Charlemagne: Minority reports

Where Europe fails in its treatment of minorities compared with America

AFTER Hurricane Katrina, Europeans rushed to congratulate themselves on avoiding the misery they saw on the faces of survivors. Such isolation and deprivation, they said, could never happen here. After two weeks of rioting in France, Americans are mockingly retorting that isolation and failure occur everywhere - and not only, some might add, in France. Britain saw immigrant riots in 2001. The Netherlands has radical Islamists who commit political murders.

Whether Europe or America really has the better record on accommodating ethnic minorities is an issue that may be debated ad infinitum. But the riots in France point to one particular area in which Europe has been unusually bad: integrating immigrant families from the second and third generations.

In America, the education levels, English-language skills and intermarriage rates of immigrant groups rise over time. So do income, home-ownership and political representation. This is the natural course of assimilation. But it does not seem to work in Europe. Some European countries (including France) do not collect ethnic-based statistics, so hard evidence is tricky to come by. But most indicators of second- and third-generation assimilation in Europe are disquieting. There are few North African or Turkish representatives in French or German politics. Most young men arrested after the French riots have been sons or grandsons of immigrants from the 1950s or 1960s. The murderer of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch film-maker, was described by the chairman of a parliamentary commission as "an average second-generation immigrant". Europe, it seems, has done less than America to assimilate the children and grandchildren of newcomers. Why?

The answer depends on another question: what makes immigrants adapt? Some people stress the role of the host country, and argue that European policy has been worse than America's. Certainly, European policy has been all over the place. In France, anybody can be a citizen, and there are no recognised group identities. The ban on the Muslim headscarf in state schools exemplified this assimilationist tradition. Germany, until 2000, was the opposite: nobody could become a citizen if they were not of German extraction, even if they met the usual conditions (such as being born in the country of parents also born there). Britain and (until recently) the Netherlands were different again: they have sponsored a tolerant multiculturalism, in which minority groups are encouraged to celebrate their distinctiveness, so long as they accept that others can do the same.

After the events of the past two weeks, some Europeans are arguing that the British approach is the better one. Yet Islamic extremism exists in both integrationist France and multicultural Britain. Neither France nor Britain has avoided segregation in immigrant areas, although Germany has. America is moving away from multiculturalism, which dominated in the 1980s, to greater assimilation (some states ban Spanish as a language of instruction, for example). The correct conclusion is not that one model is best, but that policy may not be what makes the difference.

Perhaps it is culture that counts. Maybe Muslims are unusually retentive of their original culture. Certainly, they are the targets of increasingly radical propaganda, demanding that they separate themselves from the decadent society around them. And many Muslims discourage their sons and (especially) daughters from marrying outside their faith or ethnic group. Since intermarriage influences how quickly second- and third-generation immigrants assimilate, this cultural preference may make it harder for Europe to integrate, say, North Africans than it is for America to integrate Hispanics.

But do not make too much of the difference. Hispanic intermarriage rates in America, though rising, are lower than mixed marriages in many multicultural parts of Britain. Americans worry about the different culture of Latinos just as much as Europeans do about North Africans. So even if immigrants in Europe raise cultural barriers to assimilation, this is hardly unique. What matters are the forces that work to overcome those barriers. Two stand out: work and home-ownership.

The work advantage

Work is the archetypal social activity. It provides friends and contacts beyond your family or ethnic group. If you start your own company, it pulls you further into the society around you. And here is a striking difference between Europe and America. Unemployment in France is almost 10%. Among immigrants or the children of immigrants, it is at least twice and sometimes four times as high. In contrast, unemployment among legal immigrants in America is negligible, and business ownership is off the scale compared with Europe.

The second big motor of integration is home-ownership, especially important in the second and third generations. This gives people a stake in society, something they can lose. Thanks to cheap mortgages and an advanced banking system, half of Latinos in America own their own homes. Britain, after its council-house sales and property booms, also encourages house ownership. In contrast, most of the blocks in the French banlieues are publicly owned.

Between them, a job and a house help to create not only more integration but also greater social mobility. Latinos supported America's turn towards assimilation because they feared the trap of Spanish-language ghettos. But the banlieues are full of people who have grown up without jobs, or any hope of getting a better income or a better place to live. For them, integration is a deceit, not a promise.

A job and a house will not solve everything. The father of one of the July 7th London bombers owned two shops, two houses and a Mercedes. But if you want to know why second- and third-generation immigrants integrate more in some countries than others, jobs and houses are a good place to start.

Commentary feature looks at how European countries deal with ethnic minorities and compares Europe unfavourably with America. Articles looks at what makes immigrants adapt and sees home ownership and employment as the two major motors of integration into society.