Hassan Bousetta

Institutional theories of immigrant ethnic mobilisation: Relevance and limitations

Using an institutional framework analysis, this article aims to explain patterns of mobilisation among immigrant ethnic minorities. The first part of the argument is comprised of a critical discussion and conceptual deconstruction of interpretative models of political opportunity structures. This assessment of the relevance and limitations of available institutional explanation emphasises four central problems that call for refinement. The second part consists of an alternative framework. The main argument posits that our understanding of ethnic politics is biased by an overemphasis on institutional channels of political demands and by an underspecification of internal differentiation within immigrant ethnic communities at both the level of strategy and of identity. An alternative understanding of the field of ethnic politics within European cities may take as its point of departure what may be labelled the infra-political dimension of ethnic processses. While the argument primarily takes the form of a conceptual discussion, the example of the recognition of a representative organ for Moslims in Belgium is presented as an illustration of infra-political mobilisation.

A Country Made for Disasters: Environmental Vulnerability and Forced Migration in Bangladesh

There is a broad consensus amongst the scientific community that South Asia is amongst the regions most affected by climate change. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (2007) the main climate change impacts in the region are as follows: increased frequency of droughts and floods negatively affecting local production; sea level rise exposing coasts to increasing risks, including coastal erosion and growing human-induced pressures on coastal areas; and glacier melt in the Himalayas with more flooding and rock avalanches. Crop yields could decrease up to 30% in Central and South Asia by the mid-twenty-first century. Within South Asia, Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country because of its regional connectivity through geo-physical and hydrological features and its livelihood reliance on trade (ELIAMEP, 2008).

Governing multicultural Brussels: paradoxes of a multi-level, multi-cultural, multi-national urban anomaly

ABSTRACT Updating our earlier work on Brussels as the paradigm of a multi-level, multi-cultural, multi-national city, and in the context of Brussels’s recent troubled emergence as the epicentre of violent conflict between radical political Islam and the West, this paper sets out the paradoxical intersection of national (i.e. Flemish and Francophone), non-national and ethnic minority politics in a city placed as a multi-cultural and multi-national ‘urban anomaly’ at the heart of linguistic struggle of the two dominant Belgian communities. Brussels is one of the three Regions of the Belgian federal model alongside Flanders and Wallonia. It is also an extraordinarily diverse and cosmopolitan city, in which a mixed language Belgian population lives alongside very high numbers of resident non-nationals, including European elites, other European immigrant workers, and immigrants from Africa and Asia. After laying out the complex distribution of power and competences within the Belgian federal structure, we explore whether these structures have worked over the years to include or exclude disadvantaged ethnic groups. To better understand these processes, we introduce our view of the multi-level governance perspective.

New Moroccan Migrants in Belgium

ABSTRACT Moroccans in Belgium come close to being the largest immigrant community in the country. It is characterised by being both in a post-migration and migration situation. The Moroccan community in Belgium lies at the juncture of the social experience of an older and newer community of migrants. While there has been extensive research on the legally established, the trajectories of new Moroccan migrants have not been dealt with specifically in the literature. Dwelling on both existing research and on our own fieldwork material, this paper seeks to better study Moroccan undocumented migrants. A tentative etnography is articulated that seeks to better understand the expectations, anticipations and strategic reactions of this group of migrants in relation to immigration policy-making.

Is There a Belgian School of Ethnic and Migration Studies

In Belgium, as in many other European countries, migration and the social problems allegedly generated by this process have in recent years gained an increasingly high profile in media and political debates. Social questions linked to asylum, immigration, interethnic relations and so on, have undoubtedly assumed a higher profile within the public consciousness. Significantly, this process has tended to associate ‘(im)migration’ with ‘social problems’. In the last couple of years, Belgium has been faced with several cases which gave rise to passionate public debates and controversies on matters related to migration processes — either ‘upstream’ involving the movement of people or ‘downstream’ with issues linked to the management of multi-ethnic and multicultural relations.