2023.Jan.17

REPORTS

Report on the Lecture by Dr. Justin Gest “Majority Minority: How Do Societies Respond to Demographic Change?”

On September 28, 2022, the B’AI Global Forum held a lecture by Dr. Justin Gest of George Mason University entitled “Majority Minority: How Do Societies Respond to Demographic Change?” in collaboration with ITASIA Program at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, the University of Tokyo. Dr. Gest studies the politics of immigration and demographic change and has published numerous academic articles and commentary with news publications. His latest book, Majority Minority (Oxford University Press, 2022), explores how societies respond to great demographic change based on fieldwork in several societies that has experienced a majority minority transition. In the lecture, he provided the overview of the book and discussed how to deal with diversifying population.

The states or the governments have been facing difficulties in controlling altering populations and public responses to diversifying society. A few countries including the U.S. have experienced majority minority transition where the original ethnic or religious majority loses its advantage to one or more foreign-origin minority groups. Though the governments try to control the demographic change by regulating the number of immigrants, rightful membership and the interactions among social groups, navigating such great demographic change is highly challenging. Moreover, people tend to show intolerant and exclusive reactions toward newcomers, which makes successful coexistence more difficult. So, how can we deal with diversifying societies?

To answer this question, Dr. Gest studied several societies which have already experienced a majority minority milestone. Based on his historical analysis and interviews, he insists the importance of taking realistic approaches and the great power of the states and political elites to construct or deconstruct social boundaries. While people usually think prejudice and intolerance prevent the progress of society, Dr. Gest indicates that nationalistic way of thinking still survives in societies that have achieved successful coexistence. Therefore, rather than fearing and trying to eliminate nationalism, it is necessary to accept that every society has cohesive and nationalistic power and turn to utilize it to support immigrants. To achieve that, the states and political leaders play important roles. They hold great power to control nationalistic way of thinking and overcome current issues through political institutions and the framing of demographic change.

In the Q&A session that followed the lecture, participants mainly asked how we can successfully navigate great demographic change as a practical matter. One participant, for instance, asked whether it is really possible to utilize nationalism without exploiting minority groups. Regarding this question, Dr. Gest argued that there are several types of nationalism and nationalism for social inclusion should be based on citizenship. It is, therefore, required for us to find our countries’ unique features or attributes which are not originated from race, ethnicity or religion. Another attendee asked Dr. Gest’s opinion on that his idea is similar to Habermas’s constitutional patriotism but EU countries which adopted it have failed to bring diverse societies together so far. He responded to the question that Habermas’s idea was right but it has consequently led to wrong nationalism since the states have neglected “something old” that is useful to invent new type of nationalism.

Undoubtedly Dr. Gest’s idea is interesting but, as debated in the Q&A session, we need more discussion on the way to control nationalism successfully. It seems necessary to examine the processes or the pathways to build a common understanding, beyond borders, on how to accomplish the goal. Because Japan may experience great demographic change in the near future, as Dr. Gest argued, we should start to explore the solutions of this problem at this moment.