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level; the rapid ageing of the population; the end of mass emigration from,
and the beginning of immigration to Europe; accompanied by significant
changes in social rules and behaviour in European societies (Livi-Bacci 2000
quoted in Berend 2010, 222).
These demographic dynamics generate profound political consequences.
The prospects of a declining European population create economic pressure
and fears, ageing societies threaten the viability of public health and social
security systems, with special regard to pensions, and they also contribute
to emerging intergenerational tensions.
Immigration has often been proposed as the only viable solution to these
developments. However, the refugee and migration crisis of the 2010s made
the in-built controversies of this vision obvious. As Berend explained it already
more than a decade ago, well before this migratory wave:
Europe’s population is decreasing and aging and the ratio of active to inactive people
will be 50:50 in a few decades. Rapidly increasing immigration labor is replacing the
inadequate domestic labor force. Immigrant minorities, mostly from non-European
Muslim cultures, are rapidly increasing. Integration or assimilation is painfully slow,
or non-existent. A part of the immigrant population, especially the illegal ones, form
anew underclass. Anti-immigrant hostility and intolerance are fueling extreme right¬
wing political trends. The minority question became a source of explosive tension
on the continent. (Berend 2010, 286)
It might also be worth mentioning that if demographic decline is a source of
unease in Western European societies, this is even more the case in Central
and Eastern Europe, which is home to the fastest shrinking population in
the world due to a combination of low birth rates, ageing population, and
persistent emigration. According to Krastev and Stephen Holmes, this largely
unspoken preoccupation with demographic collapse is the key factor behind
the domestic demographic panic and the external immigration panic in these
societies (Krastev and Holmes 2019, 36-38).
Another source of concerns in contemporary European public debates is
inequalities. Hartmut Kaelble shows that while income inequalities decreased
in Europe in most parts of the 20" century, this trend has reversed since the
1980s, with income differences intensifying again (Kaelble 2013, 157-165).
Others are less convinced. In their view, social market economies manage to
secure - in global comparison in particular — an advanced level of equality in
European societies, where income inequalities have only slightly increased,
if at all, over the past decades (e.g. Szewczyk 2021, 77-79).
Regarding wealth inequalities, Kaelble claims that while the reduction
of disparities in this field was even more impressive, wealth concentration
has experienced the same reverse trend since the 1980s in most European
countries (Kaelble 2013, 165-168). Thomas Piketty comes to the same
conclusion in his acclaimed Capital in the Twenty-First Century, adding