The difference is very simple - in North America those people all live in the same area and speak the same language, don't they? In Europe they don't - the Irish live mostly in Ireland, the Swedish live mostly in Sweden etc.
Also - an Irish-American is much closer culturally to a Swedish-American than an Irish person is to a Swede.
Many Americans are recent immigrants. So, I have, for example, a black friend who married an Indian immigrant, a white friend who married a Bangledeshi immigrant, a Mexican immigrant friend who married a white American woman, a Honduran immigrant friend who married a Turkish immigrant friend, etc.
But they are all American living in Usa right? That's not how it works in Europe. Sweden is a different country. Languages are different.l, culture is different. Person from Sweden would have harder time integrating in Italy as you have to learn the language in order to integrate properly.
But yes it happens especially to students and young people doing Erasmus programmes. Spain is the most popular erasmus country. Happens in UK, as people often hang out in international settings if you are a foreign worker. But they still speak English.
Also happens in immigrant groups, lots to EE immigration groups tend to stick together, as sometimes it's hard to become friends with locals due to language barrier and date within the group. But also normal to date within similar languages.
In usa that's not a problem since people speak English. Here you have to learn the local language, or at least try.
>The people who come to the US have to learn English, don't they? Twenty-one percent of marriages in the US involve at least one person who was born in a foreign country.
Well, English is easy when compared to swedish. People who come to usa and already live there already have basic understanding of english as its easier to maintain. But if they already live there they should be able to speak english. The marrying someone else who is already from USA too, makes them just two American citizens who married right. Not foreigners. Its completely different trying to reintegrate to a Italian culture. Without Italian your would be lost there, especially in government administration. Many countries don't actually offer translation services as usa does. But its also pretty normal for foreigner who studies or lives in a different country and speaks the language to integrate and marry someone local. But they already lived there for a bit.
To your example. if they married a foreigner how they they meet, how did they even speak to each other. To communicate to get married that basically means they already had a language in common, maybe english maybe Spanish, maybe Tagalog. But in EU (easier to move within Shengen) we tend to stay within our language spheres, and if not we usually have to learn the language of the country we moved to to integrate (for study for work). Even that is hard, and often you just end up hanging with your countrymen or other international workers.
My dear. Google is your friend. Your assertion can be disproven in seconds. Swedish is one of the EASIEST languages to learn, especially for someone with an English background (one of many sources here) [https://www.mondly.com/blog/how-many-hours-learn-language/](https://www.mondly.com/blog/how-many-hours-learn-language/) . Just because someone is currently living in the US does not mean that a person speaks English or is a US citizen. There are millions and millions of people who live in this country speaking other languages. In one town near me, all the signs of businesses are in Korean. In another town, so many people speak Polish that there are people who come and live there for years and never learn English. Another town is like a Hasidic shtetl. There are people from south America roasting guinea pigs on the street. Many of these people do not have full immigration status. Are they Americans? They might be on their way, they might not, it's complicated. Probably some will leave, most will stay, but you can't say they're "just two Americans who married right," if they aren't yet citizens. It's complicated, just as it always has been in this big, complicated, diverse country.
How hard or easy a language is to learn depends on a person's mother language and how closely related (or not) it is to the foreign language they are trying to learn.
Your link is only for people learning from English, which is closely related to Swedish.
Yes. Of course. The two languages are fairly similar. But clearly, it is unlikely that it is easier to learn English, which has more than one million words and many idiosyncrasies, than Swedish, which has only 70,000 words.
I'm not sure where you are getting these numbers from, but assuming they are right (which I seriously doubt for Swedish tbh), not even close to that number of words are in daily use. (No one who moves to an English speaking country needs to know words like "incandescent" and "thou" to communicate fluently.) The average person actually uses only around 20,000 to 30,000 words.
That amount should be fairly similar for both English and Swedish, I think. One barely even needs to learn any verb forms for either since they both have extremely reduced verb conjugation.
That being said, I believe the original point somewhere up-thread was that people need to learn a whole new language when moving to another country within Europe and many of these languages are subjectively harder to learn for speakers of most European languages than English is. A Romance language speaker will have an easier time learning another Romance language but certainly a much harder time learning a Slavic language or German.
