Governing Diversity - Migrant Integration and Multiculturalism in North America and Europe
REA Andrea
Product details
- Categories: Asylum and Immigration, European Integration
- Publisher: ULB Editions - EDITIONS DE L'UNIVERSITE LIBRE DE BRUXELLES
- Collection: ULB - Institut d'Etudes européennes
- ISBN: 9782800416359
- Binding: Paperback
- Number of pages: 264
- Language: English
Summary
During the 2000s, the European Union has witnessed a significant change
in terms of integration policies for immigrants. Countries like Sweden
and the Netherlands, who were both pioneers of multicultural policies in
Europe both significantly limited such policies in the late 1990s.
Restrictive measures, requiring higher levels of integration in order to
access and maintain legal statuses, have been enacted by most Western
European countries since then, especially after 9/11. In October 2010,
in a very polemic context on immigration and immigrant integration, the
German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced that Germany was to be
considered a multicultural failure, words that were soon echoed by the
Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme, the British Prime Minister David
Cameron and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy. These sensational
statements, which by and large avoid defining the concept of
multiculturalism, are based on a reaffirmation of “Western values” and
strengthening of national identity. These statements express the need to
review the policies on integration of immigrants, in the sense that
they should be more active and voluntarist, more organized by the state
and more supported by the EU. In the background, one can see fear for
Islamic extremism, but also the idea that the nation states can put some
obligations on immigrants, and that for a too long time we have been
focusing on “those who arrive”, rather than on “the society that
welcomes them”.
This book intends to address the relationship between, on the one hand,
cultural diversity resulting from migration, and, on the other hand,
social cohesion and social justice within Western societies. In order to
do this, the authors examine what can be described as two contradictory
trends in recent public policies towards foreign people or people with a
foreign origin: first, the policies against ethnic, racial and
religious discrimination; and second, new harsh integration policies for
newcomers in Europe. This book aims to provide a trans-disciplinary
analysis of the construction of “otherness” in North America and Europe.