Can Immigration Swamp Your Culture?

[This is a follow-up to my post “Melting Pot? Salad Bowl? Neither.” It is part of an ongoing series that I started with: “Also: Free Migration” and “Three Ways to Boost Liberty in the World”.]

One of the major concerns that many people have is that immigration might lead to a complete makeover of the existing culture or as immigration restrictionists like to call it “swamping.” It is not obvious why that would be bad, but it also not evident why it can’t be so. While immigrants might have to assimilate first, it could be the other way around later on. As I have begun to argue in my previous post, this is not only unlikely, but probably even impossible with immigration in a modern context.

There are some apparent counterexamples that I would like to discuss in this post before I strengthen my argument even further in another installment of the series. Immigration restrictionists are very fond of these cases. But my point is that they are fundamentally different and, therefore, irrelevant for immigration to developed countries in our times.

— — —

Immigration under current circumstances means that a small minority of immigrants end up dispersed in an overwhelmingly native cultural environment. They are usually also not a homogeneous group, so there is not one “foreign” culture opposed to the native culture, but many. Hence even among them, immigrants have to default to some “lingua franca,” a common medium, and native culture is the go-to option. All this exerts an extreme pull. Natives have little incentive to accomodate immigrants, and there is a high premium for immigrants to assimilate.

It does not work spontaneously, but it is false to conclude from this that there is a build-up that leads to “swamping.” Already the second generation of immigrants grows up mostly as natives. Over perhaps another two or three generations, their descendants merge into the existing culture. The cultural input from immigrants can be astonishingly small afterwards, a few new words in the language here and a few new food items there. Natives practically win by default, and so the concern about “swamping” is unfounded under realistic circumstances.

— — —

In principle, it could also go the other way. It is easy to imagine a situation where natives have become a tiny minority. In that case, the same mechanism might also work in the other direction. Fantasy for free, but it is quite hard to show it could realistically happen.

Immigration restrictionists have a worldview where “swamping” is the normal outcome, unless some very extraordinary conditions apply. What I call a “worldview” here is an intuitive understanding of how the world works, not necessarily a rational argument. (If that is not self-explaining, please read my post: “Worldviews, Narratives, and Ideologies” where I explain my terminology in more detail.)

The basic point about a worldview is that it is intuitively evident. If more and more immigrants come, their culture will become ever larger, so this will inevitably lead to “swamping.” Only perhaps very little immigration and very fast and complete assimilation could avoid this. However, if immigrants are rather dissimilar, this seems unlikely. The underlying assumption is that “swamping” is what normally happens. It is the rule, while assimilation seems like an unlikely and very optimistic scenario that may sometimes work, but is usually precarious.

If you hold such a worldview, any deviation from the ideal scenario with almost immediate and complete assimilation is interpreted as the first step towards “swamping” by immigrants. Short-term trends are extrapolated to the future. And since this is a worldview — an intuitive understanding of how the world works — , already flimsy confirmation counts as definitive proof that it is really happening. Some group has not yet assimilated perfectly, differences are still noticeable, and many immigrants come — so “swamping” is inevitable.

— — —

However, while it feels perhaps very intuitive, it is not as easy as it seems. The underlying reasoning is faulty, but that can escape you if you try to settle the question on an intuitive level. Unfortunately, many proponents of free immigration try to counter fears about “swamping” with a claim that a native culture can never give way to another culture. Or they gloss over it and posit that it is always good. But then this is not true, and immigration restrictionists have some counterexamples in store. They feel vindicated because the counterexamples defeat general claims that are facile.

As I will explain now, the counterexamples only show that it is possible that “swamping” could happen in some extreme cases, not that it will be so under realistic assumptions. Possibility in principle does not prove a high probability. The assumption that “swamping” is the normal outcome is simply false. Immigration restrictionists vastly overestimate the probability here and the default assumption should be the opposite of what they think.

— — —

You need to do some calculations to see why that is so because it is not obvious. Unfortunately, it cannot be settled on an intuitive level, you have to put some effort in. I will not do it here, but will pursue this in further posts. However, to cut to the chase, the result is roughly this:

(1) What you would need to corner a native culture is continual immigration of well above 5% of the current population annually. That is much higher than it was in the 19th century for the US, about 1%, or than what it currently is for either the US or the EU, about 0.3%.