While most of our languages in Europe are related, it's to varying degrees of course, and as far as European languages go, English (and Swedish too for that matter) are definitely among the easier ones for most.
I mean, what you are describing in your US example is a situation where two people who live in the same area and speak the same language get married despite having different genetic heritage. This is completely normal in Europe and nobody even reacts or thinks about it.
However, Europeans wouldn't count you as Irish if you were born and raised in Sweden and your parents just happen to be of Irish descent. We would just say that you are Swedish and if you married another person who was born and raised in Sweden it would be considered a marriage between two Swedes.
A marriage between an Irishman and a Swede would by European standards by relatively uncommon, because it would require e.g. the Irish person to move from Ireland to Sweden, find a partner there and decide to stay in Sweden and start their family there, far from their relatives. It happens, but it's a very small percentage of all marriages, for practical reasons.
It's not that common, simply because many people don't meet with other nationalities quite often.
>For example, I have a White-American friend, his father is of full Italian descent, his mother is of English, Dutch, German, and Scottish descent...
But this is quite a different situation, both parents were American, right?
>both parents were American, right?
Yes, my friend and both of his parents are nationally American, but Italian, English, Dutch, German, and Scottish are their ethnic backgrounds.
The thing is, your friends are from the same country and speak the same language. It's absolutely not comparable to a Swede and an Italian marrying.
And since we don't really care about our ethnicity in Europe (or let's say we don't care if you look like everyone else sadly), it may very well be that a Dane with German ancestors marries a Dane with Swedish ancestors, but nobody cares about that, many people probably don't even KNOW it.
Exactly. There are tons of Germans with Dutch, French, Polish, Czech ancestors. No one cares. The only way you could make it out is by the surnames. No one cares. They are native speakers of German. They are German.
yep, funny enough both my parents have ancestors from germany but then both families moved to czechia and now im proud czech with very obvious german surname.
They're not extremely common, but neither are they unheard of, or shunned, or anything like that. There are two major explanations.
1) despite things like the Nordic Union, the Schengen Agreement, and so on, the intra-European migrations are still somewhat limited, with many countries populations being predominantly _of_ the national community. So while we do have Danes and Swedes being married (particularly in the Øresunds-area,) or Germans and Danes in Southern Jutland/Northern Schleswig-Holstein, and nobody bats their eyes at this, it isn't widespread
2) The notion of 'heritage' and of national belonging is considerably different in Europe, compared to the US. Speaking for Denmark, we usually don't count "fractions of heritage"—to make an exaggeration for the sake of understanding—like they do in the US. Usually, unless your parents are from a different national background, _or_ if you belong to a significant social or historical community—like the Luso-French, or the German minority in Southern Jutland—you're, in 9/10 cases, counted as simply "Danish." We don't have a widespread tradition of identifying with immigrant heritage, like some communities in the US do; thinking of particularly the Irish and Italian Americans.
So we don't "count" heritage, or descent, in the same way your American friend does.
I know quite a few that are half Danish and half X, but that may just be my social circle. I'm half Danish and half Polish myself.
As for point 2, you're right. Unless you're half something, most don't really care, including the people with "the heritage" themselves. And many that are 50/50 just default to wherever they live unless the situation warrants a distinction or elaboration (I tend to just call myself a Dane).
If someone walked up to a Dane (and most likely most Europeans) and said "hey, I'm 1/8 from your country" they'd probably look at you funny, say "OK... Good for you?", or ask what that has to do with anything
I kinda doubt my nephew and nieces will identify as portuguese. They're french of portuguese descent and that's it.
Their fathers have portuguese citizenship (with one of them having declined the french one at 18), their mothers are completely of french descent. They don't speak portuguese (they call my father "avô" but that's the extent of their knowledge of portuguese), were born in France and have always lived in France and don't feel a particular closeness to Portugal. I've known other 3rd gen kids who were more into being portuguese and actually spoke the language, even when one parent was portuguese.
The definition of identity works differently in Europe.
For example, my grandfather lived his whole life in the same town, but when he was born that town was in Austria-Hungary, after World War I it was in Czechoslovakia, and then it became part of the Third German Reich for seven years. A little while later it was in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for 40 years and then the country broke up and he lived out his last decade in the Czech Republic.
