Unequal population growth between neighboring cultures generates adjustment and conflict pressures

Evidence

Larger populations need more resources, and hence people from societies with dense and/or rapidly growing populations tend to push outward, occupy territory, and exert pressure on other less demographically dynamic peoples. Islamic population growth is thus a major contributing factor to the conflicts along the borders of the Islamic world between Muslims and other peoples. Population pressure combined with economic stagnation promotes Muslim migration to Western and other non-Muslim societies, elevating immigration as an issue in those societies. The juxtaposition of a rapidly growing people of one culture and a slowly growing or stagnant people of another culture generates pressures for economic and/or political adjustments in both societies. In the 1970s, for instance, the demographic balance in the former Soviet Union shifted drastically with Muslims increasing by 24 percent while Russians increased by 6.5 percent, causing great concern among Central Asian communist leaders. Similarly, rapid growth in the numbers of Albanians does not reassure Serbs, Greeks, or Italians. Israelis are concerned about the high growth rates of Palestinians, and Spain, with a population growing at less than one-fifth of 1 percent a year, is uneasy confronted by Maghreb neighbors with populations growing more than ten times as fast and per capita GNP’s about one-tenth its own. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 327

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to demographic-balance theories used to explain ethnic conflict and to the FSU breakdown debates. — connects to: Nationalists frame demographic fertility as a weapon for territorial control — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 289; Demographic transitions between social orders produce cultural chaos and danger — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 43