Fear Deserves an Answer Too

There is a very convenient way to discuss immigration in Europe: divide society into the reasonable and the frightened. On one side are those who know the data, understand demographics and know that Europe is not being “invaded”. On the other are those who spend too much time on social media, vote for the populist right and believe they will soon be living on a continent they no longer recognise.

The trouble is that things are rarely that simple.

A recent Economist article, published by Infobae under the title “The Truth and the Lies About Islam in Europe”, tries to dispel some of these fears. In many respects it is right. The idea of an inevitable demographic replacement belongs more to ideology than to demography.

But as I read it, an uncomfortable thought stayed with me: are we explaining to people what is happening, or are we choosing the figures that are most reassuring? Those are not the same thing.

The article says Muslims make up around 6% of a European population of more than 500 million. It immediately adds another reassuring fact: although immigrants initially tend to have more children than the native-born population, their fertility rates tend to converge with those of the rest of society after a couple of generations.

Fine. But one rather large variable is missing: immigration itself.

Germany is a useful example

Consider Germany. Official estimates put the Muslim population at around 6.4–6.7% in 2019. A more recent estimate puts it at roughly 8.0–8.5% in 2025. Using the midpoints, that is an increase of about 1.7 percentage points in six years.

Now make a deliberately simple calculation. If that pace continued — and I stress if — Germany would move from roughly 8.25% today to 9.7% in 2030, 11.1% in 2035, 12.5% in 2040 and around 14% in 2045. By about 2049 it would be close to 15%.

That is not a forecast. Nobody knows what German immigration will look like over the next twenty years. It may fall, rise or change completely in composition. But that is precisely the problem with the reassuring........

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