Chiba University New Frontiers of Studies on Fair Society
Values and Public Vision in the age after COVID-19
Online International Seminar"Multiculturalism, East and West"
Date and Time： Wednesday 3 August 2022, 17:00-19:00,
Japan

Abstract: This is a research essay based on the transcript of the seminar "Multiculturalism,
East, and West." Section 1 Prof. Christoph Lütge from the Technical University of Munich
introduces the topic "The German Migration Crisis 2015 and 2016: Ethics, Strategy andPublic Dialogue”. Section 2 Takayuki Kawase from Chiba University will introduce the topic“Multiculturalism and Liberal Nationalism: Liberal Integration of Immigrants”. And givesome comments and questions to Prof. Christoph Lütge. Section 3 is the discussion and Q&A
time.
Moderator
・Prof. Takayuki Kawase (Chiba University)

Organizer: Chiba University Institute for advanced academic research- New Frontiersof Studies on Fair Society Values and Public Vision in the age after COVID-19

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Opening remarks:
Prof. Jiro Mizushima (Project leader)
Hello, thank you for joining and especial thanks for Christoph Lütge. Professor Lütge, thankyou for joining our workshops again, and my name is Jiro Mizushima, and as the leader of theinterdisciplinary program, Chiba Studies on Global Fair Society, I will make a few remarks for
opening this seminar.
Today, Professor Lütge, he is so kind to speak for us about especially the German debate on
migration, and I myself, I am a political scientist majoring in European politics, especially in
the Netherlands, and at the same time, I am especially interested in the politics of migration all
the more because nowadays, in Europe, migration is one of the important political issues, andthe rise of right-wing populist parties has much to do with this problem. Everywhere in Europe,
we see the rise of these new populist parties except in Ireland. From that viewpoint, it isinteresting to see the different attitudes of European countries about migration and refugees. It
is quite famous that Germany accepted more than 1 million refugees during the refugee crisis,
but the surrounding countries were not so tolerant against refugees. These divergent paths arequite interesting for political scientists, because the surrounding countries such as the
Netherlands, it was known as tolerant country, but this time, Germany was the most tolerant it
seems.
Anyway, bearing this difference in Europe, I expect a fruitful discussion between Europe andJapan and Mexico. We have a guest from Mexico, so quite an interesting composition ofparticipants. Thank you very much.
Section 1
Prof. Christoph Lütge
Thank you very much for the introductory remarks. Since I think this is a topic that has
been quite important for several years now in Germany, and I remember discussing this in Japan
also during the time when the refugee crisis was particularly hot topic. It still is, but well, it's
an ongoing topic, even if there are new ones, such as now the Ukraine War and of course, theCorona crisis. So I'm going to talk about the German migration crisis of 2015 and 16, inparticular, and especially also from an ethical point of view, about the different ethicalviewpoints and what differences they might make in evaluating this crisis. Then we can see
how we can put that into fruitful context with Germany and Japan.
Let me give some introductory facts of The European migration crisis (Figure 1). So firstof all, it should be kept in mind that Germany has been to a large extent some kind of
multicultural society for quite some time already. We have had especially since the 70s, even
1960s, had a lot of immigrants arrive originally from working in particular branches of theindustry. First they came from Italy, then later from Turkey and Greece, so mostly European
countries. As of now, I think this is some years ago, I think the percentage is slight higher thanthat, 21% are either migrants or children or grandchildren of migrants. So in many cases, we
already are in the third generation of migrants now, especially those that I mentioned that camefrom countries like Italy, Turkey, and others.

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So that was the situation. Maybe I should also mention that in the 1990s, we already had
this kind of small migration crisis when the former Yugoslavia collapsed and a lot of migrants
came across the border, from Croatia, from Bosnia especially. At that time, the thengovernment decided also to change slightly the laws about asylum and actually more or lessstopped this wave of refugees. So that was the former rise, but in 2015, as you all know,
something else happened. The Syrian military conflict that escalated more and more increase
the pressure on the EU borders, so not just on Germany. Of course, we don't have a direct borderwith Turkey where many of the Syrian immigrants or migrants came from, but they weregathering in camps along the EU borders, especially in Turkey, and come across theMediterranean Sea to some extent and try to get along the Balkan route into other countries,
especially Germany, so most of them wanted actually to go to Germany. The idea was todistribute them across the different EU countries, but this did not really work out. To someextent it did, but not very far. We can talk about the details later on.
In September 2015, Chancellor Merkel decided to open the borders and let the migrants in.
So in 2015 alone, around 890,000 asylum seekers came into Germany. The number increased
then again, so mostly they said, and according to some sources, this is around a million people
that came to Germany. I remember very well in Munich as well at the Central Station, a lot ofthem arrived and were initially greeted very nicely, let’s say. That is the term
Willkommenskultur, I will use it later on as well.
Figure 1 The European Migration Crisis

But what we have seen since then was several problems and I'm summarizing these very
globally . As Figure 2 shows one is that there is an increasing hostility against migrants ingeneral, I would say, also to some extent against those who have been living in Germany alreadyfor a longer time. Well, it’s been, 6-7 years ago already. It's a bit hard to say after a longer
time, what are the long-term consequences, but at that time, it was definitely a challenge for, I

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remember, students. We have quite a few students at the Technical University of Munich with
migration backgrounds, and they were often more than before stopped, for example, by thepolice and asked to show their papers, which I also found quite unusual just by their appearance,
but also more serious things happened. Then certainly we have seen a number of terrorist
attacks after the migration wave. The most famous one in Germany probably was the Berlin
weiner smart attack, but there were others after that. In particular, in France, there is the morenotorious one in Nice which happened with I think around 100 people may be getting killed
and others. One major problem is that there is an impression among ethnic Germans, let’s say,that their needs are not recognized sufficiently by politicians. This is more the case even morein the former Eastern Germany, but also in the West. So those who feel underprivileged andare earning as much, they feel that a lot of money and funds goes to those migrants who arecoming here and they feel left out, so kind of alienation of population. This is something towatch out.
Figure 2 Challenges of receiving a large number of refugees

So this was some of the opening facts. What we have in the German debate are two opposing
positions (Figure 3). To put them simply, the first position is to say, well, the right to asylum
is a human right, and so each refugee should receive a fair treatment. If possible, then of course,
we can argue what that means if possible, all refugees should be granted asylum. This is as I
already mentioned the term “Willkommenskultur,” the welcome culture. That was already at
the start of the crisis invoked by Merkel in particular but also others also tied to the point that
Germany has still a moral debt due to World War II and that there is this particular obligation
towards human beings in need.

