Immigration and Ethnic Change in Low‐Fertility Countries: A Third Demographic Transition

Abstract

THIS ARTICLE PROPOSES that a third demographic transition is underway in Europe and the United States. The ancestry of some national populations is being radically and permanently altered by high levels of immigration of persons from remote geographic origins or with distinctive ethnic and racial ancestry, in combination with persistent sub-replacement fertility and accelerated levels of emigration of the domestic population. The estimates and projections on which these statements are based relate to seven European countries with a 2005 total population of 183 million—about half the population of Western Europe. Most of the other Western European countries, however, share the same essential features of low fertility and high immigration. This proposition resolves itself into two claims. The first has two components: (i) in some industrial countries a rapid change is already apparent in the composition of the population according to national or ethnic origin, arising from the direct and indirect effects of immigration in the last few decades, and (ii) projections based on plausible assumptions imply, within the conventional time scale of projections, a substantial alteration of the composition of that population which if continued in the longer term would lead to the displacement of the original population into a minority position. This first claim is relatively easy to demonstrate in empirical terms, given explicit and defensible assumptions. The second claim is that such a process, were it to continue and materialize in its demographic aspect over such a short historical period would warrant the label of “transition.” Ultimate acceptance of such a label would depend on whether the transformation proved to be permanent and general and thereby would bear comparison with the familiar first and second demographic transitions.