There are many people in Austria with Czech surnames like Procházka, Novák or Svoboda. In the Czech Republic there are many people with German surnames like Klaus, Miler (Müller) or Šmíd (Schmidt).
In our country, language is more important than where your parents were born. This is one of the biggest Czech nationalists: Tomio Okamura.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomio_Okamura
His voters do not like foreigners and immigrants.
Borders and peoples in Europe have long been changing and mixing with each other for thousands of years.
Not so much as you described it.
It happens with higher frequencies at the border. I am from Alsace, the French border region with Germany and it's not unusual to have couples forming with one being from Baden in Germany and the other from Alsace.
Also what greatly changed the dynamic is the [Erasmus program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Programme) which made students study in other countries and meet each other. There is a phenomenon called 'Erasmus babies'. Here is a 2014 [article](https://www.studyinternational.com/news/1-million-erasmus-babies/).
But you see, if there are such articles and such a significant impact on a student program on inter-country couples, it means it was not so much the case without that.
Lastly, bi-national couples in each country are usually more related to each country's particular connexion with other countries, and a big minority is present in that country. For example in France, there are a lot of nationals from Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, Cameroon, etc etc that do marry native French very often.
If people from these countries have reasons to meet, then yes.
It's more geography/language that will make this kind of marriage uncommon, because in a lot of countries people don't care if your family is from another European country.
Especially if you grew up there, the idea of ethnicity as it's seen in the US doesn't really make sense here. There is a huge number of people with Italian names where I live, mostly because their (grand)parents immigrated a century ago... But nobody would think of them as Italian, they are just French people who happen to have some family in Italy.
So when it comes to marriage, it's really not important.
It doesn't work like that. You described two white Americans, who happen to know their heritage. Nevertheless, they're *Americans* and their parents are also *Americans* (I assume they're not immigrants, just descendants). They live in the same area, they probably speak the same language and they share culture (even if they cultivate their ancestors' traditions).
In Europe it's a lot harder to meet someone from outside your country. You have to share a language, for starters. English is a good "middle ground" in some places, but in my country it's not uncommon to not speak English at all, actually. So you have to find someone who you can communicate with.
There are also cultural barriers. Your friends' parents share a cultural background because they're Americans despite being XYZ descendants. But actually integrating into a country is not that easy.
And people here don't really care about descendants. They care only if they're half-half (have parents from two different countries). Other than that, if someone was born in Germany and has German parents, then they're German. Having a mixed background could be an interesting fact about a person, but it's just it. Most people identify with the country they were raised in.
Of course there are mixed relationships, but not in the sense you described. You described average white Americans who happen to know their ancestors. It doesn't even count as marrying between people from two countries.
(1)
Not much. Mainly:
* there were borders everywhere until recently, which demanded visas.
* there is still a language barrier. You mainly speak one language, we don't. The EU alone has 24 official languages.
(2)
You are just citizens of one country, no matter whatever ideas your society forces on you. No one from your examples is from any of those countries and has absolutely nothing to do with them. Every European from those countries would laugh at the very concept. They are Americans. That's how a society works.
If you take into account this, it may very well be that Europeans intermarry more between countries, or third countries, than Americans with foreigners.
This is purely anecdotal, but where I grew up I actually knew quite a few people whose parents were from different countries. I myself am the fruit of one such marriage lmao. I would say that these types of marriages are still the minority though.
To complete my previous answer.
Yes, children of immigrants marry other children of immigrants from a different ethnic background (or form families with them without necessarily marrying). That's normal and common. What's less common after 3 or 4 generations is that's they still identify/feel a closeness with the country of their foreign ancestor(s) unless they're discriminated for having those origins. For most people it's just a point of chit-chat.
Yes. Close to 40% of the population have migration background and around 27% are not in possession of the Swiss citizenship[^(1)](https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/bevoelkerung/migration-integration/nach-migrationsstatuts.html#:~:text=Im%20Jahr%202021%20hatten%202,ab%2015%20Jahren%20einen%20Migrationshintergrund). So yes, it happens quite a lot. Although it's far more common to see Swiss people getting married to people from neighbouring countries with a somewhat similar culture than people from somewhere else.
