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The demographic roots of European

xenophobia
a
Harvey Fireside
a
Ithaca College
Published online: 03 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Harvey Fireside (2002) The demographic roots of European xenophobia, Journal
of Human Rights, 1:4, 469-479, DOI: 10.1080/1475483021000031335

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 JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS, VOL. 1, NO. 4 ( DECEMBER 2002), 469–479

The demographic roots of European xenophobia

HARVEY FIRESIDE

The standard theories to account for large migrations across national borders rely on a rational model
of behaviour, to analyse reasons for a group of people to leave their homes and for another country
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to welcome or to reject them. It is proposed here that such a model needs to be supplemented by an
examination of irrational factors – either against a people’s own economic interests, or as the products
of their unconscious processes – that underlie the current xenophobia of European countries, which
are erecting new barriers to immigrants because a dramatic shift in their demography threatens to
undermine support for ‘welfare state’ social measures. Up to now migrations have been analysed in
terms of economic forces that draw immigrants to countries offering better opportunities, or of
political threats that drive refugees to seek security in an open society. In past centuries, Europe was
both a source of emigration to destinations such as North America and a recipient of immigrants
from lands to the east. An equilibrium was reached because these flows balanced, while continental
birth and death rates stayed relatively high.

Demography is destiny

That paradigm helped to explain migrations, other things being equal, until the 1970s.
Then the model reached the limits of its utility, because the ‘other things’, namely demo-
graphic factors – including birth rates falling below replacement levels and greater
longevity – drastically altered the socioeconomic environment. The most recent immi-
grants, instead of being accepted as replacements for emigrants, have been met with hostil-
ity, especially if they came from outside the continent. They have been perceived by many
Europeans as an extra burden on housing, social services, education and other resources.
They have also been stereotyped frequently as uneducated, antisocial, even criminal
elements that threaten to undermine the dominant culture. Right-wing political parties
have targeted these newcomers, whether legally immigrants or refugees, as scapegoats for
unpopular measures to cut expenses in education, health, welfare and retirement
programmes. The paradox in this popular response is that replacements are needed now
more than ever to prevent further drastic shrinkage of populations in most countries of the
European Union. Without many thousands of additional migrants, the proportion of age
groups in the workforce that bear the major tax burden would decline sharply. Given
current demographic pressures, immigrants and refugees should be welcomed and helped
to adjust through such means as more accessible citizenship instead of being isolated,
attacked, even deported. What follows is an outline of this theory, with selected examples
of xenophobic reactions in Western European countries to migrants mainly from Eastern
Europe, Asia and North Africa. This essay is a first step toward the systematic processing
of data necessary to validate the hypothesis.
One of the standard theories in the literature on migration is called the ‘push–pull’
theory. Another related economically grounded explanation, ‘dependency theory’,
represents a Marxist variant that regards migrants from undeveloped countries as reflecting

Journal of Human Rights

ISSN 1475-4835 print/ISSN 1475-4843 online © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
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DOI: 10.1080/1475483021000031335
 470 HARVEY FIRESIDE

the contradictions of capitalism, furnishing developed countries with an ‘industrial reserve

