04 Feb Migration: Is Our Identity At Risk? (Event summary)
On January 7th CEID organized the 7th Euro-Atlantic Café with the support of the US Embassy and the Pallas Athéné Geopolitical Foundation (PAGEO). The panelists were Ms.Nancy Foner, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York and Mr. Gergely Prőhle, Deputy State Secretary for EU and International Affairs of the Ministry of Human Capacities.
Integration – the key issue
The complex issue of social integration is at the core of the European discourse on migration. Actually, it is rather the lack of integration which has become the most often cited phrase earning headlines and receiving extensive media coverage all over Europe. Nancy Foner, Professor of the Hunter College at the University of New York, started the discussion by revealing that the most salient difference between European and American migration trends was stemming just from the issue of integration. As Ms. Foner stressed, ‘Immigrants are integrated in the US’. Despite recent outcries about the end of the melting pot function of the United States, Ms. Foner firmly believes that these fears are mostly unfounded since the so-called three generations phenomenon is still holding sway. That translates into the gradual assimilation process of immigrant families, with the first generation learning English for the first time, the second already being bilingual, while the third ultimately forgetting its native language. In fact, it is the process through which English overrides one’s own mother tongue which concerns most Americans, instead of the hypothetical threat to the predominance of English. Some experts even point at the negative effects of assimilation into American culture. Apart from converting bilingual people into solely English-speaking, assimilation can also lead to a less healthy, ‘typical’ American lifestyle, which is different from the one immigrants had been used to in their countries of origin. And even though presidential candidate Donald Trump tries to base his anti-migrant rhetoric on proving that immigrants commit most of the crimes, statistics simply prove him wrong. On the other side of the Atlantic though, things are essentially different. Gergely Prőhle, Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Human Resources, lamented that positive experiences with successful integration of immigrant populations were extremely rare in Europe, especially in big cities where parallel societies and segregation prevailed.
The American experience
Of course, whether integration is successful or not depends on a variety of factors: social perceptions is one of the most important aspects. According to Ms. Foner, the greatest advantage of American mentality is that it expands the notion of national identity to immigrants very easily. While there were darker times in US history as well, nowadays keeping one’s ethnic identity has become something of a social expectation. The so-called hyphenated identities (meaning that someone can identify with more than one culture) form an essential part of the American way of life. This is largely due to the US experience as a settler society, in which no one had been a Native American at the beginning. Such a unique historical background makes it seemingly senseless to talk about who can be considered a native in contemporary American society, although in social sciences those who belong to the third generation of immigrants and their children are the ones who can technically be considered as native. It is important to remember though, that such tolerance and flexibility has not come automatically. Around the turn of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt delivered his famous speech, in which he declared hyphenated Americans as different in essence from ‘true Americans’. In Ms. Foner’s view, the civil rights movement and the children of Europeans arriving to the US in the early 20th century have had a great deal to do with the current open-minded approach.
Europe: A more designed migration is needed
As Mr. Prőhle underlined, the Europan experience of migration differed both in scale and nature from the American one. He warned not to misinterpret the current position of certain European countries such as Hungary towards migration as inherently xenophobic. Instead, it is the current wave of mass migration which prompted such radical responses on behalf of several governments across Europe. The refugee crisis constituted an emergency situation which needed fast reaction. On the other hand, immigrants who arrive through legal channels are more than welcome in Hungary – Mr. Prőhle emphasized. In his view, the overall European discourse on migration should rather focus on the inevitable consequences of the unfolding demographic asymmetry that negatively affects the aging societies of the industrialized West.
A security issue?
Given the generally positive notion of immigration in today’s American society, decreasing the number of legal migrants is not the issue there. Instead, it is illegal migration which constitutes one of the major concerns in the US, providing fertile soil for populist politicians who wish to gain public support by fuelling anti-migrant sentiments. Indeed, the high number – 11 million according to Ms. Foner – of undocumented migrants living in the country generates a considerable amount of social tension. Those who arrive illegally have currently no chance to apply for citizenship, therefore they are forced to accept the worst jobs which often do not comply with basic human rights standards. Their vulnerable status leads to wide-scale abuses and exploitation by employers. Furthermore, they constantly run the risk of being deported if discovered by authorities. Taken all these risks into account, Ms. Foner concluded that the selection of immigrants was actually an automatic process since only the most daring and persistent managed to make a living under such harsh conditions. The US leadership must have had the same idea in mind when it abolished all kinds of quantitative limitations previously imposed on immigrants. Although many Americans feel threatened by undocumented migrants taking away their jobs for lower wages, security concerns have not formed part of this threat perception until now. The particularly dangerous consequence of Donald Trump’s hate speech is that it merges two previously separate social issues: illegal migration – which had been more of an economic concern – and the security threat posed by radical Islam. Mexicans who account for the overwhelming majority of undocumented migrants have not been seen as a security risk. On the other hand, the fear of terrorism, although predominantly present in the American thinking, could not really be linked to immigration due to the low number of Muslims living in the US. The perception of Muslim immigrants as a national security threat is rather a spill-over effect of the European situation where radicalization of unintegrated Muslims is indeed a serious problem.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher.
© CEID, 2016
