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Over the last five years, the phenomenon of mass displacement and forced migration has posed intractable political problems for Western nations and sparked an upsurge in popularity for Europe’s anti-immigrant political parties.
In recent weeks the empathy-evoking quality of certain images has led to an outpouring of compassion and a determination to act.
But the West does not have a particularly good history of dealing with ethnic difference.
Is this mass-scale acceptance of refugees laying the foundations for profound social conflict in the decades to come?