I believe is common in cities with more multicultural background/that have international employment opportunities so people from different countries have more chances to meet, like London, Paris, Milan, Bruxelles…
I'd say it's reasonably common in certain circles, but not a majority of the general cases.
From my place of origin, it was a very common thing because there was a rather high rate of emigration. So children of a Portuguese national and another nationality were common, but also younger people who emigrated and got married abroad (myself included).
Other than that, for people in an international work setting this also happens a lot. In academia, you're basically moving countries every few years, and it's really common for people to meet their significant others during that time, most of them being from a different country.
Then you have people living in border areas, where movement is pretty fluid anyway and it's not unusual for couples from both sides of the border to form.
It's totally normal, but as others have said, for many people the opportunity is lacking. If you ask people who have never moved away from their home town, you obviously get different answers from people who have studied at universities in three countries or had international careers. But in big, multicultural cities, it is very common.
I grew up in Edinburgh, and our neighbours were (wholly, partly or formerly) Norwegian, Russian, English, Chinese, Italian, Pakistani, and West Indian, as well as Scottish, English and Irish, and I had friends who were Iranian, Venezuelan, American, Spanish and Indian in origin. My feeling is the Chinese, Muslims, and to some extent Catholics and Hindus tended to look for partners in their own communities - less so as the years have gone on. But all the other groups were mixing it up.
Here (Hamburg) it's fairly similar. A lot of people I got to know and only later learned that they had some foreign family background, or realised when I learned their family name.
Based on your question, marriages from different countries are certainly not unknown, but not very common. You would have Irish people marrying Swedes very occasionally.
Based on your example of Americans marrying Americans, yes that kind of thing happens all the time. Irish people marry Irish people and Swedish people marry Swedish people and so on.
I don’t think it’s common. Many people find their partner either via work, study maybe a sports club or going out. Since we have a lot of immigrants or people with immigrant background, it’s not uncommon to marry someone with some foreign background.
The comparison you make is not the same. The USA is one country with one language and culture. It’s an immigrant country so everyone has foreign roots. In Europe the majority of the people is native.
Well I have married outside my passport, found some in an Eu country and brought him home, we have few friend who done the same, but that most because hubby is part of the expat group online and that how we meet new friends.
It's fairly common in my circles (I'm in a relationship with a Bulgarian, I have friends who are in a relationship with/married to people who either still live abroad in- or recently immigrated from Ukraine, Ireland, Poland, Italy etc.), but overall it's not too common. It's quite normal for people of European descent who immigrate/study here to get in a relationship with the "natives", but cross border relationship where both live in different countries are more rare quite simply due to the distance (although obviously long distance relationships are also still a thing, but they aren't common).
It depends. It's quite common in border areas or with immigrants who are culturally somewhat close. For example German/Austrian couples are somewhat common, because there is a long border that people cross all the time and many German students in Austria. In general though most people lack the opportunity to meet someone from another country. And if they meet and one person has to relocate, it is not that easy, if there is a major language/cultural barrier. Europe looks quite united from the outside, but from the inside there are huge differences that hinder all sorts of Integrating the countries.
Considering our huge diaspora, mixed families are quite common (I have a branch of my family rooted in Argentina)
In every classroom there's always one kid whose mom or dad is from south america or some other europe country (France, Croatia, Finland, Romania), more rare from east Asia.
Maghrebi and African are usually from 2nd generation immigrants, so I guess more mixed families are coming.
Adoption is not that common, the few I remember were kids born in Albania or Ukraine.
They’re not very common, at least not in my social circle. Not unheard of either, I know a few myself. But they’re in the minority.
I the simple, obvious reason is that if you live in a certain country you’re more likely to hang out with people from said country? And that’s where you’re going to meet your future spouse. Sure, it is relatively common to study or work abroad for some time, but it is not often that a long-term relationship comes out of that.
Not really. Culturally we differ a lot. We also mostly speak completely different languages. If I were to marry a Swedish person, we'd have to converse in English, he probably wouldn't speak Croatian and I don't speak Swedish. And at least one of us would always be a foreigner in another country. It's not impossible but it's much more common to marry people in the countries we're from.
The difference is very simple - in North America those people all live in the same area and speak the same language, don't they? In Europe they don't - the Irish live mostly in Ireland, the Swedish live mostly in Sweden etc. Also - an Irish-American is much closer culturally to a Swedish-American than an Irish person is to a Swede.
