- cross-posted to:
- worldnewsnonus@lemy.lol
- cross-posted to:
- worldnewsnonus@lemy.lol
Europeans — especially Germans — are increasingly keen on curbing immigration and are less focused on climate change, according to a study by a Danish-based think tank.
Europe has seen a sharp rise in the share of people who say that reducing immigration should be a top government priority, according to a study published Wednesday. Germany is topping the list.
At the same time, there was less desire to prioritize fighting climate change in the same countries, according to the survey commissioned by the Denmark-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation think tank.
Nearly half of German respondents put focus on migration
Since 2022, an increasing number of Europeans say their government should prioritize “reducing immigration,” rising from just under 20% to a quarter.
Meanwhile, concern about climate change was on the slide across the continent.
“In 2024, for the first time, reducing immigration is a greater priority for most Europeans than fighting climate change,” the report said.
“Nowhere is this reversal more striking than in Germany, which now leads the world with the highest share of people who want their government to focus on reducing immigration — topping all other priorities — and now nearly twice as high as fighting climate change,” the report read.
You must log in or # to comment.
uncontrolled migration is largely caused by the effects of climate change on poor southern countries.
I came to say this exactly. Also I just realized that I would love to move to a beautiful beach area in one of the Pacific facing tropical countries…places where poor people migrate away from… Does that make sense? That having money protects you from climate change? If basically a middle class person from the US can be rich in these poor countries, does that mean that they are less affected? You can afford fruits and vegetables if you have money? What if more rich assholes move into the area? Do they also get to still afford fresh bananas, and strawberries? Something tells me that they would quickly saturate the area like here in Seattle where every event seems to be packed to the brim with people. There’s just a packet room no matter what you choose to do. Hiking? Shoulder to shoulder. Swimming? Sardines in a can. Etc.
The Germans have a guaranteed welfare system for migrants. That is one major reason they are the preferred destination, and able-bodied people who go to another country just for welfare, are not good people, which coincidentally linked to increased crime. It seems to me, white folks try hard to convince people they are not racist. Then they live safely in their gated communities.
I’m pretty sure the increased crime among refugees here in germany is largely due to the laughably long wait times (months, if you’re lucky, on average 3 years) until their case gets reviewed, and them only gettting a tiny allowance (max. 182€ per month) and not being allowed to work during that time. Of course they end up committing crimes more often in such a situation, it’s not because they are bad people.
Gewalttaten nehmen drastisch zu: Zahl tatverdächtiger Ausländer springt nach oben - n-tv.de - https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Zahl-tatverdaechtiger-Auslaender-springt-nach-oben-article24858209.html
Das kann viele Gründe haben. Rassismus in der Polizei ist nur einer davon. Heißt immer noch nicht, dass Flüchtlinge generell schlechte Menschen wären.
edit: hast du deinen Artikel eigentlich selbst gelesen?
Die überproportional vielen Ausländer unter den einer Straftat Beschuldigten erklären Soziologen und Kriminologen mit verschiedenen Ursachen. So sind die meisten Zuwanderer junge Männer, die in jeder Kriminalitätsstatistik auffällig stark vertreten sind. Hinzu kommen die bei Ausländern in Deutschland besonders oft schwierige soziale Lage und womöglich eigene Gewalterfahrungen im Herkunftsland oder während der Flucht nach Deutschland, die die Hemmschwelle zur Gewaltanwendung sinken ließen.
Zudem passierten viele Straftaten in Ausländerunterkünften und in deren Umfeld, wo einerseits die Unterbringungssituation extrem angespannt ist, andererseits Polizei und Wachschutz besonders präsent sind. Ferner haben Soziologen aufgezeigt, dass die Anzeigebereitschaft deutlich höher ist gegenüber Menschen, die als nicht zugehörig zur eigenen Gruppe wahrgenommen werden.
