Immigrants are blamed for all manner of ills: stealing ‘our’ jobs, scrounging off the welfare state, occupying scarce social housing, committing crime, changing ‘our way of life’. Cultural issues – race, religion, fear of foreigners and of change – cannot easily be separated from social and economic ones. But they are linked: the recession has exacerbated fears that Europe is in decline and threatened by outsiders, be they Chinese workers, Polish plumbers or Islamic immigrants.

Faced with the tricky task of unpacking the many underlying reasons for this, politicians often prefer to avoid the subject or, worse, to pander to – and thus legitimise – anti-immigrant and racist views. That is a big mistake. Principle and economic logic argue in favour of robust support for immigration and diversity and need to be wrapped together in way that is relevant to diverse 21st century European societies.

Start with principle. Concern for the less fortunate is a core progressive value, as is a belief that all human beings are equal and deserve a fair chance in life. Within society, those who are poor, denied opportunities or discriminated against surely need help – whatever their background may be. More broadly, while it is true that we all care more for those closer to us than for others, and that politics remains primarily based around nation states, this doesn’t imply that we shouldn’t – or don’t – care at all for everyone else.

Cherishing diversity is another core progressive value. We are all different and equal. Many of those differences are innate: age, gender, race, sexuality – not to mention where you were born and who your parents are. Others are developed and expressed to varying extents within a social and legal framework: how you define yourself, how you dress and behave, what religion (or none) you practise, what political and moral values you hold. Modern European societies are wonderfully diverse, only partly due to immigration. People are also freer to express their differences since the liberating 1960s.

In contrast, conservatives often hark back to a Golden Era in the mists of time, or more recently the 1950s, when each European nation was supposedly united, uniformly white and everybody knew their place. That is a myth, of course: 55 years ago, Britain, for instance, was a country riven by class, where women were second-class citizens and gays imprisoned. Progressives have mostly been on the correct side of the cultural change that began in the 1960s. Conservatives have been forced, kicking and screaming, to adapt. Why on earth would progressives now want to become reactionary?
Critics claim that greater diversity undermines solidarity and that progressives therefore ought to limit diversity in order to preserve social cohesion and support for the welfare state. They reason that, since ethnically homogeneous Sweden developed a cradle-to-grave welfare state, while the more heterogeneous United States has only a threadbare social safety net, an increase in diversity in Sweden will cause its welfare state to shrivel to be like America’s. In truth, there is no obvious correlation between ethnic homogeneity and the size of the welfare state: America is diverse and has a threadbare welfare state, while South Korea and Japan are still ethnically homogeneous, but do not have European-style welfare states. There is no compulsion, therefore, for progressives to choose between diversity and solidarity.

Economic logic, meanwhile, leads to a positive approach to immigration and diversity: people tend to be more accepting of cultural change if they believe it will make them better off. So, while Silvio Berlusconi has vocally expressed his hostility to a ‘multi-ethnic’ Italy and launched sweeping crackdowns against immigrants, he made an exception for those (often in the country illegally) who care for elderly Italians.

Like Italy, other European societies are ageing rapidly. Over the next decade western Europe’s working-age population will shrink by around 0.3 per cent a year. At a time of high unemployment, an impending fall in the labour supply might not seem much of a problem. But if we do nothing, an ageing population and shrinking workforce will lead to permanently slower economic growth, and hence less ability to pay for pensions and the welfare state.

Immigration alone cannot offset the impact of population ageing but it can help societies adjust. Young newcomers who were educated abroad are generally net contributors to public finances, and, by widening the tax base, they reduce the debt burden on existing taxpayers. Some of the dynamic gains from diversity result from migrants’ individual characteristics. Migrants are a self-selected minority who tend to be young, hard working and enterprising. Like starting a new business, migrating is a risky enterprise, and hard work is needed to make it pay off. Studies show that newcomers are more entrepreneurial than most: in the case of Britain, they are twice as likely to start a new business as people born in the UK.

It is striking that more than half of the start-ups in Silicon Valley over the past decade have a migrant as a chief executive or lead technologist; Google, Yahoo!, eBay, and YouTube were all co-founded by people who arrived in the US as children. If we want to foster entrepreneurial dynamism here in Europe, we need to be open to the rest of the world.

So, how do we make the most of the huge potential of diverse societies? If there are 10 people in a room trying to come up with the solution to a problem and they all think alike, then no matter how talented they are, their many heads are no better than one. But if those 10 all think differently, then by bouncing ideas off each other they can come up with solutions to problems faster and better. Innovation comes from groups of talented people sparking off each other.

It is true that learning to live together can be tough. Throughout history European societies have wrestled with the issue of how diverse individuals and groups can live together freely, peacefully and productively. The best solution that we have come up with is modern, liberal democracies where – however imperfectly – differences are tolerated within the framework of the rule of law. Still, people often insist that immigrants need to ‘integrate’ – one of those dangerously woolly words that mean different things to different people.

When someone says ‘immigrants should integrate’, the question is ‘integrate into what?’ In a British context, should newcomers model themselves on Katie Price or Nasser Hussein, Melanie Phillips or Boy George, Tony Benn or Margaret Thatcher? Each European society is not a monolithic whole, and neither are immigrants. If integration means anything, it is about participating fully in society – which is only possible if society will accept you as a member.

Ensuring everyone can do this is partly about economics: people need access to jobs and public services. And it is also about culture: helping newcomers to become fluent in the local language, and educating everyone – not just immigrants – about the law, public services and the political system. But trying to impose ‘integration’ through arbitrary tests of ‘Britishness’ or ‘Dutchness’ that many locals would fail is absurd.

Instead, why not make a virtue of their diversity? In Canada, diversity is seen as a vital part of what makes people proud to be Canadian. Its minister of citizenship said: ‘There are no degrees of “belonging” or classes of “membership”. You don’t get bonus points if your ancestors arrived 200 years ago, and you harvest maple syrup, and play hockey on the weekend.’

Progressives should champion this positive approach to diversity. It is true to our values, in tune with the reality of modern European communities and identities, and a vehicle for economic progress for all. Different and equal, our diversity can be a source of strength, not of weakness, a reason to belong, not an excuse to exclude. We should embrace it rather than seek to deny it. Belonging and community can come from, and be strengthened by, this.

Photo: Victoria Peckham