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Social Mix and Passive Revolution. A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of theSocial Mix Rhetoric in Flanders, BelgiumMaarten P. J. Loopmans a; Pascal de Decker b;Chris Kesteloot c

a Catholic University of Leuven, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Brussels, Belgium b UniversityCollege Ghent, Department of Industrial Sciences, Saint-Lucas School of Architecture, Ghent -Brussels, Belgium c Catholic University of Leuven, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Leuven,Belgium

Online publication date: 18 February 2010

To cite this Article Loopmans, Maarten P. J. , de Decker, Pascal andKesteloot, Chris(2010) 'Social Mix and PassiveRevolution. A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of the Social Mix Rhetoric in Flanders, Belgium', Housing Studies, 25: 2, 181 —200To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/02673030903561826URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02673030903561826

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Social Mix and Passive Revolution.A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of the SocialMix Rhetoric in Flanders, Belgium

MAARTEN P. J. LOOPMANS*, PASCAL DE DECKER** &CHRIS KESTELOOT†

*Catholic University of Leuven, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Leuven, Belgium; also, Erasmus University

College Brussels, STeR*-Urban Design and Spatial Planning, Brussels, B-1070 Belgium, **University College

Ghent, Department of Industrial Sciences, Saint-Lucas School of Architecture, Ghent - Brussels, Belgium,†Catholic University of Leuven, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Leuven, Belgium

(Received November 2008; revised August 2009)

ABSTRACT Belgium’s housing policy has always been instrumental in the pillarisation process. As aconsequence, two competing historical models have existed: first, a model promoted by the socialistpillar based on social rental housing in urban settings; second, the model put forward by thehegemonic Catholic party, emphasising the promotion of homeownership of single-family dwellings inrural settings. When this second, anti-urban model, became the main housing model for the masses inthe post-war period, its spatial layout was one of sprawl and disinvestment in urban neighbourhoods.However, from the 1970s onwards, various actors have contested this policy. In response, policymakers have turned to a discourse of inner-city social mix. However, this discourse was barelytranslated into practice and did not affect the hegemonic model. Following Gramsci, this paperanalyses how social mix has primarily served as an instrument for passive revolution, by deviating anddisempowering counter-hegemonic attacks on the leading model of suburban homeownership.

KEY WORDS: Housing policy, neighbourhoods, urban regeneration, Flanders, Gramsci, social mix

Introduction

Advocacy of ’social mix’ (also referred to as ’social diversity’ or ’social balance’) has a

long history, dating back to the mid-19th century (Arthurson, 2008; Sarkissian &

Warwick, 1978). Sarkissian (1976) demonstrated how the idea that, at a certain spatial

scale, the composition of the population should reflect the diversity of wider society was

an ideal in planning throughout the 20th century (see also Arthurson, 2008).

Recent renewed interest in ‘social mixing’ in Europe has re-invigorated scientific

debate on its effects (Galster, 2007; Kleinhans, 2004; Musterd & Andersson, 2005;

ISSN 0267-3037 Print/1466-1810 Online/10/020181–20 q 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/02673030903561826

Correspondence Address: Maarten P. J. Loopmans, Catholic University of Leuven, Earth and Environmental

Sciences, Celestijnenlaan 200E, Leuven B-3001 Belgium. Email: [email protected]

Housing Studies,Vol. 25, No. 2, 181–200, March 2010

Downloaded By: [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] At: 13:59 3 May 2010

Ostendorf et al., 2001; Ruming et al., 2004). In general, these studies echo earlier analyses

(e.g. Gans, 1961; Kuper, 1953; Orlans, 1952), being critical of social mixing policies.

Their sophisticated models show moderately positive results at best, raising the question of

whether such meagre results legitimise widespread policy attention.

This paper will avoid this classical social engineering point of view that permeates so

many social studies on the issue. The study will leave aside whether social mix can or

cannot be effectively or efficiently deployed to achieve certain policy goals.

Instead, the paper focuses on the historical political rationalities which lie behind the

social mix rhetoric and tries to answer why social mix is used as a policy instrument.

In doing so, it ties in with an emerging field of research on the governance dimension

of social mix (Cole & Goodchild, 2001; Flint, 2006; Haworth & Manzi, 1999;

Uitermark, 2003; Uitermark et al., 2007). Much of the existing literature in this field is

inspired by Foucault’s (2004) conceptualisation of governmentality. The governmentality

concept has been developed further by, among others, by Rose (1996), Dean (1999) and

Cruikshank (1999), who propose that welfare policies are increasingly instrumental for

governing ‘at a distance’ the moral behaviour of individual subjects. In housing studies,

the focus is on how housing policy in general and social mix in particular is instrumental in

‘governing the everyday life’ of individuals (Dufty, 2007; Flint, 2002, 2004; McDermont,

2004; Uitermark, 2003; Uitermark et al. 2007). Flint (2002, 2004), for example, has

examined how tenant behavioural control has become a central occupation of UK social

housing agencies; Uitermark et al., (2007) demonstrate how in the Netherlands

‘social mix’ has been used strategically to install dispersed forms of governmental control

in ‘problematic’ neighbourhoods.

The perspective of this paper distinguishes itself from the governmentality approach in

that it does not aim to deconstruct the way social mix is deployed for governing people’s

everyday behaviour and conduct; rather, the focus is on the way a social mix rhetoric

is instrumental for forging political support and is put to use in political power struggles.

