European intermarriages the case of Belgium

Belgium is one of the founding members of the EU and has always actively campaigned for the development and deepening of Europe. Brussels, the capital of Belgium and also the official capital of Europe, hosts most of European institutions. About 30.000 European civil servants live and work in Belgium. Looking at the population of those who are married and living in Belgium, we find that one out of five marriages consist of at least one partner of foreign origin (in contrast to nationality) and one out of ten marriages are binational (according to the census 2001). The majority of the partners in these binational marriages are of European descent even though most literature in Belgium (from mainstream migration research) focuses on migrants with a non-European descent (especially Moroccans and Turks). This paper will describe the trends in European binational marriages over the past two decades, the most common nationalities of binational unions, and start to unravel the determinants for these unions.

We will draw information on bi-national unions from both census and register data in Belgium. Census data go back to 1981 and the most recent census data available are those of 2001. Yearly register data can be analysed from 1988 onwards up to 2009. In this paper we will use data based on the current nationality of the partners. This allows us to look at patterns in bi-national unions over time. We aim to broaden the scope also to unmarried cohabitation between partners of different national (European) origins, as these data can be derived from the census. Our study will include background characteristics of the individual and of the household. In order to get more advanced insights in patterns and relevant factors, a geographical component will also be introduced in the analysis.