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Yes, those are very good points. Another is that the current refugee crisis is as much a crisis about quantity as about culture. We've had plenty of situation
by adwf 10y ago
Yes, those are very good points. Another is that the current refugee crisis is as much a crisis about quantity as about culture.
We've had plenty of situations in the past where significant migration has occurred, Indians to Britain, Turkish to Germany, Irish/Italians/etc. to America. But they've all managed to eventually integrate well because no-one gave up on them.
The major difference as I see it today is that it's a question of quantity. How do you successfully integrate a million Syrians?
Old fashioned slow integration (watch and wait) worked because people for the large part, genuinely wanted to be in their new country. With the refugees that's not necessarily the case.
- vlehto 10y agoYes it's very much quantity problem too. Europe is bunch of nation states. Which means that language and race/ethnicity are founding parameters of the most fundamental and powerfull social construct on the continent. If you get 1% of immigrants, they are just guests. But 20% would be very problematic to the national identity, because they don't fit in to the matrix of ethnicity and language. But you can't treat them as non significant "other" anymore because they are everywhere all the time. So it's also a speed/integration problem. Most Brits don't mind "Normans" anymore. Many Estonians have beef with the very significant Russian minority that migrated after WWII. Of course current immigration is not anykind of actual problem. It's just that people are afraid of escalation and politicians seem incapable of actually doing anything.