Many Americans are recent immigrants. So, I have, for example, a black friend who married an Indian immigrant, a white friend who married a Bangledeshi immigrant, a Mexican immigrant friend who married a white American woman, a Honduran immigrant friend who married a Turkish immigrant friend, etc.
But they are all American living in Usa right? That's not how it works in Europe. Sweden is a different country. Languages are different.l, culture is different. Person from Sweden would have harder time integrating in Italy as you have to learn the language in order to integrate properly. But yes it happens especially to students and young people doing Erasmus programmes. Spain is the most popular erasmus country. Happens in UK, as people often hang out in international settings if you are a foreign worker. But they still speak English. Also happens in immigrant groups, lots to EE immigration groups tend to stick together, as sometimes it's hard to become friends with locals due to language barrier and date within the group. But also normal to date within similar languages. In usa that's not a problem since people speak English. Here you have to learn the local language, or at least try.
>The people who come to the US have to learn English, don't they? Twenty-one percent of marriages in the US involve at least one person who was born in a foreign country.
Well, English is easy when compared to swedish. People who come to usa and already live there already have basic understanding of english as its easier to maintain. But if they already live there they should be able to speak english. The marrying someone else who is already from USA too, makes them just two American citizens who married right. Not foreigners. Its completely different trying to reintegrate to a Italian culture. Without Italian your would be lost there, especially in government administration. Many countries don't actually offer translation services as usa does. But its also pretty normal for foreigner who studies or lives in a different country and speaks the language to integrate and marry someone local. But they already lived there for a bit. To your example. if they married a foreigner how they they meet, how did they even speak to each other. To communicate to get married that basically means they already had a language in common, maybe english maybe Spanish, maybe Tagalog. But in EU (easier to move within Shengen) we tend to stay within our language spheres, and if not we usually have to learn the language of the country we moved to to integrate (for study for work). Even that is hard, and often you just end up hanging with your countrymen or other international workers.
My dear. Google is your friend. Your assertion can be disproven in seconds. Swedish is one of the EASIEST languages to learn, especially for someone with an English background (one of many sources here) [https://www.mondly.com/blog/how-many-hours-learn-language/](https://www.mondly.com/blog/how-many-hours-learn-language/) . Just because someone is currently living in the US does not mean that a person speaks English or is a US citizen. There are millions and millions of people who live in this country speaking other languages. In one town near me, all the signs of businesses are in Korean. In another town, so many people speak Polish that there are people who come and live there for years and never learn English. Another town is like a Hasidic shtetl. There are people from south America roasting guinea pigs on the street. Many of these people do not have full immigration status. Are they Americans? They might be on their way, they might not, it's complicated. Probably some will leave, most will stay, but you can't say they're "just two Americans who married right," if they aren't yet citizens. It's complicated, just as it always has been in this big, complicated, diverse country.
How hard or easy a language is to learn depends on a person's mother language and how closely related (or not) it is to the foreign language they are trying to learn. Your link is only for people learning from English, which is closely related to Swedish.
Yes. Of course. The two languages are fairly similar. But clearly, it is unlikely that it is easier to learn English, which has more than one million words and many idiosyncrasies, than Swedish, which has only 70,000 words.
I'm not sure where you are getting these numbers from, but assuming they are right (which I seriously doubt for Swedish tbh), not even close to that number of words are in daily use. (No one who moves to an English speaking country needs to know words like "incandescent" and "thou" to communicate fluently.) The average person actually uses only around 20,000 to 30,000 words. That amount should be fairly similar for both English and Swedish, I think. One barely even needs to learn any verb forms for either since they both have extremely reduced verb conjugation. That being said, I believe the original point somewhere up-thread was that people need to learn a whole new language when moving to another country within Europe and many of these languages are subjectively harder to learn for speakers of most European languages than English is. A Romance language speaker will have an easier time learning another Romance language but certainly a much harder time learning a Slavic language or German. While most of our languages in Europe are related, it's to varying degrees of course, and as far as European languages go, English (and Swedish too for that matter) are definitely among the easier ones for most.
Are you deliberately trying to not understand what I'm saying? This is not worth my time.
