If the current Belgian government wishes to harden migration policy, it has not always been the same. So, After the Second world Warl’immigration was at contrary in a context Unprecedented economic expansion: the Thirty Glorious Years. During this period, Belgium signs bilateral agreements with several countries around the Mediterranean: Italy in 1946, Spain in 1956, Greece in 1957 et, has A few months of intervals in 1964, Morocco and Turkey. Le oil shock from 1973 will come honeyre a term to this Situation: in the context From an economic and social crisis that follows, foreigners are no longer welcome. Dwomen Moroccans, identified as such in public space, will crystallize this rejection of part of Aboriginal Belgians. Return on l’story of ces pioneers of Moroccan immigration with the subject specialist, Hajar Ould Ben Taïb.
From the first “coals agreements” (Editor’s note, signed with Italy in 1946), arrangements legal are taken so that Foreign workers can be joined by their families in Belgium. Indeed, Belgium is not the only European country to seek foreign labor: France, Germany, the Netherlands, are also applicants. “In the sources of our government, there is a question of the debauchery of foreign minors by French coal, Especially in Pas-de-Calais mines“explain Hajar Ould Ben Taïb. Providing family reunification makes it possible to combat this mobility of immigrant workers, including TRAjectoires often range from country to country.
The idea is to stabilize the foreign worker in Belgium, it is more difficult for a worker with children who are educated to move than if he is alone.
Initiallythe immigration of these foreign workers is SO thought, in the leader of all parties, as temporary. It is a question for Belgium to answer momentarily at theA request for employers, In search of an arm to run his factories. Signatory countries, as for them, face serious difficulties political, economic et social. Ils see it as a Opportunity for their nationals to enrich themselves and then return to the country having accumulated capital and professional qualifications that they can use. THE sociologist’s work immigration, Abdelmalek Sayad (Editor’s note, friend and collaborator of Pierre Bourdieu) have shown that immigrants themselves often thought that their immigration would be temporary. Hajar Ould Ben Taïb collected the word of Moroccan immigrants whose testimonies agree with the conclusions formulated by Abdelmalek Sayad. “Every summer, families fell into their country of origin in pinhealth are back for good But the lack of perspectives For their children and professional reintegration made them return to Belgium finally“she says.
If immigration is first thought of as temporary, the demographic crisis of the sixties will change the situation. We realize SO that the Belgian population, especially Walloon, is aging. L’immigration and the contribution Immigers to birthare thought as The solution to this problem. Consequently, family reunification is no longer just enabled but encouraged. “All propaganda is set up in order to encourage These immigrant families to settle in our country “explains Hajar Oulad Ben Taïb. This present Belgium as a country of cocagne where it does Good to live, far from the reality of housing worker molenbeekois, cramped and without a sanitary water point where immigrants find accommodation. Disillusionment is terrible and the shock of particularly violent exile for immigrant women, “cut offs of their female world “.
