IIn Berlin, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Saarlouis and in some other cities, young migrant men have been fighting in outdoor swimming pools in recent weeks. Sometimes in large, sometimes in small groups, they hit, insulted and bit the lifeguards, security and police, they molested women.
Videos showing dozens of naked brown male bodies huddled together are aggressive and frightening on social media. The “Zeit” reports that the majority of Germans are now worried about visiting an open-air pool, the former mayor of Neukölln, Heinz Buschkowsky, warns parents against letting children of a “certain age” go to open-air pools like the one in Neukölln.
After so much emotion, it’s time for some facts. First of all, the videos: Most of the ones that are currently running up and down do not show current incidents, but scenes from past years – often without pointing them out. The news channel “Welt”, for example, shares a video shot in 2014 on its YouTube channel, the worst that has existed in the last decade, and a spokeswoman says in the background: “Scenes like this are now happening almost every week and all over Germany in outdoor pools.” But that is wrong and manipulative. It is true that there are such incidents, but they are isolated cases.
In the case of juvenile delinquency, it is the living situation that counts, not the origin
In 2022, the Berlin pools only issued a quarter as many house bans as four years earlier. At that time there were more than 300 because of disturbances in the house and bathing rules, last year not even 60. Ten because of sexual offenses, last year two. The picture is similar for the Berlin police: in 2018 there were at least 77 violent crimes in all outdoor pools (including crimes against sexual self-determination). Last year there were 57. In Baden-Württemberg, where there were also prominent examples this year, the number of crimes in outdoor pools fell by 14 percent in 2022 compared to 2019.
So overall the violence is decreasing and not increasing, you can go to the swimming pool more carefree than a few years ago. But what is also true: The proportion of young foreigners who commit violence in the open-air swimming pool (and not only there) is significantly higher than their proportion in the total population. In Baden-Württemberg it has increased over the years. It is also clear that men in other cultures often defend their own honor differently than most Germans. But does all this have to do with failed integration of migrants?
Criminological research largely agrees that juvenile delinquency is about the social situation, not about origin. It’s about unemployment, a lack of housing, dropped out of education, and a lack of prospects. And yes, this raises the question of whether integration has failed. It is important that there is more talk about this and that nationwide programs that start here do not fall victim to the austerity measures.
Such an approach is not “do-gooderism”, but confronts the complex causes of migrant youth violence. Viewing Muslim culture as the root of all evil, on the other hand, is frighteningly simplistic. The debate about the outdoor pools is not always about wanting to understand social processes – but also about rejection and devaluation and about the fear of young Muslim men.
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