Culture unites more than divides Europe and Mediterranean

Most people in the north and south of the Mediterranean region do not mind working with a person from a different cultural background, having them as a neighbour, having their children going to school with them or marrying into their family.

Most also agree that such people should have the same rights and opportunities. North and south agree that schools are places where children can learn to live in diversity. Language and cultural barriers to cross-cultural encounters are seen as important by both sides, as are stereotypes of each other. Education and youth programmes fostering dialogue are regarded as the best way to deal with conflicts and radicalisation.

Religion is a key value in bringing up children in the south and far less so in the north, where respect for other cultures tops a list. Key qualities associated with the region are a shared way of life and hospitality, outranking migration, instability and source of conflict. Nearly twice as many in the south and east of the region want to start a new life in their own country as in Europe.

There is substantial interest in hearing news about the other side but media fall short in meeting that interest. Of those that do, television is most trusted, but print media are much more trusted in the north than the south, where social media are more influential. More Europeans met people from the south personally while there was more online interaction in the south. In each case views of the other were changed positively more by personal encounters than media coverage.

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Fundamental values

Thus there is much more convergence than divergence on fundamental values and willingness to live together with cultural difference between Europeans and people in the south and east of the Mediterranean. That positive and hopeful finding is a surprise given the strong negative stereotyping of each side currently generated by populist and extremist movements. Their representations in many media depict the Mediterranean region as riven with conflict over refugees and migrants, political instability and religious values.

This information comes from a survey of public attitudes towards inter-cultural relations conducted last autumn by Ipsos-Mori for the Anna Lindh Foundation in eight European states – France, Italy, Croatia, Portugal, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland and Austria – and five southern ones, Algeria, Tunisia, Israel, Palestine and Jordan.

The 13,000 interviews will be used to analyse and act on inter-cultural issues over the next three years. They are a rich and unique source of information which should help correct misleading political and media accounts of enmity and polarisation and provide evidence for alternative narratives of peaceful cooperation. The key findings were published this week in Malta before a meeting between foreign ministers from the EU and are available on the Anna Lindh website.

The survey shows that clear majorities of both regions have a common accord on what unites them. A senior EU official said they have shown they resist pressure exerted by groups on both sides of the Mediterranean “to focus purely on the negatives and the factors that differentiate. The voices supporting converging values are too quiet compared to those who cite the ‘Clash of Civilisations’. It is not a foregone conclusion.”

Muslims in France

Marine Le Pen disagrees. She defends the French colonial occupation of Algeria and insists her country faces a mortal threat from Islam and France's Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian cultural minorities who adhere to that religion. She wants to close off immigration and expel suspected terrorists from these countries. An Ipsos-Mori survey last year shows French people think Muslims are 31 per cent of the population when the real figure is 7.5 per cent. Other studies show racist Islamophobia increasing throughout Europe.

This is a frightening prospect in the final stages of France’s presidential election campaign in which Le Pen may get 40 per cent of the vote. Although most French people do not share her views and will not vote for her, the cultural stereotypes she articulates are much more influential than her electoral support.

Media are often unfairly blamed as the primary source of such distorted and simplistic accounts which culturalise difference into supposed civilisational clashes between Christian and Muslim peoples. These clashes originate more in political movements than media in a framing battle to capture public discourse. Media become complicit, driven by political and financial interests and are then real multipliers of prejudice. But media vary and are different too, reflecting the fact that cultural clashes occur more within civilisations than between them.

pegillespie@gmail.com