Refugees in Belgium
to offer an undergraduate course dedicated to multilingualism, back in the 1970s. “Right up until the late 1970s, even within the scientific community, bilingualism and multilingualism were perceived as something negative,” Housen explains. That notion was loosely based on the concept of the brain as a container with a finite capacity – that every time you learn something new, it’s at the expense of existing knowledge. “Now we see the pendulum swinging the other way,” he says; “now people think it’s some kind of miracle cure. It’s been shown in certain studies that people who are proficient in two or more languages score higher on IQ tests, for example, and that it can set back the advance of Alzheimer’s and other dementia-related illnesses.” Housen’s colleague, linguistics professor Esli Struys, did his PhD research on the cognitive development of bilingual children here in the city. “We’ve known for years that there are cognitive advantages related to bilingualism, to the fact that two language systems are present in the brain and that children have to switch between languages,” he says. “This leads to more flexible brains, and this flexibility isn’t restricted to language but transfers into general cognitive skills, which are better developed in bilinguals.” In an experiment with his colleague Wouter Duyck and his team at Ghent University, Struys followed the development of two groups of children in kindergarten in Wallonia. At the beginning, he says, they didn’t see any differences between them, but after two years, those children who were in an immersion programme had higher scores on intelligence tests than those in monolingual education. “They had actually become more intelligent,” he says. “It shows that language acquisition might literally make someone smarter.”
Changes in the brain During Struys’s PhD research he was also interested in the structure of the brain itself: the connectivity between linguistic centres, for example, or the grey matter in the linguistic centres themselves.
FACTS AND FIGURES
medical assistance, integration initiatives and community services. The Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons receives the asylum case and decides whether the applicant qualifies for refugee or subsidiary protection status. It can take several months to reach a decision.
In the first nine months of 2015, Belgium registered 22,266 refugees, compared to 17,213 in the whole of 2014. With a capacity to accommodate 25,513 refugees and in light of the unexpected influx, on 16 October the government decided to provide 1,600 additional places. Most refugees currently come from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Of those 22,266 refugees, 18,896 have applied for asylum and 3,370 subsidiary protection or regularisation. The process for asylum-seekers is as follows. The refugee applies for asylum with the Immigration Office, which registers the request. After registration, the applicant goes to the Federal Agency for the Reception of Asylum-Seekers (Fedasil) to be allocated shelter. Belgium has about 50 reception centres that offer the same services: shelter, social and legal guidance,
For 2015, to the end of September, 12,328 decisions had been taken, of which 6,772 (54.7%) were positive. Once refugee status has been granted, the refugee is entitled to the same rights and obligations as Belgian citizens and can apply for permanent citizenship after five years of permanent residence. In Flanders, refugees are required to follow a civic integration programme including individual counselling, a social orientation course, career orientation and basic Dutch lessons. So far this year, 9,400 people have participated in official language classes. This capacity will need to double in 2016, with at least 17,000 participants expected. www.cgrs.be/en Source: Asylum Statistics CGRS Care Statistics Fedasil
HENRI DECEMBER 2015
31