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"When the first refugees arrived here in Oberhausen we had a big welcome culture, this has calmed down," says Joerg Fischer, manager of a Red Cross refugee transit camp in Oberhausen in Germany. In the six months since BBC News first visited Oberhausen, the mood here has changed. The majority of people still welcome new arrivals, but there are some who say they are creating a strain on a local economy with an 11% rate of unemployment. Oberhausen lies in the western region of North Rhine-Westphalia, which took in an estimated 21% of asylum seekers in 2015, more than anywhere else in the country. Nearly 3,000 refugees, many fleeing conflict in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, settled in Oberhausen last year. A BBC team first visited in October 2015 and has returned to speak to aid workers, residents and the asylum seekers themselves. Khaled has begun learning German and is looking for work. He says he's been treated very well by the people of Oberhausen, but has struggled at times to understand German customs: "When we get on the bus in our country everyone is friendly and they say hello to each other," says Khaled with a smile on his face. "But here people are just sitting and they just want to keep their privacy. We tried to be quiet and not say anything because we are scared, we don't know the rules, maybe it's illegal to talk? But nowadays I understand it and it has become a little better for me." Social etiquette has also become an issue at AQUApark, Oberhausen's biggest swimming pool. General Manager Timor Schrimer says the pool's rules have been printed in Arabic on leaflets to help the new arrivals understand German customs.
Keywords
refugee, transit camp, Germany, unemployment, asylum seekers, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, aid workers, residents
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