9 ms·

Most Europeans believe their countries are more polarised than 10 years ago

Overtonwindow 9y ago
A question for everyone: Would a delay in the open borders element have helped? For instances a gradual transition, with restrictions, gradually over several years moving towards full openeness?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- showsover 9y ago
  Some restrictions pertaining to integration would help. Being able to speak the language within your first year in a new country helps integration and lessens the us-vs-them feeling. Ideally people wouldn't mind hearing a different language, but unfortunately we're not that tolerant yet.
  - simion314 9y ago
    The rich countries want cheap workers, you can have them both cheap and educated in foreign languages, this workers also will go home when working season is over or if they don't like the conditions. The ones that do not directly benefit by this cheap workforce may not like this people that don't speak the main language well but the ones that benefit don't care.
    - michaelt 9y ago
      The rich countries want cheap workers, Do you think voters in rich countries want cheap workers? Because I don't think I've ever heard a politician say out loud that they want cheap workers.
      - iguy 9y ago
        It's a vote-winning strategy to keep an economic boom going, and importing young workers to fuel it is such a strategy. Almost all European countries did this. By the time said workers are old, and their kids (who aren't mentally comparing to the village their family) are unhappily unemployed... well that's decades later, you don't get elected by worrying about such things.
      - simion314 9y ago
        The ones that do not benefit from this do not want it, but there are family businesses that would fail without the cheap workers from other countries, I am not making the point that cheap work is a good thing or a bad thing, just that people are benefiting from this. Also this workers are working hard jobs in agriculture or constructions, with bad conditions, the citizens would not accept to work this job, for the agriculture obs I am not sure if even with bigger pay the regular citizens would want to work hard physical jobs outside in the bad weather.
  - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
    > Being able to speak the language within your first year in a new country helps integration and lessens the us-vs-them feeling. Not sure what you're talking about. I'm been to Italy and Germany many times and never felt unwelcome for not speaking their language.
    - mfoy_ 9y ago
      Visiting, or living.... there's a different standard applied to guests than to neighbours.
      - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
        If you're an Italian guy and we meet on the street and I don't speak Italian, how would you know if I'm visiting or living? EDIT: Before you respond that "immigration policy etc etc", notice that the post I was responding to was talking about interations between individuals (using phrases like "ideally people wouldn't mind hearing a different language"), not policy.
        dazc 9y ago
        I've found in different countries within the EU that attitudes change dramatically to foreigners once you go beyond the centres of major cities or tourist areas. This is true even in Ireland where the only language barrier is an accent. Maybe this is what he means by the distinction of living/visiting?
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > Some restrictions pertaining to integration would help. Again, on which immigrants are we talking about here? Could you be specific?
  - deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
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- mcintyre1994 9y ago
  There's already a lot of rights that countries can (and do) use to limit this, but for whatever reason the UK chose not to. We could have stopped/limited migration from the new EU members (for up to 7 years after they join), but chose not to. We could prosecute benefit fraud/welfare tourism, but choose not to. We could return EU migrants who don't work and can't support themselves, but choose not to. I have no idea what the motive for not taking any of these actions is, but whatever it is it'd probably apply to any other delay or transition you could come up with - unless it was forced on the UK I guess.