Maintenir une homogénéité culturelle et linguistique : mise en perspective diachronique des stratégies de découpages territoriaux de la périphérie flamande de Bruxelles-Capitale

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A partir d’un travail de terrain et du traitement de données sociolinguistiques précédemment recueillies, cet article analyse l’évolution de stratégies - plus ou moins affichées par les autorités flamandes - de découpages politico-linguistiques de la périphérie de Bruxelles-Capitale. Ainsi fait-il la démonstration d’un processus d’autonomie nationale qui n’a cessé de se poursuivre et qui repose désormais sur des stratégies de délimitations territoriales plus informelles. Les dernières réformes de l’Etat n’ont jamais satisfait certaines revendications territoriales nationalistes flamandes ; le récent échec d’une coopération interrégionale portant sur l’aire métropolitaine de la capitale belge en témoigne. L’article rend compte de cette évolution des formes de découpages de l’espace afin de préserver une homogénéité linguistique et culturelle ; de fusions de communes (et électorales) partisanes (« gerrymandering ») aux récents découpages « de programme » et ponctuels qui ne renvoient à aucun échelon administratif préexistant. L’étude de ces stratégies démontre l’importance persistante du territoire dans les logiques nationales flamandes alors que de nombreux chercheurs pointent la relative désuétude de tels ancrages territoriaux à l’ère des mobilités grandissantes et des projets de coopérations transnationales.

This paper is a continuation of the scientific literature dealing with the politico-linguistic divisions of Belgian national territory. Through a diachronic analysis, it aims at analysing its most recent developments. A fieldwork, combined with the analysis of official directives from the Flemish authorities and the processing of sociolinguistic data previously collected, provide information on the new forms of politico-linguistic divisions in the Flemish periphery of Brussels-Capital (a cosmopolitan capital). This article assumes an ongoing process of national autonomy through more or less informal territorial demarcation strategies displayed by the Flemish authorities. Semi-structured interviews with elected officials, residents, cultural associations (mostly French-speaking ones) and civil servants from this Flemish periphery show that these strategies are always based on the minimisation of the existing Francophone community. If the Dutch-speaking / French-speaking dichotomy seems obsolete for such an internationalised periphery, and thus refers to worn-out linguistic battles in Belgium, the French-speaking national minority factually remains the most demanding and resistant to new Flemish territorial delimitation strategies. Furthermore, the internationalisation of the periphery reinforces the ever-increasing phenomenon of its francisation (following the model of the federal capital). In words, this French-speaking population denounces informal division manoeuvres that began in the 1970’s, during municipal merging operations. The analysis of sociolinguistic indicators made it possible to test these accusations of gerrymandering. If the clearly intentional dimension of these strategies, with regard to the marginalization of the Francophone community in the periphery, remains difficult to demonstrate, it seems certain that the most urbanised municipalities (and those gathering large French-speaking minorities) were not merged with each other but with more rural, more Dutch-speaking, municipalities, not bordering the Belgian capital. This step has strengthened the territorialisation of the Vlaamse Rand (literally the “Flemish periphery”) whose administrations and ministerial offices now promote more punctual delimitations of space, of program, and more or less displayed perimeters of action. The management of these perimeters, that are supposed to guarantee the Flemish identity of the places, is today delegated to the legitimate local authorities of these municipalities accompanying a strengthened federalisation. The most emblematic of the decrees establishing such delimitations was the "Wonen in eigen streek" ("Living in one's own region"), now invalidated by the Constitutional Court of Belgium, which established that prospective buyers of housing in certain localities, where the real estate pressure is strong, had to necessarily prove their cultural link with the municipality of the desired property. This paper shows that other actors, locally appearing as authority figures (independent cultural associations, receiving subsidies from the Flemish Region for example) contribute even more to such punctual, labile, adaptable divisions, with a sometimes questionable legitimacy, and aiming at responding to regional imperatives of cultural preservation.