Flanders' population is becoming more international, and it is no longer limited to a metropolitan context. However, local governments are not responding to a new developing spatial inequality – the unequal distribution of resources and services across different areas.
Whereas non-Belgians made up just 6.5% of the Flemish population in 1990, they now account for one-fourth of its inhabitants. For a long time, this super-diversity was distributed unevenly, but this is changing, as Flemish people with a migration background move to border municipalities and the periphery, the Atlas Superdiversity Flanders, a report mapping the distribution, scale and evolution of diversity, showed.
"Today, people of more than 180 different nationalities live in Flanders and one in four people in Flanders has a non-Belgian origin. In Brussels, it is even three in four," Dirk Geldof, a researcher at Odisee University who worked on the report, said. "They are not all living in cities, far from it."
He explained that many of them also share the Flemish "dream" of having "a house, garden and little tree" (the region's equivalent to the much-desired white picket fence) which has seen them moving away from the city, which at one point represented a place of "soft landing" for many newcomers, where they could find people of their community, the necessary infrastructure and cheap housing.
"In the eastern edge of Brussels we mainly see people with EU or OECD backgrounds, while to the west of the city, people of non-EU origin are more likely to settle," noted Geldof.
This urban exodus is a trend that has long been confirmed among the white middle class, but in recent years, has been accelerated due to expensive housing and gentrification in cities. "People are being pushed to places where they can still afford housing," Geldof noted.
Moving into suburbs
The report confirmed that the evolution towards an increasingly diverse population is not taking place at the same speed everywhere in the region. The international population is growing most steadily in Brussels' southern edge, Antwerp and Ghent, the Limburg mining region and smaller towns with an industrial history such as Vilvoorde, Lokeren or Zele, places where people of non-Belgian origin have settled in for many years.
However, the peripheries of these places are also becoming more diverse. The Dutch are increasingly present in cities and villages along the border with the Netherlands and, more recently, more French people are living in West Flanders border municipalities.
Most significantly, the report highlighted a recent trend of people with migration backgrounds and how they are fanning out to the outskirts, places that were previously less diverse, including in "smaller towns with an industrial past and outdated working-class housing," while less diverse neighbourhoods in cities also continue to diversify.
Lower-income households tend to move to cities outside of cities, like Boom, the Dender region (Ninove and Geraardsbergen) or the stretch of the canal from Charleroi across Brussels to the Rupel (Vilvoorde, Drogenbos).
Uneven distribution leads to inequality
Worryingly, researchers found that the more diverse the residential environment is, the scarcer the public and private green spaces are, highlighting that the increasing diversity has translated into spatial inequality. They are also more likely to live in terraced, smaller houses, rental properties and multi-family dwellings.
However, this growing diversity poses challenges to local governments and their spatial policies. The need for places where people can play and meet as well as new types of shops, extra capacity for schools or places of worship and affordable housing is growing. Increasing diversity goes hand in hand with rejuvenation, meaning there will also be more demand for childcare and school places.
The report highlighted that local governments need to respond more actively to these changing demographics, but also recognised that on the local level, they are often ill-equipped to develop and implement a vision for this due to a lack of support and funding from the Flemish government. This is especially the case in municipalities where a growing super-diversity goes hand in hand with a poor(er) population and fewer fiscal resources.
Some municipalities also fear a "suction effect" in their municipalities that will see people with migration backgrounds flock to their area, and are apprehensive of a challenging difference in mentality between residents who have lived in the municipality for a very long time and "newcomers."
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In response, the researchers stressed that super-diversity is a demographic and social reality that cannot be controlled or stopped. "Superdiversity also offers opportunities to municipalities, especially where the population is ageing and the middle class is moving away.
