科隆案揭示移民性別失衡危險

There were so many of them: weary young men, some barely teenagers, trekking across Europe to reach the promised German land. I remember wondering a few months back, during the peak of the Syrian migration wave, why the women had been left behind.

有太多這樣的人：疲憊的年輕男子穿過歐洲大陸抵達了福地德國，其中有的還只是青少年。我還記得，幾個月前，在敍利亞移民浪潮達到頂峯的時候，我曾想過為什麼女性被留下了。

There were reasons men sought refuge first: the arduous journeys, the pressing need for work before applying for family reunification and, above all, escape from recruitment by the army or militias. It is not unusual in war for parents to send their boys away.

男性先尋求庇護有許多原因：艱苦的旅途、在申請家庭團聚前找到工作的迫切需要，以及最重要的原因——逃脱軍隊或者民兵組織的徵召。父母在戰爭中把兒子送走很平常。

Yet the impact of this gender imbalance was a largely overlooked aspect of the migration crisis. In Angela Merkel’s remarkable drive to show compassion for a people the world had tried so hard to ignore, some risks were understated. It seemed insensitive and politically disadvantageous, in the face of opposition to the migration surge, for supporters of the German chancellor’s humanitarian policy to dwell on the consequences.

然而，在移民危機中，性別失衡的影響基本上被忽視了。安格拉默克爾(Angela Merkel)向世界刻意忽視的一個民族展現同情的非凡之舉中，一些風險被低估了。對德國總理的人道主義政策的支持者而言，面對反對移民潮的聲音，過多地考慮後果似乎不近人情，在政治上也是不利的。

After the ghastly New Year’s Eve in Cologne, however, questions that should have been raised and vigorously debated in public are finally being voiced. The details of that night are murky but we know enough — and the scale of the attacks is shocking. The number of complaints filed by women has been gathering pace, 40 per cent of them related to sex attacks.

然而，跨年夜科隆發生可怕事件之後，早應提出並在公眾中進行積極討論的問題最終被表達出來了。有關那個夜晚的細節很模糊，但我們知道的已經足夠，襲擊的規模令人震驚。由女性提出的申訴不斷增加，其中40%都和性侵犯有關。

How many asylum seekers, whether from Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq, were involved has yet to be established. But they may have been recruited by north African gangs responsible for many robberies in the city in recent years.

有多少尋求庇護者參與其中還未確定，無論他們是來自敍利亞、阿富汗還是伊拉克。但他們可能被近年在科隆市內製造多起搶劫案的北非犯罪團體招募了。

Scholars who have studied mass migration of young men and discovered a correlation with a rise of crime and attacks on women are unsurprised by this turn of events.

一些研究年輕男性大規模遷移的學者對這一變故並不感到驚訝，他們已經發現這種遷移現象與犯罪及對女性襲擊增多有關聯。

Much has been made of the demeaning attitude towards women that some of Europe’s newest Muslim migrants may have grown up with. But Valerie Hudson, a professor of political science at Texas A&M University who has researched migrant issues in Asia, says the sex ratio is far more important than different interpretations of female modesty.

有關歐洲最新的這批穆斯林移民可能從小就耳濡目染養成對女性的輕蔑態度，已經有很多論述。但研究亞洲移民問題的德克薩斯農工大學(Texas A&M University)政治科學教授瓦萊麗欠德森(Valerie Hudson)表示，性別比例比對女性得體舉止的不同理解重要得多。

“The literature I’ve contributed to shows a pattern: the higher the sex ratio, the higher the crime rate and crimes against women,” she tells me. “When you get a surplus of young men in a society — and they are marginalised, disadvantaged, and they live together and socialise together — you have the beginnings of collective activity in which they take what society has denied them. And they are, collectively, willing to take risks.”

“我撰寫的文章表明瞭一種模式：性別比例越高，犯罪率越高，針對女性的犯罪越多，”她告訴我，“當社會中的男性過剩，而且他們被邊緣化、處於弱勢、在一起生活和交往，你就會看到他們開始通過集體行動去獲取社會拒絕給予他們的東西。而且作為一個集體，他們願意承擔風險。”

Such fears about sex ratios in cases of mass migration extend beyond the immediate consequences. Many young male migrants are minors, which facilitates their asylum applications but could have a longer lasting impact on the sex ratio in the host country.

對大規模移民中性別比例的擔憂不止表現在即時影響方面。許多年輕的男性移民是未成年人，這有利於他們申請庇護，但可能會對接受國的性別比例造成更持久的影響。

Andrea Den Boer, an expert on gender imbalance in Asian internal migration from the UK’s University of Kent, says there are already measures preventing asylum seekers who arrive as unaccompanied minors from bringing their families over at a later stage — which in turn further inflates the proportion of young men in the population. Some work has been done on the potential long-term impact in Sweden but there are no official statistics on the ages of the refugees to Germany. Ms Den Boer’s rough estimate is that 72 per cent of refugees last year were male, but no one knows how many were young adults. “Nobody has thought about the sex-ratio implications,” she says.

研究亞洲內部移民性別失衡問題的專家、英國肯特大學(University of Kent)的安德烈婭笠嬸爾(Andrea Den Boer)表示，目前有一些措施防止無人陪伴的未成年申請庇護者在之後將整個家庭帶來接受國，此舉將進一步使年輕男性在人口中的比例上升。在瑞典，人們已經對這個問題的潛在長期影響展開了一些研究，但德國還沒有難民年齡的官方統計數字。登博爾的粗略估計是，去年有72%的難民是男性，但沒人知道其中有多少是年輕的成年人。“沒人考慮過性別比例的影響，”她説。

The one country that has taken gender into account is Canada, where the government said last year that it would take only Syrian women, children and families. The policy was probably prompted by concerns over terrorism — and it drew its share of critics who warned that young men faced the greatest risk in Syria.

有一個國家已經將性別納入考慮，就是加拿大，去年該國政府表示將只接收敍利亞女性、兒童和家庭。這項政策很可能是因為對恐怖主義的擔憂而出台的，但這項政策也有批評者，他們警告稱年輕男性在敍利亞面臨的風險最大。

There are no easy answers to the mass migration dilemma, particularly where horrific crimes are being perpetrated on an innocent population as in Syria. But taking into account the long-term implications for the host society should be an integral part of any policy. As Prof Hudson says: “A normal sex ratio is a public good.”

對於大規模移民帶來的兩難困境，沒有簡單的答案，尤其是在恐怖罪行正被加諸在無辜人們身上的地方，如敍利亞。但對接受國來説，將長期影響納入考慮應該是任何政策不可或缺的一部分。就如赫德森教授所説的：“正常的性別比例將造福大眾。”