The Psychology of Germany's refugee response: From Auschwitz directly to Munich's main station [View all]

[pampango]

Will she jump?
All across Europe Merkel's refugee policy is considered by many to be crazy. But it’s not all that simple. The Chancellor is following a strategy. And a very high risk one at that.

A sudden outbreak of sympathy built up over time. And then in response to the question as to why the country initially gave in to this insanity, there is a psychoanalytical answer: the German people, weighed down by their traumatic past, wanted to free themselves from their stigma and consequently ended up with a completely irrational Willkommenskultur (the positive message of welcoming migrants). From Auschwitz directly to Munich's main station as it were.

Ultimately it all started very sensibly. From Merkel’s point of view the situation presented itself as follows: the Middle East is in absolute chaos, a large number of people will, for the foreseeable future, be fleeing towards Europe. Germany is the strongest country in Europe with the biggest demographic problem; a closed-borders policy would be hugely damaging - economically given Germany’s position as the world’s leading exporter and morally because any policy towards the refugees which could be seen as hard-hearted would be held against the German people much more than anyone else. Besides, integrating Turkish Muslims has, on balance, been a good experience. And last but not least, the previous few years have shown us that the majority of people are truly willing to help. So why not have a go at introducing a modern refugee policy to Europe, shouldering the biggest burden yourself in order to then distribute them fairly?

Therein lies the problem which political scientists call the "tragedy of the commons." Applied to Europe and refugee policy it means that the best situation for everyone would naturally be for the refugees to be more or less fairly distributed and the strain on each individual country would then be less significant. As long as, however, at least one country accepts limitless numbers of refugees, for the rest it’s rational and very simple at that to either wave them through or turn them away. This is how this fatal dynamic emerged: those who turn away the refugees quickly find themselves in a better situation than those who accept them and find themselves in a worse and worse situation, which in turn vindicates those wanting to close the borders and angers those accepting refugees.

And something else has also been added to the mix, something epochal. The pressure on the refugee policy is, therefore, so immense because people are gradually starting to realise that globalisation has reached a point at which a few old debts are now due to be repaid. Initially, a debt between the developed and developing world and consequently, now between the rich and the poor in the developed world. This sounds abstract and yet has thrown the US election race out of joint. Donald Trump has made an attractive racist offer to the electorate: the debt won’t be repaid because we will keep out all these criminals, rapists, freeloaders and terrorists (no Hispanic and Muslim people) and live as we have done up until now. The Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, currently putting pressure on Hillary Clinton, has made his own attractive (and more respectable offer). He says: yes, we have to share what we have with the migrants but for that we have to get tough on the rich.

http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2016-02/refugee-policy-angela-merkel-europe-eu