When they come to Europe, they are confronted by still closed borders. Thus, the concept of open borders is a very selective concept, one that is not taken seriously at all in the experience of non-Europeans.
Category Archive: Ulrich Beck
Western countries in particular can today no longer be separated from Muslim societies, because they have them within themselves. They are themselves internally globalized.
I held a conference in Harvard where Americans said they didn’t believe in risk. They thought it was just European hysteria. Then the terrorist attacks happened and there was a complete conversion. Suddenly terrorism was the central risk.
You need education. You need subsistence protection. We need jobs and social security. These are preconditions under which it will perhaps be possible to deal with these complex circumstances.
You cannot make peace with terrorists. The normal dividing lines between war and peace do not apply.
And the terror itself is an example of the world’s uncontrollability.
In the first instance, therefore, global terrorism created a kind of global community sharing a common fate, something we had previously considered impossible.
The basic assumption of the secular society is that modernity overcomes religion.
Global conditions are far too complex to be able to imagine that they could ever be really controlled by one power.
Europe itself is an embodiment of this diversity.