AYAAN HIRSI ALI: When migrants come, culture migrates too.
The challenge of integrating immigrants from the non-western world is not new to Europe. But a large influx of new migrants over the last decade, and a significant increase in harassment and sexual assault against women across multiple European countries, make it one that Europe can no longer avoid addressing.
This story has its origins in the decades of economic recovery after World War Two, when many European countries faced a growing worker shortage for industry work. ‘Guest worker’ programs were created, notably in Germany, on the assumption that such workers would return home. But many workers preferred to stay in Europe and pursued family reunification. Jobs and welfare entitlements made Germany preferable to Turkey, France preferable to Algeria.
Meanwhile ideas of national sovereignty and national identity came under scrutiny. The horrors of national socialism and fascism were used to discredit the idea of national borders and the nation-state itself. As part of the process of European integration, states began to relax border controls. Countries such as the Netherlands sought to atone for their insufficient resistance against German deportations of Dutch Jews during World War Two by relaxing immigration restrictions in a quest to realize a ‘multicultural society’.
Multiculturalism also meant that little effort was made to promote the cultural assimilation of immigrants and their children. ‘Dish cities’ — cultural enclaves watching satellite television broadcasts from abroad — became a feature in many parts of Europe. What was over-looked is that multiculturalism is often at odds with a commitment to universal women’s rights, particularly women’s autonomy and security in the public sphere.
Europe’s leaders did not realize that opening the gates brought not just guest workers, but also their culture. Sometimes — often — the cultures of newcomers contained misogynistic norms incompatible with the modern notions of women’s rights that had made rapid progress in Europe from the 1960s on. Suddenly, Europeans were confronted with the unfamiliar: traditional practices such as child marriage, female genital mutilation and honor violence.
Well, some of Europe’s leaders did: “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”
Related: the Hoover Institute’s video interview with Ali, discussing her new book, Prey: