Talk:Revenge of the cradle

I am not sure the two articles "Demographic Warfare" and "Revenge of the Cradle" should be merged.

My argument is as follows:

"Revenge of the Cradle (Revanche des Berceaux where I come from) is only one aspect of "Demographic Warfare," though the latter is perhaps an overdramatic term; "Demographic Cold War" catches the reality better, or "Demographic Strategies in Political Conflicts". It is not always a minority community that is accused of the tactic, it can also be a suppressed or aspiring majority group (see below). One other aspect of the Demographic Warfare concept would be officially organized or encouraged internal migration of a majority ethnic group into a historical minority dominated region in order to shift the population balance there in a hostile manner, and often protected by armed force. Alleged cases are government movement of Han Chinese into Tibet, and the Sinjiang region, and Indonesian transplantation of Javanese (I think) to the outer islands, and particularly to Irian Jaya. Another aspect of demographic warfare is ethnic cleansing, and forced emigration. While it arouses horror nowadays, it was engaged in on a very large scale in Europe in the 20th century, not least in the aftermath of World War II. Then there is genocide. Each genocide is different, but it is arguably sometimes an extreme form of conscious demographic warfare, though usually more irrational. This does not exhaust the list. Some lower birthrate minority communities keep pace with a higher birth rate majority which they somewhat dominate through a very liberal immigration policy and easy assimilation of the immigrants into the minority identity, while not allowing the members of the majority that desire it the same ease of merging with the minority. Anglophone Quebecers in the first half of the 20th century may or may not have partly pursued such a tactic. It may possibly have been a feature of the dominant "European community" in many colonial situations, where recently immigrated Europeans and sometimes other outsiders could easily join the elite, but locals faced many more barriers doing the same. More broadly, immigration practice, both formal and in terms of tolerance of "illegal immigration" can also reflects demographic conflict in some part, though other drivers are usually paramount.

In light of the above, while I think the subject of demographic strategies in political conflict could use a bit of organizational work in Wikipedia --a lot of the material is already in various articles, they merely have to be linked into a coherent network of articles focusing on the subject area-- I tentative feel that the two articles should not be merged since one is arguably a sub-aspect of the other and should be treated as such.

Incidentally the demographic history of Quebec Province in Canada deserves discussion here. It has had a history in which several types of quiet demographic warfare have been alleged, from a dominant minority said to have encouraged immigrants to join its identity maintianing a high group growth rate, and a "suppressed majority" with a significantly higher birth rate (long gone) whose elite was accused of knowingly pursuing a "revanche des berceaux" policy to overturn the results of a war in which control of the province switched from French to English, and attempting their own easy immigrant assimilation policy as well with certain compatible groups like the Irish famine refugees. Accusations of demographic plotting flew thick and fast from all groups, but whether they ever had much reality is unclear. This is not to gainsay that demographic changes had political effects, but rather that it is unclear if the changes were as much consciously organized as feared by the other group in each case.

Quebec is well documented as to psychological subtleties of when a higher minority birth rate is partly a "demographic cold war" and when it is just a higher birth rate for other reasons. Does anyone, even the people with the higher birth rate, ever really know for sure? Probably not. Even if they can see the political implications, are the determinants of having a third and further children in minorities really driven by politics -- one should be cautious about alleging that they are lest the accusation incite official and informal discrimination that only further fuels what political alienation that may be present. At the same time, if a case does appear possibly present, promoting discussion without accusation as to whether this form of politics, given environmental considerations among others, should be an acceptable method in the political contest,seems reasonable, if preceded by a sensitive investigation as to whether any such effect is really occurring. Often careful demographic analysis will show the concept to be an illusion based on an erroneous popular surmise that birth rates are static, when they are in fact usually highly dynamic, and high differential minority rates one decade are much reduced the next, with the resulting spectre of a "demographic time bomb" proving a phantom. For a more contemporary situation than Quebec, interesting material in this area is becoming available on the Kurdish population in Turkey and the factors influencing the decision to continue having children past two there among majority and minority populations. Accusations of demographic warfare are also made about this situation, but the research seems to cast doubt on whether this is really occurring. As with the "Eurabia" hypothesis, there may be political entrepreneurs who would like to organize such a demographic effect and agitate (lots of press releases and nowadays YouTube films) for the necessary births, but perhaps, as with more official pro-natal projects, it is hard to actually get anyone to do the required, despite active exortations. (See also the comments in the article "Fecundism" also stressing the difficulty of proof of conflict-related motive in accusations of demographic warfare. Though unsourced, I expect a literature on the subject probably exists that could be tapped.)

In the end, I would like to see both articles greatly strengthened, but not merged. I should add clearly that I am not any sort of an expert in this area, and base my observations only on casual exposure and travel. I stand only to present my perhaps superficial ideas, and in hope of correction and amplification by those dealing with the subject more professionally.--FurnaldHall (talk) 06:32, 19 August 2010 (UTC)