“Wir schaffen das!” Ok; but how?
Thoughts on living well together

François Levrau

Introduction

On August 31, 2015, in the midst of the so-called European refugee crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel launched the notorious slogan “Wir schaffen das!”. Herewith she stated that her country could handle the increasing flow of migrants to Europe. While Merkel was praised by some – in 2017 she was awarded a joint honorary doctorate by the University of Leuven and Ghent University, for instance –, her approach also brought her a lot of criticism, both at home and abroad. The “Willkommenskultur” was claimed to be naive as it was said to, at least in the long term, undermine the stability of German and European societies. Since the precise long-term effects of large-scale migration are yet unknown, quite a few people in Western European countries are worried and anxious, especially since migration is often associated with a decline in national security and cohesion and with threats in terms of social profitability, overpopulation, and ghettoization. The reluctance is also caused by the fear that migrants could undermine the liberal culture (gender equality, respect for sexual diversity, etc.), the national culture (language, symbols, traditions, etc.) and the anthropological culture (clothing, folklore, social customs and rituals). Migration also undermines the confidence in politics as people believe politicians lack real control over who enters the country and are unable to successfully integrate newcomers. About ten years ago this flaw was admitted in a remarkable confession of several political leaders, such as David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, Yves Leterme and… Angela Merkel. These prominent politicians indicated that their respective multicultural societies had failed. In the words of Merkel (2010): “Der Ansatz für Multikulti ist gescheitert, absolut gescheitert.” How could Merkel first say that multicultural societies are a fiasco and then, a few years later, claim that Germany can handle the influx of newcomers?

The ‘nervousness’ about migration and integration has led to the rise and increasing success of (radical) right-wing parties all over Europe. These parties have gained in particular from the complaint that ‘native people’ feel as ‘strangers in their own country’. Natives do not watch with a light heart how ‘their cultural identity’ changes and fear that it will be replaced due to migration. In this article we pursue a number of philosophical paths that help us reflect in what ways and to what extent majority groups can preserve their culture while safeguarding the rights and flourishing of minorities. We argue that a normative culture can be protected in the form of constitutional nationalism (hard duties) and that a certain form of anthropological culture and togetherness can only be maintained through soft paternalism (indirect duties).

Minority-majority relations

In the postwar period people had a relatively clear picture of what it meant to be British, Italian, French, Belgian or German, for example. The need for self-determination was seen as something that is of importance for colonialized and oppressed peoples who want to preserve or further develop their culture in the process of decolonization. Especially in political-philosophical and legal circles, the conviction that the majority has a certain culturally dominant position led to campaigning for group-differentiated minority rights. From the 1970s the insight grew that a state cannot be fully neutral in terms of culture because it is necessarily involved in a process of nation-building. While a state can take a neutral stance towards religion, it can never completely separate itself from culture. To put it like this, a state can legitimize its policies without any reference to a particular religious foundation, but it must always make a number of cultural choices, such as which language is officially used in the territory, which holiday calendar is followed, which symbols are honored, which curriculum is taught. Through this project of nation-building, the state has a certain power over the formation of a cultural identity and a corresponding sense of togetherness. The shared reality of a public realm (e.g. a particular history, language, future, symbols, folk heroes, national anthem, traditions) and a shared institutional framework (e.g. education, media, national defense, public transport, sports and economic market) generate the sense of a ‘people’ that feels connected and coherent.

