1995 Global Cultural Diversity Conference Proceedings, Sydney
Communities and Participation in Political Institutions in Europe
Professor Tomas Hammar
Centre for Research in International Migration and Ethnic Relations,
Stockholm University, Sweden
Cultural diversity may bring us great values, a richness of life, unexpected views and perspectives, an encounter with other lifestyles, and in the best case also a better understanding of our own culture, and a respect for other people's cultures and religions.
But cultural diversity may also confront us with a dilemma, a matter of great concern to politicians, political parties and governments, to the majority population and, first of all, to the minorities in a society.
My subject here is Communities and Participation in Political Institutions in Europe, and Europe is not traditionally an immigration continent like Australia or America. It is the home region of the nation state, a continent divided into a great number of states of varying size and power, all with doubtful claims that they are nation states. Many of these states, and especially the large and rich ones in Western Europe, have recently experienced a labour immigration, from the beginning supposed to be temporary, but in the end resulting in the permanent settlement of large ethnic minorities.
This immigration during the 1960s and 1970s is one of the main reasons why cultural diversity has become a major dilemma and a matter of great concern to political institutions in almost all European countries. There are also several other reasons for this. The development of the European Union as a political body has raised the question what kind of a multicultural society Europe will be. Which groups will be considered to be minorities? What rights and influence will they get, and what guarantees against majority encroachment of their rights?
My contribution here will be a short discussion of the cultural diversity caused by international migration into Europe from the East and from the South. I shall especially deal with political rights and political participation of the large immigrated ethnic communities that have settled in Western and Northern Europe. Only a few countries have officially proclaimed a multicultural policy, but everywhere cultural diversity is an obvious fact. Many languages, religions, traditions and cultures co-exist, side by side, in the greater cities of Europe.
Multiculturalism has become the official objective of my own country, Sweden, and I shall give some details about this, especially as it has some characteristics in common with Australia, in spite of all obvious differences. Professor Jerzy Zubrzycki made me aware of these similarities, when we compared notes on his visits to Sweden. In both countries and at about the same time, a traditional policy of assimilation was replaced by a conscious positive view of cultural differences and of ethnic communities. In Sweden, this happened during a ten year period from 1965 to 1975. The key word was freedom of choice for ethnic minority groups, a freedom to preserve and develop their language, culture and religion and to bring up new generations within the minority cultures. In 1976, this principle was even manifested by an amendment to the constitution, which in one of its first articles says: "Ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities shall be entitled to preserve and develop their own cultural and societal life." (RF: 1:2)
Mother tongue instruction is given in the regular schools. The communities are subsidised by the state for activities in their own associations, for publishing their press, for churches and religious congregations etc. Special radio and TV programmes are being transmitted. But of course, in all fields too little is done, if the aim is to give all the minority communities a genuine opportunity to establish themselves for long-term survival in Sweden. There is also another competing aim, however, namely the full functional integration of all immigrants into the Swedish society: they should learn the Swedish language, work on regular working conditions, enjoy the same education and vocational training etc. Most important for our discussion, they should also be integrated into political life. I shall soon return to this political perspective, and compare with some other countries, first of all with Germany. But allow me first to give a short introduction to the following four democratic dilemmas caused by immigration and multiculturalism.
Four Dilemmas
1. Access to residential, civic and political rights. Democratic government is done for the people and by the people. But immigration raises the question, who are the members of the people? Citizens only, or also other legal residents and taxpayers? Who are entitled to make use of political freedoms, who are entitled to vote in public elections? Finally, naturalisations: who are granted citizenship and on what conditions?
2. Political participation. Low interest and participation may decrease the power of the ethnic communities. Limited voting rights (only local, for example) and rigid requirements for naturalisation may tend to reduce the rate of participation. If foreigners are entitled to vote, this right is seldom fully utilised by the immigrant or ethnic voters.
3. Majority decisions vs respect for minorities. Democracy presupposes a super ideology or a common understanding that majority decisions shall be followed. In the multicultural polity such majority decisions should not, however, inflict upon minority rights.
4. When does multiculturalism result in assimilation? Is it true that the more there is (for ethnic communities) to fight against, the more energy, strength and spirit and the more cohesion may be found in the ethnic communities? The more they are granted of rights and money from above and without struggle, the weaker the communities may be?
