In September, 1219, Francis of Assisi went to Egypt to preach to Sultan al-Malik al-Kâmil. Although we in fact know very little about this event, writers from the 13th century to the 20th have portrayed Francis alternatively as a new apostle preaching to the infidels, a scholastic theologian proving the truth of Christianity, a champion of the crusading ideal, a naive and quixotic wanderer, a crazed religious fanatic, or a medieval Gandhi preaching peace, love and understanding. This study of the varying depictions of this lapidary encounter throws into relief the changing fears and hopes that Muslim–Christian encounters have inspired in European writers over eight centuries.

Presentation summary by Monika Ewa Kaminska

I believe that Europe can do without immigration. We do not need it to solve our problems. It does not help our national income. We should not push for immigration.

This article is a small part of a research project dealing with the presence of Hebrew poetry from al-Andalus in Israeli culture in general and in Israeli poetry in particular. In spite of its indisputably canonic status and 800-year history as a central model for the writing of poetry, this magnificent corpus is quite unknown to today’s readers, and its genres are obsolete. It is, as I shall explain, a ‘dinosaur-like’ canonic entity. The article contains some explanatory references to the historical trajectory of the poetry in question, from a central and active position to a marginal and passive presence – dealing with both the particular beneficial conditions in al-Andalus and current internal and external political situations. However, the paper is not about literary history or cultural politics. Rather, it focuses on the ways ‘dinosaur-like’ canonic status is revealed in the writing of contemporary poetry and in its readings. I begin with a short introduction concerned both with the poetry of al-Andalus and with the cognitive and inter-textual aspects related to the ‘dinosaur-like’ existence of texts and models. Owing to lack of space, I then deal with only three of the many characteristic features of this phenomenon: cognitive accessibility (illustrated by two readings of a Palestinian poem by Sami al-Kilani), manifested distancing (illustrated by Amnon Shamosh’s poem that converses with Yehuda Halevi), and modes of alluding (illustrated by a poem of Yehuda Amichai).

Although age distributions differ between countries, the ageing challenge is apparent everywhere. In the coming decades, the average age will increase all over Europe. As a consequence, the ratio between the working-age population (age 15–64) and the elderly population will decline, meaning a relatively reduced supply of labour, resulting in a ‘potential employment gap’. Although different in magnitude, the ageing effect is clearly present in all countries. If the EU-25 employment rate were to remain at its present 63% the average employment level will have decreased by 30 million persons in 2050. This effect is even relevant in the short-term perspective, as the first post-war birth cohorts are exiting the labour market already. After mentioning solutions to close this potential gap, such as raising participation rates and real labour productivity, this paper will focus in more detail on the possible role of migration in labour supply. As well as being the most unpredictable, this is also the most disputed variable. As traditional migration patterns are rapidly changing at the moment, this paper does not have the intention of being conclusive and absolute. However, the labour migration debate can still be elevated to a more scientific level by tackling some common misperceptions and adding new empirical facts.

Today Western European welfare states find themselves in a paradoxical situation: parts of working life are in need of labour that is difficult to find nationally – and internationally. While this is partly due to inflexible policies, it is also due to competition for labour among Western countries. At the same time, asylum seekers are constantly arriving, often to be joined by family members. The authorities are confronted with a mismatch between the supply of, and demand for, immigrants. The receiving countries do not get the labour they want, while many of those who actually come cannot be incorporated productively for various reasons. This situation illustrates the squeeze facing today’s welfare states – in this article exemplified with the Norwegian case – between the logic of humanitarian responsibilities and the concerns of the national economy.

In matters of migration, it is not only the immigrants that are influenced by the new environment in their host country. The autochthonous population of the receiving country is affected by contact with the newcomers. This article analyses the impact of Polish domestic and construction workers on their employers in Leuven, a mid-size Belgian town. It shows that there was much more contact between employer and employee than one might have expected, despite the lack of a common language and the regular absence of the employer during the employee’s working hours. This contact led to the personalization of the anonymous mass of immigrants. New images arose, mostly very positive ones, and mostly related to the workplace. Old stereotypes did not disappear, but they were overshadowed by an awareness of particularities (clichés do not count for all Poles) and similarities (Poles have much in common with Belgians). In this way, the employment of Poles somehow stimulated a ‘Europeanization’ of sorts, and contributed towards developing a sense of common European features and values.

This paper focuses on the reconstruction of social identity in which Polish pendulum migrants to Belgium engage, and pays specific attention to the civic components of this process. Social identity is here understood as an interactional, changing, and contextual phenomenon. Migration means being in a world in which neighbouring families and surrounding actors represent completely different cultures with different customs, traditions and lifestyles. The reconstruction of identity is an essential condition for adaptation and assimilation in the new place of settlement. This process of identity reconstruction, based on changes in stereotypes, is linked with the acceptance of pluralism as an important feature of the socio-cultural reality. The acceptance of a pluralist world brings migrants to a wider tolerance of diversity. This paper examines different circumstances of the processes mentioned in concrete empirical reality.

The collapse of the Iron Curtain, and recent European enlargement have brought about new waves of intra-European migration. Whilst millions of people from Central and Eastern European countries have trodden the well-worn path to the West in search of better paid jobs, their migration trajectories have differed from traditional patterns. They very often work in host countries and simultaneously maintain close social links with their countries of origin, thus earning the label ‘pendulum migrants’. These pendulum movements can be perceived as agents that stimulate processes of social integration at the micro level. Contrary to popular discourse, which represents migration as a phenomenon endangering social cohesion, this article investigates how personal contacts between hosts and guests may contribute to the building of mutual trust between European citizens.

The persistently high popularity of migration marriages within large immigrant populations in Western Europe is an intriguing phenomenon. Why do so many young people born and raised in Western Europe opt for an unknown partner coming from a region that, although it is where their parents or grandparents came from, is by and large unknown to them personally? This contribution attempts to shed some light on the dynamics of this particular kind of migration which impacts significantly on the social fabric of Western European societies. Our focus here is specifically on the Belgian case, namely the so-called ‘Emirdag connection’. In Belgium, the majority of immigrants with a Turkish background come from the region of Emirdag, in the province of Afyon. Over the last 40 years a close relationship has been established between this region of emigration and a number of Turkish communities in Flanders and Brussels. Over the last decade chain migration became for most the most popular means to enter Belgium; in other words, the majority of newcomers arrived in Belgium as (future) spouses of Belgian residents. This certainly applies to Turkish migration. Particular to the Turkish residents in Belgium, including the second generation, is that the majority still marry a person who grew up in Turkey.