EPTSo how exactly are you coming to the conclusion that blaming "immigration" is dishonest?
European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1067
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Velr
Switzerland10954 Posts
So how exactly are you coming to the conclusion that blaming "immigration" is dishonest? | ||
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
On March 06 2018 21:46 Velr wrote: Uhm, didn't the largest voting block vote "anti"-immigrant (MS5+right wing coalition)? So how exactly are you coming to the conclusion that blaming "immigration" is dishonest? Blaming only immigration is dishonest*. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
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Dan HH
Romania9246 Posts
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Acrofales
Spain18445 Posts
On March 07 2018 00:03 Dangermousecatdog wrote: How strange. You would think that it would be the northerly areas with the most migrants, yet these areas are the least likely to vote for anti-immigration parties Pretty sure that's the same in most countries. Anti-immigration sentiment is correlated with poverty, not with #immigrants/sqkm. | ||
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warding
Portugal2397 Posts
On March 07 2018 00:03 Dangermousecatdog wrote: How strange. You would think that it would be the northerly areas with the most migrants, yet these areas are the least likely to vote for anti-immigration parties Uhm, you sure? Isn't Lega the main anti-immigrant party and isn't that mainly popular in the North? Actually, weren't they even advocating for the independence of the North a while back? | ||
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
On March 07 2018 00:03 Dangermousecatdog wrote: How strange. You would think that it would be the northerly areas with the most migrants, yet these areas are the least likely to vote for anti-immigration parties You meant South, right? The Lega does its best results in the North. | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28895 Posts
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Silvanel
Poland4769 Posts
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Velr
Switzerland10954 Posts
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28895 Posts
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Longshank
1648 Posts
On March 07 2018 20:05 Liquid`Drone wrote: Isn't it quite common for anti-immigrant sentiments to be strongest in regions without that many immigrants? Way more immigrants in cities, but non-immigrants who live in cities are more positive towards immigration than people from rural areas. Makes sense to me too - media primarily exposes you to negative stories, while living in areas with a lot of immigrants exposes you to both the negative and positive sides. From a Swedish perspective however, many depopulating small rural cities and villages are more or less depending on immigrants to keep the place alive and are very welcoming towards newcomers. That seems to be where you see the most successful cases of integration, not really in the big cities. I guess immigrants being desired in combination with a small town without ghettos where people are forced to mix on daily basis is a good foundation for successful integration. But yeah, I agree with you on the thing about anti-immigrant sentiments in regions without immigrants, but I don't think it has to be a rural vs city thing. | ||
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Silvanel
Poland4769 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
The people, at least in many Austrian areas, live in long-grown communities with their clubs, their shops, their jobs, their local oligarchs, their priest... and they expect a lot of respect from each other. They expect that the locals buy locally, that the local politics looks after the local business, and that the local business provides jobs. They are the typical socialist-conservatives that get pissed off by "Vienna" or "Brussels" interfering with their lives and they hate that they like going to the local Kebap and hate how that Serbian Family was able to afford a bigger house than their son (which must be because they are not paying taxes). And that their daughter has moved to Vienna to study and will never come back. I believe the essence is that many of them don't want to take responsibility for the world around them changing. They want the politicians to keep things as they are for them and immigration is one of the most visible ways of change - and one that you are not self-responsible for, like buying a foreign car instead of spending more money at that one, local bar which had to close down. | ||
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28895 Posts
On March 07 2018 22:33 Longshank wrote: From a Swedish perspective however, many depopulating small rural cities and villages are more or less depending on immigrants to keep the place alive and are very welcoming towards newcomers. That seems to be where you see the most successful cases of integration, not really in the big cities. I guess immigrants being desired in combination with a small town without ghettos where people are forced to mix on daily basis is a good foundation for successful integration. But yeah, I agree with you on the thing about anti-immigrant sentiments in regions without immigrants, but I don't think it has to be a rural vs city thing. Yeah I totally think that one of the failures of integration has been too high concentration in certain urban regions. That's where most of the problems derive from, and I second the opinion that the immigrants who come to rural regions tend to integrate much more successfully, for the reasons you describe. Still it's not that easy because it requires infrastructure, and saying immigrants aren't allowed to live where they want can be considered somewhat of an overreach.  | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On March 07 2018 00:55 Acrofales wrote: Pretty sure that's the same in most countries. Anti-immigration sentiment is correlated with poverty, not with #immigrants/sqkm. It's not really that straight forward though. In many countries the very poorest don't all tend to turn out for anti-immigrant parties. The average AfD voter is actually quite wealthy and at least has an average education. Same is true for Trump voters, far from the poorest demographic in the US. Those voters often seem to be a certain subset of the middle-class. Culturally removed from 'urban values' as BigJ indicated, they usually had a well paying job in trades or manufacturing where pay was higher than education status would indicate and which has eroded over the years, they have their shops and bars and communities but that seems to be going away now too. They're not the precariat. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