Das Bundeskriminalamt hält aber auch fest: Der Anteil der einer Straftat Beschuldigten unter allen Ausländern ist im vergangenen Jahr sogar gesunken Weil aber zugleich deutlich mehr Ausländer in Deutschland leben, ist die absolute Zahl ausländischer Straftäter dennoch gestiegen. Ein Zusammenhang zwischen Zuwanderung und Anzahl registrierter Straftaten ist damit offensichtlich.
Unfassbar guter Journalismus daraus so eine Überschrift herbeizudichten…
Propaganda works and people are stupid.
It does. We really need positive propaganda. Dupe everyone into thinking that climate change is real, we have to do something now, doubling down on renewable and sustainable resources is required, etc. I’d love to brainwash everyone into believing that public education needs more funds and resources. Or that rivers and lakes shouldn’t be polluted.
They problem is that climate change makers people feel guilty all the time and afraid (true most likely) that they will feel the financial repercussions, and not the big corporations.
So blaming the other is an easy way to feel superior and deal with the uncertainty rage.
I’ve got news for you guys, one of these things is going to radically affect the other.
Maybe the key to getting old people to care about climate change is to frame the mass displacement and migration that will occur as a direct result of it.
That is pretty genius for sure but I think the issue is that these people think that once shit hits the fan they will be able to stop the desperate masses at their border by legalisation or whatever.
Whatever is machine guns.
Ameribro here. I’ve hosted a German exchange kid. She was really, really worried about immigration and “preserving German culture”. I pointed out to her that:
-
Culture is not a fixed thing, it’s always drifting a little bit, with or without immigrants. That’s why old people always complain about how different everything is.
-
Germany is actually younger than the US as a state by about a century, and contemporary Germany has really only existed since either the end of WW2 or the fall of the Soviet Union, depending on your view. (IMO, the collapse of East Germany is non-trivial. Her mom was an East German and described to us how they had an entirely separate culture with different groceries and everything and all that just vaporized into nothing when the wall fell, replaced with West German culture almost overnight). So, what does it really even mean to be defending German culture?
-
There’s always hardship when a new group of people arrive, but over time you usually end up with something that’s better than what you had before if you can learn to embrace it. US culture has, in spite of our issues with racism, tangibly benefitted from immigration over the centuries.
She wasn’t receptive to it. A lot of Europeans who hold anti-immigratiom views insist that it’s different for Europe when they have immigrants than it is for the US. I’ve yet to have one persuasively explain why that’s true and not just whiny exceptionalism.
I mostly agree with your conclusion, but this is a very american (I.e. ignorant) response to her concern and i am not surprised she wasnt receptive. I think you underestimate the difference between a country like yours (which has always been a ‘salad bowl’ of cultures united by a commitment to liberalism) and mine (Germany, which is essentially a big tribe of tribes). This difference is even more stark if you look at a place like Denmark.
Here are a few of your points that gave me this impression:
Germany is actually younger than the US
Her concern is (to me) obviously independent of the state we happen to live under. Germaneness is not tied to a political entity. East Germans were German, Volga Germans are German and the German speaking people under the hre were German. (“German” Americans are not German btw.) This also makes your comment about
Her mom was an East German and described to us how they had an entirely separate culture
baffling (to me).
US culture has, … tangibly benefitted from immigration over the centuries.
The us is in many ways a much worse country than Germany (or almost any EU country). I don’t see why we should strive to emulate that model.
I think the question that really needs to be answered is how you plan on enforcing cultural normality. If, as you say, Germans have had a strong identify regardless of historical causes and conditions, it sounds like they’ve figured their culture out throughout the decades and centuries without someone pointing a gun at them over it. So then why should the force and violence of the government be necessary now, and to what extent? Are we just talking arresting brown people, or should we start arresting anyone who speaks something besides German in public, since they’re eroding the culture too?
I also wanted to respond to your remark about emulating the US. You don’t give rich old white men enough credit, they’ve managed to turn the country into a shambling wreck all while keeping everyone else locked out of governance. Maybe if we’d had those other voices, we wouldn’t have Donald Trump soliciting a billion dollar bribe to roll back all of our environmental protections.
