Multiculturalism is Survival by risa
by Foggy Bottom
While unrest was simmering across Europe and the Muslim world in the wake of the recent row surrounding the Mohammed cartoons, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called to the newly minted Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay to congratulate him on his appointment. Amidst the light and amicable banter that accompanies such courtesy calls, Minister MacKay told his American counterpart that the two countries has fared relatively well amidst the cartoon row because of their deeply engrained cultures of tolerance and multiculturalism. One could argue that North America was spared from the violence by showing enough common sense to not publish needlessly provocative content, rather than by any sense of multiculturalism. However, there is some truth to the idea that tolerance and multiculturalism are assets to the West. Indeed, the capability of Western societies to adapt and absorb large numbers of foreigners will become the key to their survival in the 21st century.
Adaptability has always been a determinant of the security and prosperity of societies. This adaptability has been present in technology. Societies that could innovate, or emulate the technological development of their peers, have tended to fare better, whereas those who failed to do so have tended to be exploited, defeated, or eliminated altogether. Adaptability has also been present in economics. Those societies, which developed the most efficient means of production, and adapt to the pressures of regional and international competition have prospered. Adaptability has been present in politics. Modern liberal democracies have currently proven to be optimal structures by allowing for the accountability and transparency needed for smooth running capitalist economies and technological progress. Adaptability is “built-in” to the liberal democratic order since it allows for change of government and free and open debate. These liberal democratic societies have allowed for precisely the transparency and communication needed to spur the radical technological advances of modern information societies. Now, demographic adaptation will become another prime determinant of the prosperity and security of Western societies.
First some basics in Western demography. Rich countries are getting old and this is has become a major preoccupation for their governments. At the same time as life expectancy have increased, fertility rates have dropped. This is largely a side-effect of modernity. People stay in school longer, marry later, seek to maintain higher levels of disposable income. Women are a greater part of the workforce, and couples tend to divorce more often. If present trends in fertility continue, Europe will reach a peak in population by 2022. Afterwards, it will be up to an ever smaller working population to support their elderly counterparts. According the Jeremy Rifkin, elderly entitlements in Germany already account for 15% of the state’s GDP. By 2040, it is expected to reach 26%. This will create a net drag on the economy that will make it less competitive on the international scene. Governments have tried to address these trends in several ways. The Bush administration has tried to reform social security to reduce the burden of an elderly population that may reach 26% of the US by 2050. Other governments have tried to reverse this trend by providing incentives for childbirth. Indeed, a recent report from the European Union noted that Western Europe benefits from the flow of labor from Eastern Europe. However, unless certain Western societies double their birthrate, they will need a major influx of immigrants to stay competitive. It is not immigration that threatens Western societies and their economies, but rather lack of immigration. This dire predicament is not universal. North America for example has fared much better demographically. While a slightly higher fertility rate can account for some of the difference, it is also North America’s openness to immigration that is significant.
Western societies that bar immigrants will become atrophied and impoverished. The well-being of younger generations will crushed by the weight of entitlements for the elderly as their undermanned economies slow down. However, raw immigration is not enough to solve the demographic dilemma. Immigration must be accompanied by respect, integration, openness, and economic fairness. Societies that develop a reputation for the fair and respectful integration of immigrants will encourage the best and the brightest to immigrate. This reputation will also provide the host state with moral and diplomatic clout and international goodwill. At the same time, multiculturalism via diasporas will help build political and trade bridges with emerging markets and help dampen eventual cultural clashes.
However, Western societies that accept immigrants but do not respect cultural diversity or provide them with meaningful opportunities will eventually be faced with civil unrest. This civil unrest will serve to exacerbate racial and religious tensions. Greater fertility rates in the immigrant populations will stoke fears of loss of national identity and corresponding xenophobia. This vicious cycle of intolerance and unrest has been characteristic of Western Europe from the French riots to the assassination to Dutch cineaste Theo van Gogh. Such violence and domestic xenophobia will also tarnish the reputations of these societies abroad.
What does these emerging demographic realities tell us? For starters, it shows that bigotry, racism, and xenophobia while reprehensible in their own right, are becoming liabilities to the prosperity and security of Western societies. There is a certain pragmatism behind multiculturalism. Far from being the result of some liberal relativism, multiculturalism is an underpinning of the new demographic realism. Where nationalism used to be a power multiplier for the revolutionary armies of Napoleon, it is now becoming a straightjacket of the national interest. In this sense political and economic liberalism have finally merged. Civic and political rights are not only inalienable, but essential to the prosperity of liberal economic societies. These realities also tell us that truly multicultural societies (often nations formed from immigration) such as Canada, the US, Australia, and are well suited to prosper in the 21st Century. Those societies that are too rigid to adapt to immigration will fail. Multiculturalism is therefore survival.
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