army’ from former colonies (Cornelius et al. 1994). These economic theories argue basi-
cally that migrations originate in the ‘backwardness and poverty of sending areas and the
gap between them and the receiving regions’ (Portes 1983: 71). The migrants learn that
they can improve their standard of living and life chances for their families by leaving their
homes. Generally, they abandon the pressures of rural poverty to seek industrial jobs in
another country, or even in an urban setting of their home country. Of course, as analysts
of these global movements point out, the hopes of migrants are often defeated by their
lack of linguistic, educational and job skills. They tend to find employment, if at all, either
as labourers in agribusiness, or as manual, unskilled workers in manufacturing, construc-
tion or the service sector. In either case, they may have exchanged a life of subsistence
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farming at home for an equally grim existence at the bottom of the urban job pyramid in
an unfriendly, alien environment. The country that becomes their destination may find a
flood of newcomers straining the limited stocks of its housing, schools and health services.
In that case, there is generally a backlash against immigrants.
When migrants kept streaming into Europe despite the economic downturn in 1973,
some analysts shifted from an economic to a political rationale. The new immigrants, they
said, were attracted by the ‘rights-based politics in postwar Western Europe’, the liberal
granting of refugee status to asylum seekers and the failure of governments to adopt drastic
measures to deport migrants who had not been legitimated as permanent residents
(Cornelius 1994: 8).
Still, other observers contend, there is a degree of marginal advantage for most of the
immigrants, even in a negative economic or political climate, in terms of their life chances
and the access of their children to health and educational services. There are also benefits
to the country that receives them: filling low-paid, unskilled positions that have gone
begging, eventually utilizing the predominantly youthful newcomers as vigorous contribu-
tors to the economy, who pay taxes, replenish the ranks of the military, and in other ways
enrich the culture, economy and society (McCartley and Ronfeldt 1983). The cost–benefit
approach, however, has its limitations. Researchers have found that some of the key factors
determining immigration policy are unquantifiable. Rather than simply calculating gains
or losses of money and people, policy makers are often moved by so-called historical and
structural forces, such as the degree of openness in their societies and traditions of respond-
ing favourably or not to refugees from foreign cultures and different religious backgrounds.

‘Guest workers’ and their grandchildren

Western Europe had left behind the post-Second World War era of migration when Gastar-
beiter (‘guest workers’) from less developed countries were recruited to help rebuild war-torn
areas. Often, they came under the legal fiction that they would perform temporary labour,
then return to their home countries. Now, several generations later, their children and
grandchildren generally find themselves in ethnic ghettoes, alienated from the dominant
culture and without the full spectrum of civic rights granted to citizens by law. Many
European countries lack the tradition of cultural assimilation that is found in the United
States, Australia and Canada, and are only now trying to extend some basic rights to long-
time legal residents, at least those born on their territory. The continental legal systems
generally base citizenship on jus sanguinis, derived from the parents, rather than jus solis, the
place of birth, though some countries, such as Germany, are liberalizing laws to provide
for naturalization of long-time legal residents (Koslowski 2000).
 DEMOGRAPHIC ROOTS OF EUROPEAN XENOPHOBIA 471

The older migrant population in Europe overlaps with the new streams that began to
be directed westward in 1989, as the Cold War ended and Communist regimes in Eastern
Europe collapsed. The other half of this ‘new migration’ derived from ethnic conflicts,
which engendered the expulsion of minorities. One study finds the political refugees from
1989 to 1994 to number nearly four million, ethnic refugees from the former Yugoslavia
alone adding another five million (Koser and Lutz n.d.). The totals are the largest in Europe
since the Second World War. Unlike the supposed ‘guest workers’ of earlier times, these
newcomers come uninvited, many lack legal entry documents, and they frequently seek to
establish claims for political asylum on grounds of persecution at home. They are also
distinguished from the earlier group by their arrival in some of the smaller countries of
Central, Southern and Western Europe, such as Austria, Switzerland and Belgium, rather
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than primarily in Germany, France and Great Britain.

