arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

This ‘integrating’ exercise will somehow magic up good jobs for immigrants, bring them in from the margins of society, overcome the friction between them and the mainstream, and banish the discrimination against them from the popular mind. But far from being a cure-all, talk of integration is simply a placebo prescribed by political witchdoctors unable to face up to the real maladies needing treatment.

The latest politician to join the fray is Marino Keulen. Being the Flemish minister for integration, this is perhaps not surprising. He also happens to be the minister for housing, internal governance and city policy. Wearing two political hats, he was able to conjure up a combo proposal: all immigrants applying for social housing need to demonstrate a basic grasp of Dutch or commit to taking free Dutch lessons. But those who have jobs, he helpfully suggested, would not need to do this, since that proved they were sufficiently well integrated.

Of course, I’m not opposed to the idea of offering Dutch lessons to people who don’t know the language very well. It helps them overcome the language barrier to human and societal interaction, and is a great aid to fitting in with the host culture. I personally find that learning Dutch opened up a whole new view on life here.

But the minister’s proposal makes very little practical, ethical or common sense. The only sense it makes is for political sound bites at the expense of a vulnerable segment of society that lacks the voice to defend itself.

Firstly, I understand that new measures were recently introduced obliging all recent immigrants – at least those from outside Europe and the rich world – to sign up for language courses upon arrival but the government doesn’t have enough capacity to deal with the demand!. This means that the minister’s scheme will, in practice, affect very few people, since nearly all of the younger generation of immigrants who grew up hear (allochtonen) speak the language.

Moreover, there’s more to promoting neighbourly understanding on council estates than speaking the same language. Most Moroccans and other minorities living there speak the language. What stands in the way of good relations is usually prejudice and mutual distrust. Those are the individual barriers that need to be broken down.

Ethically, it seems absurd and inhuman to deprive – if it ever comes to that – someone of their basic right to shelter on language grounds, especially if they don’t have a job and, hence, can’t afford to live in private accommodation.

I have heard complaints that there are some people who have lived here for 30 or 40 years and barely speak the language. And, I can confirm, such people, although a tiny minority, do exist.

But that is as much society’s fault, as their own. When they arrived, no one really wanted them to integrate because they were seen as temporary migrant workers. And work in a factory or down the mines doesn’t really require much eloquence or linguistic aptitude.

I would find it shocking if a retired couple needing social housing were told they could not because they had an insufficient grasp of the language. After their decades of productive service to society, that would smack of ingratitude.

Fortunately, there has been a massive groundswell of criticism against the minister’s proposals, with the Greens leading the charge.



The cultural fortress
In Belgium, language is an immensely important issue. After official denial for more than half the country’s history of the language spoken by at least half the population, the linguistic defensiveness felt by many Flemings is understandable. After decades of political struggle, they can now speak their own language in government offices, schools, universities, and more.

But that doesn’t mean everything can and should be viewed through the language periscope. Sometimes, it appears to me that this immigrant language debate is actually a deflection of the underlying Dutch-French debate.

“This fixation on the knowledge of Dutch… is slowly getting very painful for Flanders and our future,” Johan Leman, an anthropologist at Leuven University and the former boss of the Centrum voor Gelijke Kansen en Racismebestijding (Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism), wrote in De Standaard. “Flanders is hopefully not going down the road of total blindness that the Netherlands has taken.”

If Belgians wish to create a truly bilingual society, then they need to rebuild a sense of national belonging, and start young. Like in Switzerland that requires a bilingual education system so that Flemings and Walloons can grow up completely comfortable in both tongues, and a broad cultural exchange programme between the two loosely linked regions.

As for the immigrant community, the language barrier is the least worrisome obstacle of all. The segment that causes the most concern is usually young second and third-generation immigrants. Like the Belgians they are, they speak French or Dutch or both perfectly.

Their difficulty is the social and economic exclusion they suffer across the country, and the mutual distrust between them and mainstream society. And this won’t be overcome with language or ‘inburgerings’ courses. This can only be resolved through serious programmes for creating employment opportunities for this marginalised group and the promotion of a two-way cultural dialogue.