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Figure 3 The German Debate 1

Then there is a second position which is opposed to it (Figure 4). Of course, this can takeon various forms. So, a rather cautious one is to have a cautious approach to migration. That's
what actually many other critics of the migration policy said at the time. We should not let somany of them in at one time, but take a more gradual approach. Of course, then there are more
extreme versions of this ranging up to xenophobia and just shutting your country down basicallyand not allowing in or hardly anyone in. So there's a whole spectrum of positions here. The
debate has been quite polarized with the two positions. This is a very interesting thing to observe
which I would say also has had long-term consequences up to now that the proponents of one
position accuse the other position of being extremists, right-wing extremists, even Nazis
basically, especially those people with “Willkommenskultur” opposition said, well, are you
going to go back to the extremism of the 1930s or similar.
What they often did not distinguish was between the reasonable caution that one can haveand really xenophobia for position. So sometimes it was as simple as saying any person who
wants to limit migration is a fascist and this is certainly a problem. I should also add that there
were surveys at the time, I remember well, which showed that around two-thirds, at least twothirds of the population were not in favor of this first “Willkommenskultur” position, so would
have rather been in favor of a more cautious approach. But this was not really taken into
account at the time, but I will get back to that (Figure 5).

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Figure 4 The German Debate 2

Figure 5 The German Debate 3

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So today, what I will do is to talk a bit more about the public debate from the perspective of
two major ethical positions and also in the second part about the public debate is a failed
communication between fundamentalism and pragmatism (Figure 6).
Figure 6 Today's presentation

So the two ethical approaches that one can take here, in particular, is the discourse ethics
and order ethics (Figure 7). So my approach at least is order ethics. Takayuki knows it, also
others like Natsuka, and I will just make some remarks about this, but let me start with thediscourse ethics of Jürgen Habermas first.
Discuss ethics Actually, both of them are procedural theories, saying well, a certain
approach, certain procedure is ethical or non-ethical and not just the outcome, but the procedure
is important (Figure 8). So discourse ethics is looking for guidelines of the ideal conversationthat enables citizens in democratic societies to arrive at their norms and values. You willprobably know this, this is the kind of ideal discourse situation that Jürgen Habermas invented
if you want. This is, as it says, it's an ideal situation. It works as long as all participants intend
to cooperate and also seek compromises for the sake of the greater good. They're willing to set
aside their own interests. This is quite important. Of course, I make this very short here, but
discourse ethics does not work if all parties are self-interested. That's actually what Habermas
openly admits.
So, this is what I call in my work a moral surplus, but that's not important. The main pointis that there must be a willingness of the citizens to disregard personal incentives, and of course,
this is rather hard to guarantee I would see. That's why the theory builds on an quite insecurefoundation I would say (Figure 9).

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Figure 7 Part 1

Figure 8 Discourse ethics 1

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Figure 9 Discourse ethics 2

There are certain positions of this in business ethics (Figure 10). I think this is not very
important here for us. It would also require corporations to neglect actually their own interestat least in certain situations, and it would also require a country, in that case, Germany, todisregard the interests of their own citizens in order to assist refugees. Again, this is an ideal
situation, and I mean, any philosophical theory requires some kind of ideal concept or models.
But the question is, what does it mean if you wanted to implement them? So if there aresubstantial obstacles to implementation like self-interest, then you have a problem.
So, the discourse ethics position leads, actually, at some point, to a situation where you
cannot even debate the position of the counterpart (Figure 11). It can only be rejected because
you're saying I have the moral legitimacy to insist that there is human rights for all refugees.
So this is an absolute fist in a normative position. Those who were in Romania have heard thelecture by Axel Honneth maybe, so Habermas successor in Frankfurt, and this was quite similar.
It was a normative or normativist position that he takes, so this is the way it has to be and so
reality has to follow put very bluntly actually. I think this is a problem. I would even go as far
to say this weakens democratic culture because democratic culture should consist in different
approaches and debate, even a hot debate between different approaches, pluralism, and that's
kind of a problem if you take this strong normative discourse ethics approach.
This is what I just said (Figure 12). So this is the position of strong human rights andeverything follows from that.
Just to mention one of the outcomes which is I think the most serious one after which is notgoing back anymore. So even if we had integrated all those migrants now, which I think has
worked better than many people thought, now after 6 or 7 years, it's safe to say that it was not
so bad as some people thought. But anyway, what we have is now a right-wing party like theAlternative for Germany (ifD) which we never had before after 1945 in the German parliament,
and in 2014, actually, this should be 13, in ’13, they missed being elected into the Bundestag,

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but that was before the migration crisis (Figure 13). After that, they kept being elected into all
the parliaments, even the regional Parliaments, almost all of them, and there is this as you know
Figure 10 Discourse Ethics in Business Ethics

Figure 11 Consequences of discourse ethics for public Debate 1

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the 5% threshold. So we have to have above 5%. In 2017, so the election after the migration
crisis, they reached more than 12%, and this went down during the Corona crisis for some time,
but then it turned upward again, so they are still around 10%, and this is a problem because thenyou have a completely different political situation because no one wants to form a coalition
with this party, and that weakens actually I would say not conservative, I would say, the center,middle, right, liberal conservative camp. This is certainly weakened by this situation. It doesn'tlook like this is going to go away. This was the first position.
Figure 12 Consequences of discourse ethics for public debate 2

Figure 13 Orders ethics and the dangers of extremism

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Then, back to my position, the order ethics position, which just some remarks about this.
This is grounded in the social contract tradition of philosophy (Figure 14). It goes back to
people like Thomas Hobbes and also David Hume, and both rest their theory systematically on
the self-interest of people in different ways. They both take different approaches, but it is clearthat we have to recognize the fact that people are self-interested, that there are certain conflictsituations, and that they want to form a society for mutual benefit. In modern times, two famous
thinkers here would be John Rawls and James Buchanan who held this, for example, of course,
the original position by Jonathan Rawls, which you all know so I don't have to introduce that,and Buchanan's public choice theory, which says that basically, the social contract is a solution
for the prisoner's dilemma situation. The prisoner's dilemma situation you find everywhere, insociety, in our economy, and also in the migration crisis. So, I will not model this now, but itshould be more or less clear. We can discuss more later on.
Figure 14 Order Ethics 1

The point is that here maybe I should introduce the distinction between pre-modern andmodern societies because pre-modern societies, played zero-sum games. There was nosystematic economic growth in Europe, not until the early 19th century, and only then did
economic growth take off systematically, and we are not living in this pre-modern zero-sum
society anymore, which means also our ethics should change to the pre-modern society of zerosum societies. So we should have as I have just sketched in my book, “Ethics of Competition,”
which also appeared in Japanese, we should systematically recognize the concept ofcompetition as an ethical concept, that there is an advantage in the competition which is, bymost ethical approaches, rather seen in a negative way.
Anyway, so the order ethics, pretty much the modern, not pre-modern approach, takes into
account that we have a culture of pluralism, of competitive societies, that freedom to act
according to personal incentives is key, is an essential democratic value, and that ethics thatwould require citizens to disregard systematically their own interests, not just once for a shorttime but systematically, this cannot really be implemented in these modern mass societies,
which the discourse ethics would rather favor.