Xenophobia in an era of globablization

The context of the current migration is also unique, in that it takes place, paradoxically,
during a period of the dismantling of borders as well as the freer movement of capital and
goods – and of a technically skilled elite – that is the hallmark of European unification.
Yet political leaders of the receiving countries regard the migrants, especially undocu-
mented ones, with ‘a brand of moral panic’ as paradigms of people who ‘abuse the welfare
state, commit crimes and threaten the employment of established citizens’ (Koser and Lutz
n.d.: 3). Hence, the new migration has been linked to the emergence of racist and extreme
nationalist movements in several European countries. The hatred has been directed most
vehemently against non-European immigrants, although they account for only about half
of the influx, amounting to some seven million of the roughly 13 million official ‘foreign-
ers’ out of Europe’s population of 322 million (Werth et al. 1991).
The irrationality of the hostile response to ‘new immigrants’ is compounded by the
paradox that some of the most bitter xenophobia has occurred in the era of globalization,
which has generally brought economic benefits in its wake. It seems that, as European
governments fuse their economic and political systems into a continental system, resistance
to unification intensifies within certain subcultures and factions in many of the countries.
These groups retrogress into premodern, almost tribal, communities, directing a dispro-
portionate amount of anger, rooted perhaps in alienation and blurred group identity, at
recent newcomers in their midst.
Curiously, from the viewpoint of an outside observer, the ‘plummeting birth rates and
aging populations’ should logically lead to a drastic shift in immigration policy to avert a
crisis in ‘Europe’s economic vitality’ (New York Times 2001a: A28). Rather than introducing
current restrictive measures, government leaders should, therefore, be persuading their
public of the need for a far more liberal immigration policy. But they tend to become mute
in the face of demagogues who demonize the refugees and blame them for drugs, street
crime, unemployment, welfare cheating and a host of other social problems, although
crime statistics do not bear it out. The media magnify this paranoia, while but a few advo-
cates try to redress the balance in favour of immigrant rights. It has become common to
blame asylum seeks for ‘coming to exploit our welfare state’ (Brochmann 1994: 58).
Table 1 shows that, according to projections: (1) in most Western European countries
the proportion of retirement-age people to those of working-age is roughly 1:3, so that
three workers are now paying taxes to support benefits for one retiree; (2) that the United
States has a lower proportion than all but one (Ireland) of the European countries; (3) that
 472 HARVEY FIRESIDE

Table 1. Population aged 60 and over/population aged 20–60 (estimates)

1995 2000 2005 2010 2020 2030 2040

Austria 34.1 35.7 36.7 39.6 47.9 64.8 77.3

Belgium 39.0 39.3 39.9 43.8 54.7 71.2 73.4
Denmark 35.6 35.9 39.5 45.2 52.7 63.0 66.5
Finland 34.1 35.7 38.3 46.5 59.3 68.0 67.2
France 37.4 37.8 38.2 42.8 52.7 61.1 66.6
Germany 36.5 41.7 44.4 45.2 54.1 72.6 73.9
Greece 40.8 44.0 44.7 47.8 55.8 69.5 88.2
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Ireland 29.0 28.1 28.7 31.4 39.2 45.4 55.1

Italy 40.2 43.3 45.7 50.0 59.8 80.9 98.1
Luxembourg 33.7 34.6 35.9 38.9 48.7 60.6 67.4
Netherlands 30.9 31.9 34.6 40.5 52.9 71.3 77.6
Portugal 37.1 37.6 38.5 41.3 47.4 58.9 79.0
Spain 38.3 38.5 39.5 42.1 51.4 70.4 97.9
Sweden 41.9 42.0 45.7 51.3 58.6 68.9 71.7
United Kingdom 38.6 38.9 40.3 44.1 51.1 62.7 64.6
E.U.-15 37.6 39.5 41.4 44.6 53.6 68.6 77.2
[United States 30.0 29.8 30.8 33.9 45.0 53.0 53.9]

Source: UN statistics, cited in European Parliament, Directorate-General for Research (2001) The
Economic Situation of the European Union and the Outlook for 2001–2002 (Luxembourg: European
Parliament), 85.

in the period 1995–2000, there has been only a slight increase in the retirement-age sector
averaging 1.9% for the 15 EU members; (4) that during the next 40 years, the proportions
increase drastically, to about 3:4 overall, even higher in six of the countries. (If these projec-
tions are borne out, far fewer workers will be supporting benefits for many more retirees.)
Clearly, the budgets of these countries for welfare state programmes will have to be dras-
tically curtailed, and perhaps retirement ages moved up by several years. The demographic
bind has been exacerbated by sharply declining birth rates across the continent.

