"I know what civilisational erasure looks like: I've seen the graph. The European Commission published it in March. It's a chart of total fertility rate: the average number of children born per woman. After a minor bump over the past 20 years, the EU rate appears to be declining once more, and now stands at 1.38. The UK's is 1.44. A population's replacement rate is 2.1. You may or may not see this as a disaster, but the maths doesn't care what you think."
"Civilisational erasure is the term the Trump administration used in its new national security strategy, published last week. It claimed that immigration, among other factors, will result in the destruction of European civilisation. In reality, without immigration there will be no Europe, no civilisation and no one left to argue about it. Of course, we're talking about different things. The Trump administration"
"There is and was no such thing. Our language, science, mathematics, music, cuisine, literature, art and thanks to the legacy of colonial and post-colonial looting much of our wealth, originated elsewhere. Italian cooking might be unimaginable without tomatoes but, originating in South America, they were not widely used until the 19th century. The balti might have a greater claim to be the UK's national dish"
European Commission data show EU total fertility rate at around 1.38 and the UK at 1.44, both far below the replacement rate of 2.1. Without immigration, national populations face rapid decline and potential loss of viability. The Trump administration labels demographic change as 'civilisational erasure' and links it to immigration. That framing treats civilisation as a racialized, white western property and casts Black and Brown people as threats. Several countries, including Poland with a TFR of 1.2, need immigration to avoid demographic collapse. Much of modern Western culture and wealth traces origins to other regions.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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