“God blessed me with the anticipation of becoming an American son,” Marco Rubio erstwhile said. As he competed with Donald Trump in 2016 for a Republican candidacy in the presidential election, he based the run on the past of his parents, commercial migrants from Cuba. A fewer years earlier, even as a local politician fighting for the votes of the people of Florida, he even claimed – contrary to the fact – that they were refugees who came to flee from Fidel Castro's shoe. Today, as Secretary of State of the United States, he is closing the American doubles against both refugees and economical migrants. It is listed as a possible candidate for the next president of the United States. In the meantime, if Donald Trump's decree abolishing the law of the earth were in force at the time of his birth, he would not even become an "American son".
A akin paradox was set out by Priti Patel, a British Home Minister in Boris Johnson's government, who pushed for a plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, as well as a series of restrictions for migrants. In 1 interview, she admitted that, in the light of her proposed regulations, her parents – immigrants from Uganda of Indian origin – might not be allowed into Britain.
Tomio Okamura, a politician of the utmost Czech right of nipponese origin, is an even fiercer opponent of migration. He was celebrated for his calls to decision pigs close mosques, boycotting kebabs, as well as a complete ban on practicing Islam. At 1 time he besides advocated the displacement of the Roma into India – all in the name of the “defence of Western civilization”. In his final election, he encouraged himself with posters depicting a dark-skinned man with a bloody knife. "Health shortages won't solve imported surgeons," he said. From specified dramatic generalizations, he was not prevented by the fact that he himself, as he claims in interviews, repeatedly fell victim to racism. In the Czech child's home, he was abused due to his slanted eyes, and erstwhile he left for Japan as a young man, he could not find a job.
There is besides Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician known for his anti-migration rhetoric. As he tweeted his own brother, their parent was born in East India (today Indonesia), and Geert's wife is Hungarian of Turkish descent. Or Sahra Wagenknecht, the face of the German alt-left and the daughter of an immigrant from Iran. In GDR school, she was bullied for the dark setting of her eyes, and present she opposes migration. Unlike the remainder of the society described here – from leftist positions, that is, in concern not for German culture, but for the resources of the German welfare state.
Infectious Prejudice and Fear of Stigmatisation
Examples of migrant politicians who argue the admission of migrants can be multiplied. Just political hypocrisy? surely not just – if at all. In many cases, these are emotions brought to politics from the streets. Migrants are not monolith, and class, religious, gender, cultural and in many another ways, have tensions among themselves.
This message may seem trivial, but scientists, in this case economists, have only late begun to carry out quantitative investigation on how migrants already surviving in a given country perceive another migrants – they previously focused on their relation with hosts. As Aflatun Kaeser and Massimiliano Tani compose in the article To immigrants always opposition immigration, published in 2023 in the European diary of Political Economy, this issue caught the attention of researchers only in 2016, erstwhile amazingly many Hispanics voted in the presidential election for the originator of the construction of a wall on the US border with Mexico, or Donald Trump. investigation has since shown that migrants can take over the anti-immigrant host moods, that they bring prejudices with them, and that those with a higher socio-economic position can cut off from others for fear of losing their position or to separate themselves from those stigmatized.
Bio-Germans, conjunctivars and gastro-beiters
Such tensions are clearly seen in countries with a long past of mass immigration, for example in Germany. After planet War II, German-speaking people from east Europe began to descend there, driven out of their homes as Germans, but in their homeland they frequently called “Polacken” ("polacks" – chaotic from the East). In the era of “economic wonder”, or the 1950s and 1960s, the German government brought in “gastarbeiters” – citizens of Italy, Greece, Turkey, Spain and Yugoslavia, who were about to return home after their contracts were completed (but did not return, which many locals did not like, including “polaczki”). And due to the fact that their position in the fresh homeland mostly depended on their work, they looked suspiciously – they and their children – at successive waves of refugees (from communist east Europe, from war-torn Yugoslavia, Syria, and yet Ukraine) who could number on various privileges. In the meantime, there has been a very diverse migration from the countries of the scattered USSR and, somewhat later, those joining the European Union.
I had the chance to look at these tensions in the microscale, preparing report on Poles surviving in Berlin. The representatives of the solidarity emigration told me that they felt superior from "more German than German" "aussors", i.e. Polish citizens (sometimes provoked) of German origin, who obtained approval to go to Germany in the 1970s (in exchange for them Edward Gierek negotiated for the Polish People's Republic, among others, a low-interest credit). They looked at Poles who began to slide to West Berlin in the 1980s in order to undertake illegal work.
They were even more ashamed erstwhile the wind of change collapsed and Poles began to associate with Berliners on the 1 hand with criminal groups (functioning according to the rule of "stealing something to German is how to enforce war reparations"), on the another hand – with merchants who will become “Polenmarkt”, an illegal “Polish market”, which functioned close Potsdam Square. It passed 3 decades later after Polish mobsters and “Polenmark” there is no trace, not many people come from Poland “after social”, but Polish migrants inactive find reasons to turn their backs on each another in u-bahna. In general, a typical of a young creative class does not want to be associated with a homeless individual – and it is crucial to know that both groups are represented by Poles in Berlin today.
