I think the potential for assimilation also explains the attitude of Spaniards towards immigrants. Spain doesn't seem to have much of an "immigrant problem" and most of the Spanish population has a favorable view of immigration, and this might have to do with the composition of the immigrant population in Spain. Close to 40% are Other Europeans (EU and not-EU), close to 30% are Latin Americans and around 9% are Asians.
Other Europeans assimilate just fine, and Latin Americans already speak the language, don't have any religious impediments to intermarriage and assimilation and bring a culture that's not identical but pretty similar. And most Asians come from some of the usual model-minority countries: China, India, Philippines.
So even though immigrants constitute as much as 15% of Spanish population, close to 80% of them belong to the easy to assimilate category.
The biggest evidence that in fact the US isn't any better at integrating immigrants (ethnic groups) all else equal than Europe is their inability to control Black crime rates 60+ years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. If the US was so good at integrating various ethnic groups, than why the Black crime rate is multiple times that of Whites and Asians?
While on the other hand, when it comes to certain kind of immigrants, like for example, people from the Balkans (except the Albanians in some countries like the UK), many of whom are not university educated, both societies seem to integrate them well, and it is easy to integrate them be it in North America, Europe or Australia.
It is just that, it's very hard to integrate people who have vastly different culture and behavior, and there's not much a state can do in that case to improve the situation.
Interesting, but you seem to dismiss the large gap in the jobless rate between France and the USA. It has always been much easier to get a job in the USA/Canada compared to most of Europe.
I don't think I really dismiss it, I just don't think it explains much. The difference is not huge anymore in absolute terms and it's actually somewhat misleading due to the fact that labor participation is significantly higher in France. Of course, for some groups the unemployment rate is much higher than for the population as a whole, but as I explain in the post the explanations of that fact that proponents of America's Special Sauce Theory like are not very plausible. The fact that some groups have a very high unemployment rate doesn't explain why, for instance, they commit violent crimes at several times the rate of the rest of the population, but rather the same characteristics that make a lot of them unemployable also make them more likely to commit violent crimes.
Since the US is individualistic with low uncertainty avoidance, it doesn't make sense that social desirability bias would be high in the US.
(If you can pass the paywall, you could download the paper and check to see if this hypothesis is borne out.)
As an American, I think the US's high number for racial tolerance is fairly accurate. There is a lot of discussion about racism in the media, but I think that is more due to anti-racism activists, and high *concern* with racism, rather than high *incidence* of racism. If you actually walk around in the US, friction between different races seems quite low.
So, another story here would be that France has closer contact between different ethnicities due to factors your essay doesn't discuss, e.g. France has a primate city and the US doesn't. That could lead to both increased intermarriage rates, and increased friction with people who don't want each other as neighbors.
good article. I see in the second footnote you explain that integration is an elusive concept and there is some disagreement on how to measure it. In your article you talk about intermarriage rates, income, schooling rates, and crime rates. What other metrics would you look at to asses whether people are integrated?
I opened this genuinely expecting a little essay about condiments and their use in US cuisine vs other parts of the world that I could breeze through while eating lunch. But this was super interesting, ta.
I think the feasibility of the Argument ad Mexicanos is at some level the question of who bears burden of proof. If you start with the assumption that people (or, at least, people controlled for some obvious variables) are equal until proven otherwise, as many evidently do, then the argument works because it is up to someone who tries to deflate the argument to prove that there are important differences between Mexicans and MENA people after controlling for education, and such proof is elusive. You obviously start from the opposite assumption of burden of proof.
"To be clear, I’m not saying they are being dishonest, I think they genuinely believe the argument to be sound because they’re conceptually confused about causation."
Pour certains militants de base, vous avez surement raison. Mais j'ai du mal à croire que les intellectuels, politiciens, journalistes, etc qui avancent cet argument fallacieux ne soient pas malhonnêtes et ne se rendent pas compte de l'entourloupe.
Do the Algerian immigrants in France you talk about have any relationship with the pieds-noirs? Are you talking about a different group who came afterwards?
The Pieds-Noirs were ethnic French who lived in Algeria and were not immigrants in the sense we're using that term in France, people born abroad without French citizenship, since they were born French in what at the time was French territory. Algerian immigrants mostly came after independence.
Interesting overview, especially on this topic as it's difficult to isolate the relevant variables. I was surprised to come across a French study that dealt with ethnic data, does this fall under an exception?
The idea that collecting data on race/ethnicity in France is illegal, though widespread even in France, is a myth. It's complicated and there are some restrictions on what the state can do, but basically for research you are allowed to and people do so increasingly often. The main difference is that, as far as public statistical agencies are concerned at least, they do it by looking at the country of birth of a person's ascendants. Previously, they would only collect data on the country of birth of parents, but more recently they have started doing so for grandparents as well. There is actually a good case to be made that it's better than self-identification, though it would be even better to have data on both (which in France is sometimes the case for religion), because when you rely only on self-identification the phenomenon of ethnic attrition can create problems.
I think the potential for assimilation also explains the attitude of Spaniards towards immigrants. Spain doesn't seem to have much of an "immigrant problem" and most of the Spanish population has a favorable view of immigration, and this might have to do with the composition of the immigrant population in Spain. Close to 40% are Other Europeans (EU and not-EU), close to 30% are Latin Americans and around 9% are Asians.