The upshot is that those who migrate to another country end up in a different ‘social culture’ that is not fully accessible to them. However, because inclusion in that culture to a large degree determines the socioeconomic opportunities for migrants, it is important for them to integrate. To speed up this process, liberal multiculturalists claim that immigrants are entitled to group-differentiated measures or minority rights. These measures/rights are not intended to favor ethnic-cultural minorities, but to compensate for unfair disadvantages that are rather side-effects of the nation-building. Although ‘multiculturalism’ is often depicted as a policy aimed at the survival of minority cultures, this is incorrect in the context of immigration. Liberal multiculturalism aims at binding all individuals to one shared social culture, but remains sensitive to ethnic-cultural and religious group differences that might be overshadowed by the nation-building that took shape in a time when ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities did not belong to the country in significant numbers (although there has, of course, always been a certain amount of diversity). The multicultural assumption is that by making the social culture more inclusive (by, for instance, multicultural policies) newcomers will feel recognized and therefore will more rapidly embrace the ‘new’ societal context in which they live. Whether this strategy is successful or not is hard to say, as it depends on many intermediary factors. When the aforementioned politicians claimed that the multicultural societies had failed, this does not necessarily mean that multicultural policies have failed, as most Western-European countries simply have not full-heartedly embraced multiculturalism.

However, times have changed. Due to the extent, composition and dynamics of immigration and the emergence of transnational minorities (e.g. minorities that are physically in a Western country but mentally at least partially reside in the country of origin), the demographic composition of Western countries has changed considerably, even to the extent that sociologists invoked new terms to describe contemporary societies, such as ‘superdiversity’ (where diversity is regarded as the demographic norm) and ‘majority-minority realities’ (where the original majority is no longer a majority and the population exists of a range of minorities) (Vertovec, 2007). Moreover, through the implementation of minority rights/measures, the impact of international treaties and the codification of universal rights in national legislation, the right to (cultural) self-determination of the majority group has become limited. These policy changes are obviously a good thing for the minorities, as they could otherwise be suppressed by the so-called ‘tyranny of the cultural majority group’, but at the same time it has become more difficult for the latter group to express its cultural particularity in an exclusive way and to pass it on to the next generation. As policies of strong cultural assimilation are no options, members of the majority (or better: people without a recent migration background) fear the loss of their (cultural) identity or cultural heritage. How one should deal with these (political) struggles for recognition is not always clear. Below we explain why the only formal touchstone is the Constitution and that it is therefore that people must be brought together around the Constitution so that a democratic (national) culture can gradually be shaped (hard duties). Although this is an ancient idea – it has already been formulated by Aristotle –, it is highly relevant, as politicians might reconsider the concrete implications for a society that has become more diverse than ever before.

Constitutional nationalism (hard duties)

The essence of a community, Aristotle argued about 2500 years ago, lies in the Constitution and in the extent to which citizens make it their own. Because every liberal Constitution is based on universal principles that embrace the human dignity of each individual, respect for all people (whether or not they belong to a minority group) is fundamental. People from the majority and minority group can be brought together in the same constitutional frame, and it is within that frame that democratic processes can generate solutions for all kinds of tensions between people who hold different beliefs. According to Orgad (2015), this process of constitutional inclusion has two phases.

In a first phase, the admission of newcomers is central and a focus on the principles of political liberalism dominate. Political liberalism is the philosophical underpinning of all liberal-democratic constitutional states that want to treat their citizens with a similar degree of care and respect. This phase is universal in the sense that it starts from the moral equality of people and therefore from an overlapping consensus that indicates ‘natural duties’ such as, for example, obeying laws that are the result of just political institutions, following up on judicial decisions, resolving conflicts in a peaceful manner, etc. (Rawls, 2005). The second phase deals with the naturalization of newcomers and focuses on ‘constitutional essentials’: “Constitutional essentials concern questions about what political rights and liberties, say, may reasonably be included in a written constitution, when assuming the constitution may be interpreted by a supreme court, or some similar body. Matters of basic justice relate to the basic structure of society and so would concern questions of basic economic and social justice and other things not covered by a constitution” (Rawls, 2005: 442). What is central, then, is the specific way in which the universal liberal principles are constitutionally anchored in a certain country that is characterized by the history of a certain nation-building. The consequences for newcomers are threefold. First, they must agree with the abstract principles of equality, freedom, solidarity, and state neutrality. Secondly, they must agree with the particular way in which these principles are incorporated into a concrete Constitution. Thirdly, they must accept that they are in a context that has already been culturally developed by a group of people that share a cultural identity through the historical impact of nation-building. Immigrants cannot rely on self-governing rights and thus should not rebuild the societal culture from which they departed. Instead, they can boast of multicultural measures and rights that help them to integrate into the ‘new’ societal culture. Immigrants, in other words, are expected to accept ending up in a society where a ‘societal culture’ is already present as the result of a certain nation-building and where the principles of political liberalism form the normative background culture that has been refined in and concretized by a particular Constitution.

