‘Whiteness’, low youth engagement and lukewarm pro-Europeanism in some states risks eroding bloc’s founding values, expert says
Voting patterns and polling data from the past year suggest the EU is moving towards a more ethnic, closed-minded and xenophobic understanding of “Europeanness” that could ultimately challenge the European project, according to a major report.
The report, by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), identifies three key “blind spots” across the bloc and argues their intersection risks eroding or radically altering EU sentiment.
The report, shared exclusively with the Guardian, argues that the obvious “whiteness” of the EU’s politics, low engagement by young people and limited pro-Europeanism in central and eastern Europe could mould a European sentiment at odds with the bloc’s original core values.
Nationalism sucks no matter who does it. Address immigration problems using data and pragmatic policy. Don’t address it by allowing bigotry to fester in your population based on lies.
Seriously. Why does every single Center->Left of center government not understand the alt-right playbook at this point? Stop trying to fight fire with water (good guy things) and start taking a page out of the Dark Brandon playbook.
Eastern and Central Europe didn’t join the EU because they loved the western liberal ideals so much. It was a way for them to get out of poverty and to stop any aspirations of Russia to march into their countries. And now their economies have grown the basic needs of the people are met and now they have time to think about the other things the EU brings and turns out many don’t like many of those things.
Yep, this is my best guess for the EU, sadly. It will keep being democratic and united, but adopt a more East Asian-style attitude to the rest of the world in the process. Oh well, hopefully we can pick up the internationalist slack in Canada.
Meanwhile, the US is probably going to explode one way or the other.
Canada has our own issues with national identity, and it’s only being exacerbated by the weak policy making that is doing very little to stem the tide of irresponsible immigration that only serves the ruling class by growing their real estate portfolio’s worth. Between corruption at the highest level in our Federal government, and the Trumpian brainrot that PP and people like Jordan Peterson and Maxime Bernier are more than willing to incept feeble-minded Canadians with, we ain’t picking up shit for slack.
I mean, if we could build some more damn houses, immigration has been unambiguously great for our economy and general demographics, and Anglo Canadian identity was never a real thing to start with.
No shit. I see and hear so much pathetic racist bullshit in Europe I want to vomit more than I could possibly eat. Pathetic little racist shitstains thinking they are somehow superior to “brown people”. /a “white” person with common sense and no inferiority complexes
Seems bad, however: europenus
Yeah, Europe is about pure European whiteness. Just ask half the population of Iberia. Or most of the population of Hungary. Or pretty much anywhere previously ruled by the Ottomans.
Many Spanish people face racist attacks in more pale countries like Germany, where they are considered to be part of the brown people.
Fascists and Racists are not know for differentiation.
Wait a minute… what do you think an avarage Hungarian looks like?
Yes, the founders of the kingdom of Hungary came from the east… but we are not talking about Magyars 1500 years ago. Based on your post it seems you have some… stereotypical preconceptions about what modern day Hungarians look like.
No, I’m saying Europe hasn’t been all white people from day one. I’m not sure why that wasn’t clear to you. You do know the Moors were driven out of Iberia in the 15th century, right?
“White” has always been more about fitting a certain narrative than a specific shade of skin. Ask any black soccer player who’s ever missed an easy shot whether there’s a problem with racism in Europe. Or anyone of Roma descent.
Most of their countries do not have the same issues of structural racism that the US does (largely because there weren’t enough people with recent non-European origins to make a viable political constituency to target), and they don’t have the legacy of dealing with a country that was involuntarily multicultural from the beginning, but in some sense that has allowed casual and personal racism to fester in a way that most Americans would find disconcerting.
Ask any black soccer player
Not the best example if you want to argue that it’s not about skin color, tbh.
“White” has always been more about fitting a certain narrative than a specific shade of skin.
Replace “White” with “Racism” and you’re on the money.
Whiteness has always been more important in the US that in Europe. People here have always been surrounded by other “white” nationalities and cultures that they could still be racist against.
Of all the things people say about Roma, them not being classified as white is one I have never heard.
There wouldn’t be any problems if the idiots in charge required some integration for civic purposes. Can’t speak French? Alas, you can’t be a French citizen. Duh. Religious zealotry? No thanks, we’ll pass. You don’t agree with democracy and free speech? Then go away.
What do you do if - let’s assume- integration is proven to require a generation? If you have large migrations, they will lead to ethnic enclaves, which means the strongest point of integration will be when the children of the migrants enter the education system.
