Notes on the economic and social impact of the migration flows in Belgium from the post-World War II to the new Millennium: some case studies

This paper aims to illustrate the impact of emigration on the Belgian economy and society during the twentieth century. We analyse some particular case studies and illustrate the effects of the arrival of foreign workers in Belgian mines, textile and iron and steel factories, and the building sector. Our research also illustrates the related changes in the Belgian life style (concerning food, music, sport, agronomics etc.) and in particular the creation of a real melting pot in the Belgian society. The paper also shows that the migration process included, especially in the second half of the twentieth century, very different people as far as language, religion and education are concerned (from the poorest migrants who needed training courses for improving their language and labour skills to the high skilled migrants who came as the executives of the European institutions in Brussels). The integration process of “foreigners” was complicated in particular for those who had a different religion and/or skin colour and/or a low knowledge of the French (or Dutch) language. As it happened elsewhere in Europe, while the immigration in Belgium until the second world war was almost exclusively white, Catholic and European, the post-war immigration was in fact much more different, with its large numbers of non-white and non-Christian manual workers from outside Europe. Their process of integration was also made more difficult by the absence of the “protecting” rules on emigration and welfare reserved to EEC migrants. There existed some bilateral agreements only and this increased the number of illegal immigrants: the latter obviously had a lot of problems in finding a job and an accomodation and they had no possibility to improve their quality of life. This has also favoured, in the case of few young adults who were born in the 1980s and 1990s and were not able to be fully integrated in the Belgian society, the growth of feelings in favour of the radical Islam which had no followers until the last decades of the twentieth century