How do the youth map out Belgium? How do they envisage federalism in Belgium? These are the questions which the book Dessinez la Belgique. Comment les jeunes Belges francophones voient le fédéralisme (Draw Belgium: How young francophone Belgians see federalism) (1) attempts to answer, a work by Min Reuchamps, Geoffrey Grandjean et Elodie Flaba, young researchers in the Department of Political Science.

Belgian federalism is the fruit of a long and slow evolution. Yesterday a unitary country, Belgium today is in full transformation and is now composed of three Communities and three Regions which are continually gaining new powers to the detriment of the Federal state. The recent programme ‘Bye-bye Belgium’ (broadcast by RTBF on December 13th, 2006), and the long equivocations by the parties on leaving the ballot boxes at the federal elections of June 2007, temporarily leaving the country in a period without government, remind us that it is not always easy to live in Belgium and above all to understand how our country works. It was in this context that three University of Liège researchers had the idea to launch a research project of a new genre.

It was within the framework of an introduction to political science course that the idea was born: ask young Belgians to draw Belgium and to express their vision of Belgian federalism. ‘The idea’s starting point was mental maps,’ stresses Min Reuchamps, F.R.S.-FNRS researcher in the Department of political science, ‘in other words to ask people to represent something from a geographical perspective.’ Joined by Geoffrey Grandjean and Elodie Flaba, both of whom are researchers within the same department in the Faculty of Law and Political Science, he put his test to 234 young people, the majority of whom were in the first year of political science, social sciences and human sciences studies, as well as in the second year of communication and law.

The three researchers know that in putting together an ‘amphitheatre’ sample they risk being criticised for the representativeness of the latter. ‘It is difficult to gather a representative sample,’ explains Geoffrey Grandjean, ‘and it often demands time and money. Perhaps we opted for an easy choice, but we really wanted to carry out this enquiry.’ A large majority of this sample is of course francophone, its subjects for the most part coming from the Liège region. ‘The enquiry was carried out in a completely anonymous fashion,’ continues Min Reuchamps, ‘and that doubtless allowed the students to feel more at ease and thus to reply in a much more spontaneous way.’ As the enquiry, named ‘Draw Belgium’ went hand in hand with a questionnaire aimed at putting across the young people’s perception of Belgian federalism, but also their vision of the country’s future.

(1)REUCHAMPS M., GRANDJEAN G., FLABA E., "Dessinez la Belgique. Comment les jeunes Belges francophones voient le fédéralisme" (1), Les Editions de l'Univeristé de Liège, 2009.