Don’t get stuck in the Golden Cage

 “First I resisted it, then I fought it and now I accept it.” An anonymous interviewee about living in Brussels

Donald Trump called Brussels a “hellhole”. Most Eurobubblers would not go that far, but most feel little love for the city. To see how integrated its expats were, the City of Brussels conducted a survey among around 8,000 people who work in the European Bubble. The results will have led to little joy. The vast majority described the city as “filthy” and would return “home” once their work contracts ended. Only six percent envisioned themselves growing old in Belgium.

The survey revealed that the average expat is not integrated at all. A staggering sixty percent of those surveyed stated that they did not have any Belgian friends or acquaintances. In fact, 12 percent admitted they did not know a single Belgian, even after spending many years in Brussels.

My interviews also made it clear that for most expats, Brus-sels is purely a place to work. There is little love for the city, its inhabitants, or Belgium as a country. This comes as no surprise. Just attend a party with only expats, and you’ll hear plenty of complaints about the lack of service, the rubbish in the streets, and the unfriendly Belgians.

For many it is a relief to do a bit of joint “Brussels bashing”. It often serves as a connecting factor between people who hardly know each other. It’s comforting to hear that others share similar thoughts and face the same challenges. Standing together against the dysfunctional aspects of Brussels creates a certain sense of “togetherness”.

However, engaging in “Brussels bashing” also diminishes the urgency to make an effort to learn more about the city, the country, or its people. If everyone agrees it’s not worth it, why bother trying? Moreover, there’s no real necessity because, unlike other migrants, those in the Brussels Bubble have the luxury of remaining aloof. We don’t have to integrate to find a job; we came precisely because we already have one.

And since there are approximately 100,000 expatriates (about 10% of the city), there is plenty of entertainment to be found in our little world. In that sense, we form “a city within a city”, a kind of “Expatland” where most of us live in comfortable ghettos around the European district.

This makes the Brussels Bubble probably the least integrated group of newcomers you will find in Brussels or in any other capital in the world. Moreover, because most people keep toying with the idea of moving back to their country of birth sooner or later, the motivation to dive into Belgian culture is just not there. The result is that most of us live our lives completely outside Belgian society. We don’t really need more than a Belgian col-league who can occasionally explain the Byzantine Belgian ad-ministrative system. Instead of following Belgian news, we immerse ourselves even more in European news and the news of the country we come from.

Head vs heart

There are many people who are very happy with this lifestyle. Especially in the early years, it’s fine to go from party to party and not overthink things too much. But at some point, you start to wonder if this is the life you want to lead in the long run. As discussed earlier in the book, when the first child arrives, it is often a natural moment for people to say goodbye to Brussels.

Others choose to stay, but while many succeed in making Brussels a real home, for others, it never becomes more than a working city. It never truly feels like “home” because the existential question of staying or leaving never gets definitively answered. The result is that many remain torn between the heart, which tells them to leave, and the head, which tells them to stay. The head has a point. For many, it will be very difficult to maintain the same standard of living after leaving. Salaries in Brussels are relatively high, house prices are relatively low, and the free schools and excellent healthcare are hard to beat. Few will be willing to give up thirty percent of their salary and move from a “maison de maître” to a small apartment in their own capital. Moreover, once children are settled in schools in Brussels and have made friends here, there is no turning back.

But the heart is bleeding. It remains very difficult to cope with the fact that good friends continue to leave, that the skies above Brussels remain grey, that garbage bags are dumped in the streets. All that makes it difficult for many to ever come to love Brussels. They keep life bearable by spending weekends outside Brussels or in one of the Aspria fitness clubs among other expats.

And let’s also not forget that most people came to Brussels just for the job, not because they wanted to live in Belgium. People go to New York because they love the city, adapt, and find a job to stay there. In Brussels, it’s the other way around. As long as the job is meaningful and continues to inspire, it is easier to cope with Brussels’ deficiencies. But if at some point things start to go wrong at work, many get the feeling that they have ended up in a Golden Cage. Brussels can resemble The Eagles’ song “Hotel California”: “You can check out any time you like. But you can never leave.”

The perks at work are difficult to find anywhere else

If you work in the institutions, the feeling that you have ended up in a Golden Cage could settle in. If you have a permanent position, your working conditions are very good. A job for life, excellent health insurance, the European School for the children, a good pension, and a more than excellent salary.

But the life of a civil servant can be frustrating. At university, you read about Europe’s great moments: no more wars, the common market, Schengen, the fall of the Berlin Wall, bringing a continent back together by including new Member States, the introduction of the euro, and so on. It all inspired you to work hard to become part of the elite corps of civil servants who make the European Dream a reality.

However, once you’re inside, you will quickly notice that you are a very small cog in a huge machine. From a distance, Europe appears dynamic, but up close, European integration can feel excruciatingly slow. In addition, careers progress slowly in the European Commission, and it can be quite a hierarchical place where you don’t gain a lot of visibility or responsibility quickly. On joining the Commission after a career in a bank, one of my football friends confided: “I doubled my salary, but lost half of my seniority.”