The study built upon Gramsci’s theorising of hegemony and passive revolution to

understand why the social mix rhetoric has become so pervasive in urban and housing

policy discourses in Flanders. Gramsci (2001) is an interesting source of inspiration for

this question as he combines institutional and economic analysis with less tangible

questions of ideology and discourse (Loopmans, 2008). The analysis begins with the

finding that social mix in Flanders, while being on the agenda since the 1970s, has

maintained a marginal position in policy making.

This paper will explore why that has been the case; the argument is that the social mix

rhetoric has been deployed to establish what Gramsci called ‘passive revolution’ in

relation to urban development. Belgian (or Flemish, for that matter) urbanisation policies

have always been characterised by deeply entrenched anti-urbanism, prioritising

peripheral, low-density developments as opposed to central dense neighbourhoods.

Since the 1960s this chosen path has been challenged from a number of perspectives.

Social mix then was an instrumental means to pacify and co-opt those challengers so that

the essence of the anti-urban policy was maintained.

The following section elaborates upon Gramscian theory on the political role of

discourse and introduces the concepts of hegemony and passive revolution. These

concepts are deployed in the sections thereafter to understand how social mix was

instrumental in deflecting challenges to the hegemonic anti-urban model. The final section

182 M. P. J. Loopmans et al.


analyses how social mix affects the power of the traditional counter-hegemonic model of

social rental housing in urban settings.

Gramsci, Hegemony and Discourse

One of the most influential ideas in Gramsci’s political theory is ‘hegemony’. Gramsci

introduced the concept to capture the ‘ideological predominance of bourgeois values and

norms over the subordinate classes’ (Carnoy, 1984, p. 66). Hegemony allows the state to

rule by consent rather than coercion, and connects to Gramsci’s understanding of the state

as deeply intertwined with civil society (the integral state). In a diverse society with a

variety of different and opposing interests, hegemony is always potentially unstable. There

is always the risk that counter-hegemonic discourses are produced by social groups whose

interests are not furthered by the operation of the state.

These discourses threaten to undermine widespread popular consent. To sustain

hegemony, the state engages in a hegemonic project, a permanent ‘consciously planned

struggle for hegemony’ (Gill, 2003, p. 58; Jessop, 1997, p. 62) involving the active search

for compromises, shared interests, common goals, institutional links with various social

forces in civil society and the development of a common, congruent discourse to win the

public’s hearts and minds. Ives (2004) explains how the transformation, reinterpretation

and reordering of words and concepts are important political activities.

The goal is to achieve a common language, not a singular dominant interpretation of

everything that happens in the world and all human activity. Various and opposing

perspectives can be expressed in such a language. (Ives, 2004, p. 114)

Using military terminology, Gramsci (2001) describes such an active and conscious

development of alliances around a common worldview as a ‘war of position’ and

emphasises how it is more important than and must precede a ‘war of manoeuvre’ to take

over state power. As in actual warfare, the trench war ultimately determines the success or

failure of the war of manoeuvre.

Gramsci introduces the concept of ‘passive revolution’ to refer to the situation where

such a war of position results in ‘a revolution without revolution’:

Changes occur and often they are reactions to problems and tensions of previous

political and economic arrangements, but they rarely resolve such problems and are

not really democratic in the true sense of the term—they do not come from

the people. Rather, leaders propose policies that the people do not reject. (Ives, 2004,

p. 104)

Passive revolution is realised by creatively re-shaping state discourses to incorporate the

claims of adversaries without changing the core of the hegemonic project. Early 20th

century fascism was such a passive revolution vis-a-vis the labour movement, in that

it socialised economic production, without, however, socialising profits (Gramsci, 2001,

p. 1227–1229). Hence, the potential development of counter-hegemonic discourses is

curbed, although the hegemonic project receives no ‘active’ support of civil society.

In Gramsci’s writings, passive revolution appears to entail various strategies. It can

include (1) the incorporation, in the hegemonic state structure, of the counter-hegemonic

Social Mix and Passive Revolution 183


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forces’ leaders and movements (Gramsci, 2001, pp. 962–963); (2) the development

of policy practices that incorporate some claims of the counter-hegemonic project

while ignoring others, in a way that the counter-hegemonic project loses its coherence

and importance for parts of the movement (Gramsci, 2001, pp. 1227–1229); and

(3) the (discursive) concealment of some of the various counter-hegemonic claims

(Gramsci, 2001, p. 1325). The following sections will first analyse the hegemonic project

of urbanisation as it developed in the early post-war period. Next, in different stages, there

will be an attempt to understand how counter-hegemonic forces challenged this project,

and how the state and its organisations reacted with what can be considered to be passive

revolution (see Table 1 for an overview). Particular attention will be given to the various

strategies by which social mix has been deployed as an instrument to establish passive

revolution. The analysis will focus at the regional level, where, since 1973, the main

competences in the field of urbanisation reside. However, for a full understanding of

regional urbanisation politics, it will be necessary to also provide a picture of the practices

of the largest Flemish cities Antwerp and Ghent. Indeed, political as well as institutional

links between those two cities and the regional government have created a situation where

social and political developments in these cities have had a serious impact upon policy

formulation at the regional level (see Loopmans et al., 2002).

Institutionalised Anti-urbanism as the Background of the Social Mix Debate

This section describes the development of the hegemonic post-war project of urbanisation

in Flanders. It examines the social and political forces behind it, describes its core concepts

and explains the relative powerlessness of the main historical counter-hegemonic model.

Flemish urbanisation is characterised by sprawl. The origins of this can be traced back

to the geography of the 19th century Belgian Industrial Revolution and its political

consequences (Kesteloot & De Maesschalck, 2001; Saey et al., 1998). The Industrial

Revolution gave rise to a Walloon industrial axis where the concentration of workers in

cities incited secularisation and socialism, threatening Catholic cultural and political

domination.