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Figure 15 Order Ethics 2

Figure 16 Order Ethics 3

So we would accept as a moral ambivalence of human nature. We are certainly alsointerested in the well being of others, no question, but this has limits, and we cannot
systematically disregard our own interests for a long time, especially if there's a competitive
situation that we have. So we have to look for the incentive structures, and these ethics would
ask what are the incentive structures. For example, in the migration crisis, what are the
incentive structures of migrants? Why do they leave their country? Why do they wanted tocome to Europe? Why did they particularly wanted to come to Germany? And, what can we
do about this? What can we do about these incentive structures and how to deal with them?

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Figure 17 Order Ethics 4

Figure 18 Order ethical approach to the refugee crisis

So a pragmatic approach or order ethics approach of the refugee crisis would take into
consideration the actual capacities of the countries. That's actually what the then German
President Joachim Gauck said at the time, “Our hearts are open, but our possibilities are finite.”
I mean, this is quite simple. This is actually straightforward, and this is what the Swedish
government at the very early stage during the migration crisis already said when they said “We

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are sorry, we cannot take any more of this. We have taken a lot,” and in comparison to theirsize, to their population size, they have taken a huge number of refugees as well, but then theyalso said we cannot take any more.
This is what order ethics would recognize, but of course, we should also not underestimate
the value of pluralism, which means that in general migration is still a good thing with limits
certainly, but also for enriching the culture of your society and also increasing competition, ofcourse, within limits, yes, within channels and limits.
This was my first part, and I'm going to do the second part now about the public debate(Figure 19). I think this is very important because it might also hold some lessons for othercountries, we have had this failed communication between the fundamentalist approach andpragmatist approach, not just since the migrants migration crisis, not just then, but also in theCorona Crisis, for example, which is not our topic today, but there we have had a quite similar
debate.
Figure 19 Part 2

So the debate on the refugees can either be conducted as a struggle between different moral
or rather maybe ethical positions, or as a pragmatic, collective search for compromises thattakes the interests of all stakeholders into consideration which would be favored, but not by
everyone (Figure 20).
We have seen in the debate actually three main positions (Figure 21). Well, we havefundamentalism and pragmatism, and we have what I would call or what has been called in theliterature, moralistic fallacies of the political left wing, and the naturalistic fallacy of thepolitical right wing, and I think this is quite important to see there are fallacies that have beencommitted on both ends of the political spectrum.

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Figure 20 Fundamentalism and Pragmatism

Figure 21 Tree mail positions of debate during refugee

The naturalistic fallacy is more often committed by right-wing politicians, which of course
derives a moral conclusion from a factual statement and factual premises that support evaluative
conclusions are used. Of course, this goes back – I don't have to talk about this, to some remarks
by David Hume as well already, and during the 20th century, this was elaborated in thenaturalistic fallacy, and to give you some examples, of course, very simple ones, “men are
physically stronger than women, therefore men should be a charge.” or they have, ”Many

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Middle Eastern nations are under development.” I would say ‘were’ maybe. For this reasons,human beings of Middle Eastern descent are morally inferior, and this would be a kind ofnaturalistic fallacy. Or, “the lady is from Denmark; therefore, she drinks too much alcohol.”This is what my Danish staff member Mariana suggested. Maybe you have met her, or maybe
not yet. So apparently this is when they frequently encounter, or, saying “Your son has been
unfaithful to me. What kind of upbringing did you give him?” and the mother says, “Darling,
don't forget, he is a man.” So this is also something if men is like that and you can derive ethicalconclusions from them (Figure 22).
Figure 22 Examples of the naturalistic fallacy

That's the naturalistic fallacy (Figure 23). This is a quite known and famous argument inphilosophy, but we also have a moralistic fallacy. The moralistic fallacy is often committed in
the claims of left-wing politicians. So facts are rejected with reference to potential, morally or
ethically unwanted consequences. Then you deny that there are certain facts because these facts
are politically unwanted. Again, something that we have seen during other crises like Corona
as well, is not our topic today. Some examples of these (Figure 24). “Men and women are thesame. If there are differences between men and women, we would have to treat them differently
and that would be discrimination. Therefore, there can be no differences.” So starting again
from a moral basis and deriving facts from that. Or another example, is “the researcher is not
objective. In fact, she's immoral because her research demonstrates that she from the very
beginning was looking for a result that confirms her prejudices.” That might be, but just saying
she's immoral does not say anything about the results and about the validity of the results, andwe should keep in mind that scientific research has always been finding out counterintuitive
results on not starting with ethical premises, but finding out how it is actually.

Figure 23 The moralistic fallacy

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Figure 24 Examples of the moralistic fallacy

So, of course, within limits, I mean, we also know about the philosophy of science and about
constructivist positions in philosophy of science, and many of the scientific results have also
elements of construction and interpretation, and we should not disregard that. But this has
limits. Or if you have, this may be very controversial, but just to make that example, astatistician who demonstrated that statistically Asians have a higher IQ than Caucasians is a
racist. I'm not saying it is or it is not. It is just something that should not be debated in theseterms, but it's very hard to say this today.

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I'm not saying we should do away with these statements. Maybe there's just a way to remind
us that sometimes it's a question of being sensitive to these issues and knowing that we should
not just say this is a racist statement, that's very often in public debate this is brought up racist.
Here's one example of a clash between a pragmatic and a moralistic position and that's
actually the last thing (Figure 25). Then, I will also stop. These are some slides left. This issome years ago already, it's been more than 30 years ago. There was a Neo-Nazi attack on
refugees’ home in Germany, in early 90s that was actually during when a lot of Vietnamese
refugees came to Germany. Actually, just to keep in mind, this was very small number
compared to the migration crisis of 2015. This was just maybe 10,000 or 15,000 people, so
nothing in comparison.
Figure 25 Example of clash between a pragmatic and a moralistic position

There was a famous debate between a Jürgen Trettin, who was a member of the Green Party,
and Georg Kronawitter from the Social Democrats. This is interesting just to see the arguments
they used. Kronawitter said, “Well, we have massive unemployment. The housing situation isdesperate. People are afraid and angry. They look for a scapegoat and pick the weakest in the
population, the refugees,” and then Trettin answered, “Wait a minute. Unemployment is no
excuse for being a bastard. And the miserable situation? That's the government in Berlin. They
are making a big deal of this because they want to cover up their own mistakes.”
So what is happening here (Figure 26)? The Green Party politician is accusing the Social
Democrat of excusing the Neo-Nazis. So according to the Green Party, the other one said
because there's unemployment, it's okay to set the refugee home on fire. This was a single casethat happened in the early 90s. So, Trettin says, Kronawitter, the other one, is committing anaturalistic fallacy. There is unemployment, so it's okay to set the refugee home on fire. But
if you look at the argument closely, it's not that. Actually, he is not excusing the Neo-Nazis,
he's making a factual statement. He is programmatically stating there is a causal connection
between high unemployment and political extremism, and I think this holds for all countries.

