Demonstrators took to the streets Saturday in several towns across France to protest the government's plan to relocate migrants from the squalid Calais "Jungle" camp that is being shut down to their communities, reports Yahoo! News.
Around 250 people joined a march in Forges-les-Bains, about 30 kilometres (18 miles) southwest of Paris, against a migrant reception centre which opened Monday, housing 44 Afghans, an AFP journalist at the scene reported.
"The state forced this centre on us but I for one don't intend to just put up and shut up," said Lea, a young mother of two, who declined to give her surname.
Valérie Rigal, a leader of the marchers who are calling for a "moratorium" on further arrivals, insisted the villagers were not opposed to all migrants.
"We're not against migrants. We would have happily taken migrant families. What we didn't want was single men only," she said.
"My daughter takes the bus outside the centre every day. She's worried about running into groups of strange men."
The leafy hamlet of 3,700 residents, surrounded by woodland and corn fields, is expected to receive 91 asylum seekers. They are to be accommodated in an imposing disused hospital surrounded by high fencing.
In Pierrefeu-du-Var, southern France, a disused part of a psychiatric hospital has been chosen by authorities to house 60 asylum seekers currently in Calais who will be relocated from November.
Opposition to that plan brought out some 600 people to a rally in the village about 20 kilometres from Hyères near the Mediterranean coast, police said.