Are we just talking arresting brown people, or should we start arresting anyone who speaks something besides German in public, since they’re eroding the culture too?
The fuck are you on about.
If you want to get a handle on this I suggest you start with concepts such as the assimilation capacity of a population as well as the possible speed of different kinds of natural cultural drift. If you want to avoid to avoid fuelling xenophobic ressentiment, what you need to make sure is that cultural drift caused by new arrivals is lower than what people accept, in that case people become more tolerant of that kind of shift, though of course that has a limit (and that’s fine). OTOH if you exceed it, people become less tolerant of shifts. In other words: Culture is a non-newtonian fluid. You create resistance by pushing too hard, if you go in gently there very well might be no resistance at all.
The erm force applied to that non-newtonian fluid is more or less number of arrivals multiplied by germane cultural difference multiplied by economical impact. When Germans flock to Sweden the Swedes worry about those “closed up and private” people, they’re somewhat taken aback by directness but secretly also somewhat glad that there’s someone actually complaining in public, not just in private. In the numbers that we’re talking about the Swedes aren’t worried in cultural terms, though there’s some gripes among some around housing prices in rural areas (not among the Swedes selling the houses, of course). Berliners are way more worried about Swabian arrivals.
And, really, let’s take Sweden as an example because they’ve been so… Swedish about the whole thing. Over decades their immigration worked just fine, they had a certain number and that number didn’t exceed the assimilation capacity, and then Swedes said “we are the best so of course we’ll take in more” and more came and assimilation failed – and the Swedes, being Swedes, never complained in public. It’s a high-trust environment, of course you trust others, even if government policy led to, one way or the other, segregation: Arrivals live in one place, native Swedes in another. Which then makes it even harder for the new arrivals to even acculturate much less assimilate, leading to more segregation, leading to more difficulties. At some point a dam broke and Swedes stopped complaining in private and complained in public – the backlash. Which led to people who were born in Sweden from perfectly assimilated parents suddenly found themselves on the outside of their own culture.
If, instead their politicians had started early saying “we need to actively work against that segregation, we need to change our public housing policy to make sure that neighbourhoods are mixed, and if that doesn’t suffice we need to limit the number of new arrivals” things would’ve went very differently – such a policy would have increased assimilation capacity. But that would’ve implied things such as Sweden not being perfect which is unthinkable to a Swede… at least to say aloud. Fucking swots.
What I’m on about is that there are plenty of people who would be quite happy to make it the police’s business to enforce cultural norms. Governments probably should do more to ensure plentiful housing, but assimilation is something that just happens over time. The US has had its own assimilation woes many, many, many times, it’s never been the happy melting pot we tell the world we are. We’ve had cultural enclaves and backlashes and all of that, but what always happens is that the assimilation takes hold within a generation or two, regardless of how the older generations might feel about it. It’s something people are quite capable of figuring out for themselves, without getting the cops involved.
Imo, people should be free to live and work where they please. Borders are the tools of tyrants, imo, but I don’t think we’re ready for that conversation.
What I’m on about is that there are plenty of people who would be quite happy to make it the police’s business to enforce cultural norms.
And it’s going to stay that way, or become worse, if migration is mismanaged.
Borders are the tools of tyrants, imo, but I don’t think we’re ready for that conversation.
There is no political border surrounding Franconia. Well maybe district borders, but those are fuzzy and approximate when it comes to culture. Noone is stopping anyone from crossing in or out. But if suddenly Bavarians, culturally Bavarian that is not just as in the state, started to mass-migrate into Franconia boy would you see backlash: Franconians are perfectly entitled to want to stay Franconian instead of becoming Bavarian. Different language, different traditions, different mentality, different majority religion, different Idendidäd.
Yes, I’m familiar with what you’re talking about about. We’ve had similar backlashes even within the US before. The thing is, it’s something people can, have, and do figure out without arresting anyone. People are smart and generally want to do what they believe to be the right thing and have a peaceful life, that’s broadly true across our species.