German politicians began to follow these differences more urgently, the easier it was for German citizenship (and so the right to vote). Currently, for a year now, they can be obtained after only 5 (and in exceptional cases even three) years of surviving in the West Germany and do not request to quit a second passport. The most efficient investigation in this case went, of course, to right-wing populists, namely AfD, who have been trying to scope fresh citizens of post-Soviet and Turkish origin for respective years now.
How proves the latest survey by the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), in this he succeeds. In the February parliamentary elections, citizens from the erstwhile USSR were willing to vote for the AfD by 19.4 percent points more willingly than voters without a migration background. The German Turks were 9.4 percent points little enthusiastic than "bio-Germans", but it was inactive a large increase compared to 2017, erstwhile no Turk declared in the corresponding AfD vote. Both groups are besides much more eager to declare voting for the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance critical of migration.
Ukrainians in Poland: between solidarity and hostility
Poland AD 2025 is besides hard to think of differently than as an immigration country, but we have not yet earned on our political phase (ex) a migrant who does not like another migrants, unless included in this group two pro-Russian representatives of the "end environment"who competed in 2019 for the Europarliament from the letter of the Confederation. In the fresh parliamentary elections There were only 5 people with a migrant background, no of whom were Ukrainians. “There are many migrants in Poland, but there are inactive not adequate naturalised ones to number their voices,” explains Olena Babakov, writer and investigator of migration. – In order to apply for a Polish passport, without a Polish origin or a Polish spouse, you gotta live in Poland for 8 years without the anticipation of a longer journey and pass a language exam, which is hard to get to. Polish passport in the last 15 years has already gained 50,000 Ukrainians, but they live in various electoral districts.
– Another thing that the Ukrainian diaspora is poorly integrated with the Polish socio-political agenda – adds Babakova. "Many migrants don't really know who the Prime Minister of Poland is, and it's a long way from being elected.
The past of Poland as an immigration country began for good only after 2015, erstwhile the country became a permanent, statistically crucial Ukrainian migration. “That’s why it’s inactive hard to talk about specified complex relations between migrant groups as in Germany or France,” Babakova says. – On the basis of my own observations, I can comment on tensions inside Ukrainian diaspora. Most Ukrainians, who came to Poland before 2015, came from the Ukrainian-speaking west, so visitors from another parts of Ukraine, especially those Russian-speaking, looked with a reserve. In turn, migrants who arrived after 2015 may have been somewhat jealous of the privileges that refugees received after 2022. Almost full access to the labour market, the anticipation of setting up a single-person business, free NFZ – there are those who have lived and paid taxes in Poland for 10 years and inactive do not have these privileges.
Babakova's observations are confirmed by Grzegorz Demel from the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, who has been working with a squad investigating Ukrainian communities in Poland for respective years. He notes that the erstwhile division west and east gained a fresh sound with the outbreak of full-scale war. – Our interviewers from the south or east of Ukraine sometimes tell that they hear in Poland from people from the west of Ukraine that the war broke out due to the fact that they talk Russian. However, they do not owe themselves if they can answer the question: “All right, and what are you doing here in Poland erstwhile your city is comparatively safe? Let me guess-- You came here to take 800 plus, and you rent your flat to the people of Chersonia for a triple stake?’
It is harder to map the tensions between Ukrainians and another nationalities that have entered Polish streets on a wider scale only in fresh years. “At 1 of the right-wing demonstrations against refugees in 2015, I met a group with the Ukrainian flag,” Babakova recalls. I asked them if they were disturbed by anti-immigrant slogans at the protest. They replied that migrants were the black ones, and they came to Poland to work legally. I thought about them a year later erstwhile I saw British Poles in demonstrations behind Brexit.
Babakova besides mentions the negative emotion of Ukrainians to the Belarusians, which appeared at the beginning of a full-scale war. – There was a brief minute erstwhile the Ukrainians gave Belarusians to understand: you are not welcome here, in Poland, due to the fact that you are a citizen of a country that has attacked us and did not protest or protest as much as we did on Majdan.
Babakova besides occasionally encounters prejudice against citizens of the countries of the Caucasus or Central Asia, whose roots date back to the russian Union and partially even the times of Russian colonialism. – However, no popular communicative among diaspora was created from these individual comments – says the journalist. "Even the attack of politicians on Georgians did not affect Ukrainian public opinion, although critical comments specified as "Georgians spoil Poles' attitude towards migrants" could be expected.
Why the restraint? “Ukrainians like to think of themselves as “better” migrants in Poland, but they know that erstwhile a politician says “immigrant”, most Poles will realize “Ukrainian” – Babakova claims. "So the hatred of another migrants would not rise the position of Ukrainians as white privileged migrants, and would crush them equally with others.
The most interesting, Babakov thinks, just before us. – In 10 to 15 years, migrant children who have passed through the full Polish education strategy will start entering adulthood. Today, the standard of the Polish school is simply a kid who brings home a conviction after a fewer weeks: “in Poland, we talk Polish”. And then he reacts differently. Either it radically assimilates and becomes a turbo-Polish nationalist, or it rebels and tells colleagues: “I will never be like you”, or it starts to have intellectual problems due to these identity dilemmas, due to the fact that it is already poorly identified with its country of origin. It's hard to foretell how these kids will vote erstwhile they grow up.
