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A New Brussels: Ethnic Minorities in Brussels
| Article
# : |
16289 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1989 |
4,371 Words |
| Author
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Johan Leman
Johan Leman is managing director of the Foyer, an integration
center for immigrants in Brussels, and president of the C. W.
Laken medical and anthropological center, also in Brussels. He
is a professor of the Center of Social and Cultural
Anthropology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. |
Systematic immigration into Belgium (mostly by eastern Europeans and northern Italians) began in 1920--earlier than its northern neighbor, the Netherlands, but later than in France, its southern neighbor. The first wave lasted until 1940. The immigrants came to work in the heavy industries of French-speaking southern Belgium and the Flemish-speaking northeast. These industries were situated in semiurbanized areas. A later wave of similar size, notably of southern Italians, occurred shortly after the Second World War. By the end of 1947, Belgium had an immigrant population of 368,000, which accounted for 4.31 percent of the total population.
It must be kept in mind that the Belgian population during this period was around eight to nine million. Furthermore, Belgium is a small country, only about as large as the island of Sicily; one can drive across the country in any direction in about three hours. The Netherlands is not much bigger. To the south, enclosed between the much larger France and West Germany, is the diminutive Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which joined with Belgium and the Netherlands to form an economic union, the Benelux, in 1947.
In the latter part of the 1950s, a greater diversity developed among recruited immigrants as well as those who came on their own initiative. After the Italians came Spaniards and Greeks, and in the early 1960s, Moroccans and Turks. By the early 1960s, immigrants accounted for the same proportion of the Belgian population as immediately after the Second World War; however, a rapid increase in the immigrant population occurred after 1960 both in absolute and percentage figures; from 453,500 or 4.93 percent of the total population in 1961 to 891,250, or 9.04 percent, in 1983.
After 1960, the Netherlands experience was similar to that of Belgium. A large part of the growth after 1960 was due to Mediterranean laborers, but there were also those with ties to the Netherlands from its colonial past. The population of 117,600 foreigners (1 percent of the total population) living in the Netherlands in 1961 grew to 42,600 (3.8 percent) in 1983 and can be projected to reach 5.4 percent when Antilleans, Surinamese, and Moluccans (descendants of inhabitants of former Dutch possessions) are included.
Throughout Western Europe, the number of Third World arrivals increased more rapidly than those of other groups after 1960. Among them have been considerable numbers of Turkish and Moroccan laborers. By 1981 there were 64,000 Turks and 105,000 Moroccans in Belgium, and at the beginning of 1984 the
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