If the first gen of migrants doesn’t integrate properly. Like be able to speak the languages at a decent level so they can get a job. It will have cascading negative effects to the next generations. It will affect the next generation because they are more likely to grow up in a household that is poor, where they don’t speak the language of the host country which will negatively affect their school performance and where they don’t teach their kids the culture of the host country so these kids will always feel like outsiders.
This basically happened with the wave of migrants from North Africa and Turkey that were brought over to Western Europe as labor after WWII. The first gen didn’t cause much trouble, they just did their job and went home everyday, even though they didn’t integrate well. Since everyone thought including the migrants that they would return home after a few years. But it was the generations after where we see the negative effects of this failed integration. High school dropout , illiteracy, jobless and poverty rates are much higher than other groups including other migrant groups. And as a result crime rates including organized crime are also disproportionately higher among the descendants of those migrants from North Africa and Turkey. And also there is a lower sense of belonging among these migrants.
We basically have to make sure the first gen understands what it takes for their kids to thrive in their new homeland. And that means integrating, learn the language, understand the culture. And the government must prevent enclaves.
I’m a 3rd gen Asian migrant in Europe and went to school with many 2nd gen migrants from Morocco. I’ve seen this first hand. Many of these kids were basically behind in school and mostly because they didn’t speak the language well. And even as adults they still don’t speak it properly. I only know a few of them who went to uni. And the parents of those few spoke the host language at a decent level.
Integration requires a choice, not a generation. If what you mean to say is that hyperconservative religious zealots are unable to wrap their minds around women’s rights and democracy, then that’s their problem. Plenty of people around the world would give their left nut to live in a free democracy. Remember, that’s just 8% of the countries on this planet and basically the only ones with any upward mobility for the masses. The fact that religious fucks can’t be bothered to learn a new language or use basic reasoning to come to the conclusion that democracy is good is their problem.
Hyperconservative religious zealots of the kind who refuse to learn a new language aren’t even a majority in the nations these people come from. The “religious fucks who don’t learn the language” are small population which detracts from the millions who already have. Go look up the statistics on Syrians in Germany. The only people not learning the language are those who were already old when they got there.
Language is only a tiny part of integration. Authoritarian and conservative ideology is a much bigger issue.
Daily reminder that religion is a monstrous evil.
What do you do if - let’s assume- integration is proven to require a generation?
It doesn’t. Provably, so I really don’t get where you’re trying to go with this.
It’s actually often the opposite under certain conditions (which right now aren’t that uncommon): Kids of immigrants are less integrated than their parents. Which btw isn’t a Europe vs. non-Europe thing it also happens with inner-European migration. Heck the basic mechanism also applies to e.g. inner-German migration, kid of a Bavarian couple in Lower Saxony sticks out enough to be “The Bavarian” in class.
Heck the basic mechanism also applies to e.g. inner-German migration, kid of a Bavarian couple in Lower Saxony sticks out enough to be “The Bavarian” in class.
sounds like your society’s got a ton of racism that’s precluding the second generation from gaining acceptance
What’s your alternative? Enforce a common culture across the whole world so that noone ever sticks out when abroad?
Una in diversitate, not e pluribus unum.
No… the alternative already exists, which is to put up with people who “stick out.”
And what makes you assume that we don’t put up with Bavarians? We’re a stem family society it would be deeply suspicious to us when people from abroad suddenly discarded all of their roots. Come here from Japan? Prove you’re an actual human being by missing Nattō and prove you’ve become German by complaining about it being so hard to get here.
yeah, that seems like a society with diversity but no inclusivity
As a European, this article confuses me.
Hehe peanness
The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR):
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - Germany
Wikipedia about this sourceThe Guardian - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for The Guardian:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: Medium - Factual Reporting: Mixed - United Kingdom
Wikipedia about this sourceWhile skin hue may be a visual clue, I’m wondering if the underlying problem is global warming and global conflict driven by colonialism/capitalism.
I’m generally of the opinion that most people, even stupid people, are fairly chill when there’s only a one visible minority in their town, even if clueless and rude. Where things get dicey is when you combine economic insecurity from any source whatsoever with whatever number of visible minorities is enough to make a particular stupid person think, “hmm, that’s a lot of visible minorities.” Bonus racism/xenophobia points if any significant percentage of the minorities are gainfully employed. Double bonus points if any of them has ever committed a street crime.
