Identity Crisis

For Europe, the five years since the beginning of the Arab Spring have meant a dramatic influx of Muslim and Arab migrants into the continent. The rhetoric surrounding this influx has become more stern and unforgiving in the past year. Angela Merkel’s administration in Germany, the Financial Times reported, is seeking to eliminate “pull factors,” such as fiscal rewards programs and clothing and housing benefits, that have attracted immigrants from the Middle East—particularly Syria—to Central Europe.
And Merkel’s administration has plenty of company. In Italy, alarm over a rapid influx of Libyan asylum seekers over the summer has prompted conservatives in government to plan for mass deportations, since the country’s system of immigrant reception facilities, as the Telegraph reports, is “on the verge of collapse.” Hungary, in a similar vein, has started construction on a wall to span its southern border that would help prevent immigrants from entering illegally in the first place.
Why the Cold Shoulder?
Mass migration into Europe is something of a new phenomenon. For much of modern history, the continent exhibited a negative migration balance, meaning exportation of Europeans abroad exceeded the admission of immigrants. This changed for the first time during the decades following the end of World War II, when the emerging decolonization trend brought several million Europeans living in colonies across the globe back to their mother countries. As part of this global return phenomenon, 1.8 million French citizens left West Africa and Indochina, while nearly one million Portuguese and three hundred thousand Dutch departed from their respective colonies.
Though Europe at the time hardly had the infrastructure or preparation to anticipate such a large arrival, the continent didn’t consider itself under siege. The attitude during the period was one of relative welcoming, likely due to the racial familiarity of the returning population. Except for a small number of East Asian and African Christians, the immigrant mass largely reflected the European demographics of the era.
By contrast, the present immigrant demographic is much more heavily Muslim and Arab. This reflects the ethnic and religious composition of the major immigrant-providing countries, most of which are Muslim majority and have sizeable Arab populations. This immigrant group in particular, as Charles Kupchan, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, explained, has made much of Europe uncomfortable. “The relationship between immigrant Muslim communities and the majority populations [of Europe],” Kupchan said, “is not good.”
But this answer is not itself sufficient. The current political tone, highly critical of immigrants, has just as much to do with concerns about European cultures as it does with the ethno-religious composition of inbound migrants. A report by the United Nations Population Information Network from 1995 on post-Cold War migration trends revealed that Europeans living on the continent’s western half felt that the migration of former Eastern Bloc citizens—who were racially and, to a lesser extent, religiously similar to western Europeans—into the West had brought the continent “under siege.” It is likely that concern about immigrants entering Europe has as much to do with the preservation of a culture and its political institutions as it does with factors of ethnicity and religion.
There is also an element of fiscal concern. At present, Europe is the most frequented destination for immigrants fleeing North Africa and the Middle East, with nearly 80 percent of migrants citing the region as their terminus. Geographically, many of Europe’s weaker economies find themselves on the front lines of the migration crisis and ill-equipped to provide economic support to new arrivals. Europe’s stronger economies bear the cost of immigration doubly: having to support their own newcomers—of whom there are many—in addition to assisting their struggling neighbor states.
Some, like Volker Herzog, mayor or the German town of Vorra, feel a fiscal obligation to immigrant communities. As Herzog put it, “Wealthy Germany can afford to help.” Many of Herzog’s countrymen disagree, though—some violently so. And solutions satisfactory to all parties seem few and far between.
For now, Germany has implemented stopgap funding and begun offering free language classes to immigrants in order to prepare them for the possibility of long-term stays in Europe. The country has also eased restrictions on immigrant participation in the labor force. While the latter measure seems commonsense and easily applicable across Europe, much of Germany’s handling of the immigration crisis has been contingent on its strong national economy.
As Herzog noted, Germany is a rich country and, for the time being, has the funds to sustain a sizeable population influx. Much of Europe, however, is not rich enough to postpone answering the immigrant question any longer.