Think about the after-corona. Civil society interventions during the lockdown period caused by the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

This weekly Courier examines an unprecedented situation in the political history of Belgium: the intellectual effervescence which has manifested itself and the various mobilizations which have taken place in civil society with a view, on the one hand, to responding to the challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic (disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus) and, on the other hand, to prepare for the post-health crisis period. The study focuses on the period of confinement in the strict sense of the term, that is to say that which extended from March 18 to May 4, 2020, when the first phase of deconfinement - known as 1a - a been engaged. This choice is based on the fact that the confinement measure decided by the public authorities is one of the political decisions that has most violated the fundamental freedoms of Belgian citizens for several decades. In addition, it reduced the mobilization capacity of citizens since they were then prohibited from meeting. Certain initiatives that took place after May 4, 2020 are nevertheless also taken into consideration, insofar as they extend or echo reflections or actions initiated during the confinement period stricto sensu.
Such a situation can be qualified as unprecedented because of the scale of the questions and themes mobilized. On the occasion of the Royal Question, for example, a vast public debate, accompanied by strong social tensions, had taken place in Belgium between 1945 and 1950. But it then concerned a relatively circumscribed question, that of the return of Leopold III to his royal functions