Three years ago the Swiss People's Party, a conservative right-wing political party that was then the largest party in Switzerland's parliament, geared up for national elections by releasing a controversial campaign poster. Against the backdrop of the nation's flag, it depicted three white sheep kicking out a black sheep. The slogan said: "For more security". The SVP (as it is known) was pushing for a new law that would expel foreign families if any family member was found guilty of a serious crime. The context of the poster - that it was only non-white Swiss, "black sheep", who were causing problems - was clear.
Fast-forward to a city a few hundred kilometres away in France earlier this year, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, decides he wants to go a step further, announcing his intention to deprive criminals "of foreign origin" of their citizenship. In other words, to draw a distinction between some citizens and others and strip these of their passports. Soon after, the deportation of Roma sped up. Since the start of the year, France has sent home by force, or with a few hundred euros as payment, thousands of Roma. Camps in France have been bulldozed, and European media have carried photographs of forlorn families carrying their possessions as police demolish their homes.
It was against this backdrop that Europe digested the shocking news this month that in Sweden a centre-right alliance had won re-election for the first time. This in a country that has been led by the left-leaning Social Democrats for most of the last century. More astonishing still was the news that the far-right Sweden Democrats had polled enough to enter parliament for the first time. This follows the victory of the anti-Islam Freedom Party of populist Geert Wilders in the Netherlands in June. (It was reported this week that the price the centre-right alliance will have to pay to keep Mr Wilders' party in their coalition is a ban on the full Islamic veil. Next week, Mr Wilders will stand trial on charges of hate speech.)
The Sweden Democrats are but the latest in a line of angry men in suits to stride into European corridors of power. Given the public mood, they will not be the last. A nationalism that focuses its efforts on minority groups will be part of the political landscape for a while yet. But what is really happening in Europe? Understanding the situation requires a ground-level view of a continent-wide issue. The language of "them" and "us" sounds similar everywhere, and the complaints of those who endorse the far right are often the same: the feeling of being abandoned by their own governments and political parties, of being minorities in their own society, of the country being "full".
Yet their targets are not the same. Recent politics and demographics have tended to focus the question on Muslims in Europe, but the issue is not a religious one. Paranoid theorists of "Eurabia" aside, those complaining about "them" taking "our" jobs are as likely to be talking about people from eastern Europe or Africa as south Asians or North Africans. When he was still seeking election in 2005, Mr Sarkozy tried to draw the sting from the far right by talking tough over riots in mainly North African banlieues. Now he's going after the Roma.
The problem is not the faithful. The problem is financial. The narrative of the media suggests a binary world, with the gains of Europe's industrial nations split between the have-nots (poor, non-white, recently arrived) and the haves (well-off and longer-resident). In fact, the picture is substantially greyer: across the continent, immigrants and the descendants of immigrants have met with enormous success - they are rich, successful, pursuing careers in the public eye and public life; they are doctors and politicians, novelists and media celebrities. In the lottery of the economy, there are many winners from immigrant backgrounds and many losers among longer-resident Europeans.
It is from those who count themselves among the ones who have lost the most that votes for the far right come. And no wonder. In many towns in Europe, a generation has been lost as globalisation brings down traditional industries. The European working class have seen their way of life evaporate, their role in society vanish - and new people come in to do jobs they no longer want to do. In essence, the working class of one country has been replaced with the working class from another. These new arrivals often lack the personal and educational resources to learn the language, adapt and integrate. They cling to their own communities, culture and heritage. This creates enclaves, usually of two working-class groups competing for scare resources.
Is there a problem of racism? Of course. Can governments do more to integrate minorities? Definitely. Can minorities do more to adapt and play a part in the society? Absolutely. For too long the suggestion has been that migrants can swap one country for another, transporting their culture and way of life wholesale across continents, like uprooting a building and moving it intact. But in the end, there is an economic necessity to new people arriving that mainstream politicians are not willing to openly admit.
For the fact is modern Europe is built on immigration - it isn't just the new ideas and energy that immigrants bring that the continent needs. It's also their bodies. Europe is ageing; Western Europe in particular. The figures from the World Bank from 2008 are particularly damning: not one Western European country - not one - has an average fertility rate above 2. Germany, the continent's most populous country, is near the bottom, with just 1.38 births per woman. A replacement fertility rate of around 2.3 or 2.4 is needed for a country to maintain its population level.
At the same time, Europe's population is living longer and enjoying retirement for many years, meaning there is a shrinking workforce to support these retirees. The only solution is more people, more workers. These workers marry, put down roots, and themselves age, now as citizens. It isn't just that the process is inevitable, it's that politicians cannot find new solutions - they cannot find the language to explain the problem nor the policy to solve it. Europe keeps adding people and hopes it will all sort itself out, somehow.
When the far right tackles these issues, it feels to the people on the doorstep as if, finally, here are politicians willing to speak about their fears. But the solutions these parties propose are naive at best, dangerous at worst. Popular anger makes bad policy. Unfortunately, good policy is hard to find. An ageing population, a declining birth rate and the way industrial economies are run means that more immigrants are needed. They will necessarily change the European continent, though not as the far right imagines and not necessarily for the worse: with good government assistance and planning, more will integrate and succeed, and bring new and better ideas.
But there will be a change. Either Europe changes the way its economy works, or its economy will change Europe.
Faisal al Yafai is a journalist. You can follow him at twitter.com/faisalalyafai
