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Johan Leman, 20 April 2022

The Brussels Region is celebrated – rightly so – as a young region, the youngest in Belgium. This is a good thing. It points to an enormous potential and to expected dynamism.

However, it should not make us forget that at the same time, an ageing process is underway among the many Brussels residents of non-Belgian origin. Of the 215,378 Brussels residents aged 60+, 100,295 were not born in Belgium in 2020. Amongst the Brussels residents over 65 who were not born in Belgium, there are of course Belgians from outside of Brussels, many also born in an EU Member State, but also more and more Brussels residents born in the Congo or – and this is what I would like to discuss here – born in Morocco and to a lesser extent Turkey. Many of these people spend part of their retirement time in their country of origin, shuttling between their families there and their children here. The group of over-65s born in a North African country or in Turkey, who will continue to call Brussels home and live here, will predictably increase.

“Gouverner c’est prévoir.” Perhaps we may learn something about the concerns that will be asked of us in the future, looking inside France. In France, migration from outside Europe, in this case North Africa, goes back a full generation further than it does for us in Belgium. In 2017, on the initiative of Dr Omar Samaoli, a gerontologist, an “Obervatoire Gérontologique des Migrations” was set up.

It insists on the importance of the presence of sounds, smells and tastes from childhood and adolescence for elderly people with migratory roots in residential care facilities, and sees this as a source of confidence.

They also insist on the importance of diagnostic tools and accompanying information in the language of origin for cases of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, even for people with an excellent command of the language of the host country, because of the likelihood of the increasing importance of childhood and adolescence language for people suffering from dementia.

The VUB has a good tradition of gerontological research. I know that they are doing research in this area. A policy on this may well be needed sooner than the politicians in our “young Brussels” expect.

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