different cultural backgrounds, Brussel or Rotterdam vs Zurich

Submitted by myth (Germany), Dec 13, 2009 at 12:51

Ron, as for the cultural backgrounds of those muslim immigrants or people coming from immigrant families these groups are quite diverse. The turks for example can look back at an empire of their own and have a lot of knowledge of their history. Immigrants from North-Africa in France and Belgium, come from places like Algeria which France counted as France until the sixties. The picture is quite complicated. Consequently I doubt the counter-colonization approach. My idea is that islam servers as a common denominator, communication infrastructure between all these groups. Now the mainstream of islam is controlled by people with somewhat radical ideas. Rotterdam these days is a city with a mayor of morroccan descent and the picture in the street is no more than half-dutch. Brussel is a very striking example and one I compare to a future Zurich should not go for. Brussel historically is part of the flemish-dutch speaking part of Belgium. However the city-center is french speaking. The majority in the center came with the french speaking people coming from belgian or french colonies in north- and central-africa, they run the small shops. Zurich could see a transformation of street-language from swiss-german to french given there are sufficient immigrants from North- Africa. The tricky bit is of course that in Belgium and Switzerland french is one of the 2 or 3 official languages.

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