The ‘floridation’ of Western Europe

At least one commentator has noted that European countries are approaching the retiree
saturation level of the state of Florida, where 18.5% of the population is aged 65 or older
(Peterson 1999). Italy will reach that level in 2003, Germany in 2006, the United Kingdom
and France in 2016. The policy choices for how governments can maintain social benefits
are limited: drastic increases in immigration, bonuses for extra children, extension of
retirement ages, retrenchment in services and higher taxes.
Some of the countries in the EU, such as Austria, have already begun cutting back on
‘welfare state’ benefits. They have started to charge tuition at institutions of higher
education that had been free. They have cut some of the payments to the unemployed,
reduced hospital services and other entitlements, and begun to shift some municipal facil-
ities, such as housing and transportation, to the private sector. The budget crunch has so
far been greater in smaller countries than in larger ones, but it is likely to progress across
 DEMOGRAPHIC ROOTS OF EUROPEAN XENOPHOBIA 473

the board, as even socialist political parties who were traditional defenders of the welfare
state have been moving to the right, away from deficit spending and toward fiscal conserv-
atism (Cohen 2001).

Are we born hating strangers?

How does this context help to explain recent outbreaks of European xenophobia? The
hatred of foreigners, or Fremdenhass, has been analysed frequently in recent monographs by
reference to sociobiology. For example, one German scholar writes that xenophobia ‘seems
to be universal in all cultures. There is . . . strong evidence in favor of a biological basis of
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xenophobia’ (Flohr 1986). Another analyst cites theories that claim xenophobia is ‘norma-
tive’ for humans ‘unless there has been strong cultural training and conditioning against
it’ (vander Deunen 1986). Observations of infants are said to show their fear of strangers
as early as three months of age, usually peaking between six and eight months. There is
even said to be a genetic basis for the human predisposition to hate those unlike them.
There are several problems with the sociobiological approach, which seems to be in
vogue among continental social scientists. For one thing, it indulges in circular logic, attribu-
ting xenophobia to the human condition per se, though the data are based on statistical
trends, not on universal findings, and on observations under laboratory, not field,
conditions. It makes it appear that this negative response is ‘hard-wired’ in human infants
by seven or eight months of age, without giving due weight to the socialization process that
takes place afterward. The theory is also ahistorical, failing to explain why outbreaks of
violence against foreigners occur at certain times and places and not at others. One theorist
claims that social scientists concur that ‘racial hostility becomes serious’ in times of stress,
such as during food shortages or periods of high unemployment (Reynolds 1986). Such a
condition merely extends the theory’s circularity. It furnishes ex post facto reasons for xeno-
phobic spasms as due to underlying stress, though some sort of stress is part of life. Yet
there are societies, for example in Scandinavia, where strangers have traditionally been
made welcome, contrasted with others, such as Germany and Russia, whose history is
replete with hostility and violence toward minorities. The distinction between ‘xenophilic’
and xenophobic societies cannot be simply attributed to varying stress levels; it needs to be
seen in terms of multicausality, involving differences in national character, social stratifi-
cation, political systems, economic and cultural values, childhood socialization, plus other
factors.
The sociobiological approach might be useful if it were narrowed to apply to the
human propensity to form stereotypes and other prejudices about ‘out-groups’. Such
negative attitudes are only a substratum of the extreme hostility, bordering on violence,
which is the essence of true xenophobia. The latter could then be examined not as a
‘normal’ attribute of humans, but as involving psychological mechanisms that are studied
in abnormal psychology. For example, feelings of shame and inadequacy might be
‘repressed’ by means of the defence mechanism ‘denial’. Then, via another defence,
‘projection’, aggressive behaviour may be attributed to a foreigner. In that case, it would
become acceptable to express outright hostility to outsiders, because they have been misper-
ceived as threatening objects; acts of violence could be justified, in this distorted vision, to
‘beat the foreigners to the punch’.
According to this critical view of sociobiology, the best way to ward off xenophobia is
to have frequent interactions between citizens and foreigners, so that ‘reality testing’ would
prevent the formation of negative stereotypes. Yet, the policy of many countries receiving
 474 HARVEY FIRESIDE