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So if the economic situation is bad, if people as we have seen in the newer migration crisis, it
impacts in particular in regions where unemployment rate is high, then there is a tendency
towards political extremism, and that's what this politician said.
Figure 26 Failure of communication

Figure 27 Debate between two politicians

So you just take these two positions, one is the pragmatic approach that identifies
psychological causal connections, frustration leads to aggression and to tensions in society(Figure 27). On the other hand, you have a moralistic approach, which evaluates the other as amoral justification of Neo-Nazi violence (Figure 27). So this would be the kind of moralistic
fallacy again. So the left-wing moralistic fallacy that is being committed here is that fromPage 20 of 34

“ought,” you derive an “is.” We are our brother's keeper (Figure 28). Therefore, Germany
would benefit from opening its borders. The naturalistic fallacy on the other hand would say,well, the Germans have created a wealthy and safe society, and therefore, we are morally
justified in closing our borders, which is certainly a fallacy also. So a pragmatic approach
would then debate pros and cons and then take also an empirically informed approach which isquite important to say what we can, we actually do in the Democratic debate without resortingto fundamentalism, both either on left or right wing (Figure 29).
Figure 28 Political left-wing, Political right-wing, Pragmatic, empirical policy debatingpros. And consFigure 29 Left-wing fundamentalism, Right-wing fundamentalism, and Democratic
debateThis was repeated in the Willkommenskultur of the crisis in 2015 (Figure 30). They did not
distinguish the pragmatic approach from right wing fundamentalism, and the debate between
the fundamentalist positions is actually incompatible, the Democratic recognition of thelegitimacy of a counter position.

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Figure 30 German debate 2015

Just for the conclusion, what can we say now (Figure 31)? I think more of this will certainly
become clearer in our discussion. So first, we can give some recommendations based on our
experiences in Germany and that should promote a realistic, incentive-based migration policy.
This is I think, important also, one that is empirically informed as I said before. We have seen
also during that crisis how other countries in Europe behaved. For example, Austria, at one
point decided actually to close the route via the Balkan and that put a firm stop actually to thisflow of migrants. So this is also something we have to take into account what can we actually
do, what are the options, and the other options which are not available. What is also importantis to strengthen the collective ability to conduct a pragmatic discourse that is characterized bymutual respect. I think this is very important, and to some extent, I have to say this has been
lost a bit since then in Germany.
Figure 31 Conclusion

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Finally, we should try to avoid fundamentalist arguments that deny the legitimacy of the
opponent's position. I think this is not in our mutual interest, because the next time it will goin the other direction and so we should see how we can keep the debate alive in a way that is as
rational as possible. Thank you very much.
Section 2
Prof . Takayuki Kawase
Thank you very much, Professor Lütge let me go on to my own presentation. My title is“Multiculturalism and Liberal Nationalism – Liberal Integration of immigrants.” Of course, I
know the word or ideology of nationalism is often associated with xenophobia or chauvinism
or ethnocentrism, or racism, but, however, my arguments for liberal nationalism never evermean such kind of ideology. So let me explain.
The Nationalists are often supposed to be militant and aggressive to other nations.
Unfortunately, this is true. A lot of xenophobic movements are brought about from nationalistic
emotions. However, liberal nationalists claim that nationalism does not necessarily oppress
personal freedom or hurt individual welfare. My theory of liberal nationalism consists of the
combination of egalitarian liberalism and integrationist nationalism.
My conception of egalitarian liberalism requires that every individual in society enjoys
accessibility to an equal range of the context of choices about important things for their rights,
such as religions or politics or sexual orientations or professions, and ethnic minorities or sexual
minorities or handicapped people should not be given a narrower context of choices only
because they are minorities or handicapped. On the other hand, my conception of nationalism
requires integrating the nation in certain ways. These ways of integration could be liberal andcould be illiberal. For example, integrating a nation into a single orthodox variation, or single
orthodox sexual orientation is illiberal integration at least in this modern age. However,integrating a nation into a particular language or languages or social institutions, such as legal
systems, and this plurality is very important. For example, Switzerland has four languages, sosuch kind of plurality is very important, and such kind of integration is liberal integration, andmy theory of liberal nationalism insists that liberal integrations of the nation can be very useful
instruments of egalitarian liberalism because our sense of unity can activate our motivations to
help each other. In order to achieve the ideals of egalitarian liberalism, governments must
implement a lot of policies of the welfare state. This requires taxpayers to help unknown,
anonymous poor people in their own society. It needs a very strong source of motivating people.
In a lot of premodern societies, religions took this responsibility. Those who shared
religious faith helped each other through their churches. In many modern societies, nationalism
replaced that. Those who share a national identity help each other through their governments.
In this meaning, nationalism is a modern, secular religion. In order to maintain liberal andegalitarian societies, the nation must be integrated, not segmented. Such a theory of mine
agrees social-democrat nationalism of David Mirror and the liberal multiculturalism of Will
Kymlicka, and it is opposite to the idea of meta-utopia of Robert Nozick and the liberalarchipelago of Chandran Kukathas, and I think I am in the position of the cautious approach tothe migration in Professor Lütge’s theory.
However, a lot of objections might be made to such a theory of liberal nationalism. For
example, it might be said that such responsibilities for the distributive justice through theinstitution of social security must be taken not only by nation state, but also by regional orPage 23 of 34

supernational institutions such as the EU, or local and sub-national institutions such asprefectures in Japan and ‘Land’ in Germany or states in America, such kind of local government.
This is the right objection. I should not and actually, I do not ignore the importance offrameworks other than a nation-state, so they are also very important. The super-national
institutions are still very difficult in East Asia, such as Japan and Korea or Taiwan or China.
But I think in Europe, the framework of the EU has a long history, and I think it succeeded atleast partly. However, it is the case that many nation-states still have strong power to implement
a lot of policies of social securities still now, and in my opinion, if we have a strong or useful
institution or instrument, we should use it and the nation-states are often no less strong thanother frameworks still now at least in Japan. Actually, I'm not sure in Europe, but actually, in
Far East Asian countries, the framework of nation-states is still very, very strong.
Now, what would liberal nationalists say about immigration issues? In the first place, why
do people move beyond national borders? One big reason must be the reunion of family
members, and another reason might be to get a chance for a better life, for example, about an
educational or professional career, and so, it is a relatively long-term transfer. Actually, I don't
mean short-time movements such as the less trip or attending the academic conference such as
IVR or such short trip is excluded from this story.
How should society or government or law respond to the movement of such people?
Accepting societies have a lot of reasons and grounds about how many immigrants to accept
and what kind of immigrants to accept. I'd like to analyze these reasons and grounds today.
First, we can divide these grounds into two categories: those of deontologists and those ofconsequentialists. Deontologist grounds have their normative validity regardless of the side
effects or results of accepting immigrants. On the other hand, the normative validity ofconsequentialist grounds depends on such effects, side effects, and results.
Now, what kind of deontologist grounds might we have? For example, the subsistence ofpolitically persecuted refugees, or the freedom of movement, in general, are basic human rights.
The human rights of persons are vetoed against the considerations of public policy of society
as a whole. For example, even during the shutdown of the countries caused by the COVID
pandemic, humanitarian measures were taken for people to visit dying family members living
abroad. Actually, I remember a Japanese person visiting South Korea to meet a dying father ormother. So such kind of humanitarian action was taken.
I'm sorry, I got lost. All right, thank you. On the other hand, what kind of consequentialist
ground do we have? As reasons to reject immigrants, we might have the argument of security
and order. We may reject those who have the intention of terrorism or other crimes, and wemay put a limit on the number of immigrants during the pandemic which we actually have now
in Japan. We also have the consequentialist ground to accept immigrants. We may invite those
who have the skills society needs. For example, Japan now needs nurses or care workers or
farmers or factory workers, and so on. How about in Germany? Actually, I'm not sure, but thisis a consideration of national interests.
However, consequentialism is neither necessarily nationalist nor realist. It can pursue
purposes such as making the world richer or making all world fairer. For example, we might
have the problem of brain drain, because of the free international movements, the middle social
class people in developing countries leave their countries. If such kind of movement makes
such countries even poorer, it may be against the requirements of global distributive justice, but
if it makes all the world richer, we may have more budget to help those who are left in such

