[HPforGrownups] WW and empire

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 51153

Errol:

>Immigration into Britain also does not need to have the imperialist
>impetus that fueled the muggle immigration patterns. How about the
>dynamics of pure supply and demand? What percentage of the British
>population is magical? With the problems of over population in the
>rest of the world/ or greater proportions of the magically endowed,
>immigration to a low density area where you could find more jobs is
>quite feasible. This is just one (not very well thought out) possible
>scenario, quite separate from the muggle world. Just because England
>is crowded, doesn't mean the WW perceives it to be so. The

I wonder if the real tension is not so much immigration into the WW in
geographical terms but in terms of the "25% figure".

I'm not sure whether the 25% muggle-born figure refers to wizard children
with one or with two muggle parents - I suspect that culturally it would
have to be with at least one muggle parent. I couldn't see WW cultural
attitudes surviving an annual influx of 25% of people who have grown up
steeped in muggle cultural attitudes - the degree of acculturation would be
very rapid and there wouldn't I think be any difference between the two
worlds at all.

If by contrast we assume that a third of the 25% have two muggle parents
(and the other two thirds are acquainted with WW culture by the time they
reach Hogwarts age) then we are probably on safer ground. Societies can
safely accommodate and benefit from "immigration" on that scale. And I
suspect that a lot of the advances in magical creativity stem from the
knowledge brought in by this means.

But do "pureblood" wizards see it this way?

At present in the UK we have a full blown "moral panic" about asylum
seekers - whose numbers would be a lot less than 8% of the population. Is
this kind of attitude, I wonder, what underlies the "pureblood" attitude of
superiority?

And how pure do you need to be to be a pureblood anyway? I don't think this
has been specified anywhere.

Regards

Ffred

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