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    > We could prosecute benefit fraud/welfare tourism, but choose not to. We absolutely do. You need to look at "no recourse to public funds" (something that causes significant harm). See also many of the Windrush generation being refused benefits, or forced to repay benefits: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/22/government-aware-for-years-that-hostile-environment-hurt-windrush-generation https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/22/government-a... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/20/dwp-sent-windrush-pensioner-33000-bill-for-disability-benefits https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/20/dwp-sent-win... The current benefits regime is brutal to everyone, and there's extra brutality for migrants.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      I agree, it's an extremely limited system. I'd like to add an important fact which is that EU nationals do not get the NRPF limitation. http://www.nrpfnetwork.org.uk/information/Pages/eea-nationals.aspx http://www.nrpfnetwork.org.uk/information/Pages/eea-national...
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  What do you mean by "open borders"? If you're talking about the UK, the UK never had open borders in the sense that the rest of the EU has open borders (i.e. complete absense of customs).
- pjc50 9y ago
  Helped with which of those countries? With which borders? The top of the divided list is Serbia, which has still not fully healed from its own civil war. Then you have Italy, whose problems probably mostly relate to the financial crisis fallout. Next is Hungary, which is on the classic path of fascism by rallying against external and internal percieved enemies and anti-semitism: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/george-soros-upset-by-anti-semitic-campaign-against-him-in-hungary https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/george-soros-u... The UK being divided over Europe is hardly new, but the salience of the issue has been driven up by the press systematically misreporting it. There are also questions of the centralisation of power which aren't going away. Poland has an ongoing constitutional crisis which seems to be a straightforward concentration of power by the right: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/28/polands-in-crisis-again-here-are-3-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-law-and-justice-partys-attempt-to-take-over-the-courts/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.198ee3281824 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/2... Spain is also a victim of the financial crisis, but the important issue there is Catalonia.
  - baud147258 9y ago
    I don't see how your particular example regarding Hungary is anti-semitism. Being a Jew does not protect you from being critized. Of course there could be example of anti-semitism from the gov in Hungary, but I don't think that's the case of the linked article.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-soros-orban-jews/hungarian-jews-ask-pm-orban-to-end-bad-dream-of-anti-semitism-idUSKBN19R24L https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-soros-orban-jews/... Longer: https://www.ft.com/content/ed901d78-38c4-11e8-8b98-2f31af407cc8 https://www.ft.com/content/ed901d78-38c4-11e8-8b98-2f31af407... "Each year, pro-government crowds rally on March 15, the anniversary of Hungary’s 1848 nationalist uprising against the Habsburg yoke. This year as usual Orban spoke of what it meant to be Hungarian — and not Hungarian. “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.” The Wandering Jew is back in Hungarian politics.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway5752 9y ago
They are under concerted attack by Russia, that bankrolls nationalist/anti-immigration movements to strategically weaken intra EU relations (and intra NATO). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/10/everything-we-know-so-far-about-russian-election-meddling-in-europe/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/10... presents a decent summary.
- toasterlovin 9y ago
  Or there is a sizable portion of the European population who don’t want mass immigration. It’s not exactly a new phenomenon that tensions develop when heterogeneous groups of humans inhabit the same geographical area.
  - amiga-workbench 9y ago
    I'm totally for migration, but at a level where we can adequately integrate the people we bring in. I want to make sure everybody has the support they need and conversely I want the state to make sure the people coming in are acting in the best interests of the country. Is this really such a far-right fringe position to have?
