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Publication The Intercultural Alternative to Multiculturalism and its Limits(2012-01-01) Bodirsky, KatharinaIntercultural policies have gained salience in integration and regional development strategies in cities such as Berlin and in EU and European policy networks. Critiquing multiculturalism for having produced segregation by recognizing cultural communities, proponents of interculturalism (e.g. Wood and Landry 2008) emphasize the importance of intercultural exchange and an individual right to cultural identity combined with equality of opportunity as well as the political advertising of the value of diversity. This value, it is argued, is also economic, as intercultural exchange sparks creativity, which fosters innovation, which enhances competitiveness. Intercultural cities, it is posited, are moreover attractive to investors and the high-skilled. Based on research in Berlin and the analysis of EU documents, this paper examines why policy-makers have come to embrace interculturalism as an alternative to multiculturalism and the limits it entails for the recognition of diversity. It argues that despite its seeming inclusivity, interculturalism poses limits to what counts as support-worthy diversity which derive from liberal and neoliberal norms and the political prioritization of increased competitiveness in the neoliberal economy. Interculturalism thus feeds into the dismantling of welfare entitlements as well as processes of gentrification in the city that challenge the right to place of particular immigrant populations. Diversity in the intercultural frame thus appears as a partial concept built around particular notions of culture and class. This also becomes apparent in the anxiety that intercultural policies and policy-makers continue to betray about difference (see Eriksen 2006) - as opposed to diversity in the above sense.Publication Some Notes on Affect and Discourses of Social Tense in Tense Times(2012-01-01) Sweetapple, ChristopherPublication Not a Backlash, but a Multicultural Implosion from Within: Uncertainty and Crisis in the Case of South Tyrol's "Multiculturalism"(2012-01-01) Zinn, Dorothy LouiseThis paper considers a case in which a regime commonly identified as "multicultural", locally entrenched and stringently defended by hegemonic politics, is nonetheless undergoing crisis and uncertainty. In the autonomous province of South Tyrol (Italy), there is a heavy social, economic, legal and discursive investment in "multiculturalism", offering a case that is often celebrated as a model of social co-existence and minority protection, and even serving as a selling point in provincial self-representations. Due to the area's peculiar history—previously belonging to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire but annexed to Italy a century ago—a "separate-but-equal" system developed as a means of defending the rights of German and Ladin linguistic minorities within the Italian state, largely as a response to the severe forms of cultural repression experienced by these groups historically. The resulting accretion of a divided society deemed "multicultural" bears within it alternative forms of multicultural coexistence. In recent years, moreover, the increasing presence of migrants has exerted new stresses on the status quo: a form of neo-assimilationist backlash on the national level, exemplified in new Italian language requirements for immigrant long-term stay permits, has provoked uncertainty and fear among some stalwart "multiculturalists" within the German-language minority, as do the growing numbers of students with a migratory background within the "multicultural" provincial school system. It remains to be seen whether or not some calls for reformulating the current regime might lead to different, and perhaps more effective, forms of "multiculturalism".Publication Quebec’s Interculturalism Policy and the Contours of Implicit Institutional Discourse(2012-01-01) Shapiro, SamuelI approach the question of scales and political imaginaries through an exploration of how the Canadian province of Quebec is situated at the crossroads of several European and North American traditions. I discuss the relationship between the 2012 Quebec student strikes against the policies of then-Quebec premier Jean Charest and a welfare state model based on social protection, which is closer to that that found in France and several Scandinavian countries than in the rest of Canada. I then examine in depth how Quebec’s attempt to develop an alternative approach for the management of ethno-cultual diversity – often called interculturalism – has come to stand for a variety of political projects over time, despite using the same term to characterise them. Instead, interculturalism is a term which successive Quebec governments have long promoted but never defined nor explicitly framed as official policy. It is based on the power to regulate almost all migration into Quebec’s territory, which the provincial government has gradually acquired through a series of accords with the Canadian government from 1971 to 1991. I provide a detailed examination of the four main ‘phases’ of interculturalism since the 1970s. More generally, I offer reflections on how the Quebec case could help anthropology think through wider questions of institutionalisation, forms of government political culture and scale in order to understand political imaginaries.Publication Multiculturalism, Identities and National Uncertainties in Southwest Europe: The Rise