Demographic Dangers & Declining Birth Rates, Part Two: Refugees & Immigration.
Immigration is the potential solution to many demographic problems. So why are people so fearful & are they right to be so, or are we all falling victim to hard-right, disinformation narratives?
“If we still think of the totalitarian governments that ruled Europe before the Second World War we can easily say that it would be difficult for them to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances. If Mussolini’s fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary democracy, on anti-Semitism, then I have no difficulty in acknowledging that today the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, born from the postwar Fascist Party, MSI, and certainly a right-wing party, has by now very little to do with the old fascism. In the same vein, even though I am much concerned about the various Nazi-like movements that have arisen here and there in Europe, including Russia, (even though) I do not think that Nazism, in its original form, is about to reappear as a nationwide movement.”
Umberto Eco, Visionary and Seer! Ur-fascism, 1995.
Demographic decline: political consequences & social upheaval…
Globally the birth rate has dropped dramatically from a recorded peak of 5.3 births per woman in 1963 to 2.3 in 2020. This is just above the population replacement rate of 2.2 births per woman (although this figure can vary by nation). Should it drop below the replacement rate, which given the current trend, may happen within the next few years, then once today’s children have passed, we could reasonably expect the global population will start to drop.
But for now the problems of over population in some areas, and falling populations in others can present a whole raft of security, social and political problems, none of which we are sadly currently equipped to deal with.
