A Case Study in Multiculturalism : Has German 'Multikulti' failed?

[Rage]

I'd like to share a discussion on this, especially in light of the fact that India is also a multi-cultural society:


1. Do you think German multiculturalism has failed, decades after Germany opened its borders to guest workers from Turkey, the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe?

2. What implications, if any, does this have for India, as a multicultural society?

3. What do you think is the road ahead? A melting-pot, qua United States, where different cultures come and are subsumed under one, uniform, national culture? Or a situation like Britain, where different cultures are allowed to thrive and to co-exist, not always compatibly? Or an alternative method?



German multiculturalism has failed: Angela Merkel

18/10/2010

Germany's attempt to create a multicultural society has been a total failure, Chancellor Angela Merkel told young members of her Christian Democrat party on Saturday.

"This multicultural approach – saying that we simply live side by side and are happy about each other – this approach has utterly failed," Merkel said in an address to a CDU youth conference.

The comments followed a similar speech from Horst Seehofer, head of the CDU's Bavarian sister party the CSU. On Friday he declared his party's stance against multiculturalism: "Multiculturalism is dead," he said, to delegates' applause.

The chancellor stressed that immigrants living in Germany needed to do more to integrate, including learning to speak German.

Merkel's comments come a week after a visit to Berlin by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The two leaders said they would work to improve the integration of the some 2.5 million members of the Turkish community in Germany.

Erdogan told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung that Turks living in Germany should learn to speak fluent and accent-free German.

The immigration debate has intensified in Germany over the past few months.

Germany began to evolve into a country of immigration in the 1960s when Turks and others arrived to fill the labour vacuum left by the nation's war dead.

Mrs Merkel addressed this in her speech saying: 'At the beginning of the 60s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country. We kidded ourselves a while, we said: "They won't stay, sometime they will be gone." But this isn't reality.'

She tempered her comments by insisting that Germany still welcomed immigrants – particularly the skilled ones it needs for its export-driven economy – and echoed recent comments made by the country's president that Islam was 'part of Germany', like Christianity and Judaism. But Mrs Merkel also added that those who did come must adapt, and learn German 'as quickly as possible'.

For his part, Seehofer, in an interview with Focus magazine, said Germany should not use a lack of skilled workers as an excuse to open its doors to all comers, adding that demands made of those who wish to move to Germany should not be watered down.

Former German central banker Thilo Sarrazin was forced to resign over a book in which he wrote that the country's four million Muslim immigrants were lowering the standard of intelligence of German society.

Until now, mindful of the German legacy of the Second World War and atonement for racial policies responsible for the deaths of millions, German politicians since 1945 have tended only to speak in broad positive terms of the 'multikulti' society.

However, the debate looks sure to polarize German society as it moves into an era of transformation and possible re-integration.


© 2010 euronews


http://www.euronews.net/2010/10/17/merkel-german-multiculturalism-has-failed/
With inputs from: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6118859,00.html

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[ajtr]

already one existing thread going on same subject.

Assimilation of muslims in the main stream western society

 

[Rage]

This thread is entirely different. And it pertains not just to muslims, but to Chinese, Indians, Italians and Africans, who're immigrants to Germany as well.

I don't want it messed up with the other thread.

This discussion has several implications for our society as well. And will provide several useful guiding points to how multiculturalism should be addressed in our society.

P.S.: Lookin' forward to your input :happy_2:.

 

[mattster]

Dont confuse the issue - when Angela Merkel says that multiculturalism has failed - its mainly "code" for Muslim migration. Its not about the Poles, Italians, Greeks or Romanians or Indians or Chinese. Its mainly about Muslim migrants. The reason they use the word "multiculturalism" is because its a more "politically-correct" term.

Any German leader has to be very mindful of Germany's recent past history and would not want to appear xenophobic to the outside world. Also there is very little parallel between Germany and India as far as multiculturalism goes. India has been a multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious country for centuries.

Germany on the other hand was a pure-white Christian European country that had very few other nationalities until the end of WW2 except for long-standing Poles and Jews. The Poles in germany were extremely well integrated into german society The same can be said of the Scandinavian countries.

It was only after WW2 when they economy started booming that they opened their doors. Its an open knowledge that the whole multicultural experiment all over Europe is a big mess. Mostly the real concern is with Muslim communities but other groups from Africa, and Gypsies from Romania etc are also problematic.

 

[civfanatic]

1. It is Germany's fault to allow the immigrants into their borders. No one forced them to accept the immigrants.

2. These immigrants are essential to Germany's economy, as they perform many of the menial jobs that Germans don't want to do. As Germany's population continues to decline due to low birth rates, immigrant labor will just increase in value and importance.

3. France recently expelled Gypsies from their country. Germany, as a sovereign nation, has the right to exercise this option as well. The world will view Germany negatively for it, but some may still view it as necessary. Just how big is the immigrant problem and how much does it compromise Germany's future?

 

[S.A.T.A]

Angela Merkel is spot on, Multiculturalism was bound to be a failure because the process inherently fails to address the dichotomy that exists between a dominant culture and an interloping one.Multiculturalism provided an effective political cover to mend an economic-demographic imbalance,and Europe hoped it would eventually be able to assimilate the immigrants into the mainstream of the dominant culture.That hope has more or less come undone.Multiculturalism was a fiction to begin with........