Introduction

Belgium – as most other Western European countries – has become an immigration country in the last decades. One in five Belgian citizens has or was born with a non-Belgian nationality. On a yearly basis, around 140,000 immigrants arrive in Belgium (Myria, 2020). Refugees granted international protection represent about 10 per cent of these immigrants. The increasing numbers of refugees Belgium has been confronted with from 2015 onwards – due to wars in the Middle East and the persecution of people by authoritarian states – have mainly led to policy initiatives aimed at asylum reception and integration, while support for maintaining family ties across borders and support during the process of family reunification has received far less political attention. Family reunification is for refugees and other migrants, however, the most important legal ground for migration to Belgium: 42 per cent of migrants from non-EU countries and 27 per cent of EU citizens migrating to Belgium obtained their first residence permit on the basis of family reunification. In total this concerned 35,169 people in 2018 (Myria, 2019). Within the group of non-Europeans, 2,722 people had received an approval for family reunification with someone with refugee status (Myria, 2018).

Family reunification is a unique process within the migration processes, as it concerns ‘not only “outsiders knocking at a state's doors and requesting entry” but also the “moral claim of insiders”, people living within state borders who ask to be united with their family’ (Block, 2012: 37). Notwithstanding the right to family life inscribed in Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and in Article 22 of the Belgian Constitution, family reunification is subject to a policy of problematisation and suspicion. The association with ‘fraudulent marriages’ and possible fraud involving papers, ages or relational ties has become standard. Wray (2006: 303) calls this ‘moral gatekeeping’, which contributes to the image of ‘the undesirable family migrant’.

In general, the political discourse on migration is often very negative. Migration is framed by some as a danger; a threat from the outside for the ‘body of the nation’ (Schrooten et al, 2016). Numbers are thereby enlarged and exaggerated to create an image of massive influx. Moreover, refugee immigration is coupled with unprecedented problematisations of Islam – including an association with terrorism – and widespread populism (Lucassen, 2018).