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The eight chapters of this theme issue examine the ways in which autochthonous communities regard the supply side of education. The supply side is segregational in nature, and immigrants themselves move toward ethnic homogenization. The focus is on urban minorities in Brussels (Belgium). Compares the situation in Cape Town (South Africa). (SLD)

Discusses a project in the Flemish Brussels, Belgium educational community that seeks to provide a bicultural and trilingual curriculum that includes the language and culture of allocthonous children. Successful transfer to secondary education is discussed as is the importance of additive mother-tongue education and involving parents in what goes on in school. (17 references) (Author/CK)

The authors studied the entrepreneurial culture among Albanian smugglers and traffickers using 43 Albanian judicial files in Belgium from 1995-2005. They analyse the niches that these 'entrepreneurs' created as well as the way they invested profits. The authors also analyse the personal agency of the smuggled and trafficked clients, and practices that may help to explain the specific entrepreneurial culture. Short comparisons are made with other ethnic criminal groups engaged in similar activities during the same period in Belgium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The author reports on the observation of the communities of Italo-Brussels Jehovah's Witnesses over a 30-year period (research in 1976, 1996 and 2005). In the 1970s, "conversion" as the means of entry into a new religious community was dominant as a theme in the Kingdom Halls. Thirty years later, it is recruitment through kin and the "vécu" of kinship relations inside the religious enclaves which has become the main objective of these communities. The author analyses the processes in the composition of the socio-cultural basis and the structure of the intra-family relations in these communities between 1976 and 2005. He also tries to develop further the social network recruitment theories on this issue, not in order to object to the recruitment practices, but in order to show the changes that have taken place, and the appearance of "internal" cultural bias in the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Hare Krishna members in Belgium. The movement owns a temple on the outskirts of a provincial city in the south of the country. Fieldwork was carried out among the 'temple residents' (at Radhadesh, the 'Petite Somme'), those who live in its vicinity, the 'congregationalists' in the local centres, and those who are on the way of being initiated. The article focuses on the development members undergo from 'adepts' to 'devotees', that is from 'congregationalists' to becoming full-time 'temple residents' in Radhadesh. The question we address concerns the process of members' growth in Krishna consciousness and sacredness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a society such as Belgium, most Igbo migrants of the 1990s soon became immigrants without papers. It was only after regularization campaigns (as in January 2000 in Belgium) that a significant number of them could be regularized to stay. This means that most of them had a very difficult time in the first years of their stay in Europe. This can best be described as a situation of anonymous liminality. That is the moment when Christianity and their cosmology enter their life in Europe. These help them in their self-rediscovery and reappraisal, as well as in their social reconnection. Liminality, traditional Igbo cosmology, an ethnicity profoundly mitigated by Christianity, and transnationalism are the four basic ideas for an understanding of the life practices of Igbo migrants in a Western society since the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropological analysis of how and to what extent socio-ethnic shifts take place in a pluri-ethnic urban setting reveals that the process occurs from a situation of group-clustering on the basis of ethnicity to a situation of ethnicity that is absorbed and sometimes left behind in faith communities. Situations are identified of social and religious-cultural bridging to the region of origin, but also of socio-cultural integration, supra- and meta-ethnic self-affirmation, cultural-religious syncretism and (non-)adaptation to the host country. Religion is seen as a grammar with elements that may be considered as a form of modulation leading to social transformation. A number of generational and gender dimensions are also briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]