> If I told you that the U.S. was “93.3% American”, would you conclude that the U.S. is a homogeneous country? Because that’s exactly what everyone who cites the “98% Japanese” statistic is doing for Japan.
...yes?
I find both those numbers insanely high, since the proportion of non-citizens here in Switzerland is 25% (country-wide) or 32% ([0], Zurich).
And this doesn't exactly make the country a melting pot either.
If U.S. is "93% American" then on average 7 out 100 people you meet will not be "American", whereas for Japan only 2 out of 100 will not be "Japanese" - based on those numbers Japan is about "350% more homogeneous" country, not "5%" as suggested.
It is a case of Potato Paradox, where small numerical differences between values given as percentages can hide big differences in real world.
That's not a real paradox, which is why Quine called it a "veridical paradox." You're just taking your personal feeling about a difference as the primary criterion for evaluating the subjective significance of the difference, but these feelings differ from person to person.
Yes, but the reason for that is, that Switzerland has a really difficult naturalisation process and is a smaller country.
If all humans migrate a similar distance on average, you would expect that a smaller country that is surrounded by other countries to have a higher proportion of immigrants.
Notice that for Switzerland, you need to use the term non-citizens and can't use the term immigrant. That is because a good portion of the non-citizens are not immigrants and have lived here for their entire life.
AFAIK, Switzerland and Belgium are very different.
Belgium is culturally very divided: the two major cultures (Dutch-speaking and French-speaking) are hardly mixed, especially in recent times, with the exception of Brussels.
From conversations with a Swiss friend, I gather that the cultures in Switzerland are much more mixed in daily life.
I live in German-speaking and Switzerland and the division between here and French-speaking Switzerland is massive. There's a reason there's a whole "trench" named after it [0].
Switzerland has never been homogeneous and the recent immigration to Switzerland is very different from regular immigration elsewhere.
It is an exception in the west, mostly due to low taxation for rich people or political reasons.
for the same reasons in Lichtenstein 33℅ of the population is non-citizen and not surprisingly in Monaco an astonishing 75℅ of the residents are foreign born.
If Italian people go to Switzerland they are counted as immigrants, but the Italian ethnicity is native in Switzerland, same goes for German and French people.
The same thing is not true for Chinese or Korean people in Japan.
Also 1℅ of Japan equals to 15℅ of the Swiss population.
Very likely a mobile typo. Keyboards often expose a lot of different utf-8 chars when you hold it down and you're always a few mm away from releasing on something completely different. Muscle memory and hard to see choices easily makes it a double.
...yes?
I find both those numbers insanely high, since the proportion of non-citizens here in Switzerland is 25% (country-wide) or 32% ([0], Zurich).
And this doesn't exactly make the country a melting pot either.
[0] https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/prd/de/index/statistik/themen/b...