    - ythn 9y ago
      The problem is that proponents of mass immigration frame it as "either you are for mass immigration, or you are for the slaughtering/suffering/starvation/etc. of refugees in war torn areas"
      - k__ 9y ago
        Which you basically are, but that's just life. You can't have a cake and eat it.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        No, you're not - there are plenty of options in between the current state of things and complete indifference to peoples' lives. Alternatives include accelerated immigration programs focused on refugees. Or a peace-keeping intervention in the war-torn places. The issue GP is pointing out is that this framing is basically shutting out any possible discussion. While myself I'm rather currently in favour of relatively lenient immigration policies, a lot of people I know personally are anti-immigration because they feel like we're being scammed with a bait-and-switch tactic - i.e. that we're told to accept war refugees, and what we get instead are economical migrants. Whether justified by evidence or not, I find those fears are something reasonable for people to have.
mrmekon 9y ago
*according to a poll of 500-1000 people per country
- opportune 9y ago
  Which is a huge sample size
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Is it? Sounds pretty small to me. (Also, given it's an on-line poll, I have some doubts about whether the sampled population is representative in any way.)
    - opportune 9y ago
      http://www.dummies.com/education/math/statistics/how-sample-size-affects-the-margin-of-error/ http://www.dummies.com/education/math/statistics/how-sample-...
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        I'm not a statistician, but I have this feeling that this applies primarily when you're testing for simple things from an uniform population - not for a complex factor which has more possible spurious correlations involved than the number of samples you're taking. So I wouldn't have 95% confidence in a result of a politics poll on 1000 people per country. (Also, there's selection bias involved, including self-selection if the poll was voluntary. I generally don't trust voluntary opt-in polls much, as it's too easy to get bullshit results from them, and I don't often see people even realizing this.) EDIT: the poll authors do claim that their results are representative of the nation in some countries: "16 of the 27 countries surveyed generate nationally representative samples in their countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Poland, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and United States). Brazil, Chile, China, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey produce a national sample that is considered to represent a more affluent, connected population. These are still a vital social group to understand in these countries, representing an important and emerging middle class." https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/bbc-global-survey-world-divided https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/bbc-global-survey-wor...
Vaskivo 9y ago
How much of it is "just perception" and not actually true? The mainstream and social media can amplify negative sentiments, which propagate between people. This leads to a bad assessment of reality.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I'd say "almost all", and this is actually the place where perception becomes the reality, for all practical purposes. Society being polarized, vs. everyone believing the society is polarized and acting accordingly, is equivalent in practice. That's why I believe media people - both mainstream and social - are being dangerously irresponsible my sharing every possible polarizing bullshit to maximize ad clicks. And I mean "dangerously" as in "could cause significant loss of life at some point".
contourtrails 9y ago
In regards to immigration issues, the best long term solution is to build up Middle Eastern nations as productive societies capable of providing a comfortable life for their citizens. Consider the US's Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe post WW2. Western nations must partner in a concerted effort to build up Middle Eastern nations, rather than funding destructive and chaos inducing wars and revolutions.
- pjc50 9y ago
  They tried that in Iraq, and ran out of money a trillon dollars later without addressing any of the real problems.

