Well, OK, maybe it would be impossible to make really everybody do so, but why should it be impossible to make, say, all university students to?

I don’t know Dorothee, but I would guess that one of the first things you must notice are all the children. As a spin-off from some other work I’m doing, I just checked, and Afghanistan has the sixth highest fertility level on the planet (at TFR 6,8), the twelfth lowest life expectancy at 42.9 (and this is without a significant level of HIV-aids presumeably, and the 18th lowest median age at 17.56.

I mention all of this, since it seems to me self-evident that the Western presence there looks set to be in for the extremely long haul. Since stable political systems seem to kick-in at a median age somewhere around the median age 25 mark, this seems to be decades away from stability.

It is indeed a natural phenomenon. Yet you need not have to go as far as far-off lands. Here in Brittany, just across the Channel, the Brits behave in a very insular way as well. Not all of them, but enough to get noticed.

In Spain I have seen colonies of Dutch, Belgians and Germans (and Brits).

As an expat, who was never part of any colony, I sometimes really welcome the sound of my mother tongue. But sticking together is, as Oskar says, not a good thing in the long run. And not all people can handle emigration, either. It is tougher than you would think.

One anecdote. Someone I know and who adheres to extremist rightwing populism (she’s not really a feascist) moved abroad one day and was shocked to discover she was being treated as ‘a foreigner’. Just as those ‘foreigners’ she despises in her own country.

I know it is umpossible, but everybody should ideally spend a year or two away from their home country once in their lives. You get to appreciate your own culture better and you become more understanding, not necessary tolerant, of other cultures.

First, this is a pretty good representation of how people from far-off lands (eg refugees from Afghanistan) feel when they’re living in Europe and have a chance to meet their countrymen (or women, for that matter). Forming a clique with your countremen when living abroad is natural and feels good (although it may not always be a good thing in the long run).

Second, it’s also a pretty good example of the very different cultural backgrounds of a lot of the (muslim) refugees/immigrants coming to Europe have.