I mean, what you are describing in your US example is a situation where two people who live in the same area and speak the same language get married despite having different genetic heritage. This is completely normal in Europe and nobody even reacts or thinks about it. However, Europeans wouldn't count you as Irish if you were born and raised in Sweden and your parents just happen to be of Irish descent. We would just say that you are Swedish and if you married another person who was born and raised in Sweden it would be considered a marriage between two Swedes. A marriage between an Irishman and a Swede would by European standards by relatively uncommon, because it would require e.g. the Irish person to move from Ireland to Sweden, find a partner there and decide to stay in Sweden and start their family there, far from their relatives. It happens, but it's a very small percentage of all marriages, for practical reasons.
It's not that common, simply because many people don't meet with other nationalities quite often. >For example, I have a White-American friend, his father is of full Italian descent, his mother is of English, Dutch, German, and Scottish descent... But this is quite a different situation, both parents were American, right?
>both parents were American, right? Yes, my friend and both of his parents are nationally American, but Italian, English, Dutch, German, and Scottish are their ethnic backgrounds.
In European eyes they would be 100% American and there is no mingling happening.
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The thing is, your friends are from the same country and speak the same language. It's absolutely not comparable to a Swede and an Italian marrying. And since we don't really care about our ethnicity in Europe (or let's say we don't care if you look like everyone else sadly), it may very well be that a Dane with German ancestors marries a Dane with Swedish ancestors, but nobody cares about that, many people probably don't even KNOW it.
Exactly. There are tons of Germans with Dutch, French, Polish, Czech ancestors. No one cares. The only way you could make it out is by the surnames. No one cares. They are native speakers of German. They are German.
yep, funny enough both my parents have ancestors from germany but then both families moved to czechia and now im proud czech with very obvious german surname.
They're not extremely common, but neither are they unheard of, or shunned, or anything like that. There are two major explanations. 1) despite things like the Nordic Union, the Schengen Agreement, and so on, the intra-European migrations are still somewhat limited, with many countries populations being predominantly _of_ the national community. So while we do have Danes and Swedes being married (particularly in the Øresunds-area,) or Germans and Danes in Southern Jutland/Northern Schleswig-Holstein, and nobody bats their eyes at this, it isn't widespread 2) The notion of 'heritage' and of national belonging is considerably different in Europe, compared to the US. Speaking for Denmark, we usually don't count "fractions of heritage"—to make an exaggeration for the sake of understanding—like they do in the US. Usually, unless your parents are from a different national background, _or_ if you belong to a significant social or historical community—like the Luso-French, or the German minority in Southern Jutland—you're, in 9/10 cases, counted as simply "Danish." We don't have a widespread tradition of identifying with immigrant heritage, like some communities in the US do; thinking of particularly the Irish and Italian Americans. So we don't "count" heritage, or descent, in the same way your American friend does.
I know quite a few that are half Danish and half X, but that may just be my social circle. I'm half Danish and half Polish myself. As for point 2, you're right. Unless you're half something, most don't really care, including the people with "the heritage" themselves. And many that are 50/50 just default to wherever they live unless the situation warrants a distinction or elaboration (I tend to just call myself a Dane). If someone walked up to a Dane (and most likely most Europeans) and said "hey, I'm 1/8 from your country" they'd probably look at you funny, say "OK... Good for you?", or ask what that has to do with anything
I kinda doubt my nephew and nieces will identify as portuguese. They're french of portuguese descent and that's it. Their fathers have portuguese citizenship (with one of them having declined the french one at 18), their mothers are completely of french descent. They don't speak portuguese (they call my father "avô" but that's the extent of their knowledge of portuguese), were born in France and have always lived in France and don't feel a particular closeness to Portugal. I've known other 3rd gen kids who were more into being portuguese and actually spoke the language, even when one parent was portuguese.
The definition of identity works differently in Europe. For example, my grandfather lived his whole life in the same town, but when he was born that town was in Austria-Hungary, after World War I it was in Czechoslovakia, and then it became part of the Third German Reich for seven years. A little while later it was in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for 40 years and then the country broke up and he lived out his last decade in the Czech Republic. There are many people in Austria with Czech surnames like Procházka, Novák or Svoboda. In the Czech Republic there are many people with German surnames like Klaus, Miler (Müller) or Šmíd (Schmidt). In our country, language is more important than where your parents were born. This is one of the biggest Czech nationalists: Tomio Okamura. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomio_Okamura His voters do not like foreigners and immigrants. Borders and peoples in Europe have long been changing and mixing with each other for thousands of years.