A question for everyone: Would a delay in the open borders element have helped? For instances a gradual transition, with restrictions, gradually over several years moving towards full openeness?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
showsover 9y ago
Some restrictions pertaining to integration would help. Being able to speak the language within your first year in a new country helps integration and lessens the us-vs-them feeling. Ideally people wouldn't mind hearing a different language, but unfortunately we're not that tolerant yet.
- simion314 9y ago
  The rich countries want cheap workers, you can have them both cheap and educated in foreign languages, this workers also will go home when working season is over or if they don't like the conditions. The ones that do not directly benefit by this cheap workforce may not like this people that don't speak the main language well but the ones that benefit don't care.
  - michaelt 9y ago
    The rich countries want cheap workers, Do you think voters in rich countries want cheap workers? Because I don't think I've ever heard a politician say out loud that they want cheap workers.
    - iguy 9y ago
      It's a vote-winning strategy to keep an economic boom going, and importing young workers to fuel it is such a strategy. Almost all European countries did this. By the time said workers are old, and their kids (who aren't mentally comparing to the village their family) are unhappily unemployed... well that's decades later, you don't get elected by worrying about such things.
    - simion314 9y ago
      The ones that do not benefit from this do not want it, but there are family businesses that would fail without the cheap workers from other countries, I am not making the point that cheap work is a good thing or a bad thing, just that people are benefiting from this. Also this workers are working hard jobs in agriculture or constructions, with bad conditions, the citizens would not accept to work this job, for the agriculture obs I am not sure if even with bigger pay the regular citizens would want to work hard physical jobs outside in the bad weather.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  > Being able to speak the language within your first year in a new country helps integration and lessens the us-vs-them feeling. Not sure what you're talking about. I'm been to Italy and Germany many times and never felt unwelcome for not speaking their language.
  - mfoy_ 9y ago
    Visiting, or living.... there's a different standard applied to guests than to neighbours.
    - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
      If you're an Italian guy and we meet on the street and I don't speak Italian, how would you know if I'm visiting or living? EDIT: Before you respond that "immigration policy etc etc", notice that the post I was responding to was talking about interations between individuals (using phrases like "ideally people wouldn't mind hearing a different language"), not policy.
      - dazc 9y ago
        I've found in different countries within the EU that attitudes change dramatically to foreigners once you go beyond the centres of major cities or tourist areas. This is true even in Ireland where the only language barrier is an accent. Maybe this is what he means by the distinction of living/visiting?
- pjc50 9y ago
  > Some restrictions pertaining to integration would help. Again, on which immigrants are we talking about here? Could you be specific?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mcintyre1994 9y ago
There's already a lot of rights that countries can (and do) use to limit this, but for whatever reason the UK chose not to. We could have stopped/limited migration from the new EU members (for up to 7 years after they join), but chose not to. We could prosecute benefit fraud/welfare tourism, but choose not to. We could return EU migrants who don't work and can't support themselves, but choose not to. I have no idea what the motive for not taking any of these actions is, but whatever it is it'd probably apply to any other delay or transition you could come up with - unless it was forced on the UK I guess.
- DanBC 9y ago
  > We could prosecute benefit fraud/welfare tourism, but choose not to. We absolutely do. You need to look at "no recourse to public funds" (something that causes significant harm). See also many of the Windrush generation being refused benefits, or forced to repay benefits: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/22/government-aware-for-years-that-hostile-environment-hurt-windrush-generation https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/22/government-a... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/20/dwp-sent-windrush-pensioner-33000-bill-for-disability-benefits https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/20/dwp-sent-win... The current benefits regime is brutal to everyone, and there's extra brutality for migrants.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    I agree, it's an extremely limited system. I'd like to add an important fact which is that EU nationals do not get the NRPF limitation. http://www.nrpfnetwork.org.uk/information/Pages/eea-nationals.aspx http://www.nrpfnetwork.org.uk/information/Pages/eea-national...
fwdpropaganda 9y ago
What do you mean by "open borders"? If you're talking about the UK, the UK never had open borders in the sense that the rest of the EU has open borders (i.e. complete absense of customs).
pjc50 9y ago
Helped with which of those countries? With which borders? The top of the divided list is Serbia, which has still not fully healed from its own civil war. Then you have Italy, whose problems probably mostly relate to the financial crisis fallout. Next is Hungary, which is on the classic path of fascism by rallying against external and internal percieved enemies and anti-semitism: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/george-soros-upset-by-anti-semitic-campaign-against-him-in-hungary https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/george-soros-u... The UK being divided over Europe is hardly new, but the salience of the issue has been driven up by the press systematically misreporting it. There are also questions of the centralisation of power which aren't going away. Poland has an ongoing constitutional crisis which seems to be a straightforward concentration of power by the right: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/28/polands-in-crisis-again-here-are-3-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-law-and-justice-partys-attempt-to-take-over-the-courts/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.198ee3281824 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/2... Spain is also a victim of the financial crisis, but the important issue there is Catalonia.
- baud147258 9y ago
  I don't see how your particular example regarding Hungary is anti-semitism. Being a Jew does not protect you from being critized. Of course there could be example of anti-semitism from the gov in Hungary, but I don't think that's the case of the linked article.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-soros-orban-jews/hungarian-jews-ask-pm-orban-to-end-bad-dream-of-anti-semitism-idUSKBN19R24L https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-soros-orban-jews/... Longer: https://www.ft.com/content/ed901d78-38c4-11e8-8b98-2f31af407cc8 https://www.ft.com/content/ed901d78-38c4-11e8-8b98-2f31af407... "Each year, pro-government crowds rally on March 15, the anniversary of Hungary’s 1848 nationalist uprising against the Habsburg yoke. This year as usual Orban spoke of what it meant to be Hungarian — and not Hungarian. “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.” The Wandering Jew is back in Hungarian politics.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

