Measuring immigrant integration: the case of Belgium.

Abstract

Belgium, like its neighbours, has received pre- and post-war European and non-European labour immigrants and their families, whose children are forming an emerging second generation. Likewise, Belgium attracts an increasingly diverse inflow of refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants and EU free movers. As a multination state, however, Belgium is also unique. Specifically, it stands out by the late and diffuse implementation of its official integration policies, with considerable discrepancies in policy practices between the semi-autonomous regions of Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. This review presents the main national data sources on the integration of immigrant communities in the 1990s, including the 1991 census and a series of special surveys. The main part of the paper discusses exemplary measures and findings pertaining to socio-economic, cultural and political dimensions of immigrant integration. The analyses document contextual variation in enduring socio-economic disadvantage, along with cultural pluralism and multiple identities in ethnic relations between immigrants and hosts. We conclude that the Belgian case has wider comparative relevance, as it demonstrates that the varying contexts of immigration and settlement, and the more or less conflicted ethnic relations between immigrant and host communities, make the difference between integration and exclusion.