Christian Labour Movement Imaginaries of Moroccan and Turkish Migrants in Belgium, 1964-1974

Résumé

En 1964, l’afflux de travailleurs migrants marocains et turcs a marqué un nouvel épisode dans l’histoire de la migration de main-d’œuvre en Belgique après la guerre. Cet afflux a touché de nouvelles industries et a favorisé l’implantation de la migration dans de nouvelles villes, tout en introduisant, aux côtés de nombreux Belges, des populations musulmanes non-européennes. Pour accueillir ces nouveaux arrivants, les organisations de la société civile ont dû adapter leurs approches et, souvent, réinventer leur offre envers les communautés migrantes. La littérature académique récente a accordé une certaine attention à ces changements organisationnels, cherchant à comprendre comment la société civile a répondu aux nouveaux publics étrangers avec des politiques et des discours adaptés. Cependant, au-delà de cette communication performative, beaucoup moins de recherches ont été menées sur la manière dont ces organisations comprenaient « l’autre musulman », et comment ces représentations influençaient explicitement et implicitement leurs politiques. Pour explorer cette dynamique, cet article analyse les services catégoriels destinés aux étrangers de deux organisations pilarisées : le syndicat chrétien ACV/CSC et l’association des Ligues Ouvrières féminines LOFC, devenue plus tard Vie Féminine.

Abstract

In 1964, the influx of Moroccan and Turkish labour migrants heralded a new episode in Belgium’s postwar labour migration history. It affected new industries and brought migration to new cities, but also introduced many Belgians to non-European Muslim populations. To welcome these newcomers, civil society organisations were prompted to adapt their approaches and, often, to re-invent their offer towards migrant communities. Recent scholarly literature has paid some attention to these organisational shifts, to reconstruct how civil society catered to foreign audiences with adapted policies and discourses. Beyond this performative communication, however, much less research has been done on how these organisations understood ‘the Muslim other’, and how such imaginaries explicitly and implicitly shaped their policies. To explore this dynamic, this article analyses the categorical foreigner services of two pillarized bodies, namely the Christian trade union ACV/CSC and the Ligues Ouvrières Féminines Chrétiennes LOFC, the later Vie Féminine.

Table of content

Introduction

1Sixty years ago, Belgium concluded two bilateral labour migration agreements, one with Morocco and the other with Turkey, which marked the beginning of a significant transformation in the migration history of the country. From 1964 onwards, the arrival of Moroccan and Turkish families sparked hope for economic prosperity for Belgium, but it also introduced a wide range of new issues for the country to consider. From an economic perspective, their migration boosted the labour market, yet also risked introducing imbalances. In terms of demographics, these families spent their days in impoverished urban areas, begging the question if social accommodation was sufficient. From a social standpoint, new configurations of Belgian society had to be found to co-exist harmoniously with their Moroccan and Turkish customs. Finally, the culture and religion of these communities were for many Belgians decidedly unfamiliar, evoking curiosity and wariness in equal measure.¹

2In Belgium, the broader question of accommodating and, eventually, integrating these migrant populations came to lay with the so-called pillars – networks of organisations and movements connected to either the socialist, liberal, or Catholic denomination.² Out of these three, most notably the Catholic pillar distinguished itself by its adapted, categorical care for labour migrants in the postwar period. Two of its organisations did so in particular, namely the Christian trade union Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens (CSC) and the Ligue Ouvrière Féminine Chrétienne (LOFC), the later Vie Féminine, adapted their offer to the needs of the Moroccan and Turkish communities.³ To do so successfully, they attempted to comprehend this new audience, their economic position, social needs, customs, culture, and religion. This understanding was built through dialogue with Moroccan and Turkish groups, yet also heavily informed by Christian normative biases, gendered preconceptions, and sociopolitical Christian-democratic goals. As such, within the Catholic pillar, a ‘social imaginary’ of the other developed; incomplete and biased, trying to make sense of Moroccan and Turkish migrants and to define their role in Belgian society.⁴

3This concept of social imaginary has various uses within the humanities and social sciences appropriate to the goals of this study. According to Alex Gagnon: ‘The social imaginary refers to the open, unstable, and plural set of representations, interpretations, and appreciations that [society’s] members produce, receive, and circulate in order to appropriate reality and give it meaning, to construct their shared reality (both materially and symbolically), and through which they represent what the world and all its components, human and non-human, are and should be.’⁵ In the context of this study, this concept is understood from the perspective of cultural history to suggest that the members of the catholic pillar shared a discursive space, built on factual, normative, and imagined notions to make sense of social phenomena such as labour migration. This does not mean that they all shared the same understandings and opinions but rather, following David Scott’s idea of a “problem-space”, that they navigated the same discursive conjuncture “[…] which defines […] the particular questions that seem worth asking and the kinds of answers that seem worth having.” In that sense, the problem-space built on social imaginaries is above all a space of reaction and intervention. Inhabitants of the shared space interpret the migration phenomenon, while simultaneously influencing and transforming it to fit their own ideals and operations.⁶