Apart from Ghent, industrialisation and urbanisation arrived much later in Flanders.

This allowed time for the Catholic Church to reorganise (Gerard, 1998; Joyce & Lewin,

1967) and defend its dominance in industrialising Flanders. From the late 19th century

onwards, the Catholic ‘pillar’ resisted the concentration of workers in large cities and

actively promoted family values and community cohesion by stimulating commuting and

homeownership in detached houses in peripheral rural areas. Conversely, its main

alternative, the socialist movement intended to stimulate class cohesion. Hence, socialists

promoted the concentration of workers in (urban) working-class neighbourhoods,

preferably in mass public housing to prevent workers getting a taste of capitalist

property-ownership.

Whereas socialists were numerous in the Walloon industrial axis, Catholic hegemony

retained its strongholds in more populous Flanders and Wallonia’s rural south. As a result,

the Catholic pillar remained hegemonic in unitary Belgium and was able to successfully

implement its containment strategy vis-a-vis the socialist movement through housing and

planning policies (Marissal et al., 2007; Mort Subite, 1990; Mougenot, 1988). In 1948, the

Catholic law ‘De Taeye’—widely considered to be the apex of approximately a century of

Catholic housing and planning policies (Theunis, 2006)—installed a premium for the



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construction of ‘moderate’ houses by private owners. State support for homeownership

was underpinned by a massive Catholic ideological campaign to install a ‘rural Flemish

housing culture’ around the rural single-family house ideal (Flore, 2006). Making

peripheral individual detached housing into the prime model for post-war mass housing,

the policy enjoyed widespread public support (Loopmans, 2008). Twenty years later, more

than 400 000 De Taeye premiums had been conceded, mostly to Flemish builders. More

than one-third of all Belgian post-war new housing construction was co-financed this way

(Theunis, 2006). Furthermore, Belgian town planning legislation was purposively

generous in designating land for housing to guarantee housing affordability while post-war

Keynesian infrastructure provision supported the development of remote areas. Together,

planning legislation, Keynesian development and De Taeye resulted in unprecedented

sprawl. Meanwhile, urban mass social housing remained the main ideological alternative,

but it never achieved cultural hegemony in Belgium or Flanders and could not compete

with private homeownership in terms of housing production. As a result, social rental

housing today accounts for less than 6 per cent of the housing stock in Flanders, ranging

from approximately 10 per cent in a small number of cities to 0 per cent in many suburban

and rural municipalities. The stock caters for only half of the families entitled to social

housing under current legislation, resulting in long waiting lists and waiting times

(Heylen et al., 2007).

With limited access to social housing and no means to become homeowners,

lower-income groups are predominantly dependent upon a largely unregulated private

rental market which comprises nearly 20 per cent of the housing market (De Decker et al.,

2009a) and is concentrated in a limited number of (mainly 19th-century) urban

neighbourhoods (Vanderstraeten et al., 2008).

Inner City Social Mix as an Answer to Urban Mobilisation

While strongly supported by the general public, the hegemonic project of Belgian

suburbanisation soon revealed its negative side effects to the critical observer.

Increasingly, (green) open space was consumed for housing, while inner-city office and

traffic infrastructure construction demolished the traditional urban tissue. A poor minority

remained ‘unserved’ in the housing market and finally, inner cities experienced serious

disinvestment, resulting in fiscal problems for the local state.

From the 1960s onwards, these problems became more apparent and contestation

increased. This section (see Table 1) analyses the claims made through counter-hegemonic

mobilisations. In addition, it describes how the state engaged in passive revolution in order

to restabilise the hegemonic urbanisation project of suburban sprawl. More specifically,

social mix became a crucial element of this passive revolution and contributed to the three

strategies identified by Gramsci: (1) incorporation of (parts of) the contending movement;

(2) partially addressing the claims of the movement; and (3) discursively concealing

claims of the movement.

During the late 1960s, urban social movements started campaigning against the

combination of sprawl and demolition of urban heritage sites and residential

neighbourhoods (Buyck, 1988; De Smit, 2003; Verschueren, 2003, p. 165). They joined

forces with environmentalists, criticising urban sprawl for the loss of open space and the

stimulation of car traffic and found support among young urban planners (e.g. Anselin,

1967; Vanhavre; 1967). These groups formulated their criticisms about suburbanisation



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and its effects on the urban region in research notes and reports (Schelde-Dijle vzw, 1971).

However, urban planners were relatively powerless and were only gradually granted

access to state organisations. It was only after contestation grew stronger that urban

planners were incorporated into the state structure, first at the local level (in new and

relatively marginal planning departments, for example, see Loopmans, 2008 on Antwerp),

and later at the regional level.

When groups contesting mass suburbanisation and related inner-city problems were

incorporated in municipal and regional planning circles, the tone of the debate altered.

At this stage the concept of social mix entered the debate, concealing parts of the claims

made by contesting actors. It was first mentioned in three policy notes written by the first

Flemish Secretary of State for Spatial Planning (1973–1977), the Christian democrat

Luc Dhoore. In a critical review, Knops (1979), an early urban activist, described how

Dhoore reduced the original concerns over suburbanisation and urban decay to a problem

of physical deterioration of the built environment coinciding with a marginalising inner-

city population. Social mix was introduced as a solution: the call to renew the built

environment was translated to a need to renew the population. To improve inner urban

social mix, Dhoore suggested attracting higher-income groups (van den Broeck &

Baelus, 1992).

