European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 10

Refugees and Migration in Europe

Asian religious and political ideas will get
a chance to dominate the world society in
the future. Even in Europe, the migration
issue has created a certain alliance of
Leftist parties with the nativism of
Asian and African countries which was
contrary to the still predominant beliefs
in European values. Max Weber once
emphasized the difference between “the
ethics of conviction” (Gesinnungsethik)
and the “ethics of responsibility”
(Verantwortungsethik). Western values
threaten to be abused by unrealistic
emphasizers of the “ethics of conviction”
as well as by Asian and African ideologues.
Many of them refuse the Western concept
of universal human values, although
they recently proved their value in the
widespread help for refugees from Asia
and Africa by normal citizens in Europe.

Immigration is rediscovered as
a phenomenon which existed in many
periods of European history. When after
200 years, Germans in Brazil still speak a
German dialect, this was praised by some
observers, in a time when the obligation
of immigrants to learn German is widely
discussed among German Democrats. One
of the most disputed topics on migration
is the assessment whether immigrants are
useful for the economy of a guest country.
Frequently wrong comparisons are offered,
such as the Russian Jews immigrating
to Israel, who generally had a much
higher level of education than the Jewish
immigrants from Ethiopia. The 14 million
German speakers who came from Eastern
Europe and had to be accepted by the
two Germanys after 1945 are also hardly
comparable to Arabs in Scandinavia or
Germany since they knew German, were
well educated, and had the stubborn will
to be economically successful. By about
1960, they had almost reached the income

levels of West German citizens.

In German politics, the main
targets of policies in the field of migration
mentioned by leading politicians
(Klöckner 2016, 21) are as follows:
• Facilitating the integration of refugees
• Securing the outer borders of Europe
• Distribution of refugees amongst the
European countries and the German
Laender
• Fighting against the military and
economic causes of emigration
• Allaying civil war in Syria.

In these five areas a lot has been
done. But Europe is far from succeeding.
1) The integration of refugees depends
on how long most of them stay in
Europe. Certainly, in the future, many
will go back, partly disappointed with
the living conditions in the camps
and other accommodation facilities
in the European area, partly because
the conditions at home will improve—
whether economically, politically, or
otherwise. The older generation of
migrants endorsed this assumption. Last
year, more Turks, living under decent
conditions in Germany, moved back to
Turkey than the numbers of those Turks
who came to Germany. Most of the
parties agree that the refugees have to
accept the values of Western democracy
and to learn the language of the
country. Sometimes there are, however,
strange controversies when Leftists
are so committed to “understanding
foreign citizens” that they accept, for
example, masking women with Burkas
in public—widely not accepted by the
citizens’ home country.
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