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Friday 20 July 2018

Immigration, Crime and Propaganda

Pierre Lescaudron
Sott.net


In my previous article on the topic of immigration, I wrote that one of "the destructive consequences of non-integrated mass migration is a rise in crime".

Migration is the top concern for EU citizens

Migration is the top concern for EU citizens
 
I naively thought the connection between migration and crime was obvious. However, after publishing the article, I researched the topic further and realized that, as usual, things are way more complex and interesting than it seems.

In the present article we will try to understand the connections, if any, between migration and crime. To do so, we will go through a series of charts, we will interpret them and, more importantly, we will see how those data are often cherry-picked and twisted to serve extremist ideological discourses.

First, let's have a look at how migration is perceived. In Europe, immigration has clearly become the most important source of concern among the average citizen. It is ranked higher than terrorism or unemployment.

Whether this concern is justified doesn't really matter at this point, because it reveals an important point: a majority of European people are really concerned about immigration into their countries, i.e. there is an emotional load. And we know that heightened emotional states constitute a very fertile ground for hystericization, black and white thinking and extremist ideologies.

Perceived effects of immigration

Perceived effects of immigration
Negative Perception of Immigration in Europe

European people tend to associate immigration with negative effects like dilution of culture, rise in unemployment, misappropriation of social benefits and rise in crime.

Among those deleterious effects, it is actually crime that shows the strongest negative association with migration, as shown in the chart on the right.

Only 10% of EU citizens (purple ellipse) think migration has a positive effect on crime. This survey dates back to 2014, and the figure has probably deteriorated further since then.

The two previous charts only deal with public opinion. So are those opinions based on some hard evidence or are they just the result of propaganda, fear, prejudice, racism?

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