Paper Titles & Abstracts

Since the beginning of the 1990s, and the steady electoral rise of the Flemish extreme right party Vlaams Belang, migration is differently politicized in Flanders and Francophone Belgium. Due to this different politicization, the north-south linguistic cleavage started to overlap with the migration divide (liberal versus restrictive). Flemish political parties generally defend more restrictive policy positions than their Francophone counter-parts. This paper investigates the impact of European integration on this linguistic migration divide, in particular with regard to family migration policies. The paper sustains the proposition that vertical and horizontal Europeanization attenuate the political conflict on migration in Belgium by bridging the north-south migration divide. This proposition is supported by an in-depth exploration of the family reunion policy reforms of 2006 and 2011. First, the paper shows how, in 2006, vertical Europeanization (the EU family reunion directive) encouraged the main Flemish and Francophone political actors to play the consensus game. Second, the paper highlights how horizontal Europeanization might have stimulated Francophone political parties to follow the restrictive turn. This research contributes to the still very scarce debate on the Europeanization of national conflict structures. We argue that, in addition to increased cooperation between central and regional governments and the increased relevance of the central government, the attenuation (versus polarization) of political conflict must be added to the list of consequences of EU integration that might influence political stability in centrifugal federal states.