5 ms·

> From Europe, where people share some culture, they never the less still experience integration issues where locals resent foreign populations, example France

> From Europe, where people share some culture, they never the less still experience integration issues where locals resent foreign populations, example France and polish workers, or Germany and Serbs or Turks, or Spaniards. It's not really foreign populations per se. The resentment is really mostly socioeconomic. Nobody resents Persians in the Netherlands because the Persians who migrated here are mostly upper-class with a long tradition of higher education. Whereas the Turks you mentioned were considered guest laborers, Dutch companies literally drove busses to the poorest little villages in Turkey in the 60s and found the people with the least education, who couldn't read or write and had perhaps 2-3 years of primary education, then offered them a job working unskilled labour in a factory hoping they'd go back home after 10 years, basically the 1960s equivalent of off-shoring production to China at a pre-globalisation time when the factories were still back home. Knowing what we know of lower-socioeconomic classes (higher rates of crime, lower rates of education, higher pregnancy rates, more conflict with authority etc etc), it's no real surprise it turned out this way. The sad thing is that in Europe the debate about these problems acts as if it's a cultural issue (e.g. Turkish culture or Islamic culture), when it's really a socioeconomic problem (taking the least educated people from an already poor country, putting them in factory housing and not teaching them the local language, and expecting them to go back home or thrive), not a cultural one. And this debate has essentially created tons of animosity because it invites all this 'class of civilisations' bs rhetoric and turns it into what in the US is referred to as a 'racial' problem.

bruceb 11y ago
In Europe it is a cultural issue also. There is a reason even Canada has Canadian content laws to protect from the onslaught of American music. It is not unreasonable for people to want to preserve culture.
- Nadya 11y ago
  >It is not unreasonable for people to want to preserve culture. It has sentimental and historical value, but I don't think it's particularly important. We can argue cultural identity, but that's only important so long as there are various cultures. In a monoculture world, the idea of cultural identity would be a lost concept. Cultural anthropology, which while highly interesting and informative of human relations, isn't very highly valued by most people. The jobs are in such low demand (and with such low salary) that I decided not to try and get a job as a cultural and linguistic anthropologist. Which, while I'd have loved the work and have found it interesting, I can't exactly say it has much "meaningful" merit. As for CanCon laws, I've yet to speak to a Canadian that was supportive of them. I'm sure they exist - or the laws wouldn't. A large number of Canadian Netflix users mask their IP to be from America to get "better content" [0]. It seems that Canadian nationalism is mostly a 60's/70's generation thing. [0] http://o.canada.com/technology/internet/thousands-of-canadians-are-accessing-u-s-netflix http://o.canada.com/technology/internet/thousands-of-canadia...
  - danielweber 11y ago
    The reason people want to move to the US is the US's culture. The people share a wide agreement for rule of law, want to resolve issues through the political process, can usually be shamed into supporting freedom of speech, and don't want to kill their neighbors for having the wrong religion. It's not something magical about the soil that makes people want to move to the US. It's the culture. The more people that can use it, the better, but add too many new people too fast and it suddenly stops working.
    - Someone 11y ago
      Certainly, that is not all of it. For example, I would think that many, many Mexicans mainly try to move to the US for the money.
    - Daishiman 11y ago
      > The reason people want to move to the US is the US's culture. No dude, it's the money. I have at least a dozen friends who are on H1Bs working in SV for different large software companies. They're either going there because that's where the best-paying jobs are or they're staying for just a couple of years to save some money.
      - danielweber 11y ago
        It's the culture than enables the money. If you were to beam all the Americans into space and them beam all the Mexicans into their place, they wouldn't magically achieve US levels of income just because of their physical location.
        Daishiman 11y ago
        The culture doesn't enable the money. Historical reasons going far beyond that explain it very well, among them: the size of the internal American market, the amount and ease of investing capital within the US, leverage of the US government's global projection of power by its industries, ease of immigration (prior to this past decade's immense increase in difficulty for migrating legally for skilled migrants), etc etc. It's true that just swapping people places right now would not substitute anything. But you can bet that the immense natural resources, available land and influx of immigrants through the 20th century have impacts as much, if not more, important than whatever contemporary cultural trends exist.
- exelius 11y ago
  Only slightly related, but for as much as Americans consider ourselves inextricably linked with Europe, we're much more similar both economically and culturally to South America. The average American's life looks a lot more like that of an office worker in Colombia or Brazil than it does someone in Berlin or London. This is likely because South American countries developed using the USA as a model, but it's interesting nonetheless.
  - mc32 11y ago
    Culturally the US is protestant leaning. Latam is culturally catholic. Latams see Spain as a cultural beacon, whereas the the U.S. now a beacon in its own right, used to have Britain and France as their cultural beacons --yes France was nominally catholic, but they culturally leaned protestant in many ways. They are more northern European than Mediterranean. Also, while in the U.S. the so called 'old boys net' helps to get things done, in Latam there's something akin to Chinese guanxi (關係) in getting things done. Relationships are paramount and make corruption endemic and inextricable. It's quite diff from U.S. and euro culture.)))
    - exelius 11y ago
      Historically you are right, but as far as things like food, music, business attitudes, etc. there's a lot more common ground. Spain has also lost a lot of its cultural cache in recent years; many South American countries are better places to live at this point (well, unless you have enough money that you don't need a job, in which case Spain is one of the best places on earth). If I had to pick one thing though, it's the outspoken gregariousness. Europeans are generally pretty reserved; you would never approach someone you didn't know and try to strike up a conversation. A European might tiptoe around a sensitive subject, while people from the USA or South America would be very opinionated and launch into an argument -- even if they don't know you very well. Also, it doesn't hurt that everyone in South America basically shops at Wal-Mart (seriously, they are freaking everywhere; even more so than in the US). And not so long ago, corruption was inextricable from business in the US and Europe as well. Trust-busting in the US in the early 1900s broke down the networks here, and WW2 smashed them across Europe, but similar rule-of-law revolutions haven't happened yet in other parts of the world. But they are starting to as the education level rises and the middle-class expands and demands a clean-up.