4Therefore, these constructed imaginaries profoundly shaped the attitudes of Catholic civil society organisations toward migrants. In the historiographical literature, however, such imaginaries of labour migrants by social actors and movements have been understudied, often overshadowed by studies on organisational policies and structures. The largest body of literature on trade unions, for instance, has emphasized union stances on migration, migrant membership, and migrant services, gauging the various levels of acceptance of migration and migrant membership in European host countries.⁷ To explain the different strands of policy, neighbouring literature looked primarily at the Industrial Relations System and put national migration politics in comparison.⁸ In their recent volume, Connolly, Marino, and Lucio nevertheless convincingly show that research should move beyond these formal policies alone, because rationales and portrayals of race, ethnicity, and community might go a long way in explaining trade union attitudes towards their foreign members.⁹ Similarly, Alberti and Tapia argue that a full intersectional analysis of the category of ‘migrant worker’ must be conducted to unpack the complex dynamics between the labourer, syndicalist ideals, and the union as an organisation.¹⁰ In line with their call for an intersectional approach, it must be noted that these studies are conducted with a male prerogative alone, while immigrant women and gendered preconceptions have long been invisible.¹¹ Starting in the 1980s, immigrant women became a significant subject of research. Although these early studies often favoured an essentialist and culturalist approach, primarily depicting them as wives and mothers, they nonetheless provide crucial elements for analysing the social dimension of the migration phenomenon.¹² It was only later, particularly with the work of Nouria Ouali, that questions related to the work and associational life of these female populations in Belgium, including their autonomy and agency, were studied.¹³

5Inspired by those insights and lacunae, this article sets out to analyse in depth the imaginary of the Christian pillar vis-à-vis Moroccan and Turkish migrants and, thereafter, to trace its impact on organisational policy making. To complement the above-mentioned body of research on political and economic policy considerations, the scope is geared towards social and cultural facets of the Christian imaginary, including religious norms, sociocultural customs, and notions of marginalization and disenfranchisement. Moreover, CSC and LOFC are analysed in juxtaposition, offering an extra layer of gendered approaches to respectively male and female migrant membership. Finally, the study pays special attention to how paradigms of the 1960s influenced Christian discursive practices on Moroccan and Turkish Muslim migrants, including those of decolonization, Third World development, new social movements and activism, secularization, and the social teachings of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

6With this goal in mind, this study will proceed in several stages, beginning with a concise overview of the dynamics of Belgian pillarization and an examination of how this system of deeply ingrained, competing subcultures understood policies of labour migration and how it composed its attitudes toward Moroccan and Turkish migrants. Then, the article delves deeper into how CSC and LOFC/VF, driven by various societal and gendered expectations, produced and reproduced an imaginary of the economic, social, and cultural characteristics of Moroccan and Turkish migrant families. It unpacks how the pillarized bodies arrived at a discourse of migrants as uprooted victims, unable to fulfil the predefined goals of their migration due to the predatory and misleading nature of a capitalist labour migration system. Next, the article examines the strategies that CSC and LOFC used to emancipate those victimized migrants, hoping to foster their active participation and membership within the pillar and society. It shows that they opted for an approach in which cultural ownership stood central, in line with Catholic social teaching, and (re)organized their foreigner branches accordingly. In its final sections, the article unpacks the tensions that grew ever more salient in the late 1960s and early 1970s, showing that this categorical approach, and the imaginary of migrants it was built on, failed to create sustainable cooperation. The final section analyses how their self-identifications differed from the pillar’s understanding and how this deepened the gap between the pillar and the communities amidst a period of growing migrant activism and the changing migration systems of the early 1970s.

The Christian labour organisations and Migration

7The initial reactions of the Christian labour movement towards Turkish and Moroccan migrations after 1964 were very much an echo of its previous stances. Just as in earlier periods of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish migrations, Catholic organisations positioned themselves as the first point of contact for this new group. In the mining regions and urban centres, where most migrants arrived, there are plenty of examples of Catholics welcoming and supporting newly arrived migrants, offering them secondhand furniture, running small day care centres, providing small rooms for prayer, and organizing leisure-time activities.¹⁴ The Belgian bishops, with their commission labelled Pro Migrantibus, explained the need for this care through Christian values. The ethics of hospitality and neighbourly care must be extended to these guest workers, they argued, as they had been to other migrant communities before.¹⁵ Catholics were reminded of these duties by repeated references to Matthew 25:35-36: ‘I was a stranger, and you have welcomed me.’¹⁶ In addition to this moralizing perspective, there was a political reason for the pillar’s active engagement with migrant communities, stemming from Belgium’s welfare and social security system. Labour representation, unemployment benefits, and many more social areas were facilitated by provisions of either Catholic or socialist unions and labour movements, with both sides in relative balance. In this stalemate competition over socio-political relevance, membership was key. Good connections to newly arrived migrant audiences could swing the balance, or at least affirm the relevance and saliency of the Christian labour organisations in society. So, a good relation to the migrant audience was in the best interest of the Catholic labour movement, improving its relevance and soft power.

8The Christian trade union was the primary point of contact for Moroccan and Turkish workers, as it had the strongest claim over the topic within the pillar. This was because migration was above all considered an economic issue and migrants were in the country as temporary labourers.¹⁷ In its strong position, CSC determined the pillars’ stance on Belgian migration policies. It condemned labour migration as an economic strategy and reprimanded the Belgian government for relying on cheap, low-skilled imported labour to temporarily boost the economy, without any long-term investments. Moreover, CSC foresaw that migration policies would lead to unfair competition in the labour market because foreign workers were cheap and easily disposed of. This was even more relevant to Moroccan and Turkish migrations, given that they were unprotected by European regulations and thus prone to wage exploitation and arbitrary lay-offs.¹⁸ CSC argued that this could compromise the long fought-for working conditions and wages of the Belgian labour force. Lastly, the union let no opportunity pass to point out that the Belgian government mismanaged the recruitment of labourers. Although the first waves of Moroccan and Turkish workers had been enlisted in an orderly manner, by the late 1960s workers entered the country with a tourist visa and proceeded to work without the necessary permits.¹⁹ The government turned a blind eye to this irregular migration to boost the economy, incautious to the fact that it became impossible to measure the number of Moroccan and Turkish labourers in the country.²⁰ According to CSC, this lack of control severely jeopardized a healthy balance in the labour market.²¹

