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L’appel à la main-d’œuvre italienne pour les charbonnages et sa prise en charge à son arrivée en Belgique dans l’immédiat après-guerre. - Article devoted to the massive arrival of Italian immigrants in Belgium after 1945
Anne MORELLI
1988, Brussels (Belgium)
Article, Web Article
French
Article devoted to the massive arrival of Italian immigrants in Belgium after the Second World War.
The broached themes :
- Why Italians in Belgium ? Analysis of the causes of the penury of Belgian workforce for coal mines after the Second World War (work conditions, salaries, etc.). Failure of the measures taken by the Belgian authorities (status of the minor and civil mobilisation) to attract Belgian workers and decision to call for foreign workforce. Content of the Italian-Belgian agreement of 1946.
- Recruitment in Italy : organisation of the recruitment (official and parallel by the Belgian coal bosses) and control of the candidates (medical and political)
- The transporting of the convoys to Belgium.
- First contacts with the mine (medical control, absence of training, first going down, contract rupture and return home). The housing issue (the housing crisis in Belgium makes it impossible to welcome the workers and their families in decent accommodation, housing conditions in « camps », etc.).
- The political, unionist and religious training of the Italian immigrants just after the War : analysis of the influence fights for the control and the training of the immigrants :
the Catholic structures ;
the employers’ structures ;
the Communists ;
the socialist initiatives.
In conclusion, the author answers three questions :
- Who made the Italians come to Belgium ?
- How many Italians have been recruited for the Belgian mines ?
- How were they seen when they arrived ?
Article written by one of the best specialists in the history of immigration in Belgium. Well documented, it proposes an interesting light on the recruitment (much controlled) and housing (we are very far from the engagements taken in the 1946 agreement…) conditions of the Italian migrants and of their social life in Belgium with the influence fights between different spiritual or political « authorities » to control this population. In her conclusions, the author opens some tracks for the analysis of the perception of this migratory flux in Belgium.
We can find in this article many references to witnesses, articles from newspapers, etc. that can be used to broach in class the issue of Italian immigration in Belgium.
http://www.flwi.ugent.be/btng-rbhc/pdf/BTNG-RBHC,%2019,%201988,%201-2,%20pp%20083-130.pdf
Philippe Plumet
INFOREF
External expert. Project leader – Educational coordination unit « Democracy or barbarism », Ministery of French-speaking community in Belgium.
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