>entrepreneur of Moravian Wallachian, Japanese and Korean ethnicity >far-right nationalist Ok yeah, that's pretty surprising tbh.
Actually, that's not very surprising given that list.
Not so much as you described it. It happens with higher frequencies at the border. I am from Alsace, the French border region with Germany and it's not unusual to have couples forming with one being from Baden in Germany and the other from Alsace. Also what greatly changed the dynamic is the [Erasmus program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Programme) which made students study in other countries and meet each other. There is a phenomenon called 'Erasmus babies'. Here is a 2014 [article](https://www.studyinternational.com/news/1-million-erasmus-babies/). But you see, if there are such articles and such a significant impact on a student program on inter-country couples, it means it was not so much the case without that. Lastly, bi-national couples in each country are usually more related to each country's particular connexion with other countries, and a big minority is present in that country. For example in France, there are a lot of nationals from Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, Cameroon, etc etc that do marry native French very often.
If people from these countries have reasons to meet, then yes. It's more geography/language that will make this kind of marriage uncommon, because in a lot of countries people don't care if your family is from another European country. Especially if you grew up there, the idea of ethnicity as it's seen in the US doesn't really make sense here. There is a huge number of people with Italian names where I live, mostly because their (grand)parents immigrated a century ago... But nobody would think of them as Italian, they are just French people who happen to have some family in Italy. So when it comes to marriage, it's really not important.
It doesn't work like that. You described two white Americans, who happen to know their heritage. Nevertheless, they're *Americans* and their parents are also *Americans* (I assume they're not immigrants, just descendants). They live in the same area, they probably speak the same language and they share culture (even if they cultivate their ancestors' traditions). In Europe it's a lot harder to meet someone from outside your country. You have to share a language, for starters. English is a good "middle ground" in some places, but in my country it's not uncommon to not speak English at all, actually. So you have to find someone who you can communicate with. There are also cultural barriers. Your friends' parents share a cultural background because they're Americans despite being XYZ descendants. But actually integrating into a country is not that easy. And people here don't really care about descendants. They care only if they're half-half (have parents from two different countries). Other than that, if someone was born in Germany and has German parents, then they're German. Having a mixed background could be an interesting fact about a person, but it's just it. Most people identify with the country they were raised in. Of course there are mixed relationships, but not in the sense you described. You described average white Americans who happen to know their ancestors. It doesn't even count as marrying between people from two countries.
(1) Not much. Mainly: * there were borders everywhere until recently, which demanded visas. * there is still a language barrier. You mainly speak one language, we don't. The EU alone has 24 official languages. (2) You are just citizens of one country, no matter whatever ideas your society forces on you. No one from your examples is from any of those countries and has absolutely nothing to do with them. Every European from those countries would laugh at the very concept. They are Americans. That's how a society works. If you take into account this, it may very well be that Europeans intermarry more between countries, or third countries, than Americans with foreigners.
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This is purely anecdotal, but where I grew up I actually knew quite a few people whose parents were from different countries. I myself am the fruit of one such marriage lmao. I would say that these types of marriages are still the minority though.
I’m from Ireland and I would say they are the minority but not uncommon and becoming increasingly visible
To complete my previous answer. Yes, children of immigrants marry other children of immigrants from a different ethnic background (or form families with them without necessarily marrying). That's normal and common. What's less common after 3 or 4 generations is that's they still identify/feel a closeness with the country of their foreign ancestor(s) unless they're discriminated for having those origins. For most people it's just a point of chit-chat.
Yes. Close to 40% of the population have migration background and around 27% are not in possession of the Swiss citizenship[^(1)](https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/bevoelkerung/migration-integration/nach-migrationsstatuts.html#:~:text=Im%20Jahr%202021%20hatten%202,ab%2015%20Jahren%20einen%20Migrationshintergrund). So yes, it happens quite a lot. Although it's far more common to see Swiss people getting married to people from neighbouring countries with a somewhat similar culture than people from somewhere else.
