Merkel's own goal

[CHIMO]

Today, when I heard reports of Angela Merkel announcing that multiculturalism had "utterly failed", my first thoughts were: who is she talking about? I am German, and I have a sister whose three boys are half-Peruvian. My brother's children are part-Japanese. My partner is English. Were we all utter failures?

"Multi-kulti" covers a grey area somewhere between co-existence and co-operation, and one hopes the German chancellor was trying to speak in favour of team-play and against mere tolerance. My guess is that Merkel wasn't talking about us, or about Poles, Italians or Greeks living in Germany, but about her country's 4 million-strong Muslim population – in which case she has still chosen her words terribly badly. The result is a faux pas uncharacteristic of a politician who has won a reputation for treading quietly in matters diplomatic.

So what made her say it? The question over how to integrate Muslim migrants and the rest of German society is hardly new: politicians and commentators have been discussing it ever since the first wave of Gastarbeiter (migrant workers) arrived in the 1960s. If you look at the figures alone, there would be no particular reason to reheat the debate at this time: the number of Turkish immigrants into Germany in 2008 was as low as it had last been in 1983, according to Der Spiegel magazine, and the number of asylum applications is about a sixth of what it was in the mid-90s. More Turks returned to Turkey last year than came to live in Germany, which is actually bad news for the German economy, because with the population forecast to fall by 11.6 million by 2050, the country needs every qualified worker it can get its hands on.

A recent football match might have rattled Merkel a little: a Euro 2012 qualifier in Berlin, in which Turkey fans outnumbered the home support and jeered German-born midfielder Mesut Özil, who had rejected the Turkish star in favour of the German FA's eagle. Assuming that most of the Turkey fans were Berlin-based, Merkel's interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, was appalled. "These are precisely the kind of integration deficits we are talking about," he said, "and it's not a mistake to address them." But even then the positives outweigh the negatives: Özil silenced the whistles by scoring the second goal in a 3-0 win, acting as the beating heart of a German-Turkish-Polish-Tunisian-Serbian-Brazilian team that has come to symbolise successful "Multi-kulti" in action.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/17/merkel-germany-multiculturalism-football