You’re the only one around here talking about arresting people. Maybe you share – culturally – more in common with some people that you dislike than you realise or you wouldn’t be preoccupied like that.
The us is in many ways a much worse country than Germany (or almost any EU country). I don’t see why we should strive to emulate that model.
Besides the point. Immigration does not necessarily lead to “bad” legislation.
Unfortunately we do have such narrow minded people in Germany. Even sadder they apply this mindset onto their kids
Culture is identity. Isn’t that obvious from looking at different people all over the world? It is true, there is a clash of cultures because everyone is proud of their identity. Nationalism is extremely powerful because it is human instinct to look upon kinship. Humans are social animals.
Sure, but you don’t need the force and violence of the state to enforce identity. It’s something people are quite capable of figuring out on their own without being at gunpoint.
And Germany’s population, and with that the economy, would start shrinking without immigration. That’s what a fertility rate of 1.7 gets you. Things would go downhill fast enough.
People would just start blaming the politicians for the rampant inflation and reduction in services that a scarcity of workers creates, and then vote in some fascist to “fix” it, first and foremost without allowing immigration. He will overthrow the media and judiciary and “fix” it by starting wars with the neighbors or doing ethnic cleansing at home.
All countries are going to go sub-replacement within a couple of decades. Aside from our constant inability to reform the pension system Germany is actually in quite a good spot: Those 1.7 are very stable, there’s no grand fluctuations, and no real reason to suspect it will suddenly crash. It’s a rate which, yes, leads to a degree of gerontocracy but it’s not catastrophic for the economy or pension system in the sense that improvements in productivity can make up for it.
I suspect it will rise again and then hover around 2 but for that to happen spooks like climate change related hesitancy will have to go (will happen with time, the earth can easily sustain the overall projected population levels) and the sources of immigration will have to dry up to a noticeable degree, which will also happen with time.
There’s always hardship when a new group of people arrive, but over time you usually end up with something that’s better than what you had before if you can learn to embrace it. US culture has, in spite of our issues with racism, tangibly benefitted from immigration over the centuries.
Now tell that to the native americans and see how well they take it.
“if we don’t do to other people what we did to native Americans, they’ll do to us what we did to the native Americans” is a reasonably common white supremacist talking point in the US, often presented adjacent to the great replacement.
I don’t agree with your analysis. German culture clearly predates WW2. You’re conflating political entities with cultures and that’s not how any of this works
Preserving German culture and worrying about immigration - you had an AfD or nazi kid in your home.
an AfD or nazi kid in your home
Mostly the same thing.
Agreed.
-
Some explain these people that climate chance is going to cause a lot more migration if not addressed
Everyone tries but they are not listening because they claim that everything from the science are lies (climate change, vaccines etc). They will never change and the level of education and ability to think logically and objective is close to zero. The right wing parties boost this because they know they are their path to power.
Yet, in typical European fashion they would much much much rather interpret “reduce immigration” to mean “be mean to poor people here” than to mean “help stabilize developing nations and allow their economies to grow without squeezing them out using our country’s dominant economic position (so people don’t become economic migrants) and without support for bombing them every other decade (so people don’t become war refugees)”, which of course includes “address climate change (so people don’t become climate refugees)”.
No upstream thinking, just fascism fascism fascism.
The article does not address any of that, it’s your interpretation. I would like lower immigration into my country and that absolutely requires raising other countries up economically and preventing war and climate catastrophe. This was just a survey on what issues people are concerned about. It did not ask for solutions.
Yea right, I’m sure AfD voters are all for raising up other countries.
Buddy, I’m Greek. I know first hand what German right wingers think of “irresponsible southerners”. So far up their righteous asses that expending economic resources for a European country that basically buys everything Germany produces was too hard for them to swallow. Don’t tell me they would not turn uber-protectionist the moment helping some brown people place comes up.
Funny that you’re Greek. I recently had a conversation with the middle aged son of Greek migrants where he complained that the suburb he grew up in changed because of the later wave of migrants from elsewhere. No self awareness at all.