Dhoore’s notes were important as they were among the first reactions by the regional

state to the challenge posed by the anti-suburbanisation movements. They immediately

revealed a crucial strategy in establishing passive revolution: by reducing the regional

question of suburbanisation to an inner-city problem, the notes discursively concealed an

important part of the counter-movements’ claims and separated inner-city urban

movements from peripheral environmentalists. In this way they undermined the fragile

unity among the various protesting fractions. Moreover they limited the debate to a matter

of physical deterioration of the built environment, ignoring the mobility issue, the problem

of functional mix and the neglect of poor residents’ housing needs. At the same time, the

notes selected a particular part of the population (the inner-city poor) to be held responsible

for the deterioration of the built environment, driving a wedge between those arguing for a

more just housing policy and those striving for the improvement of the built environment.

In 1980, a campaign for social urban renewal was initiated by the European Council to

stimulate awareness of inner-city problems. A small ‘steering group’ of engaged

academics and bureaucrats (headed by Knops) were appointed to develop the social

renewal campaign in Flanders and subsequently delivered the first detailed working papers

on the future of Flemish cities. These working papers are interesting as they reveal the

difficulties faced by the counter-hegemonic movement to maintain a degree of unity

vis-a-vis the diversity of claims and concerns, once parts of the movement became

incorporated in official policy circles.

Embracing the policy focus on the inner city introduced by Dhoore, the working papers

depicted urban residents as the prime victims of suburbanisation and their interests as their

prime concern:

the population and the policy makers have to be convinced, first, that it is necessary

to stop suburbanisation and to give priority to the liveability of existing cores, and

second, that it is necessary to put the problems and interests of the residents first.

(van den Broeck & Baelus, 1992, p. 55)



Echoing Dhoore, the steering group’s reports regarded neighbourhood segregation as a

major problem. However, the working papers continued to emphasise the relation between

segregation, decay, real-estate investment cycles and socio-cultural tendencies, reinforced

by politics:

In looking back at the urbanisation process, one can see that those that could afford

it, moved to the fringes of the city. . . . Government, planners, developers followed

this development and reinforced it through policies. We built and planned urban

decay. (Secretariaat Stadsvernieuwingscampagne, 1982, p. 7)

However, in its policy suggestions the steering group concentrated on segregation and

social mix and revealed a similar reductionist reasoning as Dhoore’s. First, the scale of the

problem was reduced: instead of tackling the ‘regional’ problem of suburbanisation

head-on, the policy scaled down the problem to one of deficient ‘local’ ‘inner-city

communities’. The steering group emphasised the need for ‘the creation of balanced

communities, based on social justice’ (Secretariaat Stadsvernieuwingscampagne, 1981,

pp. 9–10).

Balanced communities are not only a model for societal solidarity: the aim is first, as

with Dhoore, to counter inner-city decay. Hence the discourse again transformed the

problem. Instead of blaming suburbanisation, the remaining inner-city population was

related to urban decay:

The financially well off can afford a villa. Workers and middle classes go to social

housing located at the city fringes. The remaining urban population consist,

consequently, of marginal and poor people: elderly, singles, young families with

small children and particularly migrants. . . . With limited finances and, for some, no

intention to stay in the city, these groups don’t renovate their dwellings.

Deterioration of the dwelling and the surroundings follow. Leading, finally, to the

decay of the city (Secretariaat Stadsvernieuwingscampagne, 1981, p. 19).

The steering group linked urban liveability with population diversity and hence social mix

became a prime goal of the social renewal campaign. ‘If the balance cannot be restored,

this can be fatal for the survival of the city’ (Secretariaat Stadsvernieuwingscampagne,

1981, p. 19).

The campaign awakened government interest in urban renewal and in 1982, the new

Christian Democrat Minister, Paul Akkermans, installed a regional urban renewal policy.

Akkermans strengthened the legitimation of the governmental focus on inner-city renewal

by discursively linking the interests of marginal inner-city populations (who had been

transformed into the problems of urban decay in earlier documents) with the goal of

attracting better-off residents. For Akkermans, the housing circumstances and

participation of the most vulnerable groups in the city were key concerns and social

mixing was one of the instruments used to achieve better living conditions. The ‘attraction

of newcomers must focus on a demographic rejuvenation and revival of neighbourhoods,

for the benefit of those who already live in the neighbourhood’ (Akkermans, 1983, p. 57).



The renewal process must result in: better dwellings, more pleasant surroundings,

and . . . a socially mixed population. A mix of diverse social classes is favourable

above homogeneous populations. (Akkermans, 1983, p 75)

As social mix had to be achieved for the good of the resident population, displacement was

to be avoided.

We need to attract new inhabitants to poor neighbourhoods . . . . Newcomers can lead

to a more diverse population, which will contribute to better and more diverse

services in the neighbourhood. One thing should be prevented: that newcomers

displace the present tenants. (Akkermans, 1983, pp. 74–75

To prevent displacement social housing had to be provided for those who could not afford

to buy their own residence.

Akkermans’ social renewal policy was powerful in curbing counter-hegemonic

contention because it channelled the energy of both elites and rank-and-file parts of the

movement towards collaboration with the regional and local state. The development of

policies provided answers to some of the movements’ claims while discursively

concealing others. Deploying the concept of social mix, the discourse the urban question

was changed considerably in the course of policy development. The issue was scaled down

(from a regional problem to a local or neighbourhood problem) and reduced in content

(largely limited to an issue of physical decay of the built environment), while the problem

was also changed: by emphasising the need of a social mix, the problem was no longer

middle-class suburbanisation, but the concentration of elderly and low-income groups

(and in some cases, also ethnic minorities) incapable of investing in the amelioration of

their living conditions.

