Immigration and
asylum
Migrant
men and European women
To
absorb newcomers peacefully, Europe must insist they respect values
such as tolerance and sexual equality
Jan 16th 2016 | From
the print edition
Timekeeper
FOUR months ago, the
body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach in Turkey
after he, his brother and his mother drowned while trying to reach
Greece. A photograph of Aylan quickly became the defining image of
the masses of refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war. The picture
helped cement a brief consensus that the Middle Eastern migrants
risking death to get to Europe should be allowed in to apply for
asylum. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, announced that her
country would accept asylum applications from any Syrians who reached
its borders. Much of Europe seemed on the verge of joining the
project.
But Europe never
joined. The task of absorbing the migrants has been left to Germany
and Sweden, with a bit of help from the Netherlands and a few other
countries. German and Swedish eagerness to welcome so many refugees
has gradually been worn down. Now the events of New Year’s Eve in
Cologne and other German cities may have buried it for good.
That night, gangs of
young men, mainly asylum-seekers, formed rings around women outside
Cologne station and then robbed and sexually assaulted them. More
than 600 women reported to the police that they had been victimised.
After Cologne, when Europeans think of refugees, many no longer
picture persecuted families or toddlers. Instead they see menacing
young men imbued with the sexism that is all too common across the
Middle East and north Africa.
Sex and the citadel
Such fears, though
overblown, are not absurd, and will not be allayed by pointing out
that the alleged attackers in Cologne so far identified are mostly
Moroccan or Algerian, not Syrian. There really is a cultural gulf
between rich, liberal, secular Europe and some of the countries from
which recent migrants come. It is impossible to conduct surveys in
Syria right now, for obvious reasons, but a 2013 Pew poll of Muslims
around the world makes sobering reading. More than 90% of Tunisians
and Moroccans believe that a wife should always obey her husband.
Only 14% of Iraqi Muslims and 22% of Jordanians think a woman should
be allowed to initiate a divorce. And although Arab societies take a
harsh view of sex crimes, women who venture alone and in skimpy
clothing into a public space in, say, Egypt can expect a barrage of
male harassment.
Migrants are no more
likely to commit crimes than natives. But it would be otherworldly to
pretend that there is no tension between the attitudes of some and
their hosts. European women cherish their rights to wear what they
like, go where they like and have sex or not have sex with whom they
please. No one should be allowed to infringe these freedoms.
However, it does not
follow from this that Germany was wrong to offer a haven to Syrian
refugees. The moral imperative has not changed since Aylan washed up
on that beach. Half of Syria’s cities have been blasted to rubble,
hundreds of thousands of people lie dead and tens of thousands are
starving in towns under siege. Thousands more refugees arrive in
Greece every week. Those who would shut them out must explain where
they should go instead.
Rather than
succumbing to moral panic, Europe needs to work out how to manage the
flow of refugees and help them assimilate. A good place to start
would be to insist that they obey the law. Police in Cologne clearly
failed to take on the harassers. Perhaps they did not recognise what
was going on quickly enough, or were afraid of being accused of
racism. Or it may have been simple incompetence. Women have
complained for years that German police are slow to stop sexual
harassment in the drunken crowds at the Munich Oktoberfest.
Whatever the precise
nature of the failure, it needs to be fixed. Security cameras in
public places would make it easier to convict those who hide in
crowds—Germans should overcome their queasiness about such
surveillance. With luck, the police will learn from their mistakes
and work out how to prevent such incidents. Molesters should be
punished. Asylum-seekers who flout the law should face prison or
deportation. No one can be sent back to Syria, but Mrs Merkel is
right to argue that Morocco and Algeria are safe enough (see
article).
Work and family
When it comes to
assimilating new arrivals, Europe could learn a thing or two from
America, which has a better record in this regard. It is not
“culturally imperialist” to teach migrants that they must respect
both the law and local norms such as tolerance and sexual equality.
And it is essential to make it as easy as possible for them to work.
This serves an economic purpose: young foreign workers more than pay
their way and can help solve the problem of an ageing Europe. It also
serves a cultural one: immigrants who work assimilate far more
quickly than those who are forced to sit around in ghettos. In the
long run most children of migrants will adopt core European values,
but the short run matters too.
Migrants who take
the most hazardous routes into Europe, for example by crossing the
Mediterranean in leaky boats, are disproportionately young men (see
article). Overall they make little difference to Europe’s sex
ratio, but in some areas and age brackets they may skew it. This is a
problem—districts with more young single men than women are more
prone to violence, especially if those men are jobless. That is why
it is daft to restrict the ability of refugees to bring their spouses
and other family members to join them, as Denmark’s government is
now doing.
The process of
absorbing refugees will be neither quick nor easy, but it is the
right thing to do and will ultimately benefit Europe. Ideally, all
European countries would do their part. It is scandalous that so few
have agreed to take more than a handful of Syrians, and that European
governments have yet to agree on a beefed-up border agency to police
the EU’s external frontiers. Even in Germany, there is a risk that
Mrs Merkel will be forced to abandon her policy of compassion. If she
is to salvage it, she must take the lead again, spelling out how
Germans can make Willkommenskultur work—and how the newcomers
themselves must adapt to basic European values.
From the print
edition: Leaders
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