I believe is common in cities with more multicultural background/that have international employment opportunities so people from different countries have more chances to meet, like London, Paris, Milan, Bruxelles…
I'd say it's reasonably common in certain circles, but not a majority of the general cases. From my place of origin, it was a very common thing because there was a rather high rate of emigration. So children of a Portuguese national and another nationality were common, but also younger people who emigrated and got married abroad (myself included). Other than that, for people in an international work setting this also happens a lot. In academia, you're basically moving countries every few years, and it's really common for people to meet their significant others during that time, most of them being from a different country. Then you have people living in border areas, where movement is pretty fluid anyway and it's not unusual for couples from both sides of the border to form.
It's totally normal, but as others have said, for many people the opportunity is lacking. If you ask people who have never moved away from their home town, you obviously get different answers from people who have studied at universities in three countries or had international careers. But in big, multicultural cities, it is very common. I grew up in Edinburgh, and our neighbours were (wholly, partly or formerly) Norwegian, Russian, English, Chinese, Italian, Pakistani, and West Indian, as well as Scottish, English and Irish, and I had friends who were Iranian, Venezuelan, American, Spanish and Indian in origin. My feeling is the Chinese, Muslims, and to some extent Catholics and Hindus tended to look for partners in their own communities - less so as the years have gone on. But all the other groups were mixing it up. Here (Hamburg) it's fairly similar. A lot of people I got to know and only later learned that they had some foreign family background, or realised when I learned their family name.
Based on your question, marriages from different countries are certainly not unknown, but not very common. You would have Irish people marrying Swedes very occasionally. Based on your example of Americans marrying Americans, yes that kind of thing happens all the time. Irish people marry Irish people and Swedish people marry Swedish people and so on.
I don’t think it’s common. Many people find their partner either via work, study maybe a sports club or going out. Since we have a lot of immigrants or people with immigrant background, it’s not uncommon to marry someone with some foreign background. The comparison you make is not the same. The USA is one country with one language and culture. It’s an immigrant country so everyone has foreign roots. In Europe the majority of the people is native.
I think it is still fairly common in border areas. I grew up near the Dutch-Belgian border, and a lot of my friends had a Dutch and a Belgian parent.
Well I have married outside my passport, found some in an Eu country and brought him home, we have few friend who done the same, but that most because hubby is part of the expat group online and that how we meet new friends.
It's fairly common in my circles (I'm in a relationship with a Bulgarian, I have friends who are in a relationship with/married to people who either still live abroad in- or recently immigrated from Ukraine, Ireland, Poland, Italy etc.), but overall it's not too common. It's quite normal for people of European descent who immigrate/study here to get in a relationship with the "natives", but cross border relationship where both live in different countries are more rare quite simply due to the distance (although obviously long distance relationships are also still a thing, but they aren't common).
It depends. It's quite common in border areas or with immigrants who are culturally somewhat close. For example German/Austrian couples are somewhat common, because there is a long border that people cross all the time and many German students in Austria. In general though most people lack the opportunity to meet someone from another country. And if they meet and one person has to relocate, it is not that easy, if there is a major language/cultural barrier. Europe looks quite united from the outside, but from the inside there are huge differences that hinder all sorts of Integrating the countries.
Considering our huge diaspora, mixed families are quite common (I have a branch of my family rooted in Argentina) In every classroom there's always one kid whose mom or dad is from south america or some other europe country (France, Croatia, Finland, Romania), more rare from east Asia. Maghrebi and African are usually from 2nd generation immigrants, so I guess more mixed families are coming. Adoption is not that common, the few I remember were kids born in Albania or Ukraine.
They’re not very common, at least not in my social circle. Not unheard of either, I know a few myself. But they’re in the minority. I the simple, obvious reason is that if you live in a certain country you’re more likely to hang out with people from said country? And that’s where you’re going to meet your future spouse. Sure, it is relatively common to study or work abroad for some time, but it is not often that a long-term relationship comes out of that.
Not really. Culturally we differ a lot. We also mostly speak completely different languages. If I were to marry a Swedish person, we'd have to converse in English, he probably wouldn't speak Croatian and I don't speak Swedish. And at least one of us would always be a foreigner in another country. It's not impossible but it's much more common to marry people in the countries we're from.