(2) Immigration would have to be also very homogeneous, everybody would have to come from practically the same culture. But that is hardly ever the case under normal circumstances. The largest homogeneous group — and often it is not even that homogeneous — has usually only a share of some 20% of all immigrants.

(3) And very strong and homogeneous immigration is still not enough: There would have to be almost no assimilation at all, not just slow assimilation, which is not sufficient to prove the point. On top of that, natives would probably also have to have incentives to assimilate to immigrants for some reason.

It is possible in principle that all these conditions come together. Maybe you can turn this into an argument against very fast and very homogeneous immigration. For small countries, there might be a case here. Yet, under current conditions or even with much more immigration, the claim is false although it seems so intuitive to immigration restrictionists. But then also a general argument has to fail that “swamping” can never be the case. It is in principle conceivable in an extreme scenario.

— — —

Here comes a favorite counterexample that immigration restrictionists never tire to bring up in this regard: Native Americans and immigration to the US over the past centuries.

Obviously, Native Americans ended up as a small minority, and if at all they had to assimilate to the immigrant culture, and not the other way around. But here is why it worked out in this way:

(1) Initially, there were Native Americans who were mostly hunters and gatherers. Their lifestyle could only support a very low population density. By contrast, European immigrants were into more advanced agriculture that could support population densities higher by one or even two orders of magnitude, ten or even a hundred times. When immigrants settled in a region, there could be a very large inflow of them over a short period of time. That satisfies the first condition: A very fast increase of the immigrant population.

(2) Then immigrants were a rather homogeneous group. Initially most came from some part of Great Britain. Even when they were not all that homogeneous, they could work it out among themselves, and immigrants from other countries were sucked into the originally British culture. This satisfies the second condition: High homogeneity.

(3) In addition, there was hardly any incentive to assimilate to the culture of the Native Americans even if they were not driven away. They were a small minority in a region that was being settled by a large majority of European immigrants. The Native Americans were also on a lower technological level, so immigrants could easily ignore and work around them. That satisfies the third condition: Hardly any assimilation. If there was a pull, it went from towards the immigrant culture.

In this case, you had what immigration restrictionists call “swamping.” However, think about what these conditions would mean for an already settled country, ie. any developed country. A parallel scenario is conceivable, but totally unrealistic.

It would presuppose: Immigration, orders of magnitude greater than the native population and over a short period of time, much denser settlement than the original population, mostly homogeneous immigration until the immigrant culture is established, and hardly any reason for immigrants to work with natives. All the counterexample hence shows is that under certain extreme conditions it could be otherwise, not that these conditions apply for immigration to developed countries nowadays, even if immigration increased considerably.

— — —

Immigration restrictionists probably sense the problem, and have another counterexample at hand. There are many historical examples where a country was conquered by some rather small group, and later the resident population assimilated to their culture. For example, people in what is now Turkey would originally speak other languages, before all Greek. Hungarian was also a language that was not indigeneous to Europe, but came with conquerors from the East. The spread of the Slavic languages perhaps also proceded in the same way. And the prime example here is the Roman Empire where the language and culture in the small region around Rome became dominant over half a continent.

In such a case, you don’t need many immigrants. But what you need is that they conquer a country and end up high in status, wealth, income, education, and so forth. They may also have more advanced technology that makes higher population density possible. That can then lead to a slow pull towards their culture as others assimilate. In this case it is not the numbers, but other factors that induce a pull. However, you have to give it a few centuries to work out. If thatis so, also the culture of a small minority can become the majority culture and edge others out. Most of Southern Europe now speaks Romance languages derived from Latin. Only the Basques kept their language over time.

It doesn’t have to be by conquest, though, there can be similar peaceful mechanisms. Sometimes a language associated with a more advanced culture or useful as a “lingua franca” can suck other populations in. In the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, for example, Greek became the dominant language although Greece did not play a political role. But then this is no given: The Norman language exerted a deep influence on English, but it did not replace it.