9Despite opposing migration as an economic policy, CSC did not reject migrant workers. Instead, the union approached them as colleagues and vied for fair wages, healthy workspace conditions, and vital social security benefits.²² CSC, just like its socialist contender FGTB, actively recruited Moroccan and Turkish labourers as union militants. They realized that this new influx of workers could boost their membership numbers and, therefore, their influence in Belgium’s competitive union landscape. For Moroccan and Turkish migrants in particular, the competition lay wide open. Whereas before national migration waves were deemed to have pre-existing political preferences, with the Italian labour force joining the Christian CSC and the Spanish preferring the socialist FGTB, Moroccan and Turkish workers could be persuaded by whichever union was most convincing.²³ Through this competition for the foreign membership, Belgium’s traditionally strong union landscape boasted a higher migrant militant count than in Germany, France, and The Netherlands, with a membership rate of about 40% among migrant workers.²⁴ CSC and FGTB often emphasized this success, further solidifying their strong say over the topic within their respective pillar and, by extension, in Belgian civil society at large.²⁵

10This union prevalence was self-evident for Moroccan and Turkish male populations, who were above all labourers and therefore the prerogative of the labour union. For immigrated women, however, it was less clear who would assume responsibility. After all, they had not been attracted by the Belgian government to work, but rather to stabilize the immigrated male workforce by being the cornerstone of the family.²⁶ Additionally, some politicians hoped they would foster demographic growth, particularly in the aging Walloon industry regions.²⁷ Therefore, most Moroccan and Turkish female immigrants came to Belgium under the provisions of family reunification, as stipulated in the 1964 bilateral agreements. The agreement with Morocco, for instance, severely limited the possibilities for female migrants because it did not address their integration into the labour market. Moroccan women derived their rights from their husbands and were only under male tutelage entitled to a residence status, proper housing, social benefits, and sometimes employment.²⁸ The agreement with Turkey, in contrast, acknowledged the right of Turkish women to work, opening opportunities in sectors such as food and textiles which required precise and labour-intensive tasks.²⁹

11Contrary to what Belgium expected, many migrant women were keen to enter the labour market, because of two main reasons.³⁰ First, they sought jobs out of economic necessity, closely related to the first reason for their arrival in Belgium. Women worked to help their husbands, often incited to do so to hasten their return home. Secondly, they also saw it as a way of breaking the isolation in which they were immersed, and as such found their ways into the cleaning sector and into newly established suburban factories in Brussels, Wallonia, and Flanders. The workforce of immigrant women was assigned the arduous tasks Belgian women rejected, but amongst themselves a hierarchy also emerged between women of different origins. Italian, Greek, and Spanish women, who had been in Belgium longer, had better grasp on the languages, and were trained better, took up more highly skilled jobs than the recently arrived Moroccan and Turkish women31. This was particularly the case in factory work, where ‘(…) the lowest rung was occupied by Turkish and North African women. Immigrant women from Latin countries occupied roughly the middle level, while finishing work was almost exclusively reserved for Belgians.’³² Immigrant women were considered a cheap and easily manoeuvrable labour pool for employers, who did not hesitate to exploit them.³³ Despite this, immigrated women were hardly considered as members of the labour force, nor did their particular needs fall within the expertise of the predominantly male trade union.

12Within the Christian labour movement, the LOFC was therefore the only organisation that could embrace Moroccan and Turkish women to complement CSC on the migration topic. Instead of focusing solely on labour representation, however, it addressed – from the inception of immigrant services in 1947 – the social and cultural needs of immigrant women and their families. It welcomed migrant women in railway stations and recruited them for various activities, such as sewing classes, literacy courses, and information sessions on family life in Belgium.³⁴ Also successful were the infant consultations, assisting women through pregnancy and childcare in a medical system that was foreign to them.³⁵ Those infant consultations, which many women attended for their children’s medical follow-up, provided the LOFC with an opportunity to connect with these women and, subsequently, allowed them to raise awareness among them on the broader, gendered structures behind their day-to-day issues.³⁶ This was meant to politicize the women and introduce them to various tangible and pertinent political questions relevant to their situation, such as the immigrated workers’ status, voting rights, and education.³⁷ Moreover, LOFC was particularly interested in the role of the Islamic faith and culture in migrant women’s daily lives. It regarded a ‘fraternal and constructive dialogue’ with immigrant women as a logical extension of LOFC’s religious commitment within society, but also recognized that cultural and religious differences must be acknowledged so that Moroccan and Turkish women could comfortably participate. To accommodate them, LOFC rescheduled its activities to safeguard Islamic prayer times and planned fewer events in the holy month of Ramadan.³⁸ To avoid misunderstandings due to different cultural or religious sensitivities, Islam and the religious rituals of Moroccans and Turks were studied, while intercultural training was provided to LOFC animators.³⁹ Therefore, if CSC claimed the socio-economic facets of labour migration as a masculine prerogative, then LOFC specialized in sociocultural support which, through its Christian lens, it regarded as a ‘female’ affair.