However, the social urban renewal policy did little to alter the core of Flemish

anti-urbanism. Compared to the ongoing De Taeye-subsidies, the social renewal campaign

struggled with tight budgets. Consequently, the objective of improving the urban living

environment and social mix was barely met. Rather, on the contrary, the policy further

stimulated planning blight by quickly designating areas for redevelopment while turning to

action belatedly with limited budgets (De Decker, 1987). When housing was finally

constructed, social mix was not even achieved; in the context of continued suburbanisation,

the renewal campaign did not succeed in stimulating homeowners to renovate and nearly

all renovation was done by social housing companies for lower-income residents.

Addressing the Immigrant Question through Neighbourhood Ethnic Mix

Compared to the early industrialised Wallonia, Flanders was rather late in experiencing

mass immigration. With the exception of the mining basin in Central Limburg, immigrants

arrived in Flemish cities only in the second half of the 1960s, filling in the gaps in the

urban labour and housing markets left by Fordist economic growth and suburbanisation

(Kesteloot, 2006). The number of immigrants remained insignificant until the crisis years

of the 1970s and 1980s when mass lay-offs in the Limburg and Walloon mining area

shifted the focus of migration to Flemish cities. Immigrants, mainly of Moroccan and

Turkish descent, concentrated in the 19th century inner-city districts dominated by private

rental housing. From the 1990s onwards, while immigration from Turkey and Morocco



remained important, an influx from Eastern European, Sub-Saharan African and Asian

countries added to the ethnic diversity in these areas.

The issue of ethnic mix was only rarely mentioned in the 1970s and early 1980s, but this

was to change dramatically after that time. By the late 1980s, the extreme right party

Vlaams Blok introduced a virulent anti-immigrant discourse to electoral campaigns.

While the Vlaams Blok’s anti-immigrant mobilisation did not react against the hegemonic

urbanisation model as such, it did connect its anti-immigrant stance to wider discontent

about everyday life in derelict inner-city neighbourhoods where immigrants tended to

concentrate. From 1987 onwards, the Vlaams Blok made a combination of immigrants,

crime and inner-city degeneration its prime campaigning theme (De Maesschalck &

Loopmans, 2003). Gaining strength with each election, the Vlaams Blok turned the

‘immigrant question’ into a major urban problem, thereby indirectly challenging the

dominant mode of urban development that had resulted in inner-city immigrant

concentration. Faced with such a potentially disruptive mobilisation and electoral threat,

government parties felt forced to react (Loopmans et al., 2002; De Decker et al., 2005).

First, the federal government installed a Royal Commissioner to investigate the immigrant

question. The Commissioner reinforced the discursive link between social mix, urban

development and the immigrant question, thereby concealing parts of the claims made by

Vlaams Blok. Flemish political reports further twisted the Vlaams Blok discourse into a

matter of concentrated urban poverty. Subsequently, the Flemish Government initiated a

number of policies that tried to improve the lives of the urban poor (native or immigrant)

while also decreasing immigrant concentration. Flemish policy discourse and practice

introduced social mix as a way to partly address the concerns of Vlaams Blok voters.

Meanwhile, discontent over cultural disintegration was ignored and the economic

emancipation of immigrants was stimulated.

The first time the Vlaams Blok made substantial gains in (local) elections was 9 October

1988. In Antwerp the party gained 17 per cent of the votes and 5 per cent in Ghent. In its

campaign, the party emphasised an anti-immigrant stance linking minorities with crime

and urban decay. It explained the ‘immigrant problem’ as ‘uprootedness’ and redundancy;

there was no work for them anymore. Vlaams Blok called for closed borders and the

deportation of non-nationals from Belgian territory. The Federal Government appointed

former Christian Democrat Minister Paula D’Hondt as Royal Commissioner on Migration

(hereafter RCM) with the task of analysing causes and proposing measures to deal with the

problems of migration. In her report, she concealed parts of the Vlaams Blok claims by

downscaling and transforming the ‘immigrant question’ from what Vlaams Blok had

called ‘failed assimilation into national culture’ to a problem of deprivation in particular

urban neighbourhoods. She emphasised the lack of opportunities for young urbanites of

immigrant descent: ‘The problems of social cohesion are caused by social exclusion, in

particular of youngsters, in urban contexts’ (RCM, 1993, pp. 11–12).

Focusing on the issue of young people in deprived neighbourhoods, RCM formulated

proposals to stimulate coexistence of natives and aliens, focusing on education, work and

housing. RCM criticised the unfairness of housing policies for the middle classes which

forced immigrant households into low quality housing concentrated in rundown

neighbourhoods. She claimed that the concentration of immigrants harmed their

integration into mainstream society. She emphasised how their concentration resulted

from housing market forces and racial discrimination. Hence, social housing was

presented as a strategic but underused instrument to achieve social mix. RCM described



how immigrants’ inability to enter social housing reinforced concentration in areas

dominated by a residual private rental market. She criticised housing companies for

purposively deploying subtle exclusion mechanisms to keep out immigrant families, even

though since 1973 nationality no longer figured among the legally defined eligibility

criteria; she pleaded for stricter controls on allocation procedures and argued that the

proportion of immigrant households in social housing estates should be comparable to the

city average (D’Hondt, 1989, p. 25). At the Flemish level, the Vlaams Blok claims were

further distorted. Analysts of the Flemish Socialist Party depicted the Vlaams Blok success

as the revenge of the urban poor in particular (Huyse, 1992). Vlaams Blok was popular, not

because it denounced immigrants’ lagging cultural integration, but because of urban

decay, social deprivation and lack of adequate housing for the urban poor in general; the

urban poor (native and immigrant) had been neglected for too long, and they took revenge

by supporting an ‘anti-establishment party’.

