| Abstract: |
The present article presents at first a German language summary about recent
quantitative studies by the author and his associates about global development
since the end of Communism in up to 175 nations of the world, using 26
predictor variables to evaluate the determinants of 30 processes of
development on a global scale. • As correctly predicted by quantitative
dependency and world system research of the 1980s and 1990s, core capital
penetration (MNC penetration) has very significant negative impacts on the
social development of the host countries of foreign direct investments; but
these negative effects are mitigated by the positive effects of MNC
headquarter status. MNC penetration increases income polarization and infant
mortality, and blocks democracy, desired environmental performance, and the
rule of law. Increases in MNC penetration over time had a negative effect on
the rule of law, and equally had a negative effect on economic growth in the
period 1990-2005. A good and plausible reason for this is the process of
‘creative destruction’ in the less fortunate regions of the world economy, and
partially also in several regions of East and Central Europe. Exactly 50
results from our multiple regressions, explaining 30 process variables, are
significant at least at the 10% level. However, of the 50 results, 20, i.e.
40%, did not conform to the theoretical explanations, offered by the
mainstream of globalization critical research. Seventeen of the 20
contradicting results stem from just three weak dimensions of the
globalization critical paradigm – (i) the insufficient understanding of the
role of economic freedom, especially in advanced countries, (ii) the inability
to comprehend existing problems in the areas of democracy and tolerance,
gender equality, and employment in the ‘real existing Muslim countries’ and in
the parallel worlds of Muslim ‘diasporas’ and finally (iii) the inability to
formulate a proper framework of the interaction between the public and the
private, especially in higher education. Four of these contradicting results
stem from the positive effects of Economic Freedom on development, and eight
contradictions stem from the negative effects of membership in the
Organization of the Islamic Conference or from Muslim population shares on
such phenomena as democracy and tolerance, gender equality, and employment.
The remaining five contradictions stem from the fact that different
development theories, including the globalization critical development
consensus, overlook the crowding-out of public education expenditures on
employment, growth, and human development. We also have to concede that the
understanding of globalization critical research of the global migration
process is rather deficient. We can reasonably assume that the import of labor
to the world economy, measured by the reciprocal value of the worker
remittances scale has – ceteris paribus - detrimental effects on life quality
(Happy Planet Index, life expectancy, life satisfaction, Happy Life Years),
and gender relations (closing the political gender gap; closing the overall
gender gap). The percentage of the population with what today is called an
‘immigration background’ also has – ceteris paribus – a negative effect on
some other key indicators of the environment and gender justice. Immigration,
and all the transport activities it causes, increases, without question, the
CO2 output of a given society, and it also increases the ratio of carbon
emissions per GDP. But ceteris paribus, there hold other important effects as
well, which by contrast tend to confirm the migration policy liberal
Consensus, inherent in the UNDP HDR 2009 analysis. Yes, there are not only
Hiob’s messages for inward migration, but the process is a very contradictory
one. Yes, the share of people with migration background per total population
seems to coincide with a weakening of the role of traditional, local, native
elites, and income inequality even tends to be lower due to the effects of
this variable. Also, migration phobias and migration pessimism are
contradicted in another very important way: there is no significant effect of
any migration variable on the unemployment rate. Liberals are right in
assuming that inward migration is a driver of economic growth: net
international migration rates, 2005-2010, which are a typical migration flow
measure, relating to current and contemporary migration flows, are
significantly and positively influencing current economic growth rates, and
also the ratio of closing the political gender gap. While stocks of already
existing, large-scale migrant populations negative affect the closing of the
gender political gap to the tune of -0.225, which is significant at the 2.6%
level, new inflows, which are best measured by the net international migration
rate, positively affect the closing of the political gender gap to the tune of
0.208, which is significant only at the 8.3% level. Under these circumstances,
the management of the global migration process becomes one of the most
important phenomena to handle, politically. With one of the most glaring
problems of the international migration scene - especially in Europe -
probably is the fact that in many countries of origin of migration blockades
against religious tolerance prevail. Not ‘Islam’ as such is the problem in
this wider context, but the combination of regionally or nationally dominant
roles of denominations in a socio-cultural milieu of the periphery or
semi-periphery of the world system. In addition, migration unfortunately
exports a relatively strong materialist, and no post-materialistic value
system, which is still in favor of economic growth and not on favor of the
environment, if competing interests should occur. All this suggests that on
the political left, the so-called new social movements of environmentalism and
feminism of the 1980s and the contemporary civil society movements for
religious and ecumenical tolerance could be weakened further by the process of
immigration, and the growth of pessimist attitudes on migration will continue.
