Quote:
Originally Posted by Martina
Most of us here do not have a clue what it is like to live in a European city where there is that kind of daily anger and hostility in the air between strangers of different ethnic groups. Rocky is an American living there. My sense is he is fairly shocked by it. He does seem to have taken some of the racist attitudes to heart -- the tax comment. But it's really easy for us to preach when we aren't living it. How many people have lived among Arabs and worked with them daily and lived side by side? i have. And there was no hint of the anger and hostility so common in France and Germany. My friend from Egypt reports the same experience from the other position -- as an Arab immigrant.
Since 911 it has gotten much worse for Arabs living here. But it's still a real life, a life with a future. It is not a life lived as a permanent outsider in your own home. That is true for many Arabs living in France.
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I think this post is a bit extreme when it comes to portraying the life of immigrants as a whole in Western and Central Europe (Eastern Europe is a different matter altogether) in comparison to what they face in North America, particularly where you describe daily anger and hostility. I am both a Canadian and European citizen and have lived in Bavaria, one of the more conservative regions of Germany (though when you compare it to the conservatism I've witnessed in North America, it's not really comparable) and found that the experiences of the many immigrants I knew there were pretty diverse.
At one point I worked at a small café where I worked and lived along side a Polish woman and a Slovenian woman. One was my age (20/21 at the time) and the other a few years older. Both women had been migrant workers at this same place for a few years before I got there, and were doing it to make money to bring back home. They were being exploited as much as any migrant worker in North America is.
At the same time I was acquainted with a Bulgarian guy also in his 20's who had started off a migrant worker, but eventually came to own his own internet café/movie rental place and was going to school as well. There is still stigma toward Eastern Europeans in Germany because of German/Polish history in particular, which is slowly but surely changing. And that is the issue primary issue in Europe: centuries of history. And that is one issue that straints German/Turkish relations, the history of both nations during the last century, as well as foreign (particularly American) intervention in Turkish/German relations throughout the last century.
On the other hand, I was friends with a Peruvian guy who moved to Germany for a better life since his father lived there, but his father ended up refusing to help him out in getting started, so he had to learn German on his own and found it hard to get out of low wage restaurant jobs. Whereas a Brazilian guy I was acquainted with came to Germany on a visa and within four years was working for the Volksbank. It all depends.
But the stigma toward these migrant workers and their situation and opportunties are not really different from what migrant workers face in the US and, increasing more recently with our wonderful PM, Canada. Also, I think the public is more aware of the plight of migrant workers in Germany than in Canada, for example, which is one of the positives about Germany: generally more socio-political awareness and activism.
When comparing the lives of migrant workers and the opportunities available to them with those of German-born youth of Turkish or other non-German ethnicities, I would say that the latter have far more opportunities. Certainly it was extremely difficult for their parents and the older generations who did not have citizenship as a whole and who faced a lot of discrimination, but for young people things are much easier and they are far more accepted in German society than their parents were, probably because the attitudes of young Germans have also changed a lot over the years.
I think part of it has to do with how the education and health care systems function in Germany, the Benelux and Northern Europe. As citizens they have the same access to universal health care and cheap to free post-secondary education (and as time goes on, more and more gain access to it by finishing secondary school), which provides them with better futures regardless of the socio-economic standing their parents held. I'd say in that respect they have more available to them than many North Americans. Older immigrant generations have a tendency to either alienate themselves or be alienated in society, in a similar way that many older immigrant groups in North America do, whereas their children typically feel as much a citizen as anyone else (unless it's the World Cup
). On that topic, the prominence of German-born athletes of Turkish descent has probably helped things over the years. Footballers like Mesul Özl and Hamut Altintop, or half-German half-Spanish footballers like Mario Gomez are as beloved as other football stars of ethnic German descent. Just look at the way both Özl and Müller were equally praised rookies for their performances. Then compare them to Eastern Europeans playing for German teams...there are not many, and those who do are usually of German descent/Germans that immigrated to the East in past centuries and either expulsed during the Soviet years or returning after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I'm not aware of efforts by the government to disenfranchise German-born youth of Turkish descent, but feel free to go into detail. There was the problem over a decade ago with gaining German citizenship (requiring at least one German parent even if the child of immigrants was born in German), but that was changed a while ago so that the children of immigrants gain citizenship.
That isn't to say there aren't some people who are hostile towards Turks or Germans of Turkish descent...but whether it is "worse" than in North America is rather debatable. Comparing the treatment of Turkish migrant workers to Mexican and Central/South American migrant workers or migrant workers anywhere there is not much difference. In my opinion what you've written is an exaggeration of the hostility of the average German towards those of Turkish descent.
If you want to talk about systematic discrimination against a given group, the Roma are a far better example...very similar to how First Nations peoples are treated throughout North and South America, except that because the Roma have no "claim to the land" the way First Nations do, they are frequently deported and berated.
If I were to rate German acceptance of those of foreign descent it would be less accepting than Canadian or Dutch urban areas, but generally more tolerant than what I've seen expressed by many American news sources and from what I've experienced as far as many (not all) American sentiments towards the "unAmerican." When it comes to public and media response to the "threat of terrorism" it was far less frantic, paranoid and prejudice than the American media like CNN and Fox...that much was fairly evident. I would also add that I see Germans and the German government as more accepting than France in general.
But there is still probably more distrust of Eastern European Slavs and Roma than other groups, I would say.