— — —

Still, all these mechanisms are also unrealistic under current conditions. You can, of course, assume a conquest. Immigration restrictionists often try to establish the claim in this way: Since they assume that they have already proved that immigration alone can yield the result, they then conclude that this will also lead to a takeover. But then the premise is false, and the reasoning is circular when you want to establish how the immigrant culture takes over. If there were a conquest with long-term rule by the conquerors, it might work that way. However, if that is your contention, you should perhaps not worry about immigration, but about a conquest in the first place.

Also the peaceful avenue via cultural superiority or a “lingua franca” seems unlikely. There is a funny inconsistency here: On the one hand, immigration restrictionists worry about immigration of poor, uneducated, and backwards people. But on the other hand, they have to assume for such an argument that natives look up to the immigrants and are enticed to learn their ways. So what is it now? It cannot be both. I will explore this contradiction in a further post.

— — —

There is still another example how cultures can change. It has nothing to do with immigration and so I have never heard it from immigration restrictionists:

Suppose you have two linguistic groups living in a region along a boundary, not necessarily a state border. Some people might move to the other side. But they are then faced with a majority of the other language, which pulls them in that direction. So both sides will remain rather homogeneous over time although you might find a narrow transition zone where it is a mix.

Close to the boundary, already small changes can tilt the balance. That might be because one language area protrudes into another, and so it is surrounded by more people of the other group. Or there is some additional pull because people switch their main affiliation for other reasons, eg. because one language is more prestigious or useful. With a new majority at some point close to the boundary, the pull goes in the other direction, and the boundary starts to move.

Physicists will recognize this as similar to an Ising model where different spins flip because of spins close-by. Mathematically what happens is a mean-curvature flow: The boundary moves in the direction of highest curvature. If it is wavy, it straightens out. Protrusions are flattened, and small enclaves are swallowed up. The contact between the two groups tends to become as small as possible, and that means it becomes rather straight. On a larger scale, it is like soap bubbles sitting on each other.

In reality, it is not that simple because geography also plays a role, eg. if a river or mountains introduce a natural boundary. Or there might be additional pull for other reasons. Still what you very often see is that there are rather sharp linguistic boundaries around bubbly homogeneous regions.

There are, for example, various linguistic innovations that occurred long ago in the German language. They spread in this way, but then resulted in such “bubbles.” This is still visible today in the respective dialects where there are sometimes very sharp and straight lines. People on one side use the linguistic innovation, and those on the other side don’t. Check out “High German consonant shift” for more information.

Basically, what that means is that linguistic boundaries will try to straighten out, and that means that some regions end up with a different language or dialect than before. If there is additional pull, the boundary can also start to move, which again means that some region ends up with a different language. In a way it was also “swamped.”

For example, a few centuries ago, the boundary between Dutch and German ran farther to the East. The Netherlands were richer and more advanced, and so many people in the West of Germany spoke (also) Dutch. Later the boundary moved westwards. The Frisian language was once a very widely spoken language along the North Sea coast from Belgium to Denmark, also as a “lingua franca” in the Hanseatic League. But then Dutch, Low German, and Danish moved in. Many factors played a role here, not just boundaries that moved all by themselves.

But then also this example is irrelevant for immigration from non-contiguous cultures. It can only happen where two of them directly meet. In principle, it is conceivable that with an open border between the US and Mexico, the boundary between the English and Spanish could straighten out. If there were a pull in the Mexican direction, the boundary could also move into the US. But perhaps the pull is more in the other direction, and English would slowly move into Mexico?

— — —

To sum up: As far as I can see, there can be some exceptions to the rule that the native culture sucks immigrants in:

• Extremely fast, strong, and homogeneous immigration of people who have hardly any reason to assimilate and where assimilation may even work the other way around.
• A conquest that persists for a long time or an expansion of a culture that is more advanced or can serve as a “lingua franca.”
• Slow movements of boundaries between different linguistic and cultural regions over time.

Yet, none of these examples realistically apply for immigration to developed countries in our times. Already by the numbers, it is hardly conceivable how “the” culture of immigrants could “swamp” the native culture. What makes it even more improbable is that the pull is in the direction of the native culture also for other reasons: Natives are the incumbents. They start with higher status and often also education as well as with more wealth and income.

I will explore what that means in another post. So stay tuned …