bruceb 11y ago

In Europe it is a cultural issue also. There is a reason even Canada has Canadian content laws to protect from the onslaught of American music. It is not unreasonable for people to want to preserve culture.

Nadya 11y ago
>It is not unreasonable for people to want to preserve culture. It has sentimental and historical value, but I don't think it's particularly important. We can argue cultural identity, but that's only important so long as there are various cultures. In a monoculture world, the idea of cultural identity would be a lost concept. Cultural anthropology, which while highly interesting and informative of human relations, isn't very highly valued by most people. The jobs are in such low demand (and with such low salary) that I decided not to try and get a job as a cultural and linguistic anthropologist. Which, while I'd have loved the work and have found it interesting, I can't exactly say it has much "meaningful" merit. As for CanCon laws, I've yet to speak to a Canadian that was supportive of them. I'm sure they exist - or the laws wouldn't. A large number of Canadian Netflix users mask their IP to be from America to get "better content" [0]. It seems that Canadian nationalism is mostly a 60's/70's generation thing. [0] http://o.canada.com/technology/internet/thousands-of-canadians-are-accessing-u-s-netflix http://o.canada.com/technology/internet/thousands-of-canadia...
- danielweber 11y ago
  The reason people want to move to the US is the US's culture. The people share a wide agreement for rule of law, want to resolve issues through the political process, can usually be shamed into supporting freedom of speech, and don't want to kill their neighbors for having the wrong religion. It's not something magical about the soil that makes people want to move to the US. It's the culture. The more people that can use it, the better, but add too many new people too fast and it suddenly stops working.
  - Someone 11y ago
    Certainly, that is not all of it. For example, I would think that many, many Mexicans mainly try to move to the US for the money.
  - Daishiman 11y ago
    > The reason people want to move to the US is the US's culture. No dude, it's the money. I have at least a dozen friends who are on H1Bs working in SV for different large software companies. They're either going there because that's where the best-paying jobs are or they're staying for just a couple of years to save some money.
    - danielweber 11y ago
      It's the culture than enables the money. If you were to beam all the Americans into space and them beam all the Mexicans into their place, they wouldn't magically achieve US levels of income just because of their physical location.
      - Daishiman 11y ago
        The culture doesn't enable the money. Historical reasons going far beyond that explain it very well, among them: the size of the internal American market, the amount and ease of investing capital within the US, leverage of the US government's global projection of power by its industries, ease of immigration (prior to this past decade's immense increase in difficulty for migrating legally for skilled migrants), etc etc. It's true that just swapping people places right now would not substitute anything. But you can bet that the immense natural resources, available land and influx of immigrants through the 20th century have impacts as much, if not more, important than whatever contemporary cultural trends exist.
exelius 11y ago
Only slightly related, but for as much as Americans consider ourselves inextricably linked with Europe, we're much more similar both economically and culturally to South America. The average American's life looks a lot more like that of an office worker in Colombia or Brazil than it does someone in Berlin or London. This is likely because South American countries developed using the USA as a model, but it's interesting nonetheless.
- mc32 11y ago
  Culturally the US is protestant leaning. Latam is culturally catholic. Latams see Spain as a cultural beacon, whereas the the U.S. now a beacon in its own right, used to have Britain and France as their cultural beacons --yes France was nominally catholic, but they culturally leaned protestant in many ways. They are more northern European than Mediterranean. Also, while in the U.S. the so called 'old boys net' helps to get things done, in Latam there's something akin to Chinese guanxi (關係) in getting things done. Relationships are paramount and make corruption endemic and inextricable. It's quite diff from U.S. and euro culture.)))
  - exelius 11y ago
    Historically you are right, but as far as things like food, music, business attitudes, etc. there's a lot more common ground. Spain has also lost a lot of its cultural cache in recent years; many South American countries are better places to live at this point (well, unless you have enough money that you don't need a job, in which case Spain is one of the best places on earth). If I had to pick one thing though, it's the outspoken gregariousness. Europeans are generally pretty reserved; you would never approach someone you didn't know and try to strike up a conversation. A European might tiptoe around a sensitive subject, while people from the USA or South America would be very opinionated and launch into an argument -- even if they don't know you very well. Also, it doesn't hurt that everyone in South America basically shops at Wal-Mart (seriously, they are freaking everywhere; even more so than in the US). And not so long ago, corruption was inextricable from business in the US and Europe as well. Trust-busting in the US in the early 1900s broke down the networks here, and WW2 smashed them across Europe, but similar rule-of-law revolutions haven't happened yet in other parts of the world. But they are starting to as the education level rises and the middle-class expands and demands a clean-up.