Residential, Civic and Political Rights
Germany has the largest number of foreign residents, close to 7 million. France has 3.6 million, the UK 2 million, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands about 1 million each, and Austria and Sweden about half a million each. All these figures refer to foreign citizens and do not include those foreign born who have been naturalised. In Germany where naturalisation is difficult to obtain, more people remain foreign citizens after several decades of stay in the country. In France, the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden, where naturalisation, just as in Australia, is more easily obtained, most foreign born are already citizens. The immigrated or foreign-born populations are therefore in these countries much larger than shown by statistics based on citizenship.
More than 20 years after the recruitment stopped in Europe, most foreign-born residents have settled for good, and many are citizens long since. But several others have not wanted to shift citizenship status. This would have required a renunciation of their original citizenship, as dual citizenship in principle is forbidden. In Germany, for example, where few could obtain naturalisation, most foreign residents have by and by acquired, not citizenship, but full residential rights, as well as most social and economic rights, and also some political rights, for instance the right to be a member of a political party. In this way the minority populations have come to include two categories of foreign-born people, namely those who are naturalised formal citizens, and those who are not, but who anyhow have obtained most of the substantial rights which follow from citizenship.
I have started to call the latter category "denizens" in order to make this large group of people visible. It includes all those who in a formal sense are foreign citizens or aliens, but who after many years have all sorts of ties to the country of immigration, by way of family, job, property etc. They are domiciled in the country, entitled to settle permanently, and they have extensive social and economic rights, although not full political rights. Most of the one million Australian immigrants who have not yet asked for naturalisation although formally entitled to do so, are in this sense denizens.
In the present situation, however, large immigrant minorities in Europe, in fact a
total population of the size of the Netherlands (15 million), are still after a period of 20 to 30 years of residence, excluded from full political rights. They were from the beginning refused all political participation. They were sometimes even seen as a direct threat to the public order. Even basic civic rights were withheld, such as long term or permanent residential rights, the freedom of expression, the right to organise or to form associations of their own, the right to stand for election in the trade unions, or to be a member of a political party. But during the 1970s, these civic rights were granted to denizens in most countries, and some countries, like the Nordic and the Netherlands went further, giving voting rights in local elections to those who were legal residents for more than three or, in the Netherlands, five years.
Most European states have in this way gradually extended civic rights to denizens, but turned down proposals to grant them local voting rights. The European Union has decided, however, that if citizens of one member state are legal residents of another member state, they shall be given both voting rights in local elections in the country of domicile, and the right to vote for the European Parliament in elections there.
But in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and most South European countries the rule is still that only full citizens may vote in public elections. In countries like Germany, Switzerland and Austria, where naturalisation is not easily available, or where it is available only after ten years or more, or where dual citizenship is not tolerated, a large segment of the resident population is excluded from political elections and representative democracy, and this exclusion may last for a lifetime, even for more than one generation. This is an immediate problem for those excluded, as the political parties neglect their interests, but it is also a major dilemma for any liberal democratic state, and the larger the excluded population and the longer this exclusion lasts the bigger is this dilemma. First of all, this long term exclusion of resident tax payers from political representation is a serious departure from democracy.
The Nordic example may, compared to the German, demonstrate my point. Germany still insists that voting rights shall be the privilege of formal citizens only. The large Turkish minorities in major German cities like Frankfurt, Cologne or Berlin have therefore remained excluded for 30 years and more. Segregated from German politics, some of them have turned away from politics altogether, while others have chosen to organise themselves on the basis of Turkish or Kurdish politics instead. German political parties will show little interest in the Turkish community, as long as there are no Turkish votes to be gained, and the Turks will pay little attention to the campaigns of the political parties.
The practise of local voting rights for denizens in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands has shown that political parties want to gain the votes of anyone voting, citizens and non-citizens alike. The parties have produced campaign material in many languages to catch the interest of voters from the minority groups, and when we have measured the level of political information within the groups, we have found an increase both in knowledge and in political interest. But, most importantly, this electoral reform opened the way for a new type of political candidate in the elections and for new immigrant politicians. All the parties wanted to place an "immigrant" on the local lists, and for example in Sweden, the number of foreign born local politicians went up from an insignificant number to about 600 after a few elections, corresponding to about 3 per cent of all elected politicians or almost the same proportion as denizen voters amounted to among all voters.
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