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poor, developing countries. Anyway, we have many kinds of reasons and grounds to accept
and reject immigrants.
Here is one important point I should remark. Neither consequentialism nor deontology has
absolute normative superiority over the other. We cannot say either of them is always right oralways stronger than the other. All we can say is that extremes theory is always inappropriate.
Probably it means a kind of pragmatism. Anyway, both extreme consequentialism and extreme
deontology should not be our options. A better and more realistic strategy is searching for agood balance between them. The prudential answer lies somewhere in the continuum between
extreme consequentialism and extreme deontology. But where is this somewhere?
It is a matter of Phronesis or empirical studies. We cannot point out the precise location of
any appropriate answers in advance, a priori. The answer is always generated from the practices
or empirical studies of balancing many different kinds of interests and reasons that people
actually have. So the casuistry or case-based judgments tell us the prudential answers which apriori or transcendental theory never does. Therefore, I never mean to ignore the importanceof deontologist grounds and the globalist version of consequentialist grounds. However, today
I'd like to think about the arguments of the national interest strategy from the perspective ofliberal nationalism.
A society has reasons when it prospers or gets richer or declines, gets poorer or weaker. Oneof the biggest reasons is the acceptance of immigrants. Suppose there is Society A which is
ethnocentric and Society B which is culturally tolerant, and these two societies compete witheach other. A lot of brilliant scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, and so on in Society A might bepersecuted because of their ethnicity, and most of them might escape from Society A and moveto Society B. When A and B compete with each other, the result must be obvious. A tolerantsociety is always stronger in my opinion. However, unfortunately, the story is not over yet.
Accepting too many immigrants may bring about cultural conflicts and conservative or racist
backlash to society. So too much tolerance makes society weaker and unstable. A famous
example may be the ancient Roman Empire and how about the present United States of America,
I'm not sure. But multiculturalism, which made a society stronger has the probability to makethis society itself weaker as well. I think each society has its own ability of integrating
immigrants. Both accepting immigrants over the limit of this ability and below the limit of thisability may spoil society. Therefore, liberal nationalists who think the national interest isimportant must identify the precise location of this limit of immigrants' integration ability of
their own society accurately. Based on this ability, they should accept immigrants, and at thesame time, they should make effort to increase this ability of their society, so make their society
more tolerant, and more multicultural because it makes their society stronger. In my opinion,
the ability of integrating immigrants is the ability of the society itself.
Now, how about the ability of Japan or Germany or Thailand or Mexico? The ability ofintegrating immigrants consists of many aspects, so we cannot or we should not oversimplify
it. But anyway, Japan maybe probably liberal about religions, but Japan is still very, very
conservative about their races or ethnicities. In general, I think or I guess, the ability of Japanis much lower than that of Germany. So Japan must increase its ability urgently in my opinion.
It is of course because of the respect for the basic human rights or global distributive justiceand the welfare of immigrants, but also because of Japanese national prosperity. I really hope
all nations, not only Japan, but all nations be stronger and richer in this meaning. So strong
Germany, strong Thailand, and strong Mexico will make our world more peaceful and exciting.

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This is all for my own presentation, and I want to move on to my comments and questions toProfessor Lütge.
I found the triangle of two fundamentalism and pragmatism so interesting and verysuggestive. I'd like to apply this theory to the political reality of Japan. Recently, I found aninteresting article in the newspaper condolence for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe according towhich, Mr. Abe, succeeded the Conservative Party of Japan, the LDP succeeded to get a lot of
support and continued the longest administration in Japanese constitutional history because of
his swinging between the right-wing fundamentalism and pragmatism. Mr. Abe was very goodat taking the balance between them, between right-wing ideology and pragmatism.
Japan is basically a very conservative society in my opinion, but the right-wing
fundamentalists are still a very small minority in Japan or any fundamentalist minority in Japanin my opinion. So Japan is basically very flexible, but an opportunist and having no principles,
having no philosophy. Philosophy in Japan is very small minority I think, but anyway,conservatism in Japan consists of a lot of pragmatism and a small amount of right-wingideology. On the other hand, how about the left wing in Japan? I know a lot of flexible andpragmatic or practical liberal or left wing persons around me, but at least as a whole society ofJapan, quite a few people think left wing is too much idealistic and too less flexible and evenstubborn.
This is very sad thing for Japanese society in my opinion. I as a person belonging to theconservative side of the liberal political power in Japan be more pragmatic. So, probably
Professor Kobayashi may have a different opinion from mine. So please say something against
me if you have something to say, and my opinion is that the triangle of the Professor Lütge’s
theory, the triangle line or connection between right wing fundamentalism and pragmatism isstrong and that between the left wing fundamentalism and pragmatism is weak at least in thecontemporary Japanese society.
My question is, if it is the case, is it the contingent phenomenon in contemporary Japanesesociety, or is the affinity or connection between right-wing fundamentalism and pragmatism
stronger than the affinity or connection between left fundamentalism and pragmatism in nature?
I am sorry if it’s a little bit complicated. So is it the realist right-wing and idealist left-wingsuch kind of tendency is inevitable or just a contingent thing, contingent in Japan or in Germany
probably, and how about in Germany or in other places in Europe in general? If it is the casenot only in Japan but also in Germany or other places, it may be essential that the right-wingloves pragmatism and the left-wing hate pragmatism. I really hope it is not the truth. I reallywant the liberal people or left-wing people to be more pragmatic. So I thought my opinion iswrong, and another question, the tendency in Japan, the opportunist conservatism is majority
and fundamentalist liberalism is the minority is stronger, especially in the younger generation.
Is it also unique in Japan, or young people in other countries are also conservative, especially
recently? How about in Germany? I want to know Professor Lütge’s and other participants’opinions.

Prof. Christoph Lütge
Yeah, thank you very much. These are some interesting questions here. So first of all, letme give some remarks. I mentioned that already in my presentation, but the kind of
multicultural society that we have already arrived at. I think some Germans like to rather
underestimate that say, well, we do not yet have a multicultural society, but on the other end inPage 26 of 34

comparison with some other countries, at least, we do have and the pictures especially of theBavaria, and if you go to Oktoberfest for example, here, is quite misleading. It tends to givethis picture that it's quite a culturally homogeneous society still which it is certainly not. So
this is something I would like to just stress again.
Now your questions, one was, is there a strong connection between the right wing and thepragmatist approach? I mean, it depends a bit on how you pose the question. So, certainly, I
would think there is now also a stronger connection between the left wing and the pragmatist
approach now. The general point is that it's hard for me to say, are we right-wing or left-wing?
We have this kind of ample-coalition right now. So now our current government, as you know,
we have the Social Democrats, we have the Green Party, and the Liberal Party. There is theChristian Democrats on the other hand, which are in opposition, and they like to say, this is aleft-wing government, but is it really? It’s hard to say because the policies vary from topic to
topic. So, I mean, we do not have any more such a clear-cut left-wing and right-wing camp,which is also to some extent due to this new situation with the Alternative for Deutsch and theAfD. There I see a connection to what you have said. If you allow a right-wing party to beinstalled there in the political landscape, then I think it's very hard to get rid of that again.
We have seen the same in other European countries such as France, which got more andmore powerful their nationalist or whatever you call it a party, and in other European countries
as well. So this is very hard. I think the connection between right-wing or conservative andpragmatism is quite important and our former chancellors like Mr. Kurt Kiesinger especiallythose who knew always about that.
Maybe a last point, are the young people more conservative now? wouldn't say conservative,
but I mean, certainly, there's a lot of pragmatism in the younger generation now than it used tobe. I think that's very important to see. There's less left-wing idealism I would say. I thinkthey're also looking more into other countries also because they're looking more into social
media. I think this is something we definitely see, so maybe not conservative, but definitely
not as much left-wing idealism, let’s say, as we had 30, 40 years ago. Thank you.
Takayuki Kawase
Thank you very much. Yes, the first point, I think we should make the definition of theright-wing and left-wing clearer. In my opinion in Japan, the right-wing in proper meaning is avery small minority. So I think, yes right and left must be clearer, so thank you so much. The
second point, the young generation, yes, you're right. A lot of people say the young people inJapan are now very, very conservative, but it is not accurate probably. They are very pragmaticin the right meaning, and probably they are not so conservative, but they are very pragmatic.
But as I said, in Japan, pragmatism and conservatism is so closely related, so probably a lot of
people are confused about this kind of thing. So the young people is probably not so
conservative. They are just pragmatic. Yes, that's a very interesting point of view. Thank youvery much.
Section 3
Participant 1
Thank you very much for your presentation, Professor Lütge. I just would like to knowwhat is the difference of maybe pragmatic approach that you would like to embrace from
Harbermas’ discourse ethics? I know that you have written this in your books or articles. I'm

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sorry, I haven't read. So for example, I remember that you emphasized the importance of mutual
respect in dealing with the problem of multiculturalism. I personally agree with it, and I thinkin Europe, in the name of interculturalism, this kind of tendency appeared. For example, theintercultural dialogue was philosophically first emphasized, and it was introduced as sometimes
like public or sometimes as a kind of NGO movement I know. So, this latter movement was,to some extent, inspired by the deliberative democracy movement from what I read. So, what
I’d like to ask is what is the differences between your pragmatic approach from Habermas’s
discourse ethic? I would like just ask you to confirm this one. Thank you very much.
Prof. Christoph Lütge
Yes. So, the one fundamental difference I would say is that where do you start from? You
say Habermasian discourse approach starts from a normative ideal and from that ideal, youderive everything else. Like we had that in the lecture in sorry, it wasn't in Romania? I mean,
actually it was not in Romania. It was in the conference in Bilbao, which I went [Unclear] andshe was there, and he's the successor of Habermas, he took exactly that role. So the democracymeans this, democracy is a normative idea, which is derived from, let's say, what Aristotle or
Immanuel Kant wrote, and from that, you derive everything else, and so it has to be like this,and there's a list of human rights, and they have to be implemented in this and that way, andthat's the normative approach that you take.
In my view, a pragmatist approach, and normally maybe I would not label myself a pragmatist,
but I think I'm happy with that term. Yeah, actually, I would like it. But a pragmatist approach
would look from what are the actual conflict situations, what are the interests, what are the
incentive structures in the society, and also, what are the possibilities that we have, the capacityof the society, so Takayuki just talked about this. We have to determine how the capacities ofa society are, and from that, let's say, of course, we also need normative ideals, but it's a kindof joint approach between normative ideals but also empirical conditions and then we can arrive
at some conclusions and policies or recommendations, but we need both of that and I would
say we should not just start with the normative idea.
Participant 1
Thank you very much. Maybe your idea of mutual respect is different from the one on the
deliberative democrats and it may be centered on realistic, maybe self-interest based somemotivations or some actual respect for this kind of private personal things are also emphasized
in your view, right?
Prof. Christoph Lütge
Right. That is a good point that the mutual respect is yeah, it might be that this is different,a bit different, from what discourse ethics would say. I think we should have respect for
fundamentally different opinions or approaches, values. Certainly, we can discuss about
reasonable limits, as Roll’s also did in his work, but still, I think there should be a wide spectrum
of approaches, and we should discuss between them and not this kind of cancel culture, ofcourse, to use the term now, which we have seen a lot recently as well. So I think there I do
not have room for this kind of cancel culture. That's why I said we should have this respectfulfor each other.

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Participant 2
Professor Lütge thank you for your useful lecture. So apart from the migrant crisis, myquestion is concerning the drive recorder in the car. It’s legal and very popular in Japan now.
It’s just my guess. Such video data has a useful function to control traffic violations. So on thecontrary, drive recorder is illegal in Germany. I wonder if the reason why it's not allowed inGermany? This is my question.
Prof. Christoph Lütge
I’d say it’s rather unusual in Germany. But maybe the general question about this is thisnotion of privacy that many Germans have which is quite different from other societies. Thisis true even within Europe. There is quite different sense of privacy. For example, in a numberof Scandinavian countries, in Sweden and others, you can even see the income tax declarationof your neighbor. It's public. There's just public records, which would never work in Germany.
Or, if you look at Google Maps, and you have in almost all countries around the world, you cansee very detailed, you can see everything, all towns digitally in very good resolution, but stillin Germany, in many places, it's not possible because of these privacy considerations because
people don't like it, and this is unusual. I think the dashboard cam is the same thing. I'm notsure if it's illegal directly. It might be, but just people do not feel compelled to do it or they do
not see their advantage. I mean, the monitoring of public areas is also I mean in Munich, there's
a little more than elsewhere, but there is no comparison to other cities like, for example, evenin Europe, or London or also Paris and other big cities. They have a lot of cameras in the publicarea, and still in Germany, this is rather there are very few of them. So yeah, I think it's a good
point that you made. The kind of privacy considerations are in Germany quite different thathas to be taken into account.

