by Esther Ben-David
1st part of 2
Western Europe has gone through two major stages in its recent immigration history. In the first stage, European leaders misjudged the effects of immigration and, in the second, they miscalculated how hard it would be to stop an immigration dynamic.
Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, European countries have changed from net sources of emigration to attractive destinations for immigration. Today Muslims, many from rural traditional areas, comprise the bulk of non-European immigrants to Europe. Even those who have settled in cities retain a village mentality and are seen as backward by the business and cultural elites in their home countries. Moroccans who settled in the Netherlands and Belgium, for example, are mostly Berbers from the Rif mountains, not the Arab cultural elite[1] from Casablanca, Rabat, or Fez. These immigrants came to Europe in order to build railroads, work in the coal mines, clean streets, and do the jobs that Europeans did not want to do.[2] Both "push" and "pull" factors affect immigration. Push factors are those that lead the immigrant to leave his homeland while pull factors are those which attract him to a different country. Europe and other Western liberal countries exert a strong pull on immigrants. However, stopping immigration is not easy, if at all possible, since the same European liberal laws that attract immigrants also prevent states from acting to stop them from coming or, later, to deport them.
Background.
After World War II, countries such as France, Belgium, and Germany started to allow and even entice foreign workers to come. The economic boom in those countries attracted immigrants, first from poor southern European countries such as Italy and Spain, and then from the far shores of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Middle East. The United Kingdom attracted immigrants from throughout the British empire: Indians and Pakistanis came to Britain from the 1950s on, Bangladeshis from the 1970s. France, Germany, and the Netherlands also attracted immigrants from their former colonies. The host European governments understood these migrants to be temporary guest workers as did many of the migrants themselves.
The economic downturn in the early 1970s led European policymakers to realize that immigration was not always a positive phenomenon. Many immigrants were suddenly unemployed, but they did not go back to their home countries. As fears grew that foreign workers sought permanent residence, between 1973 and 1975, Western European governments instituted an "immigration stop," introducing restrictive measures to deter immigration and to put a stop to recruiting foreign labor.
This immigration stop had unforeseen consequences. Migration of foreign workers dwindled, but the migration dynamic nevertheless continued. Migrants residing in Europe could continue to sponsor their extended family's immigration and, indeed, relaxation of restrictions on family reunification encouraged further immigration. The time between the first proposals for a halt and their implementation exacerbated the problem as immigrants hurried to bring over their families, fearful that the doors to Europe would soon close forever.
Ironically, in the decades that have passed since the halt to immigration, more immigrants have come to Europe than in preceding decades. Indeed, by looking at the number of immigrants in various countries, it would be difficult to determine how far back the block had been implemented in practice. In the Netherlands, for example, the number of first- and second-generation Moroccan and Turkish immigrants has increased almost tenfold since the 1974 halt.
Researchers have long sought to chart the immigration dynamic and to predict future trends. When Poland joined the European Union, forecasts of the number of Polish workers who would immigrate to the United Kingdom underestimated reality. The British government expected 15,000 immigrants a year from the newly-admitted European Union countries but instead approved close to 430,000 applications in two years, a figure that does not include self-employed immigrants who could resettle without applying for a work permit.[3]
Even when the trend is known, forecasts tend to miscalculate reality. A Dutch study from 1994, for example, thought marriage immigration had already peaked.[4] However, a study from 2005 by a Dutch government agency, Statistics Netherlands, shows that between 1995 and 2003, marriage immigration of Turks almost doubled, increasing from slightly less than 2,000 per year to close to 4,000. Marriage immigration of Moroccans in the same period tripled, increasing from slightly over 1,000 a year to about 3,000. This same study expects marriage immigration to peak by the mid 2020s, as second generation immigrants age.[5]
In Germany, while the Turkish population stabilized briefly in the 1980s,[6] it later increased steadily despite the 1973 check on immigration.
And a 1997 study by the Norwegian Statistical Bureau found that 50 percent of immigrants had arrived since 1989, and that 30 percent of the total immigrant community had arrived in just the past five years.[7]
And, according to the lowest available estimates, the number of North Africans in France tripled since the government started restricting immigration in 1974.
An Immigration Dynamic.
While North African and Middle Eastern immigrants to Europe initially focused on filling the labor market for short periods of time before returning home after a few years, after the immigration stop the new immigrants were whole families—husbands, wives, and children—who left their homeland behind to settle permanently in Europe. The arrival of families both changed the scale of immigration and the entire character of the immigrant communities. Immigrants now grew concerned about schooling, health care, and proper housing.
Families also changed the immigrants' attitudes towards religious and cultural values. Whereas single workers either isolated themselves or sought to experience the more liberal lifestyle of Europe, the arrival of families led immigrants to transport their honor culture and modesty standards to the West and to put into practice their attitudes toward women. And while temporary workers accepted basement mosques as a temporary solution to their communal prayer needs, with increasing numbers and the presence of families, these were no longer adequate. Immigrant parents brought their children to the West to give them new opportunities, but they did not want them to fall prey to Western temptations.
Immigration is a personal decision. However, once many people make the decision to leave their home country, the flow of immigrants takes on a life of its own. This immigration dynamic is hard, if not impossible, to stop. Immigrants choose to go to destinations with which they are acquainted and about which they have heard from friends and relatives who immigrated previously. Such destinations provide informal support structures and social networks. This leads to a situation where immigrants from a certain home area all congregate in a certain area in the host country, thereby leading to immigrant ghettoes. In the United States, for example, Minneapolis-St. Paul has become an unlikely immigrant ghetto for Somalis, and Los Angeles—"Tehrangeles"—is an immigrant destination for Iranians.