immigrants is to wall them off in a physical or social ghetto. The newcomers, who antici-
pate hostility in their turn, huddle together in such an enclave, seeking safety in numbers.
In Europe today, it is possible to see urban quarters that serve as ghettos – in sections of
German cities such as Hamburg occupied by Turks, ‘bidonvilles’ of North Africans in
French slums, in the Bangladeshi East End of London, and sometimes even in detention
camps where asylum seekers are forced to live for months until their cases are decided.

Germany: reunified but still divided

The nations that react the most negatively to immigrants may be the ones with populations
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suffering a so-called ‘identity crisis’. One author argues that Europeans have been feeling
insecure during the economic integration being imposed from above, just as the ‘new immi-
grants’ have appeared in their midst (Brochmann 1994).
This phenomenon is illustrated by a closer look at Germany. Approximately 12 million
‘ethnic Germans’ who were expelled from post-Second World War Poland, Russia and
Czechoslovakia were absorbed without major friction. Then the Wirtschaftswunder
(economic miracle) of reconstruction was fuelled by the importation of labour from Italy
after a 1955 agreement and a larger contingent of Turkish guest workers following a 1961
treaty, the flood cresting in 1973 and leading to the addition of relatives on grounds of
‘family reunification’ (Flohr 1994: 35–36). At the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, a wave
of ‘new immigrants’ appeared from Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall fell. Their arrival
coincided with the country’s ‘reunification’, though Germany remains divided, culturally
and economically, more than a decade later into ‘Ossies’ and ‘Wessies’.
After 45 years of living under a separate political and economic system, the East
Germans have been undergoing an identity crisis. This seems to be related to the multiple
cases of arson against shelters for refugees, primarily in the East. Of course, here as in
formerly industrial zones of other European countries, a sizeable increase in levels of
unemployment (currently 17% among eastern workers) has aggravated the situation. Both
unemployed and part-time workers have been turning to the welfare state for support.
Right-wing parties had opposed immigrants in West Germany since the late 1960s, when
the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) was able to elect delegates to seven
of the state legislatures; it has since declined to a splinter group. Yet extremist slogans, such
as ‘Ausländer raus’ (out with foreigners) and an end to Überfremdung (over-foreignization), have
been heard at political rallies since the 1970s. By 1991, more than 900 cases of violence
against foreigners were reported, plus 300 cases of arson. The mayors of several cities set
up camps allegedly to shield asylum seekers (Flohr 1994: 37).
There are over seven million immigrants in Germany, 9% of the population – the
highest proportion of any major European power, but the country’s xenophobia is focused
on the 1.4 million (2%) who are Muslim. A year ago, the opposition Christian Democratic
party (CDU/CSU), under Angela Merkel, its new leader, was about to liberalize its
platform to include pro-immigrant phrases, such as ‘Germany is an immigrant country’
and ‘The boat is not yet full’. At that juncture, the CDU parliamentary leader, Friedrich
Merz, launched an attack on the failure of immigrants to adopt Leitkultur, i.e. Germany’s
dominant culture. This critique resonated so positively with other party leaders that the
attempt to orient the party toward tolerance to immigrants was abandoned. Edmund
Stoiber, the party’s candidate for chancellor in the September 2002 elections, has forged
ahead in the polls by ‘stressing law and order and stricter controls on immigration’
(Erlanger 2002a: 3A).
 DEMOGRAPHIC ROOTS OF EUROPEAN XENOPHOBIA 475