A Gendered Imaginary of Migrant Families

13The gendered distinction that dictated the offer of CSC and LOFC also defined the Christian labour movement’s narratives on Moroccan and Turkish labour migrants. Foreign men, first, were seen as labourers caught in a trap. Lured in by promises of stable employment and better wages, they were instead confronted by poor working conditions, limited social security, and unemployment.⁴⁰ According to the Catholic labour movement’s narrative, this exploitation rendered them disillusioned and disoriented, and by this result many men found themselves astray from their original goals. After all, they had come to Belgium to support their family and build a better future but were instead left unemployed and without clear goals. Particularly younger men, many of whom arrived in the late 1960s without a valid work permit, were seen by the movement as a potential problematic group. They were portrayed as gullible and disoriented, migrating to Belgium out of economic despair and hence vulnerable to swindlers and malicious employers.⁴¹ Additionally, they seemed to experience problems in navigating the Belgian social setting, as evidenced by media reports painting a picture of Moroccan and Turkish youth provoking brawls, harassing women, and resorting to petty crime.⁴² These young men were thought to be uprooted, trying to navigate European cultural notions of coming of age and masculinity that were far different from what they knew. Therefore, the labour movement was careful not to accuse them, but instead preached in favour of understanding migrant men as victims of an exploitative economic system.⁴³

14To help them, many in CSC and LOFC saw Moroccan and Turkish women as the solution, arguing that the family could be a stabilizing cornerstone for many labour migrants.⁴⁴ Women could, moreover, play an important role in the social and cultural process of finding stable ground in a foreign country, a task that their working husbands had little time for. So, CSC and LOFC called for better family reunion policies and family-friendly housing conditions. To female migrants they assigned several sociocultural tasks regarding the wellbeing of the family in the neighbourhood, the education of migrant children, and getting familiar with the health care and social support systems.⁴⁵ As mentioned before, Moroccan and Turkish women should also figure as the guardians of culture, keeping family values and traditions intact to combat feelings of uprootedness and to safe keep one’s identity. It is perhaps striking, then, that by the late 1960s the rhetoric of LOFC equally characterized immigrant women as a victimized group. Amidst the growing, uncontrolled wave of irregular migration, the image of the female Muslim migrants became that of women ‘ … babbling a few words of French. Or fiercely mute, withdrawn behind their husbands. [They are] deeply uprooted.’⁴⁶ Thus, LOFC had come to know them as passive and withdrawn, brought in as a byproduct of the labour migration system and subjected to the same dynamics their husbands and fathers suffered. In stark contrast with earlier hopes, LOFC feared migrant women were unable to take up their sociocultural duties and even saw them as being at risk of complete isolation.

15In the labour movement’s imaginary of Moroccan and Turkish labour migrant families, two dynamics stand out. First, the social roles projected upon migrants were intrinsically gendered, reproducing the trope that men fulfilled socio-economic tasks, while women took up sociocultural duties. For Moroccan and Turkish migrants, this meant that men provided a future for their families and women ensured stability and care during their time away from home. In the view of the Catholic labour movement, the success of the family’s stay in Belgium hinged on these gendered tasks, just as their failure constituted a large part of ‘the migrant problem’. The second dynamic was intrinsically connected to this perspective of failure. To explain many issues which migrant families faced, various voices within the pillar pointed at the negative impact of ‘uprootedness’ as the main culprit.⁴⁷ Through their migration, families lost their social networks, faced all kinds of hardships, and found themselves surrounded by unfamiliar spaces. That process was considered more harmful than the simple homesickness associated with living in a foreign country, because it implied an ever-growing alienation from one’s culture and identity. Furthermore, it seemed more negatively impactful for Moroccan and Turkish migrants than for other national groups, because their cultures and customs seemed even further removed from those in Belgium. This idea is visually reproduced in the Catholic discourse, in which the French word ‘déraciné (e)’ evoked images of Moroccan and Turkish families being pulled out at the roots, replanted in unfertile soil.48 Similarly, the Dutch word ‘ontheemd’ implied that migrants’ home and safety were taken away, leaving them figuratively homeless.49 So, being uprooted withheld migrants from belonging in an alien environment, hindered their goals, and obscured their prospects for the future.

16In the social imaginary of the Christian labour movement, there was little ambiguity about who was the victim and who was the perpetrator. As discussed above, it blamed the Belgian government and the employers for their utilitarian approach to labour migration, luring migrants in with false promises and little opportunities for the future. Simultaneously, many Catholics understood this destructive uprooting of peoples as an ill of capitalism, preferring profit and materiality over solidarity and neighbourly care.⁵⁰ Such social critiques gained traction in the wake of the Second Vatican Council and the 1968 movement, which spurred on Catholic clergy and laypeople alike to reflect critically on society, aiming to improve the world around them.⁵¹ In the wider Belgian Catholic pillar, manifold areas of social activism arose, from denouncing paternalism to a strong support for universal human rights. For the issue of labour migrants, the call for better working and living conditions went hand in hand with a call for emancipation. Immigrated workers must overcome their uprootedness by regaining their voice in society and by participating in full.⁵² The Christian labour organisations positioned themselves as prime agents to support families in that process, with CSC focused on migrant men and LOFC/VF on migrant women and their families.

Strategies for Migrant Emancipation

17To foster the emancipation of Moroccan and Turkish labour migrant families, CSC and LOFC developed a step-by-step strategy that was firmly embedded within the pillar and rooted in Catholic social thought. First, labour migrants must become members of the pillar, leading the movements to actively recruit in workplaces and migrant neighborhoods. With these first connections, often through promises of material aid and representation, they hoped to catalyse a snowball effect in which they convinced migrant members to draw in more of their peers.⁵³ Then, as a second step in the emancipation strategy, the growing Moroccan and Turkish membership was given the chance to self-organize within the labour movement as separate, semi-autonomous branches. Such branches for foreigners existed in the labour movement since 1947, when CSC and LOFC launched, respectively, their Service des Travailleurs Immigrés (STM) and Groupe Immigré, rebranded to Action Immigrée (AI) in 1960.⁵⁴ With the arrival of Moroccan and Turkish workers from 1964 onwards, these branches were revived and restructured to include these audiences. So, by the end of the decade, AI brought together immigrant women of Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, Moroccan, and Turkish origin to exist as one foreigner group. The union went a step further and subdivided STM into so-called national sections: Italian, Spanish, Polish, Greek, Arab, and Turkish militant groups, responsible for representation, communication, and mobilization among their compatriots.⁵⁵ CSC believed that grouping migrants by nationality created an atmosphere of recognition and familiarity, which would in turn foster independence, cooperation based on mutual trust, and eventually emancipation. With this belief, the pillar explicitly distinguished itself from its socialist counterpart, which resolutely opted for a universalist approach.⁵⁶ The Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique (FGTB) and the Femmes Prévoyantes Socialistes (FPS) fiercely rejected the categorical approach, arguing that it reinforced national(ist) barriers and therefore impeded mutual solidarity in the international workers’ class.⁵⁷ Similarly, the categorical approach has been closely examined in academic circles, the media, and political environments, highlighting its potential to hinder cooperation and integration.⁵⁸