In Belgium, similarly, immigrants from the Turkish city of Emirdağ and its vicinity settled in Brussels and Ghent. [8] According to one emigrant from Emirdağ, it is common knowledge that family and friends live on the same street or neighborhood in Belgium as they do "back home."[9] In the Netherlands, many of the Moroccans come from the Rif mountain town of al-Hoceima; Bangladeshis, mostly coming from the northeastern Sylhet area, came to the United Kingdom and settled in the East London boroughs, particularly in Tower Hamlets. Pakistanis, mostly from Kashmir and the Punjab, settled in Birmingham, with another large concentration in Bradford. The immigrants who first came to the country set the way for their compatriots to follow. Pakistanis, Vietnamese, and more recently, Iraqis, are the largest groups of non-European immigrants in Norway. North Africans and Albanians make up the largest groups in Italy.
The more people emigrate from a certain town or village, the more likely it becomes that their neighbors or their neighbors' children will follow in their path. The immigration dynamic means that entire generations of children in villages and towns across the Third World grow up knowing that they are likely to immigrate in the future, either by marrying a cousin or by other means.
Europe today offers unique possibilities. It is much closer to North Africa and Turkey than other immigration countries such as the United States, Canada, or Australia and can be reached without air travel. Additionally, freedom of travel within Europe enables immigrants to start in the most accessible country and later make their way to their true destination. This is especially true with asylum seekers, who may arrive in Greece or Italy, for example, but then try to make their way to "easier" countries like Sweden or Norway.[10]
Technological advances have also changed immigration. Travel accessibility has transformed journeys of months or years into hours or days. Major European air carriers offer direct flights connecting Europe to the Middle East and Asia. Even after the immigrant has arrived, he can keep in constant contact with his home country: by phone and the Internet or via satellite television.[11] He can also return for summer vacations. Whereas immigrants of the past had little choice but to assimilate into their host countries, today, they can retain their native identities to the exclusion of the national identity of their new home.
In many cases, the immigrant "sojourns,"[12] living in both countries, setting up two residences and splitting his time between his new country and his homeland. Sojourning not only retards integration but also ensures continuation of the immigration dynamic since the immigrant's countrymen back home are continuously in touch and reminded of the wealth that immigration offers.
Immigrants tend to invest back in their home country, building palatial residences to show their success in Europe. There are entire neighborhoods in some countries that were built by emigrants who rarely live there: "Little Norway" in Gujarat, Pakistan,[13] or the "Belgian Neighborhood" in Tangier.[14] These neighborhoods usually only come to life in the summer when the immigrants return for annual vacations.
Investing in the home country also means less money to invest in day-to-day life in their new country. Immigrants might still be living in squalid conditions in Paris or Amsterdam, but their relatives in Morocco and Turkey can be satisfied with their success. Among Turkish immigrants in Belgium, there are those who borrow money to buy an expensive car for the summer trip to Turkey in order to show that they have succeeded in Europe. They then sell the car upon their return to Europe.[15] The "Belgian neighborhood" in Tangier was supposedly built with the savings and child benefits of the immigrants. [16]
Current Immigration: Family Reunification.
Currently, immigration to Europe is possible through several channels: through an employment or student permit for skilled workers, by marriage immigration and family reunification, or asylum and illegal immigration. Skilled foreign workers and students are considered the ideal immigrants though this immigration has a negative effect on their home countries. Third World countries need trained doctors, engineers, and academics to push their economy forward. The "brain drain" encourages further immigration and retards progress.
Family reunification is one of the most common ways to immigrate to Europe today. This means that immigration laws in host countries have transformed immigrant youth into virtual human visas. The commonality of cousin marriages to aid the extended family or to keep resources within the family encourages marriages between immigrants and family members back in the host country. The Western legal system reinforces tribal marriage patterns by giving families incentives to use marriage to work around the European immigration system. In Norway, for example, the proportion of cousin-marriages within the Pakistani immigrant community is greater than in Pakistan itself.[17]
Marriage immigration also perpetuates itself. Studies show that the age at which an immigrant woman first becomes a mother increases and the number of children decreases the longer her family is in Europe.[18] That is, a first generation immigrant would exhibit behavior closer to her native country while a second and third generation immigrant would tend to be more similar to the local population. Marriage immigration therefore ensures a continued high level of fertility among the immigrant population.
Many forecasts regarding the Muslim immigration to Europe expect that immigrant Muslims will eventually integrate into society. However, marriage immigration ensures that the immigrant population never progresses past the stage of first and second generation immigrants, frustrating integration. Also hampering demographic forecasts is the fact that many second generation immigrants prefer to marry spouses from their parents' home country. Studies among Moroccan and Turkish youth in Belgium show that they often prefer to marry spouses from "back home" rather than marrying a fellow second generation immigrant like themselves.[19] Boys, dissatisfied with what they see as the Westernization of immigrant women, opt for more traditional women from the home country. Moroccan immigrant youth visiting their home country are often accosted with offers of sex and money in exchange for a visa by local girls desperate to get to the "Promised Land."[20]
Girls, on the other hand, are dissatisfied with what they see as the lower-class behaviors of many immigrant men and their attitudes towards marriage and women and, therefore, opt for a more "open," gentlemanly, and educated man, also from back home. The market value of legal immigrant women is especially high.[21] In Norway, marriageable Muslim girls are sometimes called "gilded paper" or "visa."[22] Marrying a husband from the home country has the additional benefit that the wife can be quite sure her new in-laws will not interfere in her marriage. This is important as it is traditional among immigrants for the new couple to live in the house of the husband's parents and under their authority until they have children.
Esther Ben-David
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors. ./..
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