The Social Democratic party (SPD) has been moving cautiously in increasing immi-
gration and the rights of resident foreigners, in the face of surveys that show more than
two-thirds of German respondents opposed to immigration, which they link to worsening
unemployment. Actually, the unemployment rate of foreigners has been double that of the
country as a whole (Seifert 1998). Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s SPD government’s
coalition partner, the Green party, has shown a generally positive attitude to immigrants.
But even their leader, Renate Kuenast, declared that she was ready to scrap the party’s old
slogan for a ‘multikulti’ society, since she deemed it as ambiguous as the CDU’s Leitkultur.
She added, moreover, that newcomers should be required to demonstrate their allegiance
to the constitution of the Federal Republic by reciting a pledge of allegiance (Cohen 2001).
The demographic roots of Germany’s dilemma in immigration policy consist of its
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falling birth rate, its shrinking population, and a diminished workforce trying to maintain
a generous welfare state able to care for its pensioners and other entitlement groups. The
country’s population is expected to decline from 82 million to 62 million by 2050, with the
workforce shrinking from 41 million to 26 million (New York Times 2001b). German business
groups have suggested than an annual influx of 250 000 workers will be needed to maintain
the economy. Chancellor Schroeder picked a CDU representative, Rita Suessmuth, to lead
a bipartisan commission that called recently for admission of 50 000 foreign qualified
workers a year. However, a programme in 2000 that offered temporary ‘green cards’ to
high-tech workers was able to fill only 8000 of its 20 000 slots.
Why are eligible foreign workers not choosing jobs in prosperous Germany? A plausible
reason is the country’s reputation for xenophobia. The Council of Europe’s report on
human rights expressed ‘deep concern’ over Germany’s attitude toward foreigners (New
York Times 2001b). Social scientists have noted that Germans do not think of their country
as a haven for refugees. Indeed, the law only permitted granting citizenship to foreigners
starting in 1991, primarily to those born in Germany, but also to others who have lived
there for 15 years and are self-supporting. But three years later, less than 1% of foreigners
had become citizens – a total of 61 700 (Seifert 1998: 57). The German constitution was
changed during reunification to prevent non-European asylum seekers from entering the
country.
While the German government has sought to stem the flow of immigrants, except for
those with special technical skills, it has also tried to protect the rights of foreign residents.
One historical-structural factor is official recognition that the country must avoid the racism
of the Nazi era. Its Grundgesetz (basic law) bans political factions that seek to undermine the
constitutional order. Proceedings have been under way to delegitimize the NPD. The
national and state legislatures also have set a 5% minimum of the popular vote before
seating representatives of any party, another way of eliminating small extremist groups.
Despite periodic recent incidents against foreigners and Jews, demonstrators have often
taken to the streets afterward to express their revulsion at such attacks and vandalism.

Demagogues on the Danube

By contrast, Austria has generally blocked out its Nazi past, scarcely mentioned in history
texts for public schools, since the Allied post-Second World War occupation adopted the
official myth that the country had been Hitler’s ‘first victim’ instead of his most enthusi-
astic follower. One consequence of this historical distortion is that officials like former
president Kurt Waldheim have only thinly disguised their record as Wehrmacht or SS
officers without negatively affecting their political careers. Another is the steady rise in the
 476 HARVEY FIRESIDE

