Foyer VZW

On April 26, we celebrate Heritage Day. But what is heritage, and who does it belong to? If there is one city in Belgium where heritage never stands still, it is Brussels. The city has always been a crossroads of new people, trade, languages, and ideas. And in these domains, change has remained a constant.

Take the canal area. In the 19th century, workers arrived there from Flanders and Wallonia. They were followed by the Dutch, Italians, Eastern European Jews, Congolese, Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, Moroccans, Turks, and others.

Each wave was marked by ebb and flow, always leaving traces — in neighborhoods, languages, religions, tastes, and smells. Brussels is a mosaic of heritage, sometimes marked by cracks and fractures as well.

Interviews with people who arrived in Brussels after 2000 show that they do not primarily associate Brussels with its buildings, but with a multiplicity of languages and cultures. Of course, they are also familiar with the Grand Place, the Cinquantenaire Park, some stately mansions, and the classic museums. But this is mainly the heritage for tourists from other continents or for Europeans visiting Brussels for a few days.

For newcomers, often highly educated and settling in Brussels, Brussels heritage means something different. It is above all intangible heritage: the tradition of hearing many languages in large shopping spaces, the tradition of “making room for everyone,” of openness to difference. Many distinguish Brussels from the rest of Belgium in this respect. How often have I heard: “I am a Brusseleir, not a Belgian.”

This intangible heritage also includes the many migration stories, as made accessible by the MigratieMuseumMigration (mmm.brussels).

In the long term, this will also normally lead to interesting material heritage, where original hybridization is among the possibilities. However, in terms of high quality, it is still too early at this stage.

Heritage Day should invite today Brussels residents not only to look at buildings as heritage, but also at the many other people they are not used to encountering, by visiting neighborhoods further away from where they live or work.

The coming years will not be easy for you. On the one hand, there is the charm of Brussels (its tolerance, its generally friendly manners)… and you must preserve that. But on the other hand, there is incredible mismanagement that has been going on for years… and you are undoubtedly aware of this, mismanagement that is, incidentally, partly structurally embedded.

I want to keep it very concrete. The large amount of rubbish on the streets (and how do you make it clear to people that they should not just throw cans and empty bottles on the street, when people have been doing so with impunity for years?); the increase in drug dealing (and how will you combat this when more and more families are suffering a loss of income?); the social housing shortage (while at the same time trying to keep the middle class in the city).

You will make savings… but you cannot touch many heavy expenses and the realisation of some mergers is sometimes not entirely within your power: civil servants in sometimes overpopulated areas and others in underpopulated areas, a distressing phenomenon in some municipalities that should become partners for the success of some mergers. Municipal powers that you would sometimes be better off transferring to the Region, resulting in higher costs for the Region (and what about subsequent pension costs in such cases)?

If I had some of those same problems in the associations where I sit on the board of directors, it would take me more than three days to solve them. You are hard workers, agreed, but you managed to do that for the entire region in three days? I hope a lot of preparatory work was done in the 600 days that preceded it… Then those 600 days would have made a little more sense…

The little I have read of your policy statement makes me happy on the one hand… Phew, I think: there is a government. But on the other hand, my head is full of questions.

You will make savings… but you cannot touch many heavy expenses and the realisation of some mergers is sometimes not entirely within your power: civil servants in sometimes overpopulated areas and others in underpopulated areas, a distressing phenomenon in some municipalities that should become partners for the success of some mergers. Municipal powers that you would sometimes be better off transferring to the Region, resulting in higher costs for the Region (and what about subsequent pension costs in such cases)?

The little I have read of your policy statement makes me happy on the one hand… Phew, I think: there is a government. But on the other hand, my head is full of questions.

Over the past decades, civil society has been attacked from two sides: by government and by the media. In the meantime, social media have been added to the mix, supposedly bringing the media closer to the concrete individual. The result—coincidence or not—is that loneliness has struck many people more strongly than before. More than ever, we observe that individuals become isolated and even feel compelled to display their vulnerability to the fullest extent, as a cry for help to be understood.

What happened?
Government came to believe that its influence over people was—wrongly, in its view—being curtailed by civil society organizations. Indeed, too many civil society organizations had drifted too far from their original mission and had grown into channels of clientelism. For their part, the media believed they themselves were the most appropriate channels not only to inform people, but also to instill a sense of community. At best, this has led to “imagined communities,” and in the case of social media even to closed—and unfortunately sometimes highly polarizing—bubbles.

