Europe’s Implosion

When Europeans speak of integration, they are usually referring to nations, not immigrants; political entities, not individuals. Last Saturday, the European Union celebrated the integration of 10 new countries into what is now the largest trading bloc in the world. From Ljubljana to Lisbon, officials heralded a new era of peaceful and prosperous international cooperation. But if Europe is to continue to thrive, Europeans must begin to understand integration in a whole new way.

In a word, Europe is imploding. With their aging populations and declining birthrates, the nations of the EU have been forced to look beyond their borders to build a labor force large enough to sustain long-term economic growth. In the 1990s, an average of 857,000 immigrants a year changed the face of the original 15 nations in the EU, and the migration will continue.

Italy, for example, has the dubious distinction of having both the oldest population and the lowest birthrate in the world. Without immigrants, its population will shrink from 57 million today to 41 million in 2050. In Germany, the EU’s largest nation, the number of senior citizens is projected to increase by 50% over the next three decades. A 2000 study by the United Nations concluded that if Germany did not accept 500,000 immigrants a year, it would have to raise its retirement age to 77 in order to have enough workers to finance pensions for the elderly.

A recent poll commissioned by the European Commission revealed that although 56% of Europeans understood the need for more immigrant labor, 80% favored more stringent immigration laws. Part of the problem is that most Europeans, with the exception of the British and the French, cannot grasp the idea of assimilation, the process by which “they” become “us.” There is no civic myth -- like the U.S. “melting pot” -- that would enable them to envision unity in diversity. Nor is there an acceptance that minority and majority cultures can converge and influence one another. Immigrants are often seen as threats to social stability and national identity.

Until four years ago, for example, German naturalization law was based on blood rather than soil. A Russian-speaking ethnic German from Kazakhstan could automatically acquire German citizenship, but a German-born child of long-established Turkish immigrants could not. Now that the law has changed, Germans have only begun to expand the idea of “Germanness.” The press uses such clumsy phrases as “Turkish co-citizens” and “Turks with German citizenship” to describe their new compatriots.

Germany isn’t alone in struggling to add layers to its notion of an ethno-culturally defined nation state. Even in France, where an ideology of assimilation prevails, the level of cultural conformity expected of immigrants is high. The recent ban on Muslim head scarves in schools, for example, is based on the notion that there is only one way to be French.

Not surprisingly, phenotypic differences between the foreign and native-born do little to further belief in immigrant assimilation. In 1996, after a black, Dominican-born, naturalized citizen won the Miss Italia pageant, Italy was plunged into a national debate over the nature of “Italianness.” The following year, new guidelines were issued requiring that contestants be born from at least one “full-blooded Italian” parent.

Though the standing of all things American is at a 10-year low in Europe, there is some acknowledgment that, when it comes to immigrants, we may have a model worth studying. Last weekend, a group of 70 Italian intellectuals and opinion makers gathered in Venice at a conference hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Rome to consider that possibility.

Intimately familiar with the successes of Italian Americans from Frank Sinatra to Sofia Coppola, many of the Italian attendees were indeed impressed by the assimilative capacity of the United States. Americans may still be fighting over the desirability of more immigration and over how to integrate newcomers, but history and national folklore have taught us lessons about multiethnicity that many Europeans know they don’t yet understand.

“We are beginners in terms of [ethnic] integration,” said one of the participants, Giulio Bosetti, managing editor of Reset, an Italian literary magazine that focuses on multiculturalism. “We have to compare our experience in dealing with [ethnic] differences with that of the United States.”

More comfortable with the idea of cooperating nation states than with the prospect of competing ethnic groups, Italians attending the conference were understandably reluctant to accept the American model of immigrant integration for themselves. But after two days of hearing the successes and failures of the ongoing struggle in the United States to make e pluribus unum a reality, they appeared convinced of the need for a new approach to their immigrant future.

One aspect of the American experience did seem to take root: the idea that national culture can and should be viewed in terms of constant change, rather than as a finished product in need of preservation. As Laura Balbo, a prominent sociologist and former member of the Italian parliament, put it, the future demands that the citizens of the European Union admit that not just their political organization but their very identities are a “work in progress.”