Population, Territory, and State-istics: “Habitual Residence” in the Belgian Census, 1846–1947

Abstract

Abstract In the eighteenth century, statistics was designed and understood as state-istics, as a scientific representation of the state, its territory, and its population. Statistics helped modern nation-states to “embrace” the social lives of the people contained in them; it served these nation-states to monitor the condition, to promote the welfare, and to protect the rights of their people. The history of statistics can therefore be analyzed to shed light on the politics of membership in modern states. In this article, I present a case study that focuses on the various specifications of the notion of habitual residence in the Belgian population censuses, from the middle of the nineteenth century—the first Belgian censuses organized by the homo statisticus Adolphe Quetelet—up until the middle of the twentieth century, when the welfare state more actively took “responsibility for its population.” My analyses show how the classification schemes of the Belgian population censuses elucidate underlying politics of membership and belonging. The use and development of the notion of habitual residence displays the ways in which the state (re-)articulated its expectations regarding society membership. It is not only indicative of new ways of managing the population but also of the establishment of specific norms and evaluative standards about the individuals who are living within the boundaries of the nation-state.