incentives for expats was passed by Parliament in October. One can expect this trend would hasten under Wilders. While his xenophobia is primarily directed at Muslims, Wilders has said he intends to “severely limit” all labour and study migrants, raising the possibility that a reliably open door may soon swing shut. “[Wilders] has made threats about completely scrapping dual nationality [the Netherlands already has relatively strict dual-nationality laws] which would be a blow for Dutch-Kiwis who want to hang on to their Kiwi nationality,” says Beker.
In New Zealand’s namesake, the westernmost and least populous Dutch province, Zeeland, Wilders’ party had a margin of 9.2 percentage points over its nearest rival. By contrast, the PVV came in fourth position with just 9% of the vote in Amsterdam. This suggests most Kiwis are probably sheltered somewhat in their comfy bubble.
Over our Americanos, Jake Barnes attests to this. He says all of his friends – Dutch and otherwise – are scratching their heads about the election. However, he admits there can be a “vibe” during certain interactions with Dutch people. Kiwis described conversations with people who complain that the flow of well-paid expats has raised prices, warped the property market and accelerated gentrification. Others say they have Dutch colleagues who get annoyed because they’re forced to work in their second language in their own country. Understandable, really.
In any event, Wilders’ ability to turn off the tap is conditional on him building a coalition (don’t hold your breath, it took Dutch parties 208 days to form a government in 2017). If a deal comes to pass, it will likely involve him heavily moderating some of his more radical proposals.
Though it’s far more alarming for the Netherlands’ Muslim population, the election is a bit of a wake-up call, says Barnes. For his part, he has spent the past 10 years familiarising himself with local culture and getting his Dutch to a high level – something he thinks all Kiwis should do if they intend to stick around.
“The election shows there’s a lot of frustration. As expats, we should listen.”