Inspired by both analyses, a number of hasty policy measures intended to soothe the

rediscovered ‘urban poor’ were installed at the Flemish level (Loopmans et al., 2002).

First, in 1990, Flemish Government started a fund for ‘the integration of the under-

privileged’ (Vlaams Fonds voor de Integratie van Kansarmen or VFIK), which channelled

extra means for social measures to cities with a concentration of deprived and immigrant

households.

Second, after a long period of neglect, the Flemish Government re-engaged with social

housing to ‘improve inner city social mix’ in the way it was envisaged by the RCM.

Immigrant access to social housing was improved as eligibility criteria and allocation

procedures were clarified and more strictly enforced. Low-income households were given

priority, irrespective of nationality or descent. An emergency programme of social

housing construction (Domus Flandria) was developed to catch up with demand after a

decade of near zero production and reduce immigrant concentrations in neighbourhoods

with a large private rental stock.

The social housing measures attempted to undermine the mobilisation potential of the

Vlaams Blok challenger by partially addressing the claims of its electorate. First,

immigrants were allowed improved access to the social housing stock, which it was

expected would dilute existing concentrations and make the presence of ethnic minorities

less visible. Second, by re-engaging with social housing production, the government

hoped to regain legitimacy with the urban poor in a somewhat clientelistic manner.

However, the more general issue of cultural integration, as raised by the Vlaams Blok, was

left unanswered.

Income Mix and the Local Tax Problem

A third source of discontent with the hegemonic mode of urban development appeared

somewhat unexpectedly from within the state itself: central city governments. In the wake

of the social renewal policy, the city of Antwerp commissioned a study on the fiscal

consequences of suburbanisation (De Brabander et al., 1992), which would become

influential in the 1990s. This study revealed how, in Antwerp, selective suburbanisation of

better off residents undermined the inner-city’s tax base (48 per cent of municipal revenue

in Flanders is derived from local taxes, Loopmans et al., 2007) and added a new, powerful

contestant of the hegemonic model in addition to the previous two. The study concluded

with a series of demands from the city government: selective suburbanisation should



https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226548517_From_SIF_to_City_Fund_a_new_direction_for_urban_policy_in_Flanders_Belgium?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-2613c074-7e83-49f1-bd83-c27849243da3&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0ODk2MDcwNTtBUzoxNDQ5MDEzNzEwNzY2MDhAMTQxMTU1ODU4Nzk0MA==

be stemmed; a coherent development policy should be elaborated for the whole urban

region, and fiscal solidarity between the various municipalities of the urban region should

be improved (De Brabander et al., 1992, pp. 179–187). The Antwerp study was supported

by other Flemish cities like Ghent, and also by Brussels, and provoked some controversy

as its conclusions threatened the political status quo at the regional level. Moreover, it

posed an important challenge to the regional government, who had just shifted focus to the

urban poor. Instead of the urban poor, city governments positioned themselves as prime

victims of the hegemonic urbanisation approach in Flanders and called for attention at the

Flemish level.

In an attempt to reconcile the older discourses on inner-city decline and the immigrant

issue with the new fiscal question, a new approach to cities and urban policy emerged at

the regional level in 1995, with the advent of a new Flemish government. The aspiration

was that:

our cities must again be good and safe to live in. We need an integrated approach,

fitting smaller projects and actions in a coherent and global vision. The communities

themselves are best positioned to indicate where to take which measures, giving due

consideration to the needs of the very poor. (van den Brande et al., 1993, p. 4)

A Minister for Urban Policy (socialist Leo Peeters) was appointed. Peeters wrote an

elaborate policy note introducing two innovations to official discourse. First, Peeters

integrated the concerns of urban municipalities about their declining tax base into a

discourse on urban regeneration. The minister warned against socially selective

suburbanisation. This undermined the city’s tax base and contains the danger of social

closure:

the danger exists that suburban municipalities create their own safe havens of

affluence . . . . There are plenty of foreign examples of affluent neighbourhoods

protecting themselves with CCTV and private security. (p. 64)

He acknowledged the findings of the study by De Brabandere et al. (1992), but was rather

selective in adopting the solutions proposed. To turn the tide, the minister first saw

opportunities to exploit the attractions of urban life for the new class of young urban

professionals, thereby concealing some of the more radical demands for a city-region wide

government or improved fiscal solidarity:

For the [new] household types, highly educated and well earning, the [inner] city

provides better opportunities. Double income households have limited time budgets

and benefit from the proximity of facilities (shops, schools, work, culture).

The challenge is to create neighbourhoods that keep these people in the city in such

a way that also the poor and vulnerable people take advantage of it. (Peeters, 1995,

p. 64)

In linking the attraction of higher-income groups to the stimulation of social mix, this

reconciled the cities’ demands with the discontent of the urban population, in particular

those residents potentially voting for the Vlaams Blok. Indeed, social mix through the



attraction of higher-income groups was also proposed as a solution for concentrated

deprivation. For Peeters, concentration exacerbated social deprivation:

The chance to become poor is higher if a child grows up in a deprived

neighbourhood. There is a poverty spiral: a limited interest for education and inferior

schools result in low educational outcomes. The final consequences are: irregular or

badly paid work, a low income and a rental house in a poor neighbourhood.

(Vandenberghe et al., 1997, p. 12)

The conclusion was that, because poverty and ethnic minority concentrations were bad for

lower-income residents, and because the attraction of higher-income groups might

improve ethnic and social mix in deprived neighbourhoods, such a policy was also good

for poor and immigrant inner-city households. Peeters transformed the VFIK into the

‘Social Impulse Fund’ (SIF). The SIF subsidised ‘specific actions of urban regeneration

and the improvement of the quality of life in deprived neighbourhoods’ (van den Brande

et al., 1993, p. 5).

