According to the American government, Europe faces the real and stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The main reason… American leaders like JD Vance are quite clear:
“””The greatest threat in Europe is that the leaders of the West decided they should send millions and millions of unvetted foreign migrants into their countries.“””
This, of course, refers to the wave of mass migration in 2015, and 2016, when Angela Merkel famously said
“wir schaffen das” , we can do it. An act of kindness.
But, now 10 years later, was Merkel too naive? According to Trump at the United Nations last year, these immigrants
“””They repainted kindness with crime.“””
Even in
“””In Switzerland, beautiful Switzerland, it’s 72% of the people in prisons are from outside of Switzerland.“””
Elon Musk himself has described European immigration as an “invasion”, and agreed with dr. Alice Weidel from Germany’s AfD party that.
“””They let like millions of people in they let um um do let them do crimes on our streets like the crime rate are skyrocketing“””
But… Is this really true? Has Europe become less safe as a result of mass migration, largely from outside of Europe? This is such a politicized subject that it’s incredibly difficult for people who just want to know what’s going on, to actually find an unbiased analysis. Right wing politicians have even accused academics of a left-wing bias on this subject.
Therefore, we spent weeks reading hundreds of studies, trying to find out if EITHER right-wing politicians are cherry picking data OR if academics and activists are leaving out convenient facts. In this process, we spoke to Bocconi professor Paolo Pinotti, who has spent much of his career analyzing this issue from a data-driven perspective and is not afraid to point out problems like:
“””They don’t get a job, the visa expires, maybe they don’t have the money to go back to their own county. And so they remain in the country.
And that’s kind of, if you want, the perfect recipe for disaster, right?“””
That’s right, there are NO taboos here at Money & Macro. We just want to know what’s going on. But, we are also not afraid to call out exaggerations such as the AfDs claim that crime rates are SKYROCKETTING.
Since the 1990’s, the homicide rate went down 36 percent in Germany, 50 percent in Spain, 15% in France, 4 percent in the UK, and an astonishing 82 percent in Italy. And what makes this even more striking, is that this decline in deadly violence happened during the same period Europe experienced unprecedented immigration, with millions arriving from Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
But, if that is true, then why are immigrants so overrepresented European prisons?
Something strange is going on here.. Is Europe genuinely facing civilizational erasure? And, are European prisons full of immigrants clear evidence of that?
Here is
The truth about Europe’s mass migration experience
Okay, to truly understand the impact migration has had on Europe, we need to go back in time. Europe has essentially seen 5 big migration waves.
The first wave was the so-called guestworker wave that was driven by the need for labor in Western Europe’s fast growing economies. First, there were Italian, Spanish and Greek migrants. Then, when those economies started growing themselves, Western Europe started attracting low-skilled workers from Turkey, Morocco and Yugoslavia.
This program stopped after the oil crisis of the 1970s, when many jobs disappeared, but many guestworkers stayed. On top of that, migration continued for a while as guest workers brought their families.
The second wave was tied to decolonialization from the 1950s to 1980s. During this wave, many refugees from newly independent colonies migrated to their former colonial masters. This wave was possible because during this era many colonial subject were technically nationals, and since they often already spoke the language, it was relatively easy for them to move. This is why today there still many Indonesian descendants in the Netherlands, Algerians and Africans in France, and Indians and Pakistani’s in the UK.
Third, after the fall of the iron curtain, there was a massive migration wave from East to Western Europe. Fourth, in 2015 and 2016, there was a mass migration wave from Syria, North Africa and Afghanistan to Europe, and finally, in the last few years millions of Ukrainians migrated to Europe.
Each of these migration waves had their own political backlashes. But, do people like Trump and JD Vance refer to Eastern Europeans moving to Western Europe when they talk about civilizational erasure?
I think this clip from conservative news channel Newsmax makes it quite clear what they really mean.
“””50 million Muslims now live in Europe. At the turn of the century that was less than 500k. as the people who lead these countries try to do what Joe Biden tried to do hear and that is fundamentally change the racial and ethnic make-up of a nation and make white Christians a minority in their own country as the attack on western civilization continues —(at the end of this clip). “””
Everyone who lives in Europe knows that there are many different cultures inside Europe. American culture is also quite different from European culture. This map by sociologists
What Trump, Vance and other conservatives seem to care about are the different European cultures, such as those that political scientists Inglehart and Welzer shows us that there is protestant Europe, Catholic Europe, Orthodox Europe and the English speaking world. These cultures are distinct. But, quite close to each other. On the other hand, African-Islamic cultures are very different from most European cultures.
And look, sharing space with people who are culturally distant presents challenges. Should public schools have halal menus? Should burkas be allowed in public institutions? These are all valid debates to have.
However, the problem with using language like civilizational erasure or about white Christian descendants becoming a MINORITY is that this is just complete and utter … excuse my language, bullsh*t.