In the article, we also analyze current trends and data on Austrian migration
as a case study. One of the reasons for growing social divergence of Austrian
society is a more and more ethnically and socio-religiously defined
unemployment. A further evaluation of these trends is based on a special
analysis of data from Statistics Austria on marriage patterns. Among the
Muslim Religious Community, tendencies to marry only fellow members of the
religious community have continued to increase since 2003 and nowadays are
90.4% of Muslim women getting married, while for the Protestants, comparable
in relative community size, this percentage is only 18%. The newly available
analytical statistics by the Ministry of Interior/Integration Fund now fully
document crime rates by age and nationality. Without question, the
18-21-year-old is generally the most susceptible one for criminal careers. For
native Austrians among this age group, the crime rate is only 1.5%, for Turks
it is over 2%, for the citizens of former Yugoslavia without Slovenia it’s 3%,
for the citizens of new EU Member States it is more than 5% and for immigrants
from other states, including the former USSR, and the entire rest of the
world, it is 6%. OECD data allow also an estimate about the already existing
divide between native Austrians without an immigration background and
Austrians with an immigration background concerning the rates of people not
having any professional qualifications, without current employment and also
not currently undergoing any training among the 20-29-year-old. Only about 2%
of native Austrian men of that age are in this category, while for people with
an immigration background, this proportion exceeded 10%. Among women of the
same age, the corresponding gap is 3% to 14%. In the article, we also document
evidence of a more and more geographically-socially determined pattern of the
domains of crime. The reported statistics show that in Austria, nationals from
Romania and Bulgaria, the former USSR (including Chechnya) and other ‘third
countries’ already account for 21.62% of all murders, although this group
represents only 3.74% of the resident population. There are also some very
telling figures about the dire social state of affairs for Austria’s Turkish
Community: Turkish students make up 1.7% of all students in Austrian schools,
but only 0.4% of the students of upper secondary education. But the Turkish
share among convicted rapists is 7.96%, and it is 5.41% of all convicted
murderers, and 4.95% of people convicted for bodily injury etc., while the
Turkish total resident population share is only 1.33%. In fact, recent OECD
PISA reading ability results for Turks in Austria and for people from a
Turkish immigration background, just as the ones for Albanians in Switzerland,
are at the aggregate level of developing countries. In the OECD, there are
indeed contrasting patterns of immigration and education policy. In the
article, we specifically mention the best practice case of Australia, where
children of immigrants to that country from the UK, Korea, the USA, and China
achieve some of the best global results. With an average national reading
scale of 465.89 the native population in Turkey achieves better results than
any Turkish immigrant community in Europe, and in fact is not too different
from the value of 481.84, achieved by native Austrian children without an
immigration background. We thus emphatically contradict current islamophobic
interpretations in the tradition of Mr. Thilo Sarrazin, currently very much en
vogue in Germany, and show that not ‘Turks are the problem’ and also not
‘Islam is the problem’, but the low linguistic competence among many Turkish
immigrants from eastern Anatolia, who never had a chance to properly study in
the course of their lives neither the Turkish state language nor the widely
used Kurdish language of their home region let alone the written language of
the host country. There are also considerable differences between low PISA
reading scores for many of the OECD immigrant groups abroad and high PISA
reading scores in the home countries of the migrants concerned, such as in
Poland, Korea, Italy, and Portugal. In all these countries - like in Turkey -
the home country already achieves better national results than the migrant
communities from these countries abroad. Blue-collar migration from poor and
rural regions of countries like Italy, Korea, Poland, Portugal and Turkey well
explains such phenomena. Conversely, we find clear evidence of a real ‘brain
drain’ from Austria, the UK, Albania, France, Brazil, Germany and Russia,
where migrants abroad, as a rule, achieved better OECD PISA reading ability
test results than in their country of origin. With Portuguese investments in
education but U.S. immigration rates the current Austrian immigration model
reached certain limits. |