Views on Immigration in Europe
RUBEN SANTIAGO
COM 306 - TED GOURNELOS
AUGUST 5, 2015
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In the last few years, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the United Kingdom, among
other European countries, have experienced a relatively sudden influx of immigrants.
Ever increasing conflict in the Middle East and Northern Africa is largely to blame,
causing thousands to cross the Mediterranean in unseaworthy boats or smuggled over
land in order to find refuge or asylum in Europe. While some people in the host
countries do sympathize with the refugees, many also believe that the sheer amount of
refugees that are coming in present economical or cultural burdens on the host country.
In this paper I will discuss the general sentiments on the topic of immigration in Europe
and in doing so establish possible correlations in economic state of specific European
nations.
To establish general sentiments across Europe, I first assembled a list of the
countries that seem to be most affected by this recent wave of immigrants— what has
come to be known as “the (European) immigration crisis”. From this list, I used a list of
the most popular newspapers for each country and chose newspapers with English
content dealing with political and social issues, and simply searched using the keyword
“immigration” and chose three articles published in the last 12 months that pertained to
the topic of immigration. Also, I gathered three articles from general European
newspapers to gain a sense as to what the overall sentiment on the topic is for the
region as a whole. Of 24 pieces selected, only two are opinion-editorials, but still served
as reasonable voices of sentiment from reputable newspapers and so they were still
considered in this analysis. Each of these articles was classified as “Pro-Legislation” or
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as “Pro-Human Rights” sentiments and conclusions were drawn from the distribution
of these categorizations for each country.
The results of the survey of three news articles from five European countries and
the European Union showed interesting correlations between economic status and their
tolerance of immigration. Of the six, only Greece was entirely against immigration, with
all three articles leaning towards pro-legislation. Both France and Italy reflected the
exact opposite, with both nations leaning entirely towards human rights. The United
Kingdom, Germany, and the E.U. in general tend to lean more towards human rights,
but one out of three of the articles was observed to be pro-legislation.
Most interesting of all is Greece. With the well known economic troubles Greece
has had, it is understandable why the Greeks are so adamantly opposed to hosting
immigrants. As mentioned earlier, the weight of a significant and sudden influx of
immigrants can be a heavy burden for the tax-paying citizens and legal residents of the
host nation. It is not difficult to see that Greece’s economic catastrophe has influenced
its position on the immigration crisis. The language used in the Greek papers uses far
harsher language in their headlines including “Authorities battle migrant
smugglers…”, “Immigration - Syriza’s new Achilles heel”, and “… ‘woefully
inadequate’[sic] government efforts over refugees”. Italy and France’s headlines,
conversely, include “Forgotten Migrants on Rocks at Ventimiglia” (Italy) and “Activists
slam France’s migrant policy…”. Notably, both France and Italy’s unemployment is
about half of Greece’s at 9-13% (Eurostat 2014). The two countries surveyed with the
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least unemployment are also those who are more divided on the topic: the U.K. and
Germany. Also, more broadly, the general E.U. papers were also divided, which is
unsurprising given the variety of states of national economies of E.U. participant
nations of which all five aforementioned countries are.
From this, I have found that a nations economic status has an interesting link to
social issues like immigration. The general sentiments on immigration specifically are
also likely related to the host nation’s society’s willingness to help immigrants
assimilate or their desire to maintain separation between their national culture and
identity and other cultures and identities.
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Bibliography
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Appendix
Tolerance of Immigration In Europe
4
3
2
2
1
0
1
0
0
3
1
1
Pro-Legislation
2
3
3
0
Pro-Human Rights
Topic Frequency Across 3 News Article Titles
DESCRIPTION
PRO-LEGISLATION
PRO-HUMAN RIGHTS
Germany
1
2
Italy
0
3
France
0
3
Greece
3
0
U.K.
1
2
E.U.
1
2
2
2