This also means that the liberal constitutional state does not have to admit immigrants who do not want to take on the natural duties arising from the Constitution. Not admitting can take different forms, as citizenship could be automatically denied or made conditional. That sounds clear in theory, but there may be a certain vagueness in practice. For example, people may claim – in accordance with their freedom of expression – that Sharia is better than the Belgian Constitution, but they cannot attack that Constitution as the normative and political anchor of Belgian society. People may also take the view that terrorism is a good way to change society, but they should not call for terrorist acts. Before the security services can intervene, there must be ‘clear and present danger’. However, from what moment is social criticism an incitement to violence? How can one be bound by the Constitution if one would rather see it abolished? Every stable liberal-democratic society can undoubtedly afford a number of ‘freeriders’, but it is unclear what the threshold is and how many citizens must therefore continue to feel responsible for the fundamental values ​​and cohesive functioning of a liberal-democratic society. Where to draw the exact line between people who want to amend the (constitutional) laws (what can even be seen as a sign of political involvement) and people who intend to abolish the basic political liberal structure is difficult, and therefore upholding the constitutional culture remains a constant political and societal task. In that regard, it is important to emphasize that the political liberal culture (as reflected in political regimes of constitutional nationalism) does not completely coincide with the culture of the majority group. After all, Western societies are constantly characterized by illiberal and intolerant disruptions. The ground on which the political liberal framework in Western societies rests is therefore less stable and possibly too unstable to guarantee peaceful coexistence in increasingly complex societies.

As mentioned, in a constitutional culture, the community is determined by collective identification with the concrete way in which the universal political liberal principles have been taken up into the Constitution. People must comply with the laws, rules and principles on which political society is based, but they also retain the freedom not to agree. What matters is that people are united around a public conception of what is right, but not around a shared vision of the good. For example, people may personally disapprove of homosexuality, but they must accept that people are free to live their sexual lives as they wish – and therefore that homosexuality is a life option. Those who indicate that they do not accept the rules that follow from the constitutional culture have no place in liberal-democratic societies and should be – in one way or another – sanctioned. In a key text in the history of political liberalism, Popper (1945) famously declared that one should not be tolerant for the intolerant. The pressure exerted in certain minority groups on individuals not to express themselves as a homosexual therefore is something that cannot be accepted in a liberal society. Parents may find it difficult (because of religious beliefs, for instance), but they must ultimately accept that their son/daughter is attracted to people of the same sex. People, thus, must be able to say (without fear of repression or rejection) what their sexual orientation is. This means that every conservative group will have to allow a liberal impregnation. So, if the ‘majority group’ must defend its cultural identity, then it is mainly about the constitutional culture that allows people the freedom to live as they please. What a constitutional culture should equally protect is not all religious or cultural practices, but the individual choice to commit to this or that lifestyle, whereby that binding has to be the product of an autonomous choice (both in terms of positive and negative freedom) and not of brainwashing or coercion. This also implies that the ‘native majority group’ has no right to preserve illiberal or apolitical cultural traditions or practices that might threaten immigrants. If minorities were harmed by these traditions or practices, they can invoke the liberal Constitution. The Black Pete tradition is an example of an apolitical (and possibly discriminatory) tradition which the majority cannot claim to conserve (as a right). Traditions and folk customs prove their vitality in daily life and in that sense are no objects of legal protection.

