As the European Union has stabilized what does this mean to the economy the economy of the countries involved to have free movement to member citizens to other countries with more economic opportunities. With the recent addition of some Eastern European countries, we begin to see a movement of Eastern Europeans from lesser developed nations like Bulgaria and Romania, to western more prosperous western countries. With this interchanging of people and open migration of European citizens will we see the rise of a more of a linguistic and culturally unified Europe?
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
European labor exchange
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Is there a news article associated with this posting? Thanks.
I think there's definitely a possibility. I don't know what a culturally and linguistically unified Europe would look like, but I know that France is scared that it would be one that looks like the US and dominated by English. In fact, it's not just Europeanizationm but also globalization that threaten France, and for the French, globalization almost equals Americanization. Linguistically, the language of globalization is Englih, and it threatens French as the language of international diplomacy. Also, the French feel that the hegemony of American culture worldwide threatens many aspects of French culture, such as its film industry, its cuisine, its eating habits, which is the basic of French identity. So there's a possibility, and countries do feel threatened. Well, that's just my opinion and I could be totally wrong!
Lydia, you're right that the French feel threatened by the global forces currently at work (though I don't necessarily agree that globalization=americanization but that depends on one's definitions). The French are second only to the Spanish in their distrust of globalization, they are viscerally anti free-trade, and of course afraid of any outside influence, which is not limited to American influence. I actually think that the anti-American feelings in France are more a question of principle based on the reason stated above and the U.S. current foreign policy choices and president, they feel much more threatened by the foreigners entering their country (not very many are Americans). This brings me to the actual post; I don't think we will see an homogenization of languages and cultures. Europeans have been living close to each other and influencing each other for centuries, this has strengthened their sense of identity and shaped their culture. French culture wouldn't be without the British, Dutch, Spanish, etc influences, just like present day culture wouldn't be without the influence of the North African population and now the Eastern European Population. There is always a fear of the outsider (e.g. Mexicans in the U.S.) and that they take our jobs so on an so forth... But the current trend in Europe is interesting because the Romanians, Poles and Bulgarians are actually filling in the huge shortage of skilled manual labor that exist in most European countries due to the fact that these occupations are looked down upon by "pure" citizens. In the end I'm not worried about the French identity, I'm more worried about their increasing xenophobia.
Post a Comment