He integrated successfully.
Climate change is an existential threat. They can see those swarthy heathens filling their cities and stealing their jobs or whatever the fuck they think whenever they see someone of a darker skin tone than themselves.
Guess what’s going to exacerbate the migration issue, Germany?
Wind turbans.
I should get my emigration plans ready, I hate the German boomer racism and how it infected the younger population. Fuck racists, no matter how they label themselves.
I’m in the same boat, almost left in 2022 but didn’t go through with it. Time will tell if I made the right call.
At least I am all good with living in other countries - done 4 1/2 years in one and 1 year in another and only came back for work contractual reasons. That changed - and it’s good to know the option is not just hypothetical :)
climate change doesn’t have dark skin or speak a different language…
Until hundreds of thousands of climate refugees from around the equator start to show up…
The average human will blame immigration for that as if immigration is a self contained problem and has nothing to do with the conditions they themselves are creating in other countries.
It’s literally the same issue. Changing climate is going to force mass migrations. Don’t like brown people? Maybe do everything you can to make sure their countries of origin remain liveable and prosperous. I’m guessing many would rather that then coming to some xenophobic land of full of a-holes in order to carve out some semblance of a future for their families.
Where are Germans afraid of migrating to?
Welp, solve climate change and the migration crisis will go away. (along with stopping the exploitation of resources and interference in poor countries affairs.)
Anyone have an understanding of how much migration Germany has lately? Is this all still a hang over from the Syrian refugee intake under Merkel? Is Germany a favoured destination generally within Europe? Or are Germans just “sensitive” about darker coloured people (which would be a bit odd given the Turkish migration that occurred after the war, unless that never went well either)?
Ukrainian refugees are causing kinda the same backlash at the moment.
Ah right. Obvious guess I should have made.
I’m a German and I don’t really notice much of it. The region I’m in already has quite a lot of people that aren’t “traditionally German” and behave differently and speak languages other than German in public, it can be a little weird or unsettling sometimes, but many of them have good reasons sto stay here and immigration benefits society in the end I believe, also what is normal anyways. Maybe I just don’t worry about it as many others in our nation apperently do?
Maybe I just don’t worry about it as many others in our nation apperently do?
Well the polls would suggest that.
it can be a little weird or unsettling sometimes
I find this striking. Some places just aren’t used to major migration events, and from this it seems to be true for Germany and even you however accepting you are. And not to be an immigration absolutist about it, but Europe might benefit from realising how common migration is elsewhere in the world.
deleted by creator
In some districts immigration rate is at 60%.
One has to experience certain interactions and opinions on the streets. I know we need migration and there has been plenty of people perfectly assimilating but we are struggling with the integration part currently.
I sincerly think most of the issues I observe are due to German/European Rap Music which is nowadays mainstream and way out of line. Teenagers across the board adapt arabic phrases from said music and butchering the language. Let alone adapt the text literally.
Teachers and people working at the kindergarten I know of describe the migration rate at almost 90%. And the majority of parents do not show willingness to educate+integrate, they say. But I don’t know of any numbers!!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Europe has seen a sharp rise in the share of people who say that reducing immigration should be a top government priority, according to a study published Wednesday.
At the same time, there was less desire to prioritize fighting climate change in the same countries, according to the survey commissioned by the Denmark-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation think tank.
“Nowhere is this reversal more striking than in Germany, which now leads the world with the highest share of people who want their government to focus on reducing immigration — topping all other priorities — and now nearly twice as high as fighting climate change,” the report read.
The authors found that the greatest perceived threat globally was war and violent conflict, followed by poverty and hunger, and then climate change.
"In the past four years, this perception has remained highest in Latin America, lowest in Asia and has steadily increased in Europe since 2020 — particularly in Germany, the report said.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, chair of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, said the figures were “a wake-up call for all democratic governments.”
The original article contains 449 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Eliminate all borders and let any humam on earth live anywhere on the planet they want to.