Prof. Masaya Kobayashi
Professor Lütge, thanks for your very interesting discussion today. So I'm going to turn toyour lecture today. I understand that you somehow find contrast [Unclear] pragmatic and[Unclear] based position. So I like to ask you what you think about Professor Kawase’s position,
especially his reference to Phronesis and this prudence in Aristotle's ethics because I think whatis the relation between your pragmatism and Aristotelian approach of Phronesis or prudence
because I am close to the position of liberal communitarianism, which is a bit close to Kawase’s
position, obviously a bit different from his, but I think, for example, Charles Taylor puts
forward his own version of multiculturalism, which is very related to today's issue. He thinksthat some kind of ethics is relevant to the present issue that is how or what amount we should
accept immigrants. So this is a quite moral or ethical issue. It’s a obviously related topragmatism, but a bit different from pragmatism itself. So Professor Kawase’s question is
focused on that issue. So I'd like to ask your reaction to that.
Prof. Christoph Lütge
So yes, I see a lot of common ground there. I think I mean, the straightforward distinction
between deontological and consequentialist approaches is quite similar to the one I made. I
focused more specifically on the discourse ethics approach and the order ethics approach, but

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they are more or less in these two camps. There's quite a lot of similarity. Phronesis approach,I like it very much. I have not explicitly used the Phronesis concept in my talk and in my books.
I make some references to it, but not systematically. One reason is that I would, as I understandPhronesis, it's something that is rather it's not systematic. So this is a capability of the humanbeing to judge which itself cannot be as Kahn would say broad under principles, so it's rather
unsystematic matter. There is some similarity to the pragmatist approach that I use, but I will
still say when it comes to deciding on immigrant cultures, for example, or on what is thecapacity of a society, there we would certainly need some pragmatist approach. I think weshould still resort to some principles there. For example, one of the questions that was broughtup, in which parts of the industry do we need more migrants, and we have the same problems
as other societies, for example, care jobs, nurses, also farming, some of it, but there are a numberof others. So this is something which is I think, not just advocates, not just Phronesis, I would
say kind of it's also principles. So we need to see where do we need more and there we shouldhave maybe different quarters than in other areas, or with regard to skills in general. Maybe
this can be done with Phronesis as well, so I'm happy to hear that. Did I miss anything?
Prof. Masaya Kobayashi
No, you get the point, but my point is, in addition to that, for example, Professor Kawase
talks about the position between deontology and consequentialism. He tries to integrate thetwo somehow by the concept of Phronesis, and obviously we can see various possibility ofintegration between left and right, for example, human rights and common good in [Unclear]
position. When we use the route of Phronesis or prudence, we see that we have to embrace theimportance of the two poles, but we have to see the middle point, but when you use only theword of pragmatism or incentive-based, we easily understand that this is a very pragmatic andinterest-based words rather than ethics. So my point is, is it enough for us to have interestbased terminology rather than ethics?
Prof. Christoph Lütge
Okay, no, I would still say that ethical terminology is still not important. It's not just an
economic debate. I think this is quite important because otherwise then we would not needethics. So I don't know, we can just have the economist discuss. But still, I mean, this is theway public debates go, so they are making use of concepts like solidarity. We have to discuss
what that mean, but also have to take into account the economic conditions, and the framework
conditions. So there are certain cornerstones that we cannot remove whatever in this context
here, the capacities, so there are some upper limits to capacity and solidarity, but other concepts
too like, justice. We have to talk in terms of these ethical concepts, and that's a fundamental
point in my book about business ethics and an economically informed approach. This is myrecent book which came out last year, economically informed approach, and there we have totalk about business ethics, but in the terms of ethics with the information, not just practicalinformation, but theoretical information or theoretical approaches of economics and others inthe background, so we have to have both.
Participant 4 (From Mexico)Thank you very much. Dr. Lütge and Dr. Kawase for your interesting presentations. I
reflected about the current immigration policies in Mexico after listening to Dr. Lütge. So the

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current Mexican government strongly supports migration especially from South America andCentral America immigrants suffer from lack of resources to cover basic needs like lack of food,work, a house, etcetera. So as you mentioned, Dr. Lütge that occurs in Germany on theirprivileged citizens in Mexico, also they approved these government's approach. My personalvalue makes me support immigration policies, but if we consider them, in Mexico, more than
50% of the population is on their privilege. Critics to the current Mexican government seemkind of legit. So the problem I have seen as you mentioned is that Mexican people from othercountries get angry or act violently against immigrants instead of recognizing that governmental
policies should be discussed to negotiate possibilities of implementing solutions, for example.
In practical matter, what kind of civil practices or activities do you think that can be lead on
their privileged people to discuss their needs and at the same time understand that immigrants
are not the cause of their problems?
Prof. Christoph Lütge
This is a very important point. I think this problem has to be taken on different levels. So
one is the higher political level maybe, but also in our academic debate where it should be also
taking into account more what is the value of immigrants for a society, for an economy, and I
think this is something that it's done often in I would say too abstract terms. So you have certain
concepts which for many people do not mean anything anymore. So it's just said, for example,
that we had in Germany with Willkommenskultur I mentioned, but also enrichment, so in
German of the society, but this was just a hollow concept for many people.
So it should be made more vivid and clear, what are the advantages. Actually now after theCorona Crises, a lot of workers in special branches have left the country and then we now see
what we have lost there. So we need more workers. For example, in the care sector, there's ahuge shortage which was much worse than before the Corona Crisis actually. So that's what I
meant with this general level, but also, of course, on the more and more concrete level, this isa question for civil society. So in the daily debates that we have with our friends, with ourrelatives, with the people that we know, I think this is something that has to be lived, that’s agood term. It has to be discussed but also openly discussed. I don't think that it's a good idea
to just close the discussions when you don't have a legitimate opinion anymore, and you are notallowed to voice that opinion. I think we see a lot of bad consequences of that approach.
I think it is certainly a rough start, but again, in Germany, now that after 6 or 7 years of the
migration crisis, I will say it is not a perfect situation now, but it also has not completely led toa collapse in society. It's a bit hard to say this after the Corona Crisis because that has overlaid
a lot of the problems. But I think if you allow civil society to work and allow people to discuss,
I think we will get there eventually hopefully.

Prof. Hikari Ishido
Thank you so much Professor Kawase and Professor Lütge. I am speaking from Thailand.
I am a Japanese national, but I have my responsibility here in Bangkok, Thailand, and so myquestion is addressed to you, Professor Lütge. You keep taking questions, thank you so much.

