Week 38: The Manners of Integration
Week 38: The Manners of Integration
When comparing Australia and Sweden, is it certain national traits that makes multiculturalism more successful in the former?
This week I had a piece in the Lowy Institute’s online publication The Interpreter on language in Sweden. As the the article states, a recent headline that Sweden was the most multilingual country in the West caught my eye so I decided to do a bit of digging. I wrote about the country’s Mother Tongue Instruction (MTI) program – where if a child speaks a language other than Swedish at home they are afforded an hour of instruction in this language each week. Currently 29% of all 7-16 year old qualify for the program.
Yet the piece also touches upon the current problems Sweden is having with the integration of migrants, and how this has fuelled the rise of the ethno-nationalist Sweden Democrats. Given that the party provides confidence and supply to the government in the parliament, they have been able to secure a formal inquiry into the Mother Tongue Instruction program. My conclusion was that language wasn’t the real problem for Sweden’s current integration issues, that it may be down to a national disposition instead.
Using MTI as a scapegoat obscures what may be a more difficult question about Sweden’s problems with integration – Swedes have a national disposition towards conformity and being reserved around strangers, which combine to create significant social barriers for newcomers. Being open to the teaching of multiple languages is one thing. Opening one’s mouth to use them is another.
On the surface this may seem a bit superficial. Surely integration has to do with government policy? We love to blame politicians and bureaucrats for these things, but maybe there are things outside of government control that are far more influential?
The more I have thought about this, the more I think that national dispositions are one of those small things that are actually huge. And I think certain national traits plays an incredibly important role in why Australia has been relatively successful with its multiculturalism.
In general, Australians will talk to anyone. We’re not shy of a conversation. We may be oblivious to people not wanting to talk to us – we can be “full on” in the local vernacular – but there is a social environment that is always open to a chat. The country has a looseness that makes personal interaction with strangers easier (even if we are also a nation of cops whose enthusiasm for bureaucracy would make the Scandinavians blush).
However, its also the way we talk that is important. This is what the historian John Hirst has called “the equality of manners”. It doesn’t matter who a person is – whether a monarch or the man who collects the rubbish – Australians will talk to that person in the same way. Social hierarchy is very weak.
A good example of the equality of manners is this clip from a few years ago when then-prime minister Scott Morrison was holding a press conference at a new housing estate and journalists were standing on a man’s newly sown lawn. The man doesn’t see the PM’s press conference as something above his social standing, or something too important to interrupt. He simply comes out of his house and asks the assembled people to get off his lawn.
He then says “sorry mate” to the PM for interrupting, turns around and walks back into his house.
The equality of manners doesn’t just apply to people in powerful positions, it is cross-cultural as well. Which I suspect is one reason why Australia has been successful with the integration of newcomers. There’s a more open social environment that gives newcomers a bit more comfortability, and a sense that they are welcomed by most, and as a result have a greater ability to negotiate a new environment.
Of course, there are people who do hold awful views about people different to themselves in Australia. Let’s not deny that. But I once met a Kenyan woman in New York City who has completed her Master’s degree in Sydney and she told me something interesting. She said that while in Australia she felt there was a political environment that seemed suspicious of migrants, one-on-one everyone was always polite, friendly and always keen to help.
I think Australians have a natural disposition to be helpful. We love it. Maybe some of us love to be seen as being helpful, but the outcome is the same. Also, Australians are desperate for everyone to love Australia (and are often perplexed if someone doesn’t), so there is a strong emotional incentive to assist people as an interactive advertisement for the country.
All this means that the social barriers to a new life in Australia may be lower than other countries. Turn up, throw yourself in the mix, and someone will undoubtedly embrace you as a new friend or seek to help you in whatever way they can. This can give people greater confidence and a sense that social conditions are favourable towards them, and therefore less likely to turn to anti-social behaviour. These cultural traits that are often unconscious within individuals but can have massive positive national consequences. Places where similar traits aren’t present – like Sweden – may make integration more difficult.
Flooding the Ballot
When explaining how terrible the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system is, I often like to turn to the Canadian province of Quebec as a good example.
My theoretical explanation has been that in a federal seat in Quebec there could be four competitive parties – the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois. The first three parties are all committed to the Canadian federation, while the Bloc are a separatist party. Conceivably, under FPTP the Bloc Québécois could win a seat with, say, 26% of the vote. Yet 74% of voters support Quebec’s place within the Canadian federation. The results wouldn’t reflect the will of the people on a very major issue.
This week, this theoretical example came to life. A by-election was held in the Montreal seat of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun. The election was won by the Bloc Québécois candidate on 28% of the vote.
