Feeling Walloon, feeling Flemish: different foundations

Historically, the feelings of being Flemish or Walloon have been built on profoundly different foundations. In Flanders, the first real beginnings of national feeling were constructed against the domination of an elite perceived at every point as foreign: en economic ‘belgicain’ French speaking elite, foreign to the Flemish culture and the everyday life of the Flemish people, heavily marked by the Church. In the south of the country, the feeling of being Walloon was not forged as a ‘nationalistic’ reaction to a foreign domination, but rather as a social reaction to an endogenous economic domination. One can thus understand that contrary to Flanders, a strong ‘anti-belgicain’ feeling was not built up in the south of the country, Belgium not being experienced as a foreign domination.

The fact that the Belgian state retains not only all the sovereign functions and symbolic aspects of the nation, but also this enormous part of collective life which is social security, suits the Walloons very well whilst it profoundly irritates numerous Flemish people. The latter feel doubly cheated: for a long time dominated both culturally and economically, they are beginning to find the weight of Belgium very heavy, a weight which prevents them from developing their national symbolic but moreover obliges them to carry the weight of solidarity with a region which has become more fragile since around fifty years ago. The Walloons, on the other hand, do not find it illegitimate that the flow of solidarity, after having benefited Flanders from the nineteenth century up until the Second World War, can function in the other direction after the structural crisisprovoked by the decline of their industry.

A ‘socio-liberal’ consensus

It is one thing to evoke feelings of belonging, yet another to understand the representations, ‘the representational contents’ to which they are linked. In this respect we have at our disposal a significant sample on the socio-political values of the Walloons, gathered over the course of the enquiries carried out for twenty years. On this basis, Marc Jacquemain puts forward the hypothesis – which would need to be furrowed – that Walloon identity is perhaps more expressed in political values than in a to a greater or lesser extent realistic or folkloric ‘historical’ vision. The ensemble of the surveys show that the majority of Walloons are attached to a socio-economic model which allies strong social protection with a strong dose of individual economic responsibilisation.

Thus, in the 2004 CLEO survey, close to 80% of the people questioned agreed with the idea that ‘it is up to the State to ensure a decent income for every citizen.’ But at the same time an even higher percentage felt that ‘people should take more responsibility to ensure their own livelihood.’