Soft paternalism (soft duties)

So far we have seen that constitutional nationalism is a particular translation of a universal political liberal culture that forms the normative and legal background culture in Western societies. Although it is tempting to identify national cultures with constitutional cultures, it should be clear that every Western society has ‘anti-enlightenment tendencies’ and is therefore confronted with the challenge of defending ‘enlightened nationalism’ against illiberal and intolerant disruptions. That defense goes with a number of hard and soft duties (for members of the majority and minority groups alike). On the one hand, people are strictly bound to the same liberal Constitution (hard duties), but on the other hand, and equally importantly, they should be aware that they share a social space with each other and that they therefore should align their liberties with what I call a ‘regulatory ideal of carefulness’ (soft duties). Both kinds of duties are part of the answer to the question of how society can become more cohesive.

All citizens have an imperfect duty to integrate socially into the constitutional and societal culture. This may involve different things depending on the group (minority or majority) to which one belongs. For example, newcomers can be expected to master the language of the country as well as possible – not because Dutch is better than the mother tongue, but because a shared language is an important basis for interpersonal contact and for understanding the society in which they currently find themselves. However, expecting people to speak Dutch does not mean that it should be forbidden for immigrants and their descendants to rely on their mother tongue. One must be pragmatic here; but it is and remains important that migrants become familiar with the official language of a country. Moreover, through their efforts they also demonstrate their social membership and hence their willingness to participate in and identify with the social life of a country. Not every request for adaptation should therefore be suspected, since the request can be defended as a tool for the formation of a shared sense of belonging.

What applies to language also applies to social conventions. After all, those who do not master the social manners or norms that are prevalent in a society also put themselves aside. It is therefore important that everyone shows a willingness to become familiar with the ‘public etiquette’ and to bring it into practice. The social norms always reflect the ‘guiding culture’ – just as there is also a ‘guiding language’. In Belgium, for example, men and women shake hands. When a man avoids shaking the hand of a woman, he must realize that this will be experienced as antisocial. That man will then have to make sure that he does not lose his ‘social membership’ and will therefore have to show in a different way that his refusal to shake hands is not because of disrespect to women. It is then up to the woman in question to feel whether the man’s effort sufficiently meets the expectations about respect. The manners are always quite particular, conventional and contingent, but everywhere it is true that someone who violates local customs is considered to be rude. However, as in the case of language, one should also be pragmatic. If a multicultural society is to remain cohesive, then all citizens must develop the capacity to look beyond the customs/folkways of their own community to see how respect with others can be achieved and do an effort to be actually guided by social conventions. After all, realizing that ‘courtesy’ can be expressed in different ways is one thing, making an effort to be courteous is another. This applies to members of the majority group as well as members of the minority group. For example, whoever invites a conservative Muslim or Jew to a party should know that it is not tactful or welcoming to serve pork and a conservative Muslim or Jew should realize that his refusal to shake hands with the hostess must be compensated with other and clear signs of respect for the woman in question. This requires empathy, pragmatism and a form of social-emotional intelligence.