‘Deprived neighbourhoods’ appeared as a pivotal concept. Such poverty concentrations

were to be combated by attracting better-off residents, thus improving the housing stock

and the living environment and welfare and employment measures simultaneously.

The SIF spoke a lot about attracting higher-income groups while improving the lives

of the urban poor. In practice, however, the SIF focused on improving the living conditions

of the urban poor. Much to the disapproval of central government, attracting middle classes

to the city remained a secondary preoccupation. This changed when a new (liberal-

dominated) government came to power in 1999. Sensitive to increased central city

pressure, the new policy declaration stated:

Such a policy should halt suburbanization in the first place. In the past decades, this

flight to the suburbs has resulted in middle and upper class families changing their

inner city residence for a house in the leafy fringe. This has resulted in smaller

families and more in general to the impoverishment of the city. Hence the fiscal

basis of the city, but also the social tissue and community life are weakened.

Simultaneously increased auto mobility undermines the ecological basis. Therefore,

cities need to be turned into attractive living environments for families again.

(Dewael et al., 1999, p. 91)

The new policy discourse turned the city itself into the prime victim of suburbanisation;

the concept of social mix, now deployed at the city instead of the neighbourhood level,

was used to conceal the interests of the urban population, and the urban poor in particular:

they were being subsumed under the ‘more general interest’ of the city itself. The city was

to be saved by improving the social mix through the attraction of the ‘more vital

population’ (Anciaux, 2000, p. 10).

The City Fund, the follow-up of the SIF since 2003 (Loopmans, 2007), was destined to

support city governments in the competition for middle-class residents with suburban

municipalities. Supporting measures to improve fiscal solidarity or a city-region wide

governance structure remained taboo. Facts on internal migration revealed how the

stimulation of gentrification remained futile in respect of continued selectivity

of suburbanisation. After a short period of slow-down in the 1990s, suburbanisation



reinvigorated after 2000, stimulated by the continued practices of generous residential

zoning and subsidies and fiscal stimulation for homeownership (De Decker et al., 2009b;

Moortgat & Vandekerckhove, 2007).

Preaching the Passive Revolution through Social Mix: Consequences for the Social

Rental Housing Model

We have described above how the main historical ideological alternative to

suburbanisation, the socialist-supported idea of inner-city social rental housing, remained

underdeveloped in Flanders. With the arrival of relatively powerful counter-hegemonic

mobilisations against the suburbanisation model of urban development, it seemed to

regain momentum. In a reaction to these mobilisations, social mix was deployed in an

attempt to establish passive revolution, but equally paved the way for social rental housing

as a problem-solver. Social renewal policy needed social housing to prevent displacement

and realise social mix in a largely private housing market.

When the Vlaams Blok reduced the urban question to an immigrant question, once

again social housing was proposed as part of the strategy for passive revolution. Reducing

the Vlaams Blok discourse to an issue of ethnic (over)concentrations in 19th-century

private rental neighbourhoods, the RCM considered access to social housing for

immigrant groups (as an alternative for the private rental sector) as a prerequisite for

improving the ethnic mix in the city. Simultaneously, the Vlaams Blok mobilisation was

discursively transformed by Flemish state actors into a revenge of the urban poor. Again,

more social housing was supposed to respond partly to their claims and it was hoped it

would placate at least those who primarily complained about their own living conditions in

deprived urban neighbourhoods. Social housing seemed to have been acknowledged as a

necessary ingredient of passive revolution to save the hegemonic model of urbanisation in

Flanders from a frontal attack by a wide range of civil society movements.

However, in the course of the 1990s, the same social mix concept turned against social

housing. Stricter enforcement of eligibility rules allowed poor immigrant families access

to social rental housing and higher-income groups increasingly aspired to homeownership.

The average income in social housing declined sharply, bringing financial problems to

social housing companies. By the second half of the 1990s, they echoed the discourse

urban governments had initiated: they needed a better social mix to increase rental income;

social mix would save the companies. Their claims were echoed by the white-dominated

tenant organisations. Relating the rapid influx of poor and immigrant residents to livability

problems, they mobilised side-by-side with social housing companies to restrict access for

immigrants and poor people. The influx of those groups was now related to a loss of social

mix within the social housing estate. Geerts, Secretary of a syndicate of social housing

companies, explained that:

Antwerp social housing tenants are fed up with the poor, mostly foreign risk groups

who threaten the liveability of their dwellings. . . . Poor people have another culture,

which is hard for original inhabitants of social housing to live with. These

neighbourhoods no longer reflect the previous social mix of before. Income

eligibility rules have decreased, changing the social composition of estates.

(Geerts, 2001)



Pressured by the electorate, local politicians joined the debate. In the build up to the 1998

local elections, Antwerp Christian Democrat Marc van Peel discussed social mix in social

housing estates under the heading ‘security, tolerance and justice’:

The presence of ethnic minorities is a richness, not a threat. Nevertheless we should,

by 2002, realise a ‘social mix’ in urban areas. The share of vulnerable people,

migrants and other socially weaker groups should not be higher than 20%. A higher

concentration of migrants and other vulnerable people can be a major source of

intolerance. We need a policy of dispersal and mix. (van Peel, 26 March 1998)

In response, Flemish social housing legislation underwent considerable change. First,

eligibility income levels rose with the hope that more prosperous households could be

attracted. Furthermore, access at the bottom was increasingly restricted. Asylum seekers

and undocumented migrants faced restrictions, while in 2005 attempts were made to make

access legally dependent upon following a Dutch language course.