Scientist Ben van der Schaaf has conducted an extensive study on the concept of the Golden Cage. He concludes that there is an increased risk of a Golden Cage effect if an organisa-tion’s HR policy contains the following three elements: high job security, high income, and a lack of promotion opportunities.

These elements create an environment with an increased chance of unmotivated employees. For many of those well into their careers in the institutions in Brussels, all three elements are combined, so it is not surprising that some people do not manage to maintain the same level of motivation as when they started.

If the job doesn’t satisfy you anymore and you think Brussels is a crappy place anyway, it can lead to depression and in-creased alcohol and drug abuse. I have witnessed the conse-quences in the European Parliament, where I have seen a brilliant translator – fluent in six languages and with a great sense of humour − slowly deteriorate. Every day, he started with his first beer before lunch. It was sad to see so much talent go to waste.

Umberto Gambini, who left the European Parliament after a 15-year career to join a consultancy firm, can only encourage everyone who is fed up to make a change: “After all these years in the Parliament, I had seen it all. I was tired and pushed myself to leave my comfort zone. I love my new job. It is mentally and intellectually challenging. And if it does not work out in a few years, I can always say that I have tried.” And reader, his story also had a positive ending. Since the interview, he has been pro-moted to become a partner in the firm.

Don’t get stuck in a job that does not excite you anymore

Van der Schaaf’s study finds that people who are most likely to suffer from the Golden Cage Syndrome exhibit three symptoms: they will never get paid the same anywhere else for what they do, they have been doing the same kind of work for too long, and they don’t have a huge workload. Symptoms two and three often go together. Because you’ve performed the same task so many times, it doesn’t require much time or effort anymore. The work has become too easy and no longer presents a challenge, but the high salary prevents you from seeking a more interesting and challenging job. I found myself in such a situation. The work no longer held much interest for me, and the main motivation was the 14th of the month when the salary came in.

I realised that I had to give myself a little kick in the butt to ensure I didn’t become an overpaid and cynical old fart. So, I set myself a deadline to find a new job. Not only did I feel like I was in control of my career again, but the new job project also gave me new energy and creativity. If you open yourself up to new possibilities and contacts, you’ll find there are many more opportunities than you initially thought. Within three months, I had a new job.

The new job required me to learn new things, meet new people, move from the European Parliament to the European Com-mission, reinvent myself somewhat, and prove myself again. All in all, this was quite a healthy experience. So, don’t become a super-specialist if it starts to bore you, don’t let your existing job define you, don’t be afraid of new challenges, and keep your eyes open for other opportunities.

To enjoy Belgium, live like a Belgian

For some, it is not the job that is the problem, but the place that feels like a Golden Cage. You came to Brussels because of the job, but you have never got to feel at home in the city. In a way, you have become a victim of your own success, since you will not easily find a nicer job with the same perks in another place.

The effect is often that people become even more annoyed about the things in Brussels that have always annoyed them. I’ve experienced it myself and seen it among many others. All of a sudden, the grey weather becomes a real problem, you get super annoyed about the plumber or the Belgacom-guy that didn’t show up, and every piece of dog shit on the pavement leads to an acute feeling of depression.

In her academic study on how expats integrate, Leadership and Life-transitions coach Maja Meglic points out that this negative feeling can be reinforced because you are far from your hometown, family, and your (childhood) friends. You live in a place you don’t know, where two different languages are spoken that you may not speak or understand, and at a certain point, a form of identity loss can set in. It can easily happen that you lose a sense of who you are, what drives you, and why you came to Brussels in the first place. And as we have seen in an earlier chapter, it is not always that easy to discuss these sombre thoughts with like-minded people as lots of people lack such a support network in Brussels.

There are several ways to feel more at home. One is to marry a Belgian, as my former French colleague Anne did: “Through my husband, I got to know a lot of Belgians. Most of our parties are with Belgians. My husband is also not very interested in European Union stuff. It is pretty refreshing to talk about other things than work in the evening. It is healthy for the mind.”

For many, marrying a Belgian might seem a bit extreme. For those who don’t necessarily want to start a relationship with a Belgian, journalist Gareth Harding’s story might be inspiring. For the first 25 of the 28 years he lived in Brussels, he never liked Belgium: “I wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Incapable of leaving for a host of personal and professional reasons, I turned moaning about my adopted home into an art form. I complained about the lunatic drivers, maddening road rules,

potholed streets, archaic schools, Sunday shop closures, paying to pee in cafes, and even the lack of decent Indian restaurants.” Brexit and Covid changed his perspective. He transformed from a Belgium basher into a Belgium believer. He wanted to stay in Belgium and even obtained Belgian citizenship, which led him to reflect on his life in Brussels. He realised that he had become somewhat Belgian and actually enjoyed living there. Besides realising that the Belgians had a cool surreal sense of humour, he also started to explore Belgium and “discovered a country of breath-taking natural beauty.”

His plea is to open your eyes to the beauty of the people and the country. Belgium’s beauty does not hit you in the face; it is much more subtle, and you have to make an effort to explore it. But if you do, you will be rewarded.