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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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Haven’t Ukrainians who managed to convince much wealthier countries they’re refugees been largely a net positive in those countries? I’d think more culturally-similar Poland would benefit even more.

"net positive" does not eliminate ethnic tensions, especially in country that used to be monolingual and monoethic.

For start, there are some people who lost on the changes or at least perceive themselves as losing or just hate that someone else benefitted more than them.

And there are some conflicts but more of "call with speaker enabled in train" rather than "create organised rape gang and blackmail police for years". Still, induces nonzero ethnic tensions what is noticeable when we used to have basically none.

For example https://konfederacja.pl/ (party on right, with most significant enti-EU, for free market, pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine, with bunch of clowns but has enough support to be elected) has constant anti-Ukrainian content, including attacking people in Poland.

That’s fair, but Ukrainian refugees are pretty much all women and children and the languages are pretty close to mutually intelligible, right? Like if holland got invaded and all the Dutch women and children moved to England I predict they’d assimilate pretty well, and that’s about my mental model of the difference here.

languages are pretty close to mutually intelligible

close to but not mutually intelligible

pretty much all women and children

And among Polish women (who are more likely to compete with new people) acceptance of Ukrainians is markedly lower

they’d assimilate pretty well

so far it goes relatively well

note that "some ethnic tensions" is from perspective of place that had none of them, where violence/racial/ethnic tension are far, far, far below USA ones and so on

And among Polish women (who are more likely to compete with new people) acceptance of Ukrainians is markedly lower

Really? That's fascinating. It would definitely create a contrast with the west, where my understanding is women are more accepting of immigration than men.

https://www.rp.pl/spoleczenstwo/art38269511-sondaz-wobec-uchodzcow-z-ukrainy-niechetne-sa-glownie-mlode-kobiety is a very quick example (I remember nice data analysis, cannot find it but effect clearly exists)

among polled - young woman rated in 48% as bad/very bad, 44% as good/very good.

In full population: 57% positive, 30% negative.

(before anyone compares it directly with other countries: Poles love to complain, what is visible also in positive/negative polls - while say Brazilians will give inflated positive answers)

where my understanding is women are more accepting of immigration than men.

And where it is typically men who who migrate and compete with men.

Ukrainian migrants are all women. The rush for depopulating eastern european countries to get them into the workforce now creates downwards pressures on female wages.