18CSC and LOFC believed the opposite to be true. In fact, the third step towards emancipation was strategized on the idea that fruitful cooperation stemmed from acknowledging and accepting differences. This belief was founded on a Catholic rendition of humanist personalism; a philosophical line of thought that centralizes the individual and their unique ownness, capacity for reasoning, creativity, and self-determination.⁵⁹ Building on this core idea, personalism gauged that the individual must be given the chance to develop and flourish, before being able to fruitfully cooperate in society. Starting in the Interbellum, Belgian Catholic social agents operationalized this principle in their charitable services for the poor, gradually pivoting away from traditional symptom relief, towards aiding the individual to emancipate.⁶⁰ After the Second World War, personalism gained traction as a political theory, embedding individual personhood and citizenship as pivotal points of Christian democratic parties and think tanks.⁶¹ In the 1960s, again, it echoed in the social teachings of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and emphasized that pluralism, dialogue, and tolerance enriched society. Following these principles, CSC and LOFC contended that Moroccan and Turkish migrants could only participate and emancipate fully if they were recognized and strengthened in their own social and cultural values.⁶²

19Nevertheless, the sudden and large influx of these non-Christian Moroccan and Turkish men and women in the 1960s also urged innovation in the movement’s categorical, personalist approach. Whereas before CSC and LOFC relied on familiar Christian tropes and pastoral care for the emancipation of Spanish, Italian, and Polish workers, this was decidedly not an option for Muslim audiences. Instead, CSC and LOFC/VF needed to find a categorical strategy compatible with, and sensitive to, what they understood as ‘the Muslim culture’. These new communities could after all only flourish and find their proper place in society if strengthened by their own culture and religion, so personalism reasoned.⁶³ In this strain of thought, LOFC attempted to study and understand Islam and Islamic cultures, as mentioned above. This knowledge and sensibility were then applied in hands-on classes, meant to engage Moroccan and Turkish women in the VF ideal of lifelong learning. Beyond merely recognizing differences, LOFC/VF has set out to preserve the cultures and religious practices of immigrant women in the context of migration. To achieve this goal, it implements various actions, such as organizing Arabic language courses, meeting with chaplains, and promoting the culture of these women during major events of the movement.⁶⁴ CSC similarly incited its Arab and Turkish sections to offer cultural activities but was itself rather reluctant to embrace all too-religious or cultural topics, again leaving sociocultural aspects to LOFC. More central in union thought, instead, was the need for migrant workers to represent and mobilize among themselves and, hence, to self-emancipate with union support. To facilitate this, courses on syndicalism and union affairs were taught and pamphlets and union press were translated into Arab and Turkish, so the communities could fully discuss – and hopefully spread – union ideals.⁶⁵ As such, by the end of the 1960s, both pillarised organisations found ways to adapt their categorical strategies to North-African and Turkish audiences alongside other foreign groups.

20This support for migrants’ emancipation through the recognition of their culture, religion, and individuality was relatively unique to the Christian pillar and needs to be understood in its historical and social context. In the late 1960s, declining mass attendance and perceived dynamics of secularization challenged the traditional societal position of the Catholic church.⁶⁶ At the same time, Catholic charitable practices came under fire from new social actors, who argued that the Church was paternalistic, focused on arbitrary care and ignored the possibility of structural change in favour of symptom relief. Similar criticisms had long been voiced from within the church, notably from the abovementioned personalist poor relief field, but a widespread mobilization of these ideals was lacking.⁶⁷ In the second half of the 1960s, however, the Second Vatican Council spurred on Catholic laypeople to rethink Catholic social engagement.⁶⁸ In relation to migration, this was strengthened by the 1971 apostolic letter ‘Octogesima Adveniens’, which renewed the church’s belief in the right to emigrate and encouraged Christians to facilitate this right.69 This created momentum for bottom-up initiatives, fostering a modernized social engagement which was religiously inspired yet more independent from the Church.⁷⁰ A second tipping point was the 1968-movement, spurring on Catholic initiatives to reposition themselves in a quickly changing landscape of social movements and activisms.⁷¹ Notably organisations working with diverse audiences felt inclined to revise their position and image within civil society. Among them was LOFC, which rebranded to Vie Féminine, mouvement d’éducation permanente (VF) in 1969, downplaying its Christian affiliation.⁷² Amidst the emergence of the second wave of neo-feminism, the dissonance with the Church’s stances on questions of marriage, contraception, and abortion had after all become too great, encouraging VF to pave its own path.⁷³ Among other topics, this new path further emboldened the trust in Action Immigrée’s categorical support for migrant women, inspired by the call for pluralism and mutual dialogue and citing that ‘there is now, for the entire public, much less desire for discrimination between Christians and non-Christians.’⁷⁴

