DEMOS

It is in pursuit of dignity that so many people are pulled into the West. Few move for freedom; most move so that their children can have a better future, a more self-fulfilled life. One of the distinctive features of the Western world is that it pulls in so many. Only fifteen thousand people emigrated to Japan in 2003; in the same year, 3 million people moved to Europe and North America (they do so every year, either as legal or illegal immigrants). But the movement brings identity costs for both sides it is seen by many Westerners to pose a threat to their way of life; many migrants, for their part, feel rejected or excluded from the world to which they aspire to belong. What exactly is the Western community today? Does the very term ‘Western’ have any inherent meaning or is it a vessel we fill with our hopes and anxieties? There are even those who argue that, as multicultural societies, we should call ourselves ‘post-Western’. Demos is a Greek word which means citizen participation in democratic issues. The challenge for the West is to sign up citizens to its own future they were largely on side throughout the Cold War. The question is whether they are so today. Until the last quarter of the twentieth century, 90 per cent or more of immigrants to the United States came from Europe. Since then, 90 per cent, nearly a million a year, come to its shores from Latin America and the Pacific. The upshot is the growth of multicultural society that may swiftly lose contact with its European roots. By 2050, today’s ethnic minorities will be in the majority. If the communication or the dialectics between Europe and the US are no longer what they were, there is also concern about the racial complexion of the new immigrants. For those who believe that nationality must be defined in explicitly racial and ethnic terms, the current high rates of non-white immigration threaten