1 in 10 people in Flanders has a foreign nationality

At the beginning of 2022, almost 1 in 10 people in Flanders had a foreign nationality. This is shown in figures published by Statistics Flanders on Wednesday. The largest foreign nationality group is Dutch, followed by Romanians and Poles.

At the beginning of this year, Flanders had just over 658,000 people with a foreign nationality, or 9.8 percent of the total population. In 2000, this was nearly 5 percent. The Flemish share of approximately ten percent is slightly higher than the European average of eight percent.

The share of people with foreign nationality is highest in the outskirts of Brussels, in the major cities Antwerp and Ghent and in the border region with the Netherlands in the provinces Antwerp and Limburg. The centre cities also score relatively high. Nationality also differs strongly from region to region.

The number of people of foreign origin is somewhat higher. For example, at the beginning of this year, there were 1,677,000 people of foreign origin in Flanders, which is a quarter of the total population.

This concerns people with a current foreign nationality, but also people with a current Belgian nationality but with a foreign birth nationality or with at least one parent with a foreign birth nationality. Here, too, the Netherlands is the largest country of origin, followed by persons of Moroccan, Turkish, Italian and Romanian origin.

Furthermore, almost half of the persons with a foreign birth nationality were born in Belgium, but this share differs between origin groups. The figures are higher for persons of Turkish, Maghreb and Southern European origin. This has to do with the difference in timing of the main migration flows.

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