popularity of the demagogic Austrian Freedom party since the 1980s. By 1991 it had
increased its share of votes to nearly one-quarter, and in 1996 challenged the Social Demo-
crats and Catholic-oriented People’s party who had ruled in tandem since the 1950s
(Castles and Miller 1998). Following the 1999 elections, the People’s party leader, Chan-
cellor Wolfgang Schüssel, invited the Freedom party, led by the demagogic Jörg Haider, to
enter into a new governing coalition, provoking the European Union to impose sanctions.
They were lifted seven months later, in September 2000, after the EU received assurances
that Austria would respect human rights.
Haider officially resigned as party leader, though he exerts major influence behind the
scenes in Klagenfurt, as governor of Carinthia. He recently embarrassed the government
by gathering 915 000 signatures on a petition to keep the Czech Republic out of the EU
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unless it shuts down a nuclear power plant near the Austrian border (Erlanger 2002b).
Haider also argues that Austrian Jews should not receive restitution for property seized by
the Nazis more than 60 years ago unless the Czech authorities first pay three million ethnic
Sudeten Germans for property seized from them when they were expelled after the Second
World War.
Austria’s fragmented identity may also be traced to its nostalgia for the glories of the
Hapsburg empire, which still serves as a cultural icon and a major tourist attraction. The
population is an ethnic goulash, with descendants of former Slavic, Hungarian, Italian and
other parts of the old empire, who consider themselves paragons of German culture and
regard recent East European refugees with disdain. Yet Austria has also diversified and
modernized its economy, so that it boasts the fourth-highest GDP in the EU, as well as the
second-lowest unemployment rate (4.7% in 1997). This success is partially due to immi-
grants, who constitute nearly 10% of the population and who pay back far more in taxes
than they initially received in government benefits. Yet they are denounced by Haider as
‘die Anderen’(the others), namely, foreign idlers who have been coddled by the welfare system
(Ötsch 2000).
It is significant that the Freedom party gained access to power at a time when the
century-old Austrian welfare state was facing a demographically based fiscal crisis, although
the economy was still prospering. Life expectancy of Austrians has surpassed 77 years (74.1
for males, 80.7 for females), putting great strains on social security and health services. The
fertility rate of 1.37 children per woman is among the lowest in the world (after Italy and
Germany in the EU), far below the 2.1 replacement rate. The over-60 age group, now one-
fifth of the total population, is projected to become one-third by 2030, requiring an increase
of more than half in current revenues to support it. Here again, immigrants who are
substantially younger and more fertile than the natives should logically be viewed as assets,
not debits, of the economy (Schwenger n.d.).
The Haiderites, however, find it easier to blame both the 10 000 or so Jews who have
returned to Vienna as well as the new eastern immigrants for the country’s budget crisis
rather than the native grandparents who are living longer than ever. Austrian nationalists
also blame the EU, which Austria joined in 1995, for spreading ‘inferior cosmopolitan
culture’ that they perceive as polluting the country’s dominant Germanic literature and
art. Their xenophobia is behind a campaign to keep out of the EU the latest applicants
from Eastern Europe: Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks as well as Turks. Their allies in the
media (notably Vienna’s popular tabloid Neue- Kronenzeitung) depict these new invaders from
the East as threatening to put unbearable strains on government services, along with higher
taxes, a crime wave and drugs. A welcome mat is only extended for Slovenes, who boast
the soundest economy in the Balkans and represent a Catholic culture compatible with
Austria’s.
 DEMOGRAPHIC ROOTS OF EUROPEAN XENOPHOBIA 477

Belgium’s regional disparities

Belgium is another West European country with a xenophobic party that exploits regional
economic disparities and problems of national identity (EU 1997). Unlike Austria, the
economic roots of the ethnic problem in Belgium can be analysed by the traditional
‘push–pull’ theory as well as by attention to the country’s division into four linguistic regions
(mainly Dutch, French and German), three communities and three regions. The Front
National (FN) here has a special appeal for the French-speaking Walloons, rather than the
Dutch-speaking Flemish. Wallonia is the southern region of the country that used to be a
centre of heavy industry but is now saddled with over 10% unemployment. The youth who
cannot find jobs are grist for the mill of FN president Daniel Feret. On the party’s Internet
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site, Feret blames foreigners for a host of recent social ills: the 1996 murder of four little
girls in Charleroi, the 1997 discovery of food contamination, the youth riots in Brussels,
the prevalence of illegal drugs, instances of carjacking, urban violence, organized crime
and even outbreaks of la vache folle (mad cow disease) (Belgium n.d.). Of course, the Belgian
FN echoes the French FN of Jean-Marie LePen, which also has a special regional focus:
the southern region around Marseilles where Algerians and other immigrants from former
French colonies – along with the former French colonists – have clustered.

