Whose Human Dignity? Immigration Status, Labour Courts and Welfare Bureaucracies in French-Speaking Belgium

While the Belgian constitution states that “everyone is entitled to live in conditions that conform to human dignity” (art. 23), which social assistance is meant to guarantee, only migrants with a residence permit can, under welfare law, make a valid claim to the welfare administration. Since the aforementioned limitation was introduced in 1996, jurisprudential exceptions have been developed, based on the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Taking the assessment that the increasingly restricted access to social assistance for migrants has led to the judicialization of welfare claims, this paper aims to explore the dynamic interactions between immigration law, social protection policies and the way those policies are implemented. Based on ethnographic research within welfare courts and administrations, it examines the ways in which welfare case are built and argued by those whose social assistance claims have been rejected, and the role of courts in migrant’s access to welfare. It delves on litigants’ strategies and experiences in court, as well as on magistrate’s discretion in dealing with cases that touch upon both welfare and immigration in order to understand the role of labour courts in migrant’s access to welfare in French-speaking Belgium.