WHAT WERE THEY SUPPOSED TO INTEGRATE TO?:

Why political thought is imprisoned in the present: Two new books offer striking insights into the suspicion of the public and fear of the future that underpins contemporary political analysis. (Frank Furedi, July 2007, spiked review of books)

The focus of Walter Laqueur’s anxiety, as expressed in The Last Days of Europe, is not so much on the political illiteracy of the public as on the cultural illiteracy of the European elites. Laqueur believes that for some time Europe has faced ‘an existential crisis – or, perhaps more accurately, a number of major crises, of which the demographic problems are the most severe’.

The Last Days of Europe explores the cultural and political consequences of the recent dramatic decline in the rate of fertility amongst European people. Laqueur is not sure why Europeans have lost interest in producing children, but he is certain that a society disinclined to reproduce is unlikely to survive for very long. Like the German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn – who fears that Europe’s ‘demographic capitulation’ calls into question the survival of the continent – Laqueur is convinced that Europe is running out of time. And that’s not the only problem…. The Last Days of Europe is also concerned, principally so, with the consequences of an unprecedented level of immigration into Europe.

Laqueur is worried about the differential fertility rates between Europe’s host populations and its more fecund immigrant communities. He points to the example of Brussels, where in 2004 more than 55 per cent of the children born were to immigrant parents. More worryingly still for Laqueur, a significant section of the new immigrant communities has no inclination to be integrated into European societies. Large immigrant communities seem to have little if any desire to participate in European culture; indeed, they appear to resent the values of the very societies that they inhabit.

Laqueur argues that integration has failed in part because immigrants were just not very interested in integrating, and also because they have been inadvertently encouraged, by the politics of multiculturalism, to establish parallel communities. For Europe’s decline, he blames policies that encouraged unplanned immigration, welfare systems that discouraged immigrants from pursuing productive economic activity, and an ethos of multiculturalism that refuses to affirm national cultures. According to Laqueur, the fault lies mainly with European governments and elites. And he simply cannot make sense of why they seem to have acted in such a confused and self-destructive manner:

‘It is difficult even in retrospect to establish what the authorities in these countries were thinking. Did they imagine that uncontrolled immigration would not involve major problems; that the economic, social, and cultural problems would be solved; and that the immigrants would one day disappear or that they would be well integrated?’

Yet his book is not simply a diatribe against the unanticipated consequences of large-scale immigration. Indeed, he recognises that the problems currently facing Europe are unlikely to be the outcome of immigration.

At one point, he rejects the idea that the ‘failure of integration was the fault of European societies’, only to contradict his own argument a page later. He notes that the European elites have lost faith in their own way of life, and that ‘among the establishment little pride was left of belonging to a certain nation (or to Europe)’. ‘Such societies were not in a position to provide guidance to newcomers’, he says, who in any case ‘were bound to gain the impression that prevailing laws and norms could safely be ignored’. In such a climate of ‘cultural and moral relativism’, it is understandable that many immigrants have not been inspired by the way of life of their host communities. Many have a sense of revulsion for their host society, rather than a desire to integrate into it. The anti-European radicalisation of some sections of immigrant youth can be seen, at least indirectly, as a form of disgust with the moral disorientation of the societies they live in. The problem lies clearly with Europe, not its immigrants.

The main merit of Laqueur’s book is that it is prepared to engage with some very uncomfortable but important truths. At a time when the European elites hide behind meaningless EU rhetoric, it is essential that we call on societies to provide an account of what they actually stand for. Europe’s failure to integrate some of its newcomers may well be a result of the fact that it is far from clear what these newcomers would be integrated into. So what is to be done? Laqueur is not very hopeful about the future. His conclusion? That Europe should carry out some damage-limitation exercises in relation to its immigrant communities. He seems resigned to the inevitability of European decline, while at the same time expressing hope that we might be able to avert a full collapse. For Laqueur, the present, for all of its faults, appears preferable to an uncertain future. He ends by arguing: ‘The debate should be about which of Europe’s traditions and values can still be saved.’

The truth that European elites can't wrap their intellects around is that Muslim Europe will be more Western than secular Europe was.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 19, 2007 6:43 PM