Loneliness and latent aggression have increased, as have polarizations. Coincidence?

What Foyer advocates is a return to the valorization of genuine community building, adapted to our society and therefore allowing room for pluralism. Community building in which people of flesh and blood can find one another and rely on each other. This will benefit government, which will be able to focus more on its core tasks: ensuring people’s physical safety and the quality of education. And it will give the media more room to keep a sufficient distance from social media and to avoid having to compete with some social platforms for the attention of an audience driven by entertainment and search of information.

It is not unusual for young people to be concerned about their future. Today, this also includes following debates about pensions and trying to anticipate how other issues might look in 50 years.

From my own life – I am slowly approaching the “4 x 20” – I can, however, reassure all young people. If they can be 100% certain of one thing, it is that society in 50 years will not look like what is predicted or expected today.

I myself am a child born shortly after 1945, probably conceived during a moment of joy because the war was over. I experienced 1968 and the 1970s… If someone back then had described the society of the 2020s as we live it today, they would have been called crazy. They would have been attributed a lack of insight and an absence of analytical sense.

My message to those who are young today: do your thing… Stop worrying too much about what society will look like on the day you retire. Because if there is one thing that is as certain as day follows night, it is that society in 2070 will not be what is predicted today.

“Australia intends to grant an annual visa to 240 foreigners fleeing the consequences of climate change. Nearly five thousand residents of the Tuvalu archipelago have shown interest in the scheme, as was revealed this week.” (DM, 28.06.2025)

Although there is no archipelago like Tuvalu in Europe’s immediate surroundings, policymakers would be truly shortsighted if they did not already foresee that, in time, Europe too will be confronted with a similar phenomenon—albeit involving people coming from certain regions of Africa and the Middle East.

In most cases, the motivation to flee will not be expressed solely in climate terms, as such motivations are usually intertwined with political, religious, or ethnic factors. It will not always involve islands sinking beneath rising sea levels. Climate issues typically first lead to internal tensions in affected areas. This is what will happen in Africa and the Middle East.

If Europe wants to address the core of the problem, it must not believe that a wall will offer salvation, nor that a strict interpretation of the Refugee Convention will suffice.

Europe must plan in advance to create safe and sufficiently fertile zones in nearby regions of Africa and the Middle East. And this must happen now. We must not wait until it is effectively too late and the movement of climate refugees is already underway.

In preparing the upcoming fall exhibition “Brussels: La Congolaise: 1885–1985”, an important question for the MigratieMuseumMigration has been: what does a decolonizing approach entail?

As a matter of principle, co-curation with Brussels’ Congolese was consistently chosen—within the museum’s very limited financial resources—both in terms of the materials selected and the accompanying explanatory texts. Co-curation does not mean that a single viewpoint from the Congolese side always dominates. Sometimes, there is internal debate among Congolese people in Brussels—some believe that terminology from a specific historical period should be respected, while others advocate for new terminology because the old one is colonial. Co-curation, with respect for such internal debate, is essential.

This means that the participation of representative members of the relevant community must be a reality. However, this kind of participation is already systematically practiced by the MMM museum in every exhibition, even when there is no colonial history involved.

Furthermore, to the extent that art is included, there must be space for art from the diaspora.

But there is more. Through the topics presented, the exhibition must also seek to appeal to visitors and authorities regarding certain shortcomings in today’s Brussels. If it becomes clear that individuals or associations from the diaspora were of fundamental importance to Brussels or Belgium during the period 1885–1985, yet have received no recognition—such as a street name, monument, or commemorative ritual—this must be explicitly pointed out. Two clear examples:

How can it be explained that someone like Paul Panda Farnana, a Brussels resident (who was recently included in the Flemish canon), still has no street named after him in Brussels?
How can it be that the Brussels education system never mentions that several Congolese joined the Belgian Army during World War I, or that around 50 Congolese from Brussels joined the Resistance during World War II?

Inclusion in the school curriculum or some form of recognition outside of school—such as an annual ritual—would be appropriate. Without intending to be activist, can an exhibition not still issue a call to action?

