Belgium Continues to Punish Immigrants for Not Being Proficient in the Flemish Language

In a move intended to target Muslim and foreign minorities in Belgium, the Minister for Animal Welfare, the Brussels Periphery, Education and Sport, Ben Weyts, announced a plan to teach the Flemish (Dutch) language, which includes punishing parents who do not make an effort for this.

Weyts belongs to the right-wing Liberal Party, known for targeting foreigners through its programs and statements, but in a less severe form compared to the right-wing populist political party, Vlaams Belang, which clearly declares its rejection of Muslims and foreigners.

The Flemish are the largest ethnic group in the modern kingdom of Belgium, representing 60% of the population, and speak Flemish (Dutch), while the rest are of the French-speaking Walloon group.

 

‘Shameless’ Proposal

The Minister’s proposal includes withdrawing the financial dues that families receive monthly from their children.

Governmental financial assistance is defined as a social benefit allocated by the state to each parent or guardian who has a child or children under their family care.

Child benefit allocations for 2023 have exceeded five billion euros in the Flemish Region of Belgium (Flanders).

The subsidy was set at 170 euros per month for each child born after January 1, 2019, while children born before this date are subject to the old subsidy system.

Ben Weyts’ plan came after a research conducted on 400 primary schools found that 14% of children in the third grade before entering primary school had insufficient marks in the Dutch language.

In addition to the significant regional differences in language learning in the country, the research indicated that children need strong and intensive guidance and support in this area.

According to De Morgen website, on January 17, 2023, children who speak a different home language have lower learning scores for the Dutch language, which means they need additional language support.

The minister stressed that the plan imposes “the involvement of parents more strictly to introduce their children to the Dutch language after school as well.”

While the VRT NWS website said, on January 17, 2023, quoting teachers, that the minister’s thinking of punishing parents of young children who do not speak the Dutch language is a bad thing, describing the matter as “folly.”

The website explained that depriving parents of children, who are late in learning the language, of money does not help the students, but rather will have counterproductive results, calling for more education and additional language support.

 

Local Interaction

Tijani Boulaouali, a researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Louvain in Belgium, said that the minister’s plan was met with severe criticism, whether from the government coalition to which he belongs or from political observers, and local media.

In his interview with Al-Estiklal, Boulaouali said: “Christian and Liberal Democratic parties participating in the current government rejected this strange proposal.”

Youth Minister Benjamin Dalle believed this proposal was not in the children’s interest and that financial penalties would reduce children’s opportunities in school.

“Minister of Social Affairs Hilde Crevits also did not agree with the minister’s plan as she believes that punishing parents is not a good idea because it will exacerbate academic weakness and language delay,” Boulaouali said.

Crevits indicated that “these family subsidies were originally allocated only to give families and children more opportunities.”

Boulaouali added that the minister’s idea was supported by the far-right party, the Vlaams Belang Party, but most observers believe that what he issued is a maneuver to misrepresent the real problems facing his ministry.

The researcher warned that this plan is not devoid of implicit racism because children who suffer from language delays in Belgian and Flemish schools are primarily children of foreign and Muslim minorities.

He stressed that the minister is deeply aware of the issue and is deeply aware of its cultural, educational, and economic causes. Despite this, he put forward this strange initiative that is consistent with the vision and strategy of the liberal party that he represents regarding Muslim and foreign groups at a time when he had to adopt a realistic educational approach.

He said that the required realistic approach is seen in dealing with Ukrainian refugee children in Belgium, stressing that “they are being integrated educationally, legally, socially and economically without conditions, from the first day they set foot on Belgian soil.”

The researcher pointed out that the Belgian official reports confirm that those who are subjected to discrimination in school are children from Muslim families, which means, according to the same speaker, that they are the first to receive attention and support, but racism is taking its toll on a number of politicians in Europe.

He stated that 61% of teachers in Belgium monitored cases of racism in classrooms against Muslim children in 2022, which is usually represented in insults and verbal abuse, and sometimes goes beyond that in secondary education to acts of violence and vandalism.

 

Exposed Maneuver

On January 17, 2023, the news website, Nieuwsblad, confirmed that the minister’s presentation regarding Dutch language education was “just a maneuver to run away from his own problems.”

News websites in Belgium indicated that the Minister of Education is still facing the consequences of the confusion he left after he attended drunkenly to discuss the education budget on December 14, 2022.

Despite Ben Weyts’ denials, there are many MPs who suspect the education minister of attending the Belgian parliament drunk. They said he made a mixed impression, criticizing the opposition more vigorously than usual.

Boulaouali told Al-Estiklal that the minister’s plan comes in the face of the disparity in linguistic, cognitive, and material opportunities in Flemish society from one social segment to another.

He stressed that “the various educational problems cannot be dealt with by the same evaluation criteria, and this applies to a large extent to the problem of language delay.”

He indicated that for a child of Flemish origin, the Flemish/Dutch language is their mother tongue which they learn from birth.

It remains their daily communication language, as well as the language of media follow-up, studies, the street, and various parallel cultural and sports activities.

As for a child of foreign origin, they have a different mother tongue, which may be Turkish, Amazigh, or one of the Arabic or African dialects.

The Flemish language comes second or sometimes third if the parents are of different origins. The researcher believed that what makes matters worse is the problem of hybrid and irrational linguistic mixing.

As an important group of children and young people of foreign and Muslim origins take from each tongue without well mastering a specific language.

He continued: “This is not to mention the deep disparity in material, social and cognitive opportunities, as high salaries and social traditions help indigenous Flemish families to create various favorable conditions for the child (housing, clothing, luxury), while these conditions are not provided for the children of foreigners who live in hardship and instability.”