Allowing the far right to ambush the political process will only hurt this reconciliation process. Vlaams Belang – the one-time Vlaams Blok which changed its name after being ruled racist in order to retain its party funding – and other rightwing parties use their integration discourse not out of a desire to build understanding but to reinforce distrust and fear.

They not only blame immigrants for scrounging off the state, being idle layabouts and stealing jobs (amazingly dexterous, these foreigners), but they also say immigrant should assimilate or leave. But by constantly raising the bar of what they mean by this (for instance, calling for foreigners to learn Dutch before they even arrive), it is obvious that what they really mean is a subtle variation on the ‘go back home’ theme.

In Belgium, like in the UK and other European countries, ruling parties are borrowing the clothes of their right-wing critics. But mainstream politicians should not stumble through this smokescreen spluttering and coughing. They should instead seize the initiative and show this madness for what it is. Flemings are by and large tolerant people who respect individual differences. To be hospitable, they will generally try, if they can, to speak the language of their interlocutor.

An appreciation and respect among immigrants of the dominant language and culture are essential in a multicultural society. But in a tolerant society, minorities have rights, too, and the mainstream has to make some concessions to accommodate and understand them.

First published on Diabolic Digest - http://users.skynet.be/diab

Copyright 2005 Khaled Diab. This article may be republished for non-commerical purposes. The author would appreciate notification of any such republications. This article may not be republished for commerical purposes without the author's previous written consent.

Marino Keulen is a liberal politician from the party VLD (= Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten). But he doesn't understand very much of the problem, as you remarked already.
The main reason for his narrow-mindedness is that he is coming from a little village (Lanaken) where there is almost no immigrant to be found (except for Dutch, white well-to-do people who come to Belgium to invest their black money in houses and land). That is why his views on the immigration debate are quite distorted. How can a rich man like Marino Keulen understand what is happening in big cities like Brussels, Antwerp or Charleroi ? Sitting in his nice and cosy huge villa it is very difficult for him to understand normal people's everyday problems. That is not his fault, is is merely a fact.

Every political debate became impossible in our country, because another political party, which carries the name 'Vlaams Blok', became much too influential. Their ideal and program is based on racist and fascist principles and they are spoiling every debate about every topic. Although they're not in government yet, they are leading the political debate to a very great extent. All the other parties had to make one big rainbow-coalition, just to keep them out of the government. But this will only help them to become bigger because now they can play the victim. "We have won the elections 10 times, and still we are not in charge". This ultra rightwing party is spreading the myth that all french speaking citizens are profitors and thieves who don't like to work and who steal money from the Flemish people. In their distorted world view, the french speaking people are also the friends and allies of the immigrant population, who are all put in the same bag together with islamic fundamentalists, terrorists and socialists and criminals.
No need to tell you that they share the world view of Mr. Bush who organized a crusade against Islam.
So it is almost impossible now to talk about politics in Flanders and in Belgium without mentioning the 'Vlaams Belang', and also because everyone immediately starts to ask you questions about what you think about Moroccans and Turkish people.
'Are you member of a political party?' 'Yes I am'.
'Oh, can you tell us what you think about foreigners ?' That is all everybody is interested in. They will ask you no more. If you try to discuss another topic, they will start to talk about foreigners or criminality as soon as possible. A serene debate became impossible, because the adherents of Vlaams Blok (they changed their name very recently into Vlaams Belang after being condemned for racism by the highest court in Belgium) think that everybody who is not with them is automatically against them, is automatically a criminal, is automatically a moslem or a terrorist or at least someone who keeps with the 'brown ones'. And all the 'brown ones' or 'black ones' are seen as criminals, thieves, profitors, parasites and inferior to white Flemish supremacy.
I invite you to come to Marino Keulen's home village and try to speak about politics with ordinary people. You will soon find out that this is almost impossible.
This climate explains also why other political parties are becoming more and more racist themselves in trying to win back some of the 1.000.000 votes that went to this fascist party. Especially parties like VLD (liberals) and CD&V (catholics)are in danger of splitting up because some of their politicians are eager to stay in government, even if that means that they will have to do concessions to "Vlaams Belang". But all this loss of principles does not bring back the votes. People still vote for the original, not for the copy.

