21st Century Schizoid Man: Multiculturalism

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pronounced. Multiculturalism in Germany isn't working. It's a big step for a leading German politician to take in a country where there is understandable reticence to engage in discourse that smacks, even vaguely, of racism and where there exists a worrying underground of neo-Nazism.

German multiculturalism can be traced back to the early '60s and the system of the "Gastarbeiter", primarily Turkish workers but also those from other countries, which included Spain. The Turks were the most obvious though.

It is the start of the 1970s. A curious ceremony is taking place, and I watch as Turkish Gastarbeiter board a train in Stuttgart, one or two beaten-up suitcases in hand. They are heading back to Turkey. The Gastarbeiter were meant to be temporary. Many did return, but by no means all.

Wind forward to today, and the situation in Germany is like other countries: diasporas, some members of which assimilate, some of which do not. Even the Turks of Germany who have become "German" are probably among those who regularly vote in sufficient numbers to give Turkey "douze points" from a German Eurovision audience. German multiculturalism, to use the word of Frau Merkel, has "failed".

Multiculturalism, either through intent or accident, is an idealistic state. It can function, insofar as diversity and the implicit non-integration of the concept can be said to function, so long as something doesn't come along to ensure that it doesn't. Tensions arise not directly through the existence of multiple cultures but through the cumulation of factors which makes their existence less than tolerable.

21st century schizoid man, he of indigenous origin, has been turned paranoid through such factors - economic dysfunction, terrorism, Islamophobia, for example - and by having to contend with the way they compete with his identity. He would rather, in disturbingly large numbers, even in countries with traditional tolerance like Sweden and the Netherlands, rid himself of the cultures. Or if they stay, they should conform to his monoculture. Speak the language. Eat sauerkraut or, more of a challenge for some, pork wurst. Put a towel out on the sun-lounger at six in the morning.

Frau Merkel believes that immigrants should make greater efforts at integrating. By learning the language, for instance. Hers is hardly an original view. It is one that has been expressed in Britain and in Spain. The leader of the Partido Popular, Mariano Rajoy, is one who has made such a call.

Immigration in Mallorca is regularly an issue which appears at the top of the list of social concerns as discovered through polls. In March, a poll found that seven out of ten Balearic islanders believed that there were too many immigrants. Press reports merely serve to reinforce a perception of immigrant criminality. Moroccan drug dealers in Sa Pobla. Latin American gangs in Palma. Nigerian prostitutes in Magalluf. Senegalese lookies all over the place. A judge once sentenced a Senegalese gentleman to learn the language.

Immigration goes hand in hand with multiculturalism and therefore with a lack of integration. Yet we are selective with what we mean by multiculturalism, or rather to whom it applies. The British in Mallorca are no less representative of one of the island's multiple cultures than Moroccans. But the British are seen, and see themselves, as excluded from this definition. They are part of the illusory and faintly absurd notion of a "European culture". I am a European. Define and discuss. They are nothing of the sort. Anglo-Saxonism is alien to Mallorca, as are the English language, "Coronation Street" and the full English. As with those from other cultures, cultural separatism and non-integration are a breeze when you can switch on Sky or pick up a copy of the "Mail".

Multiculturalism doesn't work. Or rather, it works very well in a free-market way. You can cherry pick from the "new" culture if you so wish, while not having to "go native". Which is how most like it. And why shouldn't they? What's the point of learning the language? Only so you can make sense of watching the telly. Therefore, there is no point when you can tune in to Ant and Dec.

Our meaning of multiculturalism is a pejorative for anything that veers too far from the cultural norm, and in Mallorca this norm has come to be broadly interpreted, as it is in the UK and in Germany. This norm isn't simply a question of learning the language, most certainly not. It's what falls outside of the norm that defines the anyone-but-me multicultural, with all the baggage of issues such as colour, religion and ethnicity that it brings. This broad interpretation excludes the British in Mallorca from the multicultural category, but lumps them into an alternative one - that of mini-cultural. Different but non-threatening. Mini-cultural maybe, but before we cast too many stones in the direction of the body with its head poking out of the sand of multiculturalism, we might bear in mind that we are all multiculturalists now.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.