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Figure 32 Rohingya issue

Okay, just one minute of PowerPoint sharing and then my question on the third slide. So
this one is about what is called the “Rohingya” issue (Figure 32). What is called “Rohingya”
people? They come from Bangladesh. So it's a big issue in Myanmar. I am now based in
Thailand, but in the country of Myanmar, there is a group of people called Rohingya and thenwhat Myanmar people say, it's okay, they came from Bangladesh illegally, so illegal migrants
into Myanmar, but based on Bangladesh government's standpoint, no, no, no, Rohingya people
were originally in Myanmar. So please Myanmar, take care of your people. Then, the twocountries are battling against each other over the nationality, and affiliation of the Rohingya
people. So they look like this. In terms of ethnicity, they look quite like Bangladeshi people.
So culturally or ethnically, they're more like Bangladeshi people, but the Bangladesh
government denies that. No, no, no, economically, we are very poor and we have such a small
land area. You were originally from Myanmar, so please return to Myanmar, and then there isthat kind of issue. So any similar issue in Europe? Rohingya people basically have nonationality, so no nationality refugee or immigrant crisis in Myanmar. So any similar issue inEurope, maybe Kurdish people? I don't know. Then, what kind of ethics is needed in this case?
These are my questions. Thank you so much.
Prof. Christoph Lütge
Thank you. Yes, that's a very interesting issue. I have heard about the Rohingya case, but
not about the details I have to say so. It's quite interesting to hear. So you're looking for casesof people without a clear nationality. Yeah, Kurdish people would be an example since they
do not have a country of their own, and mostly the country that's not there, but it would mostly
be in Turkey but also to some extent some other areas of Iraq and even Iran I think. Yes, wehave these discussions among people who come to Germany. For example, we have a numberof people of Kurdish origin or descent in Germany. I would say it used to be more of a problem
20 years ago, I think. Nowadays, there's not so much talk about it, but I don't see it so muchanymore.

Page 32 of 34

I'm not sure what has happened if they have found some form of a solution, but we had a lot of
conflict between the Turkish and Kurdish people in Germany. But there’s not so much talk as
I said about that anymore. Another, it's maybe not the exactly same situation, but the Palestine
people may be similar. Of course, they now have some kind of country that is not officiallyrecognized by most other countries. This is quite a harsh debate, of course, in Germany, butalso in the US, for example, all this talk about this BDS, boycott, divestment, and sanctions
policy, and this is a very harsh debate.
Other cases I'm not aware of. I mean, we have other smaller problems, but just for historicalinterest since I've been just to Bilbao for this business ethics conference, and this was in theBasque Country. So Basque people is also this is a very special language which is absolutely
unique in Europe, no connections to any other languages. For a long time, for many decades, I
remember well in the 80s and 90s still, there was a lot of terrorism from Basque because theywanted to have some kind of independence. But then they found some settlement of theseissues. So there are the autonomous region with some autonomous rights, and what is importantis that their region got very well developed actually since the 80s and 90s, so economically very
well developed. It is a very strong industrial region now.
I would say that economic development is a very important factor for improving these situations
or even resolving these issues, because then they recognize - so you are asking what kind of
ethics is needed, so yeah, certainly we should also discuss in ethical terms, but I think it's
important to see that there's a win-win so that both sides can win if they compromise and work
together. But if it's a very poor situation, you have nothing to win, often then this leads to civil
war or whatever. But if there's a chance that we can say, well, we can really improve thesituation of our people and then we should work together. There's a problem in Palestine aswell. There needs to be some economic development; otherwise, they will continue to be to berelatively poor in that area. So I'm not sure that's a good answer.

Prof. Takayuki Kawase
How about Roma people we saw a lot in Romania? Do they have citizenship, the Romapeople, gypsy people?
Prof. Christoph Lütge
I would assume they have now. We have a number of them in Germany as well. As far as
I know, they have citizenship. I think the original idea of them moving around countries andhaving no citizenship, probably it might have, it used to be like that many years ago. I think
it's not any more the case. So, for example, I know that we have official organizations of Sinti
and Roma people in Germany and so on. So, they are definitely official there, and actually, I
have not heard of many problems with them in recent years I would say.

Prof. Jiro Mizushima

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Thank you for your insightful lecture. As I study European politics, and now we are livingin the Asian world, so we would like to have some comments for you. Ukrainian refugees, we
saw many people fleeing their home country, but it is interesting to see that the Ukrainian
refugees were mostly accepted from surrounding countries from heart. For example, the Polishgovernment was quite strict against refugees from Syria or other countries, but they acceptedfrom heart the Ukrainian refugees. So we see quite a great difference again about the attitudes
towards refugees. It might be that white Christian Ukrainian have more strong position. So
accepting Ukrainian refugees that is necessary I think, but if we compare with the status of
Syrian refugees, we see lot of difference. So probably, in these days, we see the difference of
attitudes among people against refugees. They care about from where that refugees come from.
I think this is not an ideal situation probably. All refugees have same rights as asylum I think.
What do you think about it?
Prof. Christoph Lütge
Yeah, it’s right. This cannot be denied there is some difference between Syrian refugees atthat time and Ukrainian refugees now. Certainly, it has to do with ethnicity maybe and also
religion to some extent. But I would also add that one difference is that at least the perceptionof many people is that Ukrainian refugees would sometime in the not too distant future go backto their country whereas with Syrian refugees, at least at that time, it was not clear whether theywould at any time go back. After quite some years now, it looks like more of them is goingback to Syria actually. I know, I've seen numbers also during the Corona Crisis actually, asignificant number have gone back to the countries like Syria and others.
Also there's a kind of factor that Ukraine was invaded by the outside and Syria is more likethe civil war. This was also perceived differently. I think there are a number of factors thatmake the difference. So ethnicity, I guess, it's one that cannot be denied, yes, but there are also
other politically influential factors. But it’s right, if we just take it from an ideal point of viewand say, well, from an ideal point of view, everyone should be treated the same. Or if we were
saying, from a realistic point of view, well, first, we can say, what can the surrounding countries
do? If we have a refugee crisis in Africa which we have had also many times, it's not the firstreaction to say they have to all go to Europe or to Japan or wherever, but it's rather surrounding
countries. So I think that's at least something we should take into account when discussing
solutions.
Closing Remarks:
Prof. Jiro Mizushima
So, thanks again. Thank you very much, Professor Lütge and other participants from Thailand
and Mexico including. We have a truly global discussion. As we discussed intensively, theproblem of refugees and migrants is more accurate than ever, and probably in a couple of years,
we see the end of Corona pandemic, and after that, we are sure that more and more people moveagain over the borders for a better life in other countries or as refugees, I am not sure. Anyway,
we are sure that we have much to do with the problem of migrants, and in that situation, we
have some principles about it, pragmatism or fundamentalism. Anyway, we have to continue
discussions further. Thank you for joining, and thank you Professor Lütge. See you again next
time.

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