Author: Steven Erlanger
Publication: The Hindu
Date: July 27, 2011
URL: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2296454.ece
This is one of the most placid and pleasant
capitals of Europe, but Oslo is a divided city. The west of the city is rich,
safe and predominantly white; the east, poorer, less safe and populated by
immigrants, many of them Muslim.
Norway has recently tightened its liberal
immigration and asylum rules in the midst of a longstanding debate about assimilation
and multiculturalism. Despite Norway's oil wealth and low unemployment, there
has been a growing concern over the increasing size of the Muslim population,
especially after September 11 and the Danish crisis over the publication in
late 2005 of cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad, which were published in
Norway, too.
But the Muslim population is growing, and
Islam is now the country's second-largest religion. The impact of an increasing,
and increasingly visible, Muslim population in a relatively monoethnic, liberal
and egalitarian Norway has led to a surge in popularity for the anti-immigration
Progress Party, now the second-largest party in Parliament. And it appears
to have been one of the triggers to the massacre carried out in Oslo on Norway's
white elite. The suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, claims he was compelled
to act by the failure of mainstream politicians - including those in the Progress
Party - to stem the Islamic tide.
In many ways, such arguments seem absurdly
inflated. Norway, with 4.9 million people, has some 5,50,000 immigrants, about
11 per cent of the population, but 42 per cent of them have Norwegian citizenship.
Half of the immigrants are estimated to be white Europeans, especially Poles
and Swedes, coming to get better wages in rich Norway.
But Norway's immigrant numbers nearly tripled
between 1995 and 2010, and Muslims here, as elsewhere in Europe, tend to have
larger families than the indigenous population.
Migrant ghettos
And whether through simple economics, or the
desire to live with other Muslims, or because of flawed social welfare policies,
some cities have heavily migrant, informal ghettos that block easy assimilation
into Norwegian language, culture and society.
In Furuset, a district nearly at the eastern
end of Oslo's subway lines, immigrants outnumber native Norwegians, who are
fleeing the area. A large new mosque is next to a community centre up a small
hill above the subway station, which is surrounded by a little park and benches.
The park features a crude statue of Trygve Lie, the former Foreign Minister
in exile during World War II who became the first Secretary General of the
United Nations, a symbol both of Norwegian resistance and of its embrace of
international responsibility.
"When I moved here in 1976, it was a
new area and there were only Norwegian people," said Lisbeth Norloff,
a teacher of Norwegian. "And now, there are very few, and some of them
are leaving." She's glad her own children are grown now and live elsewhere,
she said, "so I don't have to worry about what to do myself."
In her classes in Furuset, she said, she has
only two indigenous Norwegians out of 40 students, and she has had to lower
the teaching standards, since many of her students do not speak Norwegian
at home. "I think both sides are losing," she said.
"Here in Oslo there are a lot of schools
now where the majority of students are not coming from Norwegian-speaking
families," said Harald Stanghelle, the political editor of the newspaper
Aftenposten. "It's a new phenomenon in Norway, and it has raised a new
kind of debate."
In general, that debate is about how to integrate
immigrants into a small country with its own difficult language if they are
not able to learn to speak it well even in State schools.
Immigration, integration policies
Although the debate echoes that in other Western
European countries, Norway is stable, rich and has little unemployment, so
competition for jobs is not such a big issue. Another key difference is that
Norway, given its principles, tends to take some of the poorest victims of
conflict as refugees - whether Vietnamese boat people decades ago or Somalis
and Eritreans now.
These refugees are not normally well-educated
and many have been through terrible experiences, so they are harder to assimilate,
at least until the second or third generation. For example, many Vietnamese
initially had troubles, Mr. Stanghelle said, but their children and grandchildren
are doing extremely well in school and entering the heart of Norwegian life.
A member of the Progress Party who did not
want politics to intrude on national mourning and solidarity asked for anonymity.
But he said there is more consensus now in Norway on a tougher, more restrictive
policy. "Our immigration policies have been extremely naïve and
our integration policies ditto, but that is something all our political parties
now recognise," he said.
In the past, any criticism of immigration
or asylum was considered racist, "but that has largely been repaired
by now," he said. "We're having a real debate on immigration and
integration and an election every four years. We are a country of consensus,
this is Norway, and we're together in this," he said.
Arne Strand, the former political editor of
the paper Dagsavisen, sees Mr. Breivik as a "lone rider," whose
jumbled manifesto is unrepresentative of any real strain of thought in Norway,
except a tiny fringe right. But as much as Norwegians hate the idea, he thinks
the massacre will have some impact on politics. "This attack, this mass
murder will bring this debate up again, and there are local elections next
month," he said.
The debate is also real among immigrants in
Furuset, who fear that the flight of ethnic Norwegians will harm their children's
chances for a better life here.
Yemane Mesghina, 39, came here nine years
ago as a refugee from Eritrea, and he's enormously grateful to the Norwegians
for a hospitable welcome. He is a cleaner, and lives in Furuset with a young
baby and his girlfriend because, he says, "it is cheap" in a very
expensive city. Does he feel at home in Norway? He laughed. "It's different
culturally and in language," he said. The district is dominated by Pakistanis,
he said, who came here as guest workers in the 1970s and 1980s, when Norway
needed labour.
Some 90 per cent of the people in his apartment
building are Pakistani, Mr. Mesghina said. And the district is also a little
infamous for a Pakistani criminal gang, known as the "B Gang."
Mr. Mesghina says there is a good aspect to
the Muslim majority - "there's no alcohol here," he said. But he
worries about his child, and how he will be able to integrate into Norwegian
life when there are so few Norwegians around.
"I'm worried that my boy will not learn
the real Norwegian language," he said, "including all the jokes."
But he, like many here, was not overly worried
that the killings would mean new pressure on Muslims. "The most important
thing is what the majority thinks," he said. "And the majority is
fine with us." (Elisa Mala contributed reporting.)
