New Belgium, a migration history 1944-1978 (part 2)


Johan Leman, 21 September 2021

My previous post on Tom Naegel s book, written in Dutch, was about the period of the barracks with the German prisoners of war, followed by the Italians, the Spanish and Greeks, and then the Turkish and Moroccan guest workers, and a discussion of the discussion around the beginning of the Great Mosque in Brussels. Now, I read the chapters about the period from the late 1960s to 1978.

What I wrote in my previous post about his study and publication still stands. The book is based on critical use of available archives and on a thorough historical contextualisation of the policies pursued. It is presented with a fluent pen. The contextualisation has the effect of reviving events for the older reader and enabling the younger reader to better understand some of the policy decisions of the past. But even the well-informed reader learns. For example, I myself am more aware than I used to be that some important decisions from the past often have to be seen as official confirmations of processes that have actually been going on for some time. Policy rarely creates. Most of the time, it tries to adjust. I am thinking of the migration Stop that took effect somewhat everywhere in Europe in 1973-1974. Actually, such a stop had already been going on informally for some time.

Perhaps a comment on the use of archives is in order here as well. The author will also know – I have no doubt – that there can be a difference between personal archives and official archives. Both can be interesting, but with personal archives I have some experience. For example, I gave my personal archives from the period when I was director of the Centre d’égalité des chances et de lutte contre le racisme (1990s) to KADOC, as do many others. Well, actually these are largely limited to my correspondence and notes on the discussions on spokesmanship in Islam and on some important files on human trafficking. But yes, there are a few remaining documents that I also gave to KADOC, but the representativeness of these latter documents must be seriously questioned. Most of the documents disappeared into the shredder. There is no need to look for anything behind this. Firstly, I was not at all concerned about archives in those days and secondly, all that paper disappeared because the correspondence took up too much space. The same goes for the many racist and other correspondence (including threatening letters) that I received in the 1990s. The paper shredder did its job. Did it follow that I did not receive racist letters? One has to be careful with the interpretation of archives as well. But I have no doubt that Tom Naegels is aware of this.

One last point. One of the criticisms I heard of Naegels’ book is that it approaches migration top-down. By this one means that he does not start from the dynamics among the guest workers themselves, but from correspondence between the patronage, the policy and the embassies. This criticism is partly justified. But this top-down dynamic is very important in the case of guest labour. And in any case, I have learnt a lot of interesting things from reading, things that I did not know. And combining both, top-down and bottom-up, seems to me really too much for one author to achieve in one book.

So congratulations from me to the author. And it is a pleasant book to read. Some PhD theses are less documented.

Tom Naegels will speak at museum MMM, rue des Ateliers 17 in Molenbeek, on Friday 24 September at 6 pm. Highly recommended for those who really want to delve into the history of migration in Belgium until 1978. But please, register in case you want to come. The conference is in Dutch.

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