Other Europeans assimilate just fine, and Latin Americans already speak the language, don't have any religious impediments to intermarriage and assimilation and bring a culture that's not identical but pretty similar. And most Asians come from some of the usual model-minority countries: China, India, Philippines.
So even though immigrants constitute as much as 15% of Spanish population, close to 80% of them belong to the easy to assimilate category.
The biggest evidence that in fact the US isn't any better at integrating immigrants (ethnic groups) all else equal than Europe is their inability to control Black crime rates 60+ years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. If the US was so good at integrating various ethnic groups, than why the Black crime rate is multiple times that of Whites and Asians?
While on the other hand, when it comes to certain kind of immigrants, like for example, people from the Balkans (except the Albanians in some countries like the UK), many of whom are not university educated, both societies seem to integrate them well, and it is easy to integrate them be it in North America, Europe or Australia.
It is just that, it's very hard to integrate people who have vastly different culture and behavior, and there's not much a state can do in that case to improve the situation.
Interesting, but you seem to dismiss the large gap in the jobless rate between France and the USA. It has always been much easier to get a job in the USA/Canada compared to most of Europe.
https://www.challenges.fr/assets/img/2021/02/18/cover-r4x3w1200-602e64efee6ca-chomage-en-de-la-population-active.jpg
I don't think I really dismiss it, I just don't think it explains much. The difference is not huge anymore in absolute terms and it's actually somewhat misleading due to the fact that labor participation is significantly higher in France. Of course, for some groups the unemployment rate is much higher than for the population as a whole, but as I explain in the post the explanations of that fact that proponents of America's Special Sauce Theory like are not very plausible. The fact that some groups have a very high unemployment rate doesn't explain why, for instance, they commit violent crimes at several times the rate of the rest of the population, but rather the same characteristics that make a lot of them unemployable also make them more likely to commit violent crimes.
>if this data point shows anything, it’s that social desirability bias is stronger in the US
This paper claims that social desirability bias is associated with collectivist countries that have high uncertainty avoidance: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-005-5353-0
Since the US is individualistic with low uncertainty avoidance, it doesn't make sense that social desirability bias would be high in the US.
(If you can pass the paywall, you could download the paper and check to see if this hypothesis is borne out.)
As an American, I think the US's high number for racial tolerance is fairly accurate. There is a lot of discussion about racism in the media, but I think that is more due to anti-racism activists, and high *concern* with racism, rather than high *incidence* of racism. If you actually walk around in the US, friction between different races seems quite low.
So, another story here would be that France has closer contact between different ethnicities due to factors your essay doesn't discuss, e.g. France has a primate city and the US doesn't. That could lead to both increased intermarriage rates, and increased friction with people who don't want each other as neighbors.
good article. I see in the second footnote you explain that integration is an elusive concept and there is some disagreement on how to measure it. In your article you talk about intermarriage rates, income, schooling rates, and crime rates. What other metrics would you look at to asses whether people are integrated?
I opened this genuinely expecting a little essay about condiments and their use in US cuisine vs other parts of the world that I could breeze through while eating lunch. But this was super interesting, ta.
I think the feasibility of the Argument ad Mexicanos is at some level the question of who bears burden of proof. If you start with the assumption that people (or, at least, people controlled for some obvious variables) are equal until proven otherwise, as many evidently do, then the argument works because it is up to someone who tries to deflate the argument to prove that there are important differences between Mexicans and MENA people after controlling for education, and such proof is elusive. You obviously start from the opposite assumption of burden of proof.
Some interesting data in the FT:
https://www.ft.com/content/c6bb7307-484c-4076-a0f3-fc2aeb0b6112
"To be clear, I’m not saying they are being dishonest, I think they genuinely believe the argument to be sound because they’re conceptually confused about causation."
Pour certains militants de base, vous avez surement raison. Mais j'ai du mal à croire que les intellectuels, politiciens, journalistes, etc qui avancent cet argument fallacieux ne soient pas malhonnêtes et ne se rendent pas compte de l'entourloupe.
Very good read!
Do the Algerian immigrants in France you talk about have any relationship with the pieds-noirs? Are you talking about a different group who came afterwards?
The Pieds-Noirs were ethnic French who lived in Algeria and were not immigrants in the sense we're using that term in France, people born abroad without French citizenship, since they were born French in what at the time was French territory. Algerian immigrants mostly came after independence.
Interesting overview, especially on this topic as it's difficult to isolate the relevant variables. I was surprised to come across a French study that dealt with ethnic data, does this fall under an exception?
The idea that collecting data on race/ethnicity in France is illegal, though widespread even in France, is a myth. It's complicated and there are some restrictions on what the state can do, but basically for research you are allowed to and people do so increasingly often. The main difference is that, as far as public statistical agencies are concerned at least, they do it by looking at the country of birth of a person's ascendants. Previously, they would only collect data on the country of birth of parents, but more recently they have started doing so for grandparents as well. There is actually a good case to be made that it's better than self-identification, though it would be even better to have data on both (which in France is sometimes the case for religion), because when you rely only on self-identification the phenomenon of ethnic attrition can create problems.