Limits of the categorical approach

21Ultimately, the goal of these extensive categorical and personalist strategies was to lead migrants to emancipate and flourish in society. In the understanding of STM and AI, this emancipation would manifest in three ways. First, it meant that migrants became politicized and capable of representing themselves in the labour movement, in civil society, and in national politics. Second, this representation helped them overcome the issues tied to their migration and, at least partially, stabilize their precarious socioeconomic condition. Finally, STM and AI foresaw that Moroccan and Turkish members would move beyond their migrant status and become fully integrated constituents of the Christian labour movement, on an equal footing with Belgian members.⁷⁵ Together, these three goals relied on multiple parties to play their part. Moroccan and Turkish migrants were assigned the responsibility to become active and participating members of CSC’s national sections or in AI activities. Next, STM and AI characterized themselves as intermediaries and allies, facilitating that process of participation and emancipation. Last, but not least, the branches for foreigners of CSC and VF burdened the labour movement and its Belgian membership with the responsibility to acknowledge the hardships of migrant audiences and to act in solidarity.⁷⁶

22It is in this upscaling to the larger movement that STM and AI experienced hindrances. On the policy level, they were designated to represent the interests of foreign members yet were hardly capable of influencing the pillar’s policy. Within the union, STM had no formal voice and had no voting power, even though it theoretically stood in parallel with the sectoral and regional union boards.⁷⁷ AI, similarly, was a small and weak faction within VF and its demands had little influence on the agenda of the movement.⁷⁸ In both cases, that limit to their formal power was by design. CSC and VF curtailed their foreigner branches’ access to power out of unease, worrying that they may otherwise become a ‘union within a union’, as CSC called it.⁷⁹ They hypothesized that if the foreign branches became too categorical, they would grow fully self-sufficient and therefore find no more incentives to integrate into the larger movement.⁸⁰ Additionally, CSC saw the danger of a so-called double representation. It argued that, if STM and the national sections were given formal voting rights foreign members, would be disproportionately represented. This is because, in theory, the regional and sectoral branches also defended their interests.⁸¹ Therefore, CSC wished to organize foreigners’ formal powers exclusively through the general union bodies, so that the latter could become spaces for cooperation and mutual solidarity.⁸² Within VF, similarly, tensions surfaced between different generations of activists on how immigrant women should be included and represented.⁸³ On the one hand, as the dedicated foreigner branch, AI considered it crucial to recognize the specific demands of immigrant women to accommodate them accordingly. So, the action claimed the right to represent Moroccan and Turkish women within the movement, but equally encouraged them to defend their positions at the national office themselves. On the other side, VF council members were opposed to that particular emphasis on issues specific to migrant women, for example in the movements’ journal, because ‘their characteristics, issues, and goals did not yet relate to those of Belgian women.’⁸⁴

23In these discussions STM and AI were confronted with the incompatibility of the categorical approach within the Belgian Catholic pillar. In theory, the self-development and self-organisation of migrant audiences were key aspects, but in practice they posed concerns and organisational challenges to CSC and VF. In the view of the national boards, migrant self-isolation and migrants’ rejection of the pillar’s identity jeopardized the goals of the Belgian constituency. Therefore, VF and CSC did not grant formal voting or policy rights, but instead pushed migrant members to integrate the movement and voice their demands through the usual representative bodies. However, individual foreign members rarely succeeded in climbing the ranks of the organisations, nor did they gain access to the non-categorical branches implicitly reserved to Belgian members.⁸⁵ Even as voted representatives in the 1971 workplace council elections, they saw their input overshadowed by that of Belgian colleagues.⁸⁶ Hence, foreign militants felt isolated and restricted within the Christian pillar, unable to move up the ranks regardless of their affinity with the organisation. STM and AI were unsuccessful in raising this issue at the national level, in part because CSC and VF were satisfied with their current position as guardians of the victimized Moroccan and Turkish population.

Migrant Counter Voices

24However, some pioneering migrants after 1964 were far from the vulnerable victims that the union portrayed them to be. In fact, some were not labourers but rather exiled or fleeing political activists, journalists, opposition members, and syndicalists. Several Moroccan migrant pioneers were, for instance, educated and highly politicized inhabitants of Casablanca and Rabat.⁸⁷ Their membership of the Istiqlāl opposition party or their involvement with the radical leftist Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (UNFP) rendered them an eyesore for the Moroccan government. Domestically, they fought for a thorough economic restructuring and fast industrialization through socialist nationalization policies, while taking a stand against the ruling monarchy in favour of a more modern democratic system of governance. In doing so, they opposed the traditionalist and conservative monarchy of Hassan II and favoured the postcolonial, leftist, and pan-Arab rules of Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella and Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.⁸⁸ To defuse their opposition, the Moroccan government pushed these activists out of the country with targeted labour emigration policies.⁸⁹ By the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s, immigration from Turkey introduced similar subversive voices in Belgium, including supporters of the discredited Marxist-Leninist leaning Turkish workers’ party (TIP).⁹⁰ So, much more than CSC or VF suspected, politicized subjects with a clear affinity for Third World communist ideologies were part of the migrations to Belgium.

