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by ccity88
1243 days ago
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>Most European countries have failed to integrate their growing Muslim populations. They’ve imported an underclass, one that’s going to be increasingly furious that they’re stuck in socioeconomic ghettos Muslim from London here - my father came here as an immigrant in the 80's, and stayed here. I would say that I'm integrated. Your outlook reeks of no only condescension and disdain for class struggle, but complete misunderstanding of how cultures develop and work. Come to London and tell me immigration is an outlandish idea - your barrista, your off-license shop keeper, your NHS keyworker and your TFL underground marshall will all laugh in your face. |
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I’m not talking about individual experiences, but aggregate statistics. In the UK, poor Muslims get more education than poor whites, but that doesn’t translate into better jobs: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/asian-muslims-and-black-p.... They have lower income mobility than similarly situated whites.
The statistics are much worse in continental Europe, where Muslim immigrants are stuck in inter-generational poverty. Turkish people started immigrating to Europe in significant numbers around 1970, around the same time Vietnamese people started immigrating to the US. Half a century later, Vietnamese Americans have fully caught up with British Americans in terms of income. But the situation for Turks in Europe has been starkly different: https://theconversation.com/many-turkish-people-who-migrated... (“By the third generation, around half (49%) of those living in Europe were still poor, compared with just over a quarter (27%) of those who remained behind… Migrants from three family generations residing in countries renowned for the generosity of their welfare states were among the most impoverished. Some of the highest poverty rates were observed in Belgium, Sweden and Denmark.”).
To an American those statistics are unbelievable. Germans, Italians, and Irish all came over a cheap labor and reached parity with British Americans within three generations. The Latin American immigrants coming to America today are on the same track: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353. Several groups of immigrants who came here as impoverished refugees, such as Koreans, Vietnamese, Lebanese, and Cubans, achieved parity even more quickly.
Your point about “class struggle” and the “barista, off-license shop keeper, [and] NHS keyworker” underscores my point. In Europe immigrants take those jobs, and then their kids take those jobs. That creates a politically and socially volatile situation. In America that doesn’t happen because immigrants have relatively high economic mobility. Irish and Italians did those jobs, and a lot worse, when they came here in the early 20th century. Today there is no meaningful class struggle centered around Irish or Italian identity because those groups fully integrated. In fact it’s a consistent struggle for US Democrats to build durable movements. Irish and Italians got FDR elected, but their kids and grandkids favored Reagan in a landslide.