f “Comme les sauterelles sur un champ de maïs mûr”: the Belgian unions and alien labour in hotels and restaurants in the 1930s

This paper examines how the traditional seasonal labour of foreign hospitality workers in Belgian cosmopolitan tourist resorts became an issue in the course of the 1930s. As a result of the lobbying by trade unions a protectionist immigration policy was implemented in Belgium from 1931 onwards. An exception to the ban on immigration of foreign labour was constituted by the few hundred highly skilled Italian and French hospitality workers who arrived each season in the tourist resorts, since the employers claimed that the national workforce lacked the qualifications required for service in high-class hotels. The socialist and Christian unions of hospitality workers fiercely denounced the hiring of foreign staff in years of high unemployment. Stirred by the emotional appeals of nationalist organisations, who jealously wished to safeguard Belgium for the Belgians, the socialist and Christian unions reproduced this nationalist and highly xenophobic discourse. The unions’ limited power in a sector that was difficult to organise provides an explanation for the little resistance they offered to the nationalist rhetoric. However, throughout the 1930s, the Belgian authorities continued to make an exception to blocked immigration for such seasonal labour migrants.