These imperfect duties (including language and the social interaction culture) can be included in a rigorous civic integration policy that wants to familiarize newcomers with the Belgian culture. This ‘culture’ can include three things. Firstly, it can refer to the constitutional culture that has unfolded around some universal liberal-democratic principles. As indicated above, it is important that newcomers are properly informed, screened and tested. Secondly, it can be a romanticized concept of culture, in which a kind of cultural ideal is presented to newcomers. Rather than being what ‘we’ really are, it is about what ‘we’ think ‘we’ are, what ‘we’ want ‘others’ to think ‘we’ are and what ‘others’ should ideally become when they are ‘here’. These national descriptions of cultures then refer to prominent figures such as, depending on the country, Rubens, Rembrandt, Nietzsche, Voltaire, Shakespeare or certain heroic episodes from national history. But, this notion of culture not only presupposes a romanticization of a culture (because every culture also has its ‘dark pages’), it is also true that the so-called native people generally have little knowledge of those iconic figures and events. One cannot and may not expect from newcomers what the ‘natives’ do not know / can do. Newcomers can only be informed about this. Moreover, it is unclear what then should be learned, what or who should be mentioned in the ‘cultural canon’. This issue, however, can lead to interesting societal discussions that can help (minorities and majority) to understand the complexity of culture, identity and history. Thirdly, the culture in question can be an anthropological culture. In that case, it is about the way of doing, seeing, and organizing things. This concept of culture refers to what people do at work, in education, in the family, during social interaction, in their leisure time, in politics, etc., and therefore also to people’s habits, social customs, traditions, practices, customs and beliefs. However, this anthropological culture is diffuse as not every citizen is part of it in a similar way. Just think, for example, of the way in which city people and rural people or highly educated and lower educated people are acting. They rely on different behavioral repertoires and have – to speak with Bourdieu – different cultural capital, which, moreover, does not appear to be exclusively country-specific, but rather class-determined. At the anthropological level, a culture therefore contains a lot of variation and it is impossible to describe in detail what it entails exactly. Newcomers can therefore only be made familiar with a certain image of that anthropological culture. The point here is that they should be informed about certain social manners, sensitivities, expectations and rituals that (to a greater or lesser extent) answer the question about how life is socially lived. The integration policy must make newcomers curious and therefore should be conceived as an invitation to participate in the ‘anthropological culture’.

Citizens – both from majority and minority – must be sufficiently informed, motivated and (politically and socially) involved so that democracy can thrive (and the individual freedoms and equality of citizens are guaranteed). Using the Dutch language in social life and integration into the anthropological culture can therefore be gently encouraged because it helps migrants not to stay on the sidelines. After all, people who deliberately set themselves apart in neighborhoods, or establish their ‘own’ schools can nourish stereotypes, fears and frustrations. ‘Integration’ implies that members of the minority and majority groups do not deliberately avoid social contact. However, it is a soft form of paternalism with soft duties because people obviously have the right to choose where they live, to set up religious schools, to speak their mother tongue at home, not to send children to sports lessons, etc. The soft nature of this paternalism implies that people are encouraged to think about whether or not their daily choices and behaviors contribute to shaping a cohesive society. Viewed in this way, it is about the development of an ‘interpersonal ethos’ (Levrau, 2018), in which individual liberties are spontaneously limited by concerns related to equality, solidarity and social mix. A cohesive society where people live well together does not presuppose feelings of resentment and intransigence, but rests on positive emotions felt and cherished by active citizens who understand that sometimes, for the higher good of cohesion, a number of minimal efforts and sacrifices may be required. So, the fact that people sometimes have to make some concessions at the level of their liberties, rights and habits should not necessarily be put away as a moral failure of society, since this can also be praised as an act of responsible citizens who understand that the good of a peaceful, close-knit and tolerant society sometimes expects efforts and sacrifices from them.