Finally, the negative discourse on social mix in social housing estates puts the very

concept of social housing under strain. Large estates are increasingly considered a threat to

‘social mix’ in cities. Social housing is regarded as housing almost exclusively for poor

and minority residents. In the wider discourse on urbanisation, these groups are

increasingly considered a threat: they need to be dispersed or replaced by ‘more vital

groups’.

After Domus Flandria, the Flemish Government stopped the construction of large

estates. Instead, social housing was to become ‘invisible’: Minister Peeters presented

small-scale, mixed tenure estates as the future social housing model (see Peeters &

De Decker, 1997; Vervloesem et al., 2008). Later, Minister Anciaux repeated:

Previously too many large scale, unattractive social housing estates have been

developed without much consideration. We produced neighbourhoods, in particular

in cities, that were too one-dimensional, holding a population of largely vulnerable

residents. . . . This resulted in various problems of liveability (insecurity, vandalism,

social isolation etc.) and stigmatised the residents. The earlier policy change will be

continued and reinforced. (Anciaux, 2000, p. 3)

His successor Gabriels put it more bluntly:

In some dwellings, I wouldn’t even house my rabbits’ . . . I don’t want to renovate

these high-rises, because then I would preserve them, but they are a regular eyesore.

(Minister Gabriels in Dag Allemaal, 26 January 2002)

Conclusion

Gramscian theory offers a framework to understand the importance of policy discourse

and practices as a reaction to contentious movements and mobilisations. Gramsci

teaches us to understand such mobilisations as challenges to hegemony, threatening to

disrupt the coherence of a hegemonic world-view. Passive revolution can be understood

as an attempt to re-establish the coherence of the hegemonic project without radical

alteration. Policy discourses and practices are reformulated and changed, with three



important effects: the incorporation of counter-hegemonic forces’ leaders and

movements; partial responses to counter-hegemonic claims; and finally, the partial

discursive concealment of movements’ claims. All three effects globally result in

the undermining of the constantly fragile unity of counter-hegemonic forces while

re-enforcing hegemonic coherence.

The analysis presented here clarifies how certain concepts or ideas can be particularly

instrumental for such an endeavour. Describing the history of the hegemonic project on

urban development and housing in Flanders (which focused on support for homeowners of

detached single-family houses in rural settings), this study reveals how social mix is a

crucial concept that is repeatedly used for a passive revolution.

Its inherent conceptual openness and flexibility are essential to understand its success.

Social mix can relate to various spatial scales (neighbourhood mix, city-scale mix etc.) and

various social groups (income mix, ethnic mix, class mix); it is rarely pinned down to one

concrete definition. This allows political elites to deploy various strategies of passive

revolution. ‘Movement claims’ are re-interpreted in such a way so that they no longer

threaten the hegemonic status quo by changing the cause, victim or the scale of the

problem. For example, during the 1990s when central city governments re-opened

the debate about selective suburbanisation at the level of the metropolitan area through the

argument of the local tax base, the City Fund redefined the problem as a matter of

unattractive inner-city neighbourhoods with a predominantly poor and immigrant

population. Therefore, central cities were stimulated to engage in a competitive struggle

for higher-income residents with suburban municipalities, instead of demanding fiscal

solidarity or the creation of city-regional government bodies that could stem further

construction on peripheral greenfield areas.

‘Partial solutions’ were presented as definitive answers by discursively changing the

victim, problem or the scale at which the problem is to be addressed, as with the Vlaams

Blok initiated debate on immigration. The Vlaams Blok introduced the immigrant

question as a matter of irreconcilable cultural differences and called for stricter national

immigration policies. Linking the immigrant question with the concept of social mix,

RCM scaled down the solution from national immigration policies to addressing ethnic

segregation in opportunity poor neighbourhoods to stimulate integration. Further bending

of the social mix concept by the Flemish Government shifted the problem from

immigrants who did not adapt to national culture to the opportunity poor neighbourhoods

where Vlaams Blok voters lived.

Finally, by changing the scale of the problem, it is concealed how ‘movement leaders’

were placed in positions where they did not harm hegemonic coherence. This became

apparent in the 1980s, where urban planners, critical of selective suburbanisation within

the urban region, were engaged in policy making to improve neighbourhood social mix

with little effect on the suburbanisation process.

Social mix appears as a red thread in urban policy making. However, social mix has

never been realised through policy measures, as the dominant housing and planning logic

remains supportive of socially selective suburbanisation. The concept even serves to

undermine the main ideological alternative to homeownership suburbanisation in

Flanders, namely the model of central social rental housing. To summarise, the use of

social mix has merely reinforced the hegemony of the suburbanisation-cum-homeowner-

ship model, not just because it served to undermine potentially counter-hegemonic

claims by new challengers, but also because it gradually disempowered the main



counter-hegemonic model—social rental housing in urban settings (see also De Decker,

2005).

The paper reveals how attention to the political or legitimation dimension of policies

and policy discourses provides an alternative perspective to explain why some policy

concepts can be so omni-present in policy discourses yet so ineffective in practice.

From a neo-Gramscian perspective, concepts such as social mix are revealed to serve

very different purposes than social engineering or governing the conduct of individuals.

The success of social mix for passive revolution in Flanders, and the pervasiveness

of complaints in other policy contexts about the ineffectiveness of social mixing

policies in pursuing its stated goals, suggest that it might be fruitful to expand this

neo-Gramscian look to social mix (or other similarly popular policy concepts) in other

countries.

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