Take the Newsmax segment, while 50 million Muslims sounds like a scary big number, this includes Balkan countries and Russian republics that HAVE historically been Muslim. More outrageously, the claim that there were less than 500 thousand Muslims in Europe at the turn of the century, is JUST WRONG. As you can see here, in the year 2000 there were about 37 million Muslims in Europe and in 2020 that was about 45 million.
To put that into perspective, in this period the share of Muslims in Europe has been rising slowly from about 4 to 6%.
However, if we take into account that migration to Europe is still happening AND that Muslims tend to have more children than native Europeans, we do have some credible estimates that in 25 years from now —in 2050— the share of Muslims in many Western European countries WILL get close to or above 15%.
That IS quite a big increase from the 6-8% we see in many Western European countries today.
But, again, just to put these numbers into perspective for our American viewers, the number of black people in America today is about 15%. Saying that Europe faces civilizational erasure due to Muslim migration, is like saying that America today is a dominantly African country, it’s just complete and utter nonsense.
But, of course, if you go to certain cities in Europe, or especially certain neighborhoods in Europe, it can feel very different. For example, in Brussels about 28% of inhabitants are Muslim. Or, in the poor Brussels neighborhood of Anderlecht, where my colleague Alejandro lives, about 30% of inhabitants are Muslims. So, of course, the rapid transformation of certain cities and neighborhoods has led to cultural tensions.
In fact, besides increased economic inequality and economic stagnation, there is a lot of research that convincingly shows that increased low-skilled migration from non-European countries is a crucial factor needed to explain the rise of far-right parties in Europe.
And, much like Vance and Trump, far-right European politicians like Hungary’s Victor Orban often tell us that
“””If you take masses of non-registered immigrants from the Middle East into your country, you are importing terrorism, crime, antisemitism, and homophobia. “””
So, even though migrants and their descendants remain a minority in Europe.
Could it still be true that immigrants are making Europe far less safe?
This is where we get back to Trump’s UN speech.
“””In Switzerland, beautiful Switzerland, it’s 72% of the people in prisons are from outside of Switzerland.“””
First, Trump is not wrong. Immigrants ARE overrepresented in European prisons. But, as you can see here, Switzerland is an extreme case. In his speech, Trump DOES NOT mention that in some striking cases, like the case of the UK, immigrants are actually UNDERREPRESENTED in prison, just as they are in the other Anglo-Saxon countries like US, Australia and New Zealand.
So, what is going on?
First, as you can see here, Anglo-Saxon countries tend to attract much more highly educated migrations. These are more likely to find a high paying job and therefore less likely to commit crimes and end up in jail.
So, the fact that continental European prisons have a lot of immigrants is probably because Europe’s immigrants are simply poorer than the average European, it does NOT necessarily have anything to do with their cultural background.
A second powerful explanation is that Europeans are pretty old, and immigrants are on average much younger.
Younger people commit more crimes. So, again, this could disprove the narrative that the type of immigration matters.
Finally, being IN JAIL more could be because immigrants commit more crimes. But, there is also credible research which shows that immigrants are more likely to be held in jail while waiting for the trial because judges often believe they are a higher flight risk than locals which, makes sense I guess, but that puts them in a worse situation for negotiating deals, especially if they are not fluent in a European language.
That being said, nobody knows for sure how BIG these 3 effects are. So, all of this research NEITHER PROVES that immigrants are innocent NOR that they are GUILTY of committing more crimes.
But, okay, that means Trump and Orban COULD still be right. Migrants COULD make Europe much less safe. We need more evidence.
So, what about the AfD claim that
“””crime rate are skyrocketing“””
because of immigrants?
Well, in most of Europe, we actually see the opposite. Crime is falling. For example, as you can see here, violent crimes like murders kept on dropping even as the number of migrants in Europe increased. Similarly, petty crime like robbery, burglaries and theft have dropped in Europe, in the same years that immigration increased.
This is also true in Germany. However, here, we do see a suspicious increase in crime after the massive 2015 migration wave.
Crucially, these studies do not distinguish between the background of migrants. So, perhaps, the AfD is right about increasing crime because of the massive 2015, 2016 Muslim immigration wave in Germany. And, perhaps even for the rest of Europe, crime would have fallen EVEN FASTER, if it wasn’t for all of these new immigrants…
To separate the effect of migrants from broader effects that are decreasing crime overall, like Europeans getting older and better home and story security systems, researchers have done several detailed studies about the relationship between crime and migration in the US, Italy and Germany.
They take into account a lot of different factors such as GDP, and youth. And surprisingly
“””in general the conclusion is that this increases in migration, sometimes very huge increases in migration, they have NO significant effect on crime rates,“””
For example, as you can see here, while MOST migrants came to East Germany between 2008 and 2019, crime has mostly gone up in West and South Germany.