A rightward continental drift

In all corners of Europe, from England to Italy, the level of xenophobia as well as its focus
on Muslim immigrants increased sharply after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the
United States. The effects could be seen in Birmingham in the UK, whose population of
one million is nearly one-third Muslim, as well as in Rome, where Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi inveighed against the Islamic world as a threat to superior Western values
(Cowell 2001, Erlanger 2001). The xenophobic attacks of Berlusconi’s ally, Gianfranco
Fini’s Northern Alliance party, are even shriller. In Austria, Jörg Haider said that non-
European asylum seekers should go to ‘safe third states’ on their own continents (Daley
2001).32 Country after country has announced new stricter security checks for asylum
seekers. Even in normally tolerant Denmark, the anti-immigrant People’s party doubled
its parliamentary seats in the November 2001 elections, helping its conservative allies defeat
the Social Democrats. The key electoral issue was the family reunification policy for immi-
grants, which is likely to be ended by the new government (Associated Press 2001).
The varied reactions showed once again that, despite several vain attempts, the EU has
not yet been able to endorse a common immigration policy because of national differences
(Springer 1999). In 1990, member states did adopt the Dublin convention, which defined
rules for granting political asylum, but later attempts to coordinate a common policy failed.
Among the EC’s good intentions is a ‘Declaration of Principles Governing External
Aspects of Migration Policy’, in which members agreed to keep out illegal immigrants, to
work to remove the causes of migration and to encourage migrants to stay at home. But
the specifics have not yet been added. One might conclude that, while xenophobia extends
across Europe, the situation – thanks to changing demographic, economic and political
factors – is too labile for a common solution. It is necessary, however, to factor ‘the political
consequences of demographic issues and vice versa’ into any future EU planning (Teitel-
baum and Winter 1998: 3).
In the foregoing brief survey of three countries, we have seen the most open hostility
to immigrants in Austria, where an openly xenophobic party is part of the governing
 478 HARVEY FIRESIDE

coalition – a unique situation in Europe. We have theorized that the ageing of the popu-
lation, low birth rates and a shrinking labour force are immediate threats to the welfare
state, but that Austrian leaders find it easier to put public blame on recent immigrants.
Further, the suppression of the country’s Nazi history underlies this distorted view of many
Austrians that they have to defend their culture against loss of their national identity
because of EU pressures.
A similar psychological split exists among the ethnic groups in Belgium, but there xeno-
phobia is more of a regional than a national problem. An extremist party exploits high
unemployment among the Walloons due to a recession in heavy industry by demonizing
recent immigrants. The economic crisis lends itself to potential amelioration by EC
measures to foster economic development.
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The German xenophobic phenomenon is not as endemic as Austria’s cultural isola-

tionism, nor as susceptible of a solution as Belgium’s geographically limited economic
problem. Germany appears to be in transition, still maintaining a social split between the
prosperous West and the underdeveloped East. Government officials recognize the demo-
graphic factors that make a liberalized immigration policy necessary, but their half-hearted
measures – such as extending an invitation to technically skilled workers from abroad, or
offering conditional citizenship to long-time foreign residents – do not yet constitute an
adequate response. They alternate such moves with others that pander to public prejudices
against introducing ‘foreign elements’ into German culture.
All three cases show that the national divisions of Europe have persisted despite
economic – and even some degree of political – unification. The demographic crisis across
the continent complicates the problem. Within each nation-state, then, the people’s adher-
ence to their cultural and social institutions buttresses the negative feelings toward outsiders
that are expressed as xenophobia. It will be a long time before the EC’s structures and
processes evoke new loyalties strong enough to lead to a transnational, multicultural society.

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