The Royal Commissariat for Migration Policy (RCMP) already advocated for tailored language courses in its November 1989 report. Proposal 38 from 1989:

“The Royal Commissariat advocates making a tailored Dutch course mandatory for newly arrived and long-term unemployed non-native migrants in the Flemish Community, and a tailored French course mandatory for newly arrived and long-term unemployed non-native migrants in the French Community. A system of encouraging sanctions should be linked to this for those who deliberately avoid this obligation. However, the course must be fully adequate in terms of content and differentiation and must lead to a certificate with civil effect.”

At an Interministerial Conference in 1990, the competent minister of the Flemish Community agreed with this proposal and announced it publicly. But that was as far as it went—an example of symbolic politics.

It was non-profits like Foyer, through CNM (Coordination Dutch for Migrants, in Brussels), that organized Dutch lessons for adult migrants for many years, only to be suddenly dismissed without explanation by the Flemish government.

In Flanders, mandatory integration—with an emphasis on language acquisition—only truly got underway in 2004, and in Brussels not until 2022. Certification with civil effect will only be introduced in Flanders as of October 2023, 23 years after the RCMP first called for it.

Is there an explanation for this? The financial framework certainly offers part of the explanation, although I keep asking myself why policymakers always seem to opt for more expensive solutions when cheaper ones could work just as well.

PS. See Leman, J. (2025). Memoires inzake integratiebeleid 1989-2003. Brussels, Foyer.

After having discussed the concept of integration and the acquisition of nationality in previous weeks, today I pause to reflect on one of the two main themes from the November 1989 report: the regulation of the representation of Islam. I remember some academics at the time objected to the fact that the Royal Commissariat for Migrant Policy (RCMP) was concerned with this representation, saying, “What does religion have to do with integration policy? Stay out of that!”

But okay, what were the reasons for addressing it?

Since 1982 (with Hafez Assad’s massacre in Hama), fundamentalism had made its way into Brussels. Wahhabism was becoming the Saudi Sunni answer to Iranian Shi’ism.
On March 30, 1989, Abdullah Al Ahdal (the Saudi imam-director of the Islamic and Cultural Center, the Grand Mosque in Brussels) was murdered.
The status of Islamic religion teachers urgently needed to be resolved.

What was never part of the reasoning?

There was never any intention fort he RCMP to model Islamic representation after the Catholic Church. Rather, the model considered was that of the Protestant churches and/or the Jewish Consistory.
It is entirely fabricated by some academics—who, as often happens, continued quoting each other without verification, as though it had been proven—that the government didn’t want a solution. The opposite is true.

What turned out to be the problem?

The embassies of the countries involved wanted to keep the issue of representation under their control, and politically there were other reasons for Belgian authorities not to get into conflict with those countries.
Muslim associations could not reach internal agreement.
Most people confuse “head of the temporal affairs of religious service” with “theological head of the faith.” This confusion stems from the terminology itself and the way the Catholic Church in Belgium defines its own role.

I won’t go into all the twists and turns or subsequent developments here, but over time I’ve become convinced that a solution to this issue of representation—if it ever comes—will have to be achieved step by step and must come from within the Muslim communities themselves, though with a government that must oversee the acceptability of the proposed solution. This is the process, I think, we assist at…

PS. See Leman, J. (2025). Memoires inzake integratiebeleid 1989-2003. Brussel, Foyer.

But okay, what were the reasons for addressing it?

Since 1982 (with Hafez Assad’s massacre in Hama), fundamentalism had made its way into Brussels. Wahhabism was becoming the Saudi Sunni answer to Iranian Shi’ism.
On March 30, 1989, Abdullah Al Ahdal (the Saudi imam-director of the Islamic and Cultural Center, the Grand Mosque in Brussels) was murdered.
The status of Islamic religion teachers urgently needed to be resolved.

What was never part of the reasoning?

There was never any intention fort he RCMP to model Islamic representation after the Catholic Church. Rather, the model considered was that of the Protestant churches and/or the Jewish Consistory.
It is entirely fabricated by some academics—who, as often happens, continued quoting each other without verification, as though it had been proven—that the government didn’t want a solution. The opposite is true.

What turned out to be the problem?

The embassies of the countries involved wanted to keep the issue of representation under their control, and politically there were other reasons for Belgian authorities not to get into conflict with those countries.
Muslim associations could not reach internal agreement.
Most people confuse “head of the temporal affairs of religious service” with “theological head of the faith.” This confusion stems from the terminology itself and the way the Catholic Church in Belgium defines its own role.

PS. See Leman, J. (2025). Memoires inzake integratiebeleid 1989-2003. Brussel, Foyer.