Christian Labour Movement Imaginaries of Moroccan and Turkish Migrants in Belgium, 1964-1974

In 1964, the influx of Moroccan and Turkish labour migrants heralded a new episode in Belgium’s postwar labour migration history. It affected new industries and brought migration to new cities, but also introduced many Belgians to non-European Muslim populations. To welcome these newcomers, civil society organisations were prompted to adapt their approaches and, often, to re-invent their offer towards migrant communities. Recent scholarly literature has paid some attention to these organisational shifts, to reconstruct how civil society catered to foreign audiences with adapted policies and discourses. Beyond this performative communication, however, much less research has been done on how these organisations understood ‘the Muslim other’, and how such imaginaries explicitly and implicitly shaped their policies. To explore this dynamic, this article analyses the categorical foreigner services of two pillarized bodies, namely the Christian trade union ACV/CSC and the Ligues Ouvrières Féminines Chrétiennes LOFC, the later Vie Féminine.