On March 07 2018 23:22 Big J wrote: I don't know where you guys come from, but coming from a small rural town with my girlfriend coming from an even smaller village I would simply say it is a matter of mentality. The people, at least in many Austrian areas, live in long-grown communities with their clubs, their shops, their jobs, their local oligarchs, their priest... and they expect a lot of respect from each other. They expect that the locals buy locally, that the local politics looks after the local business, and that the local business provides jobs. They are the typical socialist-conservatives that get pissed off by "Vienna" or "Brussels" interfering with their lives and they hate that they like going to the local Kebap and hate how that Serbian Family was able to afford a bigger house than their son (which must be because they are not paying taxes). And that their daughter has moved to Vienna to study and will never come back. I believe the essence is that many of them don't want to take responsibility for the world around them changing. They want the politicians to keep things as they are for them and immigration is one of the most visible ways of change - and one that you are not self-responsible for, like buying a foreign car instead of spending more money at that one, local bar which had to close down. Funny that, replace priest with vicar and "Vienna" with "Westminster/London", "Brussels" with "the EU" and Serbian with Indians, and you have a little englander. ( With one caveat though; most English unashamedly love kebabs.) | ||
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RvB
Netherlands6322 Posts
On March 07 2018 23:22 Big J wrote: I don't know where you guys come from, but coming from a small rural town with my girlfriend coming from an even smaller village I would simply say it is a matter of mentality. The people, at least in many Austrian areas, live in long-grown communities with their clubs, their shops, their jobs, their local oligarchs, their priest... and they expect a lot of respect from each other. They expect that the locals buy locally, that the local politics looks after the local business, and that the local business provides jobs. They are the typical socialist-conservatives that get pissed off by "Vienna" or "Brussels" interfering with their lives and they hate that they like going to the local Kebap and hate how that Serbian Family was able to afford a bigger house than their son (which must be because they are not paying taxes). And that their daughter has moved to Vienna to study and will never come back. I believe the essence is that many of them don't want to take responsibility for the world around them changing. They want the politicians to keep things as they are for them and immigration is one of the most visible ways of change - and one that you are not self-responsible for, like buying a foreign car instead of spending more money at that one, local bar which had to close down. I live in a rural village myself and in my experience you're largely right. There's much more to it than unemployment and it's to a large extent cultural. My village actually has a lower unemployment rate than the Dutch average yet anti immigrant sentiment is still huge. | ||
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Mafe
Germany5966 Posts
This is going to be a longer post, but it is that has been in the back of my mind for a long time, so I wanted to share. I come from a "village" background, which according to my understanding, here in germany refers to a settlement of at most a few thousand people where you usually go to a bigger town with 5-digits of people for secondary education, specialised doctors, cinema, etc, but at least you could do everyday shopping, have a basic doctor and the usual football club, music chappella etc in your village. I had also had many schoolmates from smaller villages (3-digit population) that often had to travel 30-60minutes in one direction each day to attend school. All this was the 90s in Baden-Württemberg, a relatively rich region even for germanys standards. Now I live in a bigger city (200k) and will move on to an even bigger one (500k). When I look at those villages where I grew up and much of the stuff I just mentioned is still there, but on a noticeable downward spiral: The old doctors are approaching retirement, and replacements are hard to find. Shopping is possible, but shops have moved to industrial areas on the edges of town. Public transportation is being thinned out, which is tough for very old people, and also young people who are trapped in their village on the weekend. Young adults, who used are needed to sustain the music chapella etc move to bigger cities more often as studying is more common. Nothing of this would be dramatic on its own, but in combination it means that the established lifestyle of those who continues living there is under thread and has been for probably two decades now, and frankly, there is nothing they can do about it. So they need support from the society as a whole, but the public eye rarely looks in their direction. Because the modern society in the western world is inherently biased to bigger cities. It is just natural that anything that requires a larger-scale point of view, mostly politics and media, large companies are located in cities. But then the people who are working in these fields tend to live in cities, and as such it is also only natural that the problems from smaller are not that present to them. Statistically speaking, the people in powerful position are not representative for the country as a whole. I think this is most noticeable in the media. Yes, this I do believe the fox-news-AfD-style media bashing is based on some truths even though it is largely bullshit. But as long as these truths are not adressed, it will continue to work. As an example, before the 2017 german election zeit.de (the website of one of the most well-regarded german weekly newspaper), started doing a series of reports in about life in the rural parts of germany. All of the reports were a great read. Yet I found the basic principle and presentation to be at times highly condescending, as it was occasionally presented in an expedition-into-the-unknown tone. I mean, this is a paper which (at least thats what I thought) always had the claim to be relevant for the entirety of germany, yet it presents these people as some who need to be explained to be understood, often are "surprisingly" not showing sympathy for the AfD despite living in a village (minor hyperbole on my side), whose choice to keep living in a village (often one with still 30kish inhabitants) is admirable yet still somewhat outlandish. Yet, apparently 42% of germans live in villages with less than 20k people. Imagine you are one of them read such a report. I was happy to see that they renewed this series even in the year after the election, so some credit to them. Another example, if you look at news, they often show a few intervies with "common people in the streets" for whatever reason. Yet because nationwide tv channels are located in cities, they naturally do this next to where they are located. Maybe it is just a minor, but I do believe that at least of a subconscious level after some time the people in villages will realize that "hey these places where the average joes are voicing their opinions never look anything like the places where the average joe that I am actually lives" (Of course, there is no guarantee that if random people in a city are random people from this city, especially in a shopping district which is the common background for these interviews). Sometimes I think that for all the justified initiatives to increase participation of women, migrants etc in society, having a similar thing for people from rural areas would be good too to get a more representative view of society as a whole; only the irony of things is that these very people would then be likely to move to cities. I could keep writing more about this subject but for now I'll stop to see if this actually gets attention. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
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