throwaway5752 9y ago

They are under concerted attack by Russia, that bankrolls nationalist/anti-immigration movements to strategically weaken intra EU relations (and intra NATO). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/10/everything-we-know-so-far-about-russian-election-meddling-in-europe/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/10... presents a decent summary.

toasterlovin 9y ago
Or there is a sizable portion of the European population who don’t want mass immigration. It’s not exactly a new phenomenon that tensions develop when heterogeneous groups of humans inhabit the same geographical area.
- amiga-workbench 9y ago
  I'm totally for migration, but at a level where we can adequately integrate the people we bring in. I want to make sure everybody has the support they need and conversely I want the state to make sure the people coming in are acting in the best interests of the country. Is this really such a far-right fringe position to have?
  - ythn 9y ago
    The problem is that proponents of mass immigration frame it as "either you are for mass immigration, or you are for the slaughtering/suffering/starvation/etc. of refugees in war torn areas"
    - k__ 9y ago
      Which you basically are, but that's just life. You can't have a cake and eat it.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        No, you're not - there are plenty of options in between the current state of things and complete indifference to peoples' lives. Alternatives include accelerated immigration programs focused on refugees. Or a peace-keeping intervention in the war-torn places. The issue GP is pointing out is that this framing is basically shutting out any possible discussion. While myself I'm rather currently in favour of relatively lenient immigration policies, a lot of people I know personally are anti-immigration because they feel like we're being scammed with a bait-and-switch tactic - i.e. that we're told to accept war refugees, and what we get instead are economical migrants. Whether justified by evidence or not, I find those fears are something reasonable for people to have.

mrmekon 9y ago

*according to a poll of 500-1000 people per country

opportune 9y ago
Which is a huge sample size
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Is it? Sounds pretty small to me. (Also, given it's an on-line poll, I have some doubts about whether the sampled population is representative in any way.)
  - opportune 9y ago
    http://www.dummies.com/education/math/statistics/how-sample-size-affects-the-margin-of-error/ http://www.dummies.com/education/math/statistics/how-sample-...
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      I'm not a statistician, but I have this feeling that this applies primarily when you're testing for simple things from an uniform population - not for a complex factor which has more possible spurious correlations involved than the number of samples you're taking. So I wouldn't have 95% confidence in a result of a politics poll on 1000 people per country. (Also, there's selection bias involved, including self-selection if the poll was voluntary. I generally don't trust voluntary opt-in polls much, as it's too easy to get bullshit results from them, and I don't often see people even realizing this.) EDIT: the poll authors do claim that their results are representative of the nation in some countries: "16 of the 27 countries surveyed generate nationally representative samples in their countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Poland, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and United States). Brazil, Chile, China, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey produce a national sample that is considered to represent a more affluent, connected population. These are still a vital social group to understand in these countries, representing an important and emerging middle class." https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/bbc-global-survey-world-divided https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/bbc-global-survey-wor...

Vaskivo 9y ago

How much of it is "just perception" and not actually true? The mainstream and social media can amplify negative sentiments, which propagate between people. This leads to a bad assessment of reality.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
I'd say "almost all", and this is actually the place where perception becomes the reality, for all practical purposes. Society being polarized, vs. everyone believing the society is polarized and acting accordingly, is equivalent in practice. That's why I believe media people - both mainstream and social - are being dangerously irresponsible my sharing every possible polarizing bullshit to maximize ad clicks. And I mean "dangerously" as in "could cause significant loss of life at some point".

contourtrails 9y ago

In regards to immigration issues, the best long term solution is to build up Middle Eastern nations as productive societies capable of providing a comfortable life for their citizens. Consider the US's Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe post WW2. Western nations must partner in a concerted effort to build up Middle Eastern nations, rather than funding destructive and chaos inducing wars and revolutions.

pjc50 9y ago
They tried that in Iraq, and ran out of money a trillon dollars later without addressing any of the real problems.