It needs hardly be said that in a world of large and inc reasing waves of population migration, few countries are now without significant minority groups. New York, London, and Toronto are now so mixed socially that each represents ‘the world in one city’. West European countries acquired an average of one million migrants each year over the ten year period from 1980 to 1989,but in the next decade this doubled to two million and is now about 2.5 millions. In absolute terms Germany now has the largest non-national population (6.7 million) of any EU country, accounting for 8 percent of the total. The 2005 census found that almost 20 percent of residents in Germany have some form of migrant background. Underpinning Putnam’s article is the concept of social capital, a notion that has attracted extraordinarily widespread interests among all sorts of social scientists in the past decade, and one that is claimed to explain, or be associated with, a diverse set of social, political and economic phenomena. Social capital includes a variety of ingredients, for example, civic attitudes such as trust, reciprocity and helpfulness, as well as civic engagement and social interaction between citizens.
Problems with Diversity Part 12
