Multicultural Belgium: socialchange through micro-media

A project in Antwerp trains non-EC migrants in journalism skills to create themselves a voice in mainstream media. Cultural integration is a politically-charged issue in Flanders. This was probably published around 2012 in The Prisma Multicultural Newspaper www.theprisma.co.uk with photos. Kifkif still exists and so does racism in Flanders. 

Kifkif was founded in Brussels in 2001 as a grassroots organization to fight racism. Its name means ‘it’s equal’ in Moroccan Arabic, which reflects their aims and the group they began working with.

Their website was one of the first migrant voices in the public debate in Flanders. Now Kifkif  is a major source of information on intercultural society in Flanders, with up to 2,500 website visitors a day.

Kifkif is evolving. After running art competitions to get migrant people into the regular cultural sector, and organizing the cultural contest for the Kifkif Awards for 5 years, they are looking for people to take it over and keep the name.

An important part of their work is training people to report on multicultural society and produce books containing their reports. One was a collection of short stories by migrants. And they have produced documentary films on the problems migrants meet in searching for jobs, and the shortcomings of the education service for migrants.

Kifkif’s long-term goal in all this is to indirectly change society.

They also take a position in public debates by publishing e-books and writing opinion articles. They have filed complaints against Deutsche Bank for racism, and they won a case against Adeco the employment services last year, and against Vlaams Blok, the extreme right party. 

The large Belgian cities are as diverse as London, and the concept of Super-diversity has been developed to explain how this impacts on the way a city functions. But public policy is still based on outdated views of language and culture. The treatment of asylum seekers doesn’t take account of the effects on language of migration and displacement: the very reasons that people are refugees in the first place.

 I spoke to Ico Maly about his work in Antwerp for The Prisma.

Do mainstream journalists volunteer to work on your training courses?

Some do, most of them we have to pay a bit, and we have to choose people carefully.

I don’t like short pieces: reality is complex, and Kifkif is one of the few media where that complexity can be explained.

At the moment we have 7,000 articles on our website, and it is important as a historical record of Kifkif from 2001. 

How do micro media relate to the mainstream?

Since 2001 the importance of mainstream media has been diminishing. Micro-media like KifKif are trying to work non-commercially, and to raise voices on the Left. Our main values are democratic, solidarity, equality, freedom, intercultural, self-critical and progressive. Mainstream journalists are not fond of media-critical organisations like Kifkif, but they follow us.

One of our success stories is Fikry El Azzouzi, a young man who was contributing columns for our website for about 5 years and then wrote his first novel. The mainstream paper De Morgen asked him to be a columnist.

 In the old days we spent time trying to get people into the mainstream media; today they follow us and pick the columnists they like. 

What has changed in Belgian society in recent years?

In 1989 in Flanders there was a big shift in intercultural life. It was the start of what we call Super-Diversity.  You see an enormous differentiation of diversity after 1989.

The “old migration” was people with mostly a Muslim background. The government selected people with little education, because they wanted them to keep silent and work long hours.

Now in Belgium there are 194 nationalities, yet the first government integration policy was only introduced in 1989. Before then it was just the trade unions and social workers who called for one. They advocated socio-economic integration because we had a growing ethnic underclass of unemployed people. But in 1989 politicians became concerned about cultural integration.

There is a new class of people defined by precarious employment, which Guy Standing calls The Precariat, people with different rights within the same society. The old migrants, Muslims, have less rights than Catholics, the headscarf for example is a big issue, and around schooling. And then there are new migrants who are living here without papers, so they have no right to jobs or housing. 

How have these things affected immigrant life?

In Super-Diversity, everyone has to manage themselves as a little enterprise, in order to be integrated in society. 1989 was also the period when communication media changed, so the construction of cultural identity by migrants and native people changed too.

Before then migrants communicated with their homeland with little tapes they recorded and posted, which took a month to get there. After 1989 you get email, Facebook, satellite TV etc. So people might be very socially isolated here and yet have a very active social and political life with people at home.

Then there are the African churches, which have services with 200 people listening to priests from their home country on live TV.

But the politicians are ignoring this new reality, and thinking they can have a 2-track policy. First they try to stop ‘bad’ migration - poor people - while welcoming the top professionals according to the neo-Liberal model. That is a change from the 1970’s when they wanted unskilled people. But it won’t work, because we live in a globally connected world.

And secondly when unwanted people arrive here they have to integrate, by learning our language and our values, becoming a Belgian, their rights are conditional. 

 Learning Flemish is a useful survival skill?

It is for some people, but it can be completely irrelevant for others. In Brussels there are a lot of ‘top’ migrants who only understand English. They work and socialize with people who speak English.

If you are working in a supermarket you can’t get by speaking only Portuguese?

Here is a small example that explains a lot. Statiestraat in Antwerp is a very diverse neighbourhood, and there is a shop advertising a flat in Chinese. But it uses 2 forms of Chinese, one from Hong Kong and one from the Republic of China. It means that the owner came from Hong Kong in the 1970’s, but also wants to address the new migrants who are leaving the People’s Republic of China now. And the price is not given in Euros, it’s given in Yen. It isn’t a Chinese neighbourhood, yet here is a first-generation Chinese man addressing the 2nd generation, who are probably working as dishwashers in Chinese restaurants. It’s a parallel universe, they don’t need to know Flemish to survive - that is how layered society is becoming.

Has immigration law changed in recent years?

Before 2005 migrants had the right to live here and the government would help you financially if you didn’t have the means to survive. Now you have the right to stay in a detention centre.

The grounds to stay have been limited, and language is one of the most important factors, as Jan Blommaert, who is my Ph.D supervisor has shown. He studied asylum in London and Flanders.  95% of asylum seekers are denied residence here, most of the time because of “language errors”.

Someone from Congo comes here without papers, and speaks more English than French, and the interviewer will say that “Congolese people should speak French, so we think you are lying about where you come from”. And if we think you’re lying your application is finished. They will ask people “Explain your situation in your home country”, and then they will ask for more detail, and the main story changes as more detail comes out, so they will say “you’re lying, you’ve changed your story”.

Now you can be fined for small things like spitting in the street, 150 Euros on the spot. And it varies from one city to another. So, for the first time there is an undermining of the State of Law, and this is a response to super-diversity.