thumb|right|200 px| Borains (from [[Jemappes) fired upon by the civic guard of Mons during the Belgian general strike of 1893 (Le Petit Journal, May 1893)]]
The Borinage () is an area in the Walloon province of Hainaut in Belgium. The name derives from the coal mines of the region, bores, meaning mineshafts in local dialect.
In 1957, out of 64,800 people recorded as being in employment in the Borinage, 23,000 worked in the coal industry. Only 7,000 people in services, although in Belgium as a whole, 49 percent of employment was in the tertiary sector.
In the 1960s, because of the end of the collieries, Ladrière, Meynaud and Perin wrote that the Borinage died in the ideological and economical sense.
Misère au Borinage
thumb|150px| Gallow frame of the Crachet in [[Frameries (after renovation) ]]
The area is best known for its former coalmining industry. The living conditions of the miners were featured in the famous documentary film Misère au Borinage (1933) made by Henri Storck and Joris Ivens.
<blockquote>It is one of the most important references in the documentary genre. In 1932, a great strike paralysed the coalmines of Wallonia and the response of employers and the police had been merciless. Throughout it all the broader population was ill-informed and largely indifferent. André Thirifays, Pierre Vermeylen and all the indignant young people involved in the Club de l'écran, decided to bear witness to this dire poverty using their weapon, the camera. With the aid of a doctor and a lawyer, with very little funding, hiding from the police but supported by the whole population, the shoot took place in difficult and exciting conditions. The film is hard, magnificent. It has lost nothing of its force, its strong emotional impact of indignation and compassion. It has left to the working class the strongest images of its history and struggles: evictions; thin-faced and absent-looking children packed together in slum houses; the procession with the portrait of Karl Marx; the collecting of low grade coal on the slagheaps at dawn; the begging miner etc. There is also the shock of images placed side by side: houses standing empty while homeless people sleep in the street, near-famine conditions with no aid, whereas big sums of money go to construct a church...</blockquote>
Present-day Borinage
thumb|right|125px|A giant statue of a [[Davy lamp|mining lamp, in Cuesmes, commemorates the Héribus colliery.]]
Borinage is often considered the western end of the sillon industriel, the former industrial backbone of Wallonia, home to about two-thirds of Wallonia's population.
Since the last mines closed in the 1960s, the Borinage has had the highest unemployment rate of Belgium.
Google has its major European datacenter in Saint-Ghislain.
Four of the Major Mining Sites of Wallonia were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012. One of the sites, Grand-Hornu, is also home to the most important museum of contemporary art in Wallonia.
The former site of the 's coal mine is now the "scientific adventure park."
References
</references>