I totally agree that being able to speak the language of the dominant language group in which you are living is clearly an advantage for everybody concerned. In this regard, offering free language courses to all people living in Flanders who do not speak Dutch seems to me to be a very good idea.

But indeed:

1) refusing a home to someone on the basis of not speaking the language of the majority is totally unethical;

2) speaking the language of the majority is, in my opinion, neither sufficient, neither necessary to be able to live peacefully in a society with different cultures.

It is not sufficient, because many conflicts arise from differences in overall culture. If people have not learnt how to deal with differences, sharing the same language will never be enough. And if minorities are not granted basic rights such as the right to work, to have social and/or political representatives etcetera, it seems to me to be utopic to think that cultural conflicts can be avoided.

But let us not forget that speaking the same language of the majority is not always necessary to install peaceful 'voisinage'. For example: many Portuguese immigrants in Brussels are labourers, who never had the opportunity to learn French or Dutch. They only meet within their own 'ghetto', buying food in the Portuguese shops, mainly eating in Portuguese restaurants, and so on. And of course they only speak Portuguese, even if some of them already live for more than 30 years in Belgium. Does that bother anyone? No. Clearly, notwithstanding their language, they are not perceived as being threatening to the local majority.

Hence it seems to me that if we want to create a peaceful way of cohabitating with different cultures in Flanders, it isn't language or 'integration' of a minority into the culture of the majority that is essential. More than ever, we have to learn how to deal with overall differences. Comparing to other political party's, the Vlaams Blok / Vlaams Belang (together with those of other party's sharing some of their views, such as indeed Marino Keulen, and many others) offers for the moment the only way to think and speak about these differences.

Traditionnally, the Left has seen culture as a 'superstructure', an epiphenomenon that is just the result of socio-economical forces, but not a social factor or problem on its own, leaving all discourse about culture to the Right. Even if it is clear that the economical situation of many 'allochtonen' is far from equal with that of the average Belgian - and thus causing on itself already part of the conflict - in my perception time has come to start thinking about how to deal with differences 'in se'.

That means, amongst others, to learn to dissociate politics and corruption, to dissociate politics and denunciation, and to try to revalorize politics as the art of debating, of getting to know the others and trying to invent new ways of living together where everybody feels respected, not only as a human being and individual, but also as a person belonging to a culture, a religion or believe system and a tradition that has given shape to his or her personality.
It means recognizing that things not necessarily have only one meaning, i.e. the meaning they have for yourself and the group to which you belong, and that making laws on the basis of the meaning experienced by a majority may be equal to ignoring basic values of other people and thus creating (violent) conflicts (eg. 'le voile islamique', symbol reminding the deceitful discourse of a catholic religion that deprived women of their rights, to fervent anti-religion Flemish people, but at the same time symbol of revolt against capitalism for some muslim adolescents).

Maybe it also means learning that politics is NOT about truth (that's the domain of science), or about judging who is right and who is wrong (the domain of jurisdiction), nor about good or bad (the moral domain), but that politics has essentially to do with creating and inventing, time and again, practical, workable ways of coexistence between people having different priorities, needs and values, amongst others by 'empowering' people to express themselves socially and politically. Politics as the never ending process of creating a 'polis', a society.

It is true that Flemish people have developed, certainly also for historical reasons, the ability to try to address oneselves to the others in the language of the others. But maybe time has come now to take the following step, and learn how to really implement a democracy, how to create a really constructive political debate, in other words: how to believe in the value of politics. And maybe on that topic a good talk with for example some African artists of the famous 'palabre' could be of some help?

Anja Van Rompaey,
Ghent-Brussels.