25Upon arrival, their activism did not subside. Rather, it became the backbone for their self-imagining in Western Europe. These militants regrouped in Belgian cities to discuss home country politics, to advance their progressive thought, and to keep tabs on the non-alignment movement. Due to their affinity for leftist and syndicalist ideals, they were often among the first to connect to and fare well in local trade union circles.⁹¹ Indeed, within CSC and within its socialist counterpart FGTB, it was often these politicized migrants who became the strongmen of the Arab and Turkish sections after 1964, figuring as the first non-European union militants and as agents of recruitment in their respective communities.⁹² These roles suited them, as they, in many ways, provided continuity for their activism, but also for their social standing. Indeed, far be it from these militants to self-identify as victims of an exploitative migration policy or as uprooted people in a hostile environment. Instead, the union militants of the CSC Arab section, for example, described themselves as the ‘upper class of Maghrebi Activists in Europe, […] who hate the [Moroccan] government,’ stressing their pre-existing politicization and their continued activism to legitimize their leadership in the section.⁹³ In their communication, issues in the Arab world seemed to concern them more than those in Belgium, given the temporary nature of their employment.⁹⁴ Nevertheless, they fought for suitable housing, fair wages, and better social security in Belgium. Far be it from them to self-identify as passive subjects. Towards the end of the decade, these first wave militants even explicitly distinguished themselves from later arrivals that fell into victimhood. They argued that the earlier waves were welcomed by the Belgian government and thus legitimate, whereas so-called tourists of the late 1960s resorted to irregular labour practices. In the view of CSC’s Arab section, these irregular migrants made themselves vulnerable to exploitation and aggravated negative sentiments of the Belgian public against Moroccan and Turkish workers.⁹⁵

26This accusatory distinction left immigrants of the late 1960s feeling alienated by their militant compatriots in CSC, and recruitment started to lag.⁹⁶ This gap was expanded further because newer arrivals were more likely to be of Amazigh descent, and therefore less inclined to identify with the pan-Arab identities and ideals of the militants in CSC’s Arab section. So, those disenfranchised irregular migrant workers sought new allies among the aftershocks of the 1968 movement. Encouraged by student activism, Maoist and Trotskyist groups, and a burgeoning field of progressive organisations, the supposed victims challenged unethical practices themselves. Emboldened by the activism of their compatriots in the Netherlands, Germany and France, Moroccan and Turkish irregular migrants came to stand at the forefront of various strikes between 1968 and 1973.⁹⁷ Their protests started in the faltering mining sector, yet quickly spread to the industries that exploited low-cost migrant labour, like car manufacturing and steelworks.⁹⁸ Initially, they demanded better wages and safer work conditions, chiming in with the exasperation of their Belgian, Italian, and Spanish colleagues. Later, however, their activism grew specific to their situation and denounced the unethical and exploitative backbone of labour migration as a policy. Hence, they demanded better social security benefits, a fairer position in the labour market, and regularizations for those without a work or residence permit.⁹⁹

27These developments were a serious headache for CSC. First, because they challenged Belgium’s strong syndicalist tradition, which relied on collective bargaining in most sectors and mutual understanding between policy, industry, and the labour movement. Unlicensed migrant actions, labelled wildcat strikes, could disrupt this crucial balance and delegitimize the unions as labour representatives.¹⁰⁰ Second, the rise of new left movements as allies of the working class challenged the unions’ strong claim on the topic of migration.¹⁰¹ In its reaction, CSC, just like its socialist counterpart FGTB, heckled new left activist groups for their provocative tactics, communist tendencies, and fake promises.¹⁰² These accusations were flung wildly, however, and to many migrant strikers they confirmed that neither union wished to profoundly challenge the labour migration system and its lacking government policies. Last, but certainly not least, the upheavals of the early 1970s confirmed that CSC had misunderstood the intra-group dynamics of the Moroccan and Turkish workforce. Its Arab and Turkish sections were less representative than hoped – and certainly not passe-partout for all migration issues – while newer migrants shied away from, if not actively mistrusted Belgian syndicalism.¹⁰³ Additionally, the needs and demands of these workers proved more profound than CSC had anticipated before, as questions of social security, regularizations, extended residence permits, and a dedicated migrant status for non-EEA workers were now on the table. In any case, by 1973, any illusions of Moroccan and Turkish migrants as voiceless victims were proven to be misplaced.

28Around that period, VF experienced a similar disillusion concerning its preconceptions about the female migrant audience in Belgium. The above-mentioned gendered roles and the uprootedness that VF projected upon migrant women presupposed that these women had ‘followed their husbands’ thanks to family reunion frameworks.¹⁰⁴ Indeed, female mobility from Morocco and Turkey was limited because women’s legal status made their mobility conditional to male authorization.¹⁰⁵ Additionally, as mentioned previously, the Belgian labour market offered few work opportunities for women.¹⁰⁶ A group that VF did not account for, however, were a handful of Moroccan women who arrived in the early 1970s as students. They were often politicized and involved in left-wing politics through the Union Nationale des Etudiants du Maroc (UNEM), linked to the UNFP.¹⁰⁷ These women, whose socio-economic characteristics were very different from those of the rest of the Moroccan female population in Belgium, stood at the origin of a feminist movement that explicitly broke with victimizing discourses, such as that of VF. Offering their own alternative instead, they founded the Association des Femmes Marocaines (AFM) in Brussels in 1974.¹⁰⁸ Their belief in the agency and autonomy of migrant women quickly gathered the support of female members of the Regroupement Démocratique des Marocains (RDM) and the wives of union militants.¹⁰⁹ As AFM grew, it showed itself more capable than VF in catering to the needs of its audience. Family law, residency rights, and domestic violence featured prominently in their activities, highlighting their unmistakable focus on improving the legal and economic status of Moroccan women.¹¹⁰ With an approach beyond victimization, AFM had become a valid alternative for many politically conscious female migrants, taking this audience away from VF.¹¹¹

