Greek Communities: Radio documentaries on Greek immigration in the last century
(Research-documentation-presentation: Thomas Sideris, journalist @ERT/Human Geography PhD)
The children of Greek immigrants attended Belgian schools and, at the same time, attended Greek lessons in their mother tongue classes created in the 1960s by the Greek state, which operated at all levels of education twice a week. A purely Greek primary school has been operating in Brussels since 1981, supplemented by a secondary school and a lyceum in the early 1990s, while the children of Greek officials of the European Union, who live in the city, have the opportunity to attend the Greek section of the European School.
Initially, Greek miners were welcomed by the powerful and massive Belgian trade unions in the 1950s and 1960s, which demanded equal treatment of immigrants in order not to be preferred by employers and sought their recruitment to maintain working-class unity.
Shortly after the mass arrival of Greek workers in the coal mines, a Greek section was organized in the Christian Trade Union of Belgium, which undertook to provide services for the solution of their pressing problems with wages, insurance, and benefits, to translate the necessary documents free of charge, to organize language and trade union courses and to publish a Greek-language newspaper. During the 1960s, a Greek section was organized in the socialist trade union of Belgium, which conducted similar activities.
The Greek sections of the Belgian trade unions have been agents of change and spaces of osmosis, acting as mediators between Belgian society and the immigrants, contributing drastically to their integration process, and providing them with a – albeit limited – space for social and political participation.
The Greek Community of Brussels, the most important of the 10 communities in Belgium (Liège, Charleroi, Antwerp, etc.), brought together wealthy merchants and freelancers until the 1960s, effectively under the tutelage of the embassy. In the early 1960s, however, the overwhelming numerical superiority of former miners newly arrived in Brussels, combined with the action of the Left, changed the situation: Through conflict, the Community passed into the hands of left-wing workers and from 1962 to 1967 developed intense social and cultural activity.