The Trouble with Migrants

"CAST your eye around Europe, and you find a funk about foreigners. Denmark's voters have given the anti-immigration Danish People's Party its fourth successive rise in voting share. The Swiss gave 29% of their votes to the xenophobic Swiss People's Party. An anti-foreigner party is the second-biggest in Norway. A fifth of Flemish voters in Belgium back the far-right Vlaams Belang.

In France, Nicolas Sarkozy won the presidency in May after aping the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the National Front's Jean-Marie Le Pen. He now talks of inculcating French values. Next year, when France has the European Union presidency, he will promote a similar idea at EU level. His new ministry of national identity and immigration has proposed quotas on immigrants from some regions that may be a ploy to keep out the dark-skinned. He has passed a law to limit immigration for family unification, which allows DNA testing to prove genetic ties.

In truth the bad demographic outlook of much of western and eastern Europe will make the continent increasingly reliant on foreign labour. And one irony is that, for all the current fretting about too many foreigners, a chronic shortage of suitable workers may be felt most acutely in the countries that seem most hostile to outsiders. Germany has kept its labour markets closed to new EU members until 2011, but it now admits to a skills shortage. This month it eased the restrictions on migrant workers in the mechanical and electrical-engineering industries.

Immigration already accounts for most of the limited population growth in Europe. Ageing populations, combined with the natives' lack of ability, or inclination, to do many jobs, mean that more foreign workers are likely to be needed. By one estimate Europe's native-born workforce will shrink by 44m by the middle of the century. Skilled workers will be in especially short supply. Those calling most fiercely for foreigners to go home may come to regret what they wished for".

L'article en entier peut etre trouvé dans http://www.economist.com/world/europe/ avec les cas particuliers de la France, l'Espagne et l'Italie. C'est une perspective purement économique d'analyse, un point de vue qui n'est pas nouveau, The Economist en avait parlé aussi en 2004 lors de la première vague d'adhérents de l'Europe Centrale. Ce que je veux montrer ici n'a rien à voir avec une pub positive pour les immigrants, je m'intéresse à souligner que la masse d'immigrants n'est pas homogène; que les violences que quelques-uns commettent ne sont pas une étiquette pour le reste.

Le un ne représente jamais le tout, ce serait une réduction ridicule et éloignée de la réalité. Et ce qui me dérange c'est l'étiquette universelle qui colle et colle. Je l'ai senti ici à Genève, plus, je l'ai senti à la Fac et pas seulement une fois. Dommage. En plus, par rapport à la Fac, la condescendence immotivée à mon égard me dérange. Profondément.