How immigrant grocery stores can reshape societies

But it is about so much more than the interactions that take place.

Arab grocery stores – like the one in Amsterdam and many more in other major European cities – are places for people to meet. Here, they can speak their language, and they feel welcome.

Forming human geography

These shops provide meeting places for Arabs to mingle. They help form a city's human geography and cultural and social composition.

The writings of the Chinese-American scholar Yi-Fu Tuan are helpful in understanding these dynamics. He looked at human geography and its ideas over place-making via several components, including language.

Tuan believes that making a place is based on interaction between individuals and between them and their environment. Through these interactions, people can become themselves as they create and define the human geographical area, or domain. But this is about more than just place – it is about the two-way relationship between the place and the people in it.

Involving people in placemaking creates an emotional understanding and agreement, in which they develop some form of emotional or sentimental attachment to their surroundings. That means they become invested in the place, helping establish a sense of community.

Tuan argues that language is an integral and essential element in building a place, stating that "Words can make things visible or give them a certain character." According to Tuan, public spaces can be constructed, preserved, destroyed, and dismantled based on language.

Spices, coffee and halal products

In addition to language, this human geography is built on a more complex cultural foundation. Goods displayed on the shelves of a store — in this context an Arabic store — create a shared understanding between the seller and the buyers, a shared language between customers, and a cultural and social space that binds them.

The smell of spices, Arabic coffee, halal meat and even vegetables and fruits – priced and sold by weight in Arab shops, rather than per piece as in many Dutch shops – are details that convey a shared understanding and behaviour that doesn't require much explanation.

These details establish the human geographical space and the interactive space between people. They enable Mrs. M.A. to speak, in her language, freely.

Food as an emotional language

The signs of this understanding and agreement extend beyond that to include the cultural symbolism of the type of food, dishes and meals made from these goods in the store.

They also reveal what the immigrant left behind and what reminders of home are on offer — at least partially — in everyday life in a new European home. Cooking and food become an emotional language of nostalgia and a means of restoring a feeling of social warmth.

As well as these psychological factors, how goods are sold shows an understanding of the distinct sociological and anthropological characteristics of the customers in the store. Arab families are often extended, and frequently also feature more children. That means they can be typically larger than their European equivalents.

Consequently, it is easier and cheaper for an Arab family to buy fresh goods by kilogrammes or in bulk rather than by piece.

Also, the pace of life can be different for people of the East. Slower cooking over low fire is part of that. Generally, Easterners prefer to buy fresh ingredients for cooking and eating, rather than half-cooked or frozen, easy-to-cook products.

They also treat food and the dining table as a ritual rather than a daily routine. It is also customary for Arab grocery stores to close on non-Dutch occasions and public holidays. Closed grocery stores would have a sign — this time in Dutch — saying "Closed for Eid Al-Fitr or Eid Al-Adha".

There is no need for an Arabic sign because it is already understood.

Deconstructing and reconstructing the place

With the growing waves of Arab and non-Arab immigration and asylum-seeking spreading across Europe, some European research centres have started to study the increasing number of Arabic and Chinese groceries in many European cities.

As they became more popular, Arab products appeared in European supermarkets. However, the displays of Moroccan couscous and olive oil, or hummus (chickpeas) and mtabal (eggplant spread) made and canned in the Netherlands, along with eastern spices and halal meat, has more to do with market competition than social change — even if Dutch consumers have embraced the products.

Power relations

The famous Dutch sociologist Jan Willem Duyvendak says perceptions of homeland and the sense of belonging to it in the public space have become the subject of debate in contemporary Europe.

He studied the concept of the homeland and the citizen, looking at the dichotomy between the majority and minority (or minorities). He believed that public space had become a symbolic battleground.

If we look at what happened in France lately from this perspective, we see that the issue transcended symbolism and morphed into actual violence.

Read more: Dissecting France's race problem

Different population groups can end up competing for territory within the terrain of human geography. This can make public space a place for dialogue, or even conflict. But it can also produce a warm social space that values emotional connections and interactions with it, as Yi Fu Tuan explained.

The presence of canned ground chickpeas and other Eastern food products on Amsterdam's store shelves – and their popularity with the Dutch  – is part of the kind of change that can reconstruct public spaces.

This may also apply to the halal meat corner and some Eastern products placed in indigenous shops as an honorary representation of the Arabic or Islamic community. While that does not replace Arab grocery stores, it reflects something beyond pragmatism and capitalist interest.

Social dynamics

It reflects an ongoing and renewed process of place definition and redefinition, albeit in a power dynamic that naturally favours the white majority or native population.

Going beyond our Amsterdam grocery store, if we consider the city a human geographic space questions arise: How can this city represent everyone – or provide everyone with a sense of belonging, meaning, presence and security – if it is not constantly redefining and reinventing itself? How else can it reflect the changing reality and truth of its identity?

The same questions can be asked of any city, not just Amsterdam.

But in the famous Dutch metropolis, power dynamics at work limit Mrs. M.A.'s free movement on the public streets. The Arab grocery store in the heart of Amsterdam works differently.

The process of defining and redefining place – as demonstrated by Mrs. M.A.'s experience in the grocery store – is by no means isolated from the other major phenomena that culminated in the fall of the Dutch government following disputes over immigration.

The different positions that emerged in the Netherlands regarding immigration control policies – between what is known as the right-wing and left-wing of society – are just a manifestation of the same conflict over the essence of society and how to define it.

This is a continuing debate — being discussed at dining tables and the conference rooms of politicians and parliamentarians.