A call for living well together

Living together in a respectful way is the only thing that really matters and that is why everyone has a similar responsibility for the success of a society. One might believe this is possible – “Wir schaffen das!” – or think this is naive. Although constitutional rights are important, it is probably the daily acts of simple respect, friendship, caring and kindness that really make a particular society worth living in (Beaman, 2017). People, for example, have a fundamental right in terms of ‘freedom of speech’, but this freedom is not an invitation to insult, but rather (1) an invitation to think about how to carefully phrase your ideas and (2) a call not to feel offended too quickly. Another example: discrimination and racism undeniably do exist, and there are structural or systemic forms of racism whereby exclusionary power mechanisms are inherent to certain institutions. Still, not every unemployed person with a migrant background is the victim of racism or discrimination. Sometimes people find no work because the employer considers their language inadequate for properly performing the job. Not every young person with a migrant background who is doing poorly at school is the victim of racist teachers or structures. Young people sometimes do poorly at school because, for example, they are not sufficiently encouraged or supported by their families. A policy of equal educational opportunities does not imply that education can fully compensate for any harsh home situation and therefore neither the youngster nor the parents need to feel disadvantaged by the education system. Whoever links all sorts of (social) problems to racism, discrimination, xenophobia or Islamophobia suffers from a ‘calimero complex’, according to which the other is considered responsible for one’s own problems. Referring to racism and discrimination too quickly has a chilling and even toxic effect on society as it creates an ‘us-them division’ and paradoxically feeds ‘real’ racism. One should be well aware that emphasizing being different is not always a good strategy for creating solid, bonding relations. Social psychologists have shown that intolerance can be triggered by the mere fact that there is another group. It is only when the ‘other’ becomes an ‘empty term’ and when people really merge and form a unity that intolerance and discrimination might disappear (Van Hiel, 2016). Otherness is also more likely to become an empty term when the majority group does not impose superfluous or unproductive demands. Again, this obviously does not mean that one should stop opposing all sorts of injustices and claiming equal rights, nor does it mean that one should not be able to live according to different conceptions of the good. It does mean that it is equally important to consider that social mixing, intercultural contact and the nurturing of an ‘interpersonal ethos’ are important tools to keep or make a society cohesive. Here we can refer to what we have stated at the beginning of the article, namely that the multicultural recognition of differences was not invoked in order to preserve separate cultures, but was considered to be a policy tool that helps the formation of and the integration into a shared societal context (Levrau & Loobuyck, 2013, 2018). So, all people should examine for themselves whether or not they deliberately fuel (existing) dichotomies. This implies an attitude of self-reflection. Tracing one’s own share and responsibility in every situation is a social virtue that will often serve society more than the nurturing of resentment and envy, whether one belongs to a minority or majority group.

The imperfect duties stipulate a call for reasonableness, which boils down to being careful for one’s own existence, but also for all the things, animals and people in the world. It is hard to say what ‘care’ means – at least if it’s expected to be summarized in a clear-cut catalogue. As a broad quality it is about collaboration and moderation, but it is not always clear how and when those qualities show themselves. If the democratic society is doing well, the requirements for the citizen may be more limited, but sometimes more can be expected. The point is that citizens should be aware that they are ‘community-beings’ and that they share a responsibility for the stability and peace within that community. In a time where tensions are prevalent, people should focus even more on the extent to which their daily choices and behavior can help (re)build the stability of the community by, for example, showing why they are trustworthy. For the sake of social stability, for example, it is important that Muslims speak out openly against ‘religiously inspired terrorism’. They may not associate themselves with IS and think that IS has nothing to do with Islam, but that message must be formulated and spread widely so that the fear of and incomprehension related to Islam does not increase. People without a migration background should also be expected to display a ‘mindfulness of others’: they should look for what they have in common, so that constructive living and interaction can take place. For example, a veiled woman is not only a Muslim woman, but perhaps also a mother who likes to live in a safe and clean street with lots of trees and a good school nearby. People without a migration background should also consider the extent to which they are led by all sorts of stereotypes or anxieties. That could, for example, imply that they do not avoid schools with a lot of migrant children, simply because of the belief that these schools are, by definition, worse compared to schools with less migrant children.

Conclusion

The consequences of large-scale immigration are not conclusively known, and therefore quite a few members of the majority feel uncertain and have the impression that a certain cultural identity can/may no longer be claimed. In this article I argued that the majority group can protect its constitutional culture through natural duties and its anthropological culture through indirect duties. Natural duties imply that one should embrace the political liberal legal principles as enshrined in a particular Constitution. Soft duties, in turn, make the newcomer a participatory member of a culture that has already been filled in by a certain (albeit diffuse) ‘way of living’. People, so to speak, must adapt to the skeleton of a society formed by the legal principles and should be invited, through a form of soft paternalism, to bind themselves to the cultural flesh of society. The soft duties encourage migrants not to stand on the sidelines, but to actively participate in the ‘anthropological culture’. Likewise, people from the majority group are invited to examine their daily choices and behaviors in light of social cohesion. Living well together is undoubtedly one of the most pressing challenges. Either one thinks it is impossible and becomes frightened or frustrated, or one believes that ‘optimism’ is a moral duty and forcefully claims “Wir schaffen das!”.

Works cited