29So, after one decade of catering to Moroccan and Turkish families, CSC and VF felt their connection to these communities dwindle. The impasse seemed complete in March 1974, when a group of Moroccan and Tunisian irregular migrants began a hunger strike in Brussels to demand work and residence permits.¹¹² It was the closing piece to a continued wave of wildcat strikes and protests orchestrated by disenfranchised migrant workers, supported by leftist activists.¹¹³ Far out of the grasp of CSC and VF, these actions confirmed that the pillarized bodies had lost their position as foremost representatives of these migrant labourers. Moreover, their militancy challenged the perceptions that the labour movement had of Moroccan and Turkish migrants, demonstrating that they were not merely passive victims but could act without a need for union tutelage. Finally, they made it clear that STM and AI were no longer representative branches for foreigners because they did not capture the quickly diversified demographic of the recent waves of irregular migrants. Hence, CSC and VF felt sidelined and remained absent throughout the course of the hunger strike; breaking their silence only after the forceful repatriation of the petitioners.¹¹⁴

30Only in the aftermath of the hunger strike did CSC and VF find their footing again, using their policy influence to criticize the country’s reliance on labour migration and its arbitrary policies toward migrants.¹¹⁵ They booked a first success in the summer of 1974 with the announcement of the Belgian recruitment stop, and a second when they positioned themselves as facilitators of the mass regularizations of irregular workers; attracting new members in the process.¹¹⁶ In that sense, the events of 1974 gave them a second chance to restructure their approach. CSC and VF doubled down on their ideals of Catholic personalism to emancipate Moroccan and Turkish members and, subsequently, to fully integrate them into the Catholic pillar. To this end, several of the pillar’s organisations, led by CSC, published an exhaustive Statute of the Migrant Worker in 1975 in which, besides calls for better migrant legal and social security, they delineated three amended strategies.¹¹⁷ The first strategy aimed to strengthen migrant self-representation by giving foreigner branches more formal say in policy matters. Second, the statute encouraged migrant members to form cultural associations to meet their communities’ needs, fostering cultural and social emancipation. Third, CSC and VF promised to sensitize their Belgian members on the often-difficult conditions for foreign workers, hoping to build a greater sense of mutual solidarity.¹¹⁸ These strategies nevertheless again relied on the control of the union over Moroccan and Turkish migrant members, perpetuating the dynamic of the previous decade wherein CSC’s and VF’s oversight kept migrant members in check.¹¹⁹ Some migrant members in turn challenged this limit to their agency and autonomy, recreating lasting tensions well into the late 1970s and early 1980s.¹²⁰

Conclusion

31Between 1964 and 1974, the Christian trade union Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens (CSC) and the Christian women’s movement Ligues Ouvrières Féminines Chrétiennes (LOFC), the later Vie Féminine (VF), assumed responsibility within the Catholic pillar over the support for Moroccan and Turkish labour migrant families. In that engagement, the organisations constructed an understanding of those unfamiliar communities, giving meaning to their often-precarious position in the country. Reproducing the Catholic gendered roles of the core family, mixed in with modern ideas of emancipation and self-development, CSC argued that migrant men were lured in with false promises of stable employment, ending up in precarity because they could not provide for their family’s future. LOFC/VF in turn contended that migrant women found themselves isolated and unable to fulfil their role as guardian of culture and values, failing to be a cornerstone for the family. Consequently, an imaginary was constructed of Moroccan and Turkish communities as victims of an exploitative and ill-managed labour migration system, rendering them passive and uprooted in a foreign country. This imaginary was then reproduced in CSC’s and VF’s policies, which judged migrants in need of conscientization and emancipation through the labour movement’s support. Drawing on the principles of Catholic personalism, migrant members were structured into the national sections of the Service des Travailleurs Migrants and in Action Immigrée. Those categorical foreign branches, unique to the Catholic pillar’s approach, were designed to foster self-development and self-emancipation within the Moroccan and Turkish communities.

32However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, amidst a quickly changing landscape of migrants’ needs and activisms, that emancipation strategy showed its limits. On the organisational plan, STM and AI saw their formal influence within policymaking restricted. This was because CSC and LOFC/VF feared that the specific needs of Moroccan and Turkish migrant audiences were incompatible with, or even in defiance of Belgian members’ interests. Therefore, the branches for foreigners became ineffective and stagnant entities within the CSC, while within the LOFC/VF, they struggled to gain recognition in relation to the global movement. What proved to be more detrimental, however, was that the emancipation strategies projected ill-informed notions of uprootedness and victimhood on migrant members, while disacknowledging their politization, their experiences as syndicalists, their education, or their affinity for Marxist political thought. Simultaneously, the pillarized bodies failed to recognize that the Moroccan and Turkish communities were growing ever more diverse. This dissonance caused ruptures, as migrants in search of an alternative turned to activist groups and launched wildcat strikes in defiance of the Christian labour movement. Although the 1974 recruitment stop and regularization campaign gave the pillar some momentum to revise its strategies, the fickle balance between the movement’s tutelage and migrant autonomy remained a source of tension into the next decade.

33Thus, the analysis demonstrates the potential of the concept of social imaginaries for historical research on the relation between non-European labour migrant communities and European representative bodies. From the vantage point of those host organisations, it captures the ideologies, experiences, preconceptions, and prejudiced which, together, informed their approach to these foreign audiences. This helps unpack organisational migrant accommodation strategies and contextualizes them, venturing beyond policy and politics. In the case of CSC and VF, it can trace their unique but contested approaches back to personalist Catholic teachings, Church reform, and challenges to traditional Catholic charity; all amidst the social transformations of the late 1960s. From the side of labour migrant communities, moreover, it adds an analysis of how they were ‘imagined’, and which social and cultural facets of their identities did or did not figure in that understanding. Here, gender, socioeconomic intra-community diversity, and the diversity in migration waves were misrepresented or missing facets in the hosts’ imaginary, explaining at least part of the tensions with the communities.

Notes

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About: Stijn Carpentier

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