But if migrants do NOT clearly increase overall crime, even in places like Germany and Italy, how can low skilled immigrants be so over-represented in prisons?
When, we asked Professor Pinotti about this, he offered another explanation: immigrants may be REPLACING native-born offenders in some types of criminal activity.
“””So think about the drug sector, drug trafficking which is a major criminal enterprise in most cases, right? So if you were trying to buy drugs 20 years ago, the dealer probably was gonna be a native, right? If you buy drugs, now in many cases, the dealer is gonna be a member of some foreign criminal group, right? But in the end, the amount of drugs that is sold in the street is still gonna be the same. It depends more on the demand for drugs,“””
In other words, and honestly this is something I absolutely did not expect when starting the research for this video.
It is possible that YES immigrants commit more crimes than native people. And, yet they DO NOT increase crime overall. Just like immigrants make take low-skilled jobs like fruit picking from native Europeans, they may actually also simply take crime jobs from native Europeans as well.
“””<South Park reference, they took our jobs? with drug gang faces pasted over the south park people?>“””
“””So for instance, what we observe in this very large criminal networks involving drug trafficking is that the natives, are still part of the networks but they climb up to the higher levels of the organization, while the lower level, like the retail seller in the street, the drug dealer in the street, is gonna be an immigrant, different from 20 years ago,“””
Still, I have to be honest, we don’t have enough data to completely confirm that this is what happened. But, it could explain why even in detailed studies, big migration waves do NOT seem to lead to more crime, but they could lead to a higher number of criminals in jail being immigrants.
So, okay there you have it. The evidence is ACTUALLY REALLY clear.
Conclusion
Even for extremely detailed, recent studies
“””the conclusion is that this increases in migration, sometimes very huge increases in migration, they have no significant effect on crime rates,“””
So, No Europe is NOT at risk of civilizational erasure AND even recent migration waves have NOT caused crime to skyrocket.
That’s right here I am, an ex-academic, in his ivory tower, telling ordinary people … move along folks there is nothing to see here. Research says immigration is fine. You should just open your borders and let the immigrants come. If that is making you feel unsafe or uneasy, well you are WRONG!
No. Just because the truth is not one extreme DOES not mean that the truth is the other extreme. Immigrants from distant cultures always causes tensions. But, one key factor that often gets overlooked is access to jobs.
If asylum seekers and migrants are not allowed to work LEGALLY, they can end up stuck. Their visa might expire. They might not have money to return home. And without access to regular jobs, some may turn to illegal ways of making money, like drug dealing or burglary. The work of professor Pinotti has shown that:
“””when immigrants receive legal status, they are finally able to obtain legal status and therefore the right to work in the official economy, the probability of committing crimes decreases by 50%. It’s cut by half, right?“””
So, the take-away is that IF YOU DO want to have some migration, it’s essential to do it ORDERLY. This can also explain that a recent study did find that ONE YEAR AFTER the relatively chaotic 2015-2016 migration wave THERE WAS ACTUALLY a significant wave of increased burglaries and theft in Germany. So, there was SOME truth to what the AfD politician said to Elon Musk.
Another thing is that you want to make sure that migrants AND THEIR CHILDREN are able to integrate into society, and that they do NOT all end up in isolated ghetto’s such as the French banlieues, or in Brussels suburbs like Anderlecht.
On top of that, one major limitation of the research we have discussed today, is that it looks at migrants… but not at their children. Recent research shows that in countries like Austria, the Netherlands, France, and Denmark, children of immigrants from the first two waves often have a harder time moving up in life compared to children of native parents who grew up with the same level of poverty.
This may help explain why second-generation immigrants in, for example, Denmark ARE ACTUALLY more likely to end up in prison than both their parents AND native Danish children.
Finally, we should be open to the possibility that men from countries with more traditional attitudes towards women are, on average, more likely to engage in sexual violence. This should not be entirely surprising since we know that men with sexist attitudes are more likely to commit violence against women. Worryingly, a recent study from Lund University found that 63 percent of those convicted of rape in Sweden have an immigrant background. This MASSIVE over-representation decreased a bit after controlling for socioeconomic factors, substance abuse, and mental health conditions, BUT it did NOT disappear COMPLETELY.
So yeah, even if migration has not CLEARLY made Europe less safe overall, there are still real, serious problems that needs to be studied and, more importantly, fixed.
However, these problems are clearly NOT big enough that it is something Donald Trump should be worried about. Talking about sex offenders, perhaps he should worry a bit more about the fact that his government is actively protecting the associates of a convicted pedophile, and that Trump and his friends are overrepresented in the Epstein files.
Maybe it’s a bit much to call that civilizational erasure… but it does look a lot like civilizational decline all the way from here in Europe. But, yeah that is my take. What do you think?