Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

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> What am I missing?

The fact that a correlation between religion and fertility rates is completely bollocks (with the notable exceptions of some extremist/fundamentalist sects of Christianity such as Quiverfull and Amish as well as fringes of the Jewish Ultra-Orthodox movement). High reproduction rates are closely linked to poverty [1], and once wealth rises in a country or people migrate from poor/high-rate countries, birth rates drop accordingly [2].

Additionally, it's a simple numbers game. The US only has 1% of Muslim faith [3], the European continent has ~7.5% [4] Muslims (of which 2/3rds belong to Russia and Turkey - the European Union figure is ~3.3%), even India barely has 13% [5]. It's mathematically impossible for Islam to achieve dominance in any country it doesn't already have by population in any feasible time scale, especially as religious affiliation in general keeps dropping and dropping associated again with wealth and education levels.

In general, the "the Muslims will replace us demographically!!!" take is dominantly found on the far-right end of the political spectrum, with the worst of the worst being the virulently anti-semitic "great replacement" theory that alleges that a "new world order" led by Jews wants to "replace" the intelligent White Christian population with dumb Muslims [6]. Please, don't fall for that kind of baseless, vile propaganda.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/25/h...

[2]: https://www.knomad.org/sites/default/files/2020-01/Migration...

[3]: https://www.pewforum.org/2021/01/14/measuring-religion-in-pe...

[4]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Europa#Statistik

[5]: https://www.bpb.de/internationales/asien/indien/44418/muslim...

[6]: https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounders/the-great-replac...

It is not about plain fertility rate but tipping of demographic balance between communities by various means. It can create pockets of Muslim majority in countries where they are minority and then "right to self-determination" means partitions.

> It can create pockets of Muslim majority in countries where they are minority

I assume you're talking about the Parisian "banlieues", Berlin-Neukölln and similar areas? These ghettos are the result of a mixture of gentrification and (decades of) ethnic discrimination... basically, what happens is:

First, many immigrants take up low-paid jobs in society because of language barriers or un-recognized qualification documents [1] or because of ethnic discrimination in hiring [2]. That means they are restricted to social/cheap housing by their low income.

These housing situations (sometimes quickly) deteriorate in a phenomenon called "white flight", which leads to a vicious cycle of discrimination by city quarter [3] and everyone who is able to fleeing, leading to a collapse in rents and a subsequent rise in migrant and "down on their luck" (i.e. criminals and other people unable to find regular housing) people. In the end, the government and its services as well as economy (e.g. supermarkets, small shops, ...) also retreats from such areas, leading to further decline. The people left behind then go and self-organize - some in positive forms such as ethnic grocery exports/imports stores, some in negative forms such as crime gangs.

The ethnic discrimination, especially against the young second- or third-generation migrants, also leads to a rise in gang-related crime: when schools fail to educate them, the employment market discriminates against them and cultural icons glorify a life of crime or crime is the only way to make a living without depending on social security, way too many choose the way of joining a gang.

The crime then invites politicians, usually from the Conservative to far-right, to call for "law and order" tactics from police, which leads to an increase of discrimination by police, a further split between the immigrant and indigenous population and sometimes outright ethnic riots (the London 2011 riots began with the killing of a Black suspect by police, the Paris 2005 riots began with the death of two immigrant youth who fled from police in fear of lengthy "interrogations", and the BLM-associated riots were triggered by George Floyd being murdered by police).

And historically, governments haven't exactly had a track record combatting the early signs of gentrification or ghettoization... which makes all the crying and complaining about "segregation", "parallel cultures" etc. when something happens (such as the mentioned riots, or the gang murder spree in Sweden) a bit cynical. The policies of the Conservative and far-right politicians created the very same problems they are now complaining about.

[1]: https://www.spiegel.de/karriere/oecd-eu-studie-besonders-vie...

[2]: https://www.spiegel.de/lebenundlernen/schule/auslaendische-v...

[3]: https://www.bpb.de/politik/innenpolitik/stadt-und-gesellscha...

It's not about countries with 5% Muslim population and I am not talking about minor ghettos in European urban areas. Look at non-Islamic countries with 20%-25% or more Muslim population. Look at how India got partitioned based on religion and how Hindu population in Pakistan (+ Bangladesh) shrunk while Muslim population flourished in India. Look at how Muslim majority area in India like Kashmir wants to separate (and they don't want Hindus there).

You're pointing to a dynamic of urban decay and "broken windows effect", which is the exact opposite of gentrification. Minorities with a history of migration also tend to do mostly lower-skilled work, and the lower-skilled end of the labor market is the one that bears the greatest burden by far from the kind of onerous labor regulation and taxation that is especially common in France.

It's the very opposite of what a serious policy aimed at mitigating social and economic inequality should look like, but Big Government ideology is widespread enough in France that any reform is quite unthinkable there. (Germany used to be in the same boat, but they enacted reforms in the early 2000s that provided for some degree of much-needed flexibility for these marginalized workers. It's not a full UBI or even an EITC equivalent, but it's a tiny start.)

> You're pointing to a dynamic of urban decay and "broken windows effect", which is the exact opposite of gentrification.

Both go together hand-in-hand, you cannot have gentrification without an area that picks up those driven out by it.

> and the lower-skilled end of the labor market is the one that bears the greatest burden by far from the kind of onerous labor regulation and taxation that is especially common in France.

> Germany used to be in the same boat, but they enacted reforms in the early 2000s that provided for some degree of much-needed flexibility for these marginalized workers.

When comparing the employment sector in France and in Germany where the Schröder government introduced the infamous "Hartz IV" reforms in 2006, one clear thing pops out: France has a significantly lower rate of ultra-low-wage employment (8.6%) compared to Germany (20.7%). The "flexibility" only helped the ultra-low-wage employment sector to explode, a trend that only got reversed in the last few years before COVID hit [2].

[1]: https://www.destatis.de/Europa/DE/Thema/Bevoelkerung-Arbeit-...

[2]: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/161881/umfrag...

I think north west India would be a huge Muslim country if taken as an independent country, so dismissing it as 'just 13%' is kinda a funny dodge.

Some European countries already have a plurality of births to migrant groups, I think the figure is better than 20% for Spain and France- so even if fertility euqalizes its a big demographic event considering the timescale.

> Some European countries already have a plurality of births to migrant groups, I think the figure is better than 20% for Spain and France- so even if fertility euqalizes its a big demographic event considering the timescale.

Spain has 10% people with migration history. It will take a lot of generations for that to change in a major way simply with fertility - and after three or four generations, it's hardly fair to call these people migrants anyway. In the US, a second-generation migrant became the 44th President and a third-generation migrant became the 45th President.

Isn't "second-generation migrant" incoherent as a description of someone living in the country they were born in?

"first/second generation migrant" is a widely used term in sociology and economy to detect and track differences between native and immigrant population. The term is common both in the US [1] and EU [2], with the latter actually going up to "third-generation migrant" when talking about long-term effects; the Swiss passed a special law to ease citizenship requirements for third-generation migrants. [3]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigrant_generations

[2]: https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/pages/glossary/second-gene...

[3]: https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/abstimmungen...

Actually if there are consistently 10% migratants with a fertility rate above the average, this will cause a growth in whatever ethnic groups are migrating - even if you just consider them 'french' or 'spanish' in the second or third generations. Muslims make up 8.8% of France right now, and they have grown significantly as a percentage of the population even in the last ten years almost a percentage point. Will this ever go to 50%? Probably not but we are likely to see a higher fraction in the future.

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