Although it is tempting to avoid ethnic tensions by pressuring immigrants to assimilate, there are serious drawbacks to such a policy
Existing inhabitants, preferring their own culture, often want ‘to keep things as they are’. They can apply legal pressure upon immigrants to conform to majority behaviours. There are reasons for and against such policies:
· The people living in a neighbourhood see no reason why they should have to adapt.
· They may feel that they hadn't asked for change and might even feel threatened by it.
· Integration benefits the immigrants themselves, both economically and socially.
· Homogeneity is easier for everybody.
· Assimilation might lessen the risk of identity politics.
· It is unnecessary: people will gradually learn to live together without a top-down policy, if peace is maintained (4.4.1).
· Attempts to force rapid assimilation, by forms of coercion such as the French prohibition on wearing the Islamic veil (5.4.3.2), lead to immediate resentment.
· In countries which have a dominant religious sect, or a strong secular tradition, a stated policy of assimilation confers second-class status on everyone who holds different beliefs.
· Freedom of belief is a cherished human right – it is in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Appendix 1), for example.
· Ethnic diversity can enrich everybody's lives and stimulate creativity.
Using the law for pressuring immigrants to assimilate is likely to backfire, because people want to assert their identities in the face of what they inevitably see as oppression. Social encouragement to integrate, on the other hand, does not run those risks – as described later (6.7.4.5).
(This is an archive of a page intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. The latest versions are at book contents).