Aside from the result and the absolutely dismal turnout of 39.66% (another anti-democratic feature), there is something else of note that occurred at this election. I’m unable to screenshot the whole result because there is a long stream of independents that takes the total number of candidates to 91.
This flooding of the ballot is part of a coordinated protest against the FPTP system. A similar campaign was organised for a by-election in the seat of Toronto-St Paul’s in June, where 84 candidates were on the ballot. The idea is that as long as FPTP is Canada’s voting system, there are people who are going to make it as unwieldy and ridiculous as possible – and try to lower the percentage of the vote the winner receives to highlight FPTP’s absurdity. It’s a great movement of using the mechanisms of democracy to advocate for greater democracy.
In the lead-up to the 2015 election the Liberal Party had as part of its election platform changing the voting system. At the 2011 election, the Liberals had sunk to the third largest party in the Parliament. They suspected that the new strength of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in federal politics was to be a permanent feature and therefore the Liberal Party needed to find a way to gain power under conditions where vote shares were more widely distributed.1
Of course, in 2015 the Liberals did what seemed impossible and went from third party status to a parliamentary majority. With this new reality, voting reform was less attractive. Although a Special Committee on Electoral Reform was created, its recommendation of proportional representation was not to the party’s liking, which favourited preferential voting (ranked choice) instead. The party’s thinking was that it would always be ranked higher than the NDP by supporters of the Conservative Party, and higher than the Tories by NDP supporters, therefore almost guaranteeing permanent Liberal Party government.
I suspect this was actually some shallow thinking by the Liberal Party. While the NDP is considered more “left-wing” than the Liberals, this thinking fails my second rule of politics – no-one thinks like people with Arts degrees, and so the assumptions of people with Arts degrees are usually wrong.23
In provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan the Liberal Party are incredibly weak, holding no seats in their provincial legislatures. The nature of the NDP in these provinces – and their strength within them – is more of an “old labour” party of the traditional working class. And not a party of the managerial class or the laptop class (or the HR class) like the Liberal Party is.4 It makes more sense that many people in these provinces favour (broadly and arguably) materialists parties like the NDP and the Conservative Party (federally5), rather than align with a post-materialist one like the Liberals.6 Therefore people voting for the Conservative Party may find it easier to preference the NDP above the Liberals.
The complexity of the party system in Quebec (the province with the second most seats in the parliament) also means that under preferential voting there would be no guarantee of a permanent Liberal Party victory. Here the Liberals are seen as the party most committed to the Canadian federation and therefore may not attract Bloc Québécois preferences, even though Quebec is the Conservative Party’s weakest province.
However, whether preferential of proportional, a change in voting system in Canada is vital to producing more democratic outcomes, and not ridiculous ones like this week’s by-election in Montreal.7 The question is whether the Canadian public can force a change to their voting system through these acts like flooding ballots with candidates. The hope should be that they can, but I’m not sure whether it will.
The most likely outcome of the next election is a massive Conservative Party victory, who will undoubtedly see that there is no reason to change an electoral system that delivers them such a result (the party is also unlikely to find coalition partners under proportional representation, so FPTP is more attractive).
Absolute Horror
One final note. Like I suspect all my readers here I have been utterly appalled by the case currently in France of the man who drugged his wife and invited men over to rape her. Often I’ve struggled to watch or read news reports due to how horrific the case is, and what it says about humanity. I definitely don’t feel capable of writing about it.
So instead I’ll link to this piece by Caroline Criado Perez. Which gets to the core of the soul-searching that men need to do to understand how such abuse could be perpetuated.
[NB: Just for clarity GFP is what she calls her readers, Generic Female Pals, an idea she explains here.]
The NDP regularly win provincial elections - and currently govern British Columbia and Manitoba – but have never held power federally. In 2011 they became the official opposition for the first time, winning 103 seats. But in 2015 they collapsed back down to 44.
The first rule of politics remains learn how to count.
Burn the left-right spectrum to the ground and bury deep within the Earth’s core.
This is not a precise characterisation, as the bureaucracy favours the NDP heavily in these provinces.
The Conservative Party of Canada only runs in federal elections and is affiliated with no provincial political parties. There are unique conservative parties in each province. Some share the same name - Progressive-Conservative (6 of 10 provinces) – but no formal affiliation.
The NDP’s materialist credentials depends on the region. Across the Prairies, yes. In Toronto or Vancouver, no.
I am a huge fan of preferential voting, which you can read about here, but proportional representation is also a lot of fun (love that European post-election coalition-building). However, I think it asks the voter to think less, which isn’t great for civic participation.