of Xenophobia and Populism in Catalonia (Spain)(2012-01-01) Clua i Fainé, MontserratThe analysis of the discourses about the migratory threat takes a special feature in the Catalan case, where there is an historical strong nationalist movement that seeks to defend its own Catalan national and cultural identity against Spain. A nationalist discourse that has been self-defined as a "civic nationalism" because it claims that has historically receipted and integrated the different peoples that have arrived at its territory. But it has showed in some moments a clear xenophobic discourse against immigration, especially during the 60s and 70s, against the massive arrival of Spanish migrants that was produced at that time in Catalonia (Clua 2011). Now it seems that it reappears in public sphere, to achieve political representation at last local elections (22/5/2011). I refer mainly to the rise of PxC (Platform for Catalonia, a xenophobic far-right party) but I also refer to some candidates for mayor that are members of the PP (Popular Party, a moderate conservative party that has won recent national elections in Spain). These candidates have used a discourse of rejection to the immigration (and the problems of crime and insecurity that this supposedly implied) to win elections in cities as Badalona. But the thesis of the paper is that, before the public presence of this populist discourse against immigration (or behind or underneath), there is evidence of previous exclusion actions, that were already incubating racist discourses in towns and cities of Catalonia with a significant immigrant presence.Publication French Far-Right Trajectories: Against a Multiculturalism that Dare not Speak its Name(2012-01-01) Delouis, Anne FriederikeClearly, France is a peculiar place as far as multiculturalism is concerned. With its official ideology of egalitarianism, the "indivisible" Republic claims universal validity. As a consequence, the existence of different ethnic or cultural groups on the French territory is hardly recognized in legal terms and official rhetoric. However, the social reality of poor and mostly ethnic ghettoes in all major French towns became eminently visible when the 2005 riots brought them to international media attention. Living conditions and economic opportunities for suburban ghetto-dwellers have not improved since, nor have majority attitudes towards them changed significantly. On the contrary, the perceived failure of the political establishment to discuss problems linked to immigration and xenophobia makes these topics a favourite hunting ground for the Far Right, which attracts increasing numbers of voters convinced of the impossibility of multiculturalism. The paper examines closely the personal trajectories of voters who recently "converted" to xenophobic and far-right views. In what concepts and metaphors do they cast their "conversion experience"? What events, experiences, or encounters are seen as decisive? To what extent is religion (mis)used as an argument? Rather disturbingly, some of the new far-right discourses make "creative" use of anthropological thought, claiming a threatened indigenous people status for themselves. Is it thinkable at all that there might be any common ground between these extremist views and migrants' own critiques of multiculturalism? A comparison with public discourse about cultural diversity in Germany and the UK will identify common patterns in European critiques of multicultural policies.Publication From the Intercultural Model to its Actual Implementation in a Spanish Neighborhood(2012-01-01) Palomera, Jaime; Aramburu, MikelThe language of “interculturalism” has become part of the current doxa among policy-makers. It informs the ways in which new models of diversity governance are being designed, from supra-national organisms to local councils. In general terms, intercultural models tend to place high value on the question of “living together” or “conviviality”, and also on issues of equality and social justice. However, the evidence in this paper (based on fieldwork in a working-class neighborhood in Spain) suggests that in actual practice local governments do not see local “intercultural/community” projects as a means to promote social justice but as an end in itself, often devoid of content. In the current stage of predatory capitalism, intercultural processes of governance are often narrowed down to the prevention of conflicts that may arise as “side effects,” and possible initiatives regarding socioeconomic inequalities tend to be co-opted or eroded.Publication When Opportunity Moves Off-Shore: Multiculturalism and the French Banlieue(2012-01-01) Epstein, BethSince the turn of this new century, problems of "culture" and "difference," diversity and multiculturalism, have made their way into public discourse in France. Across a dizzying array of polemics that includes social unrest in the country's disadvantaged suburbs, the rise of the National Front, post-colonial recriminations, and more, voices are being raised in favor of a more overt form of multiculturalist discourse as a means to think through contemporary social issues in relation to notions of race, identity, and discrimination. The integrationist French republican project, wherein racial or ethnic classifications are eschewed on the grounds that they enclose people into essentialist categories, is being outshined, some proclaim, by a more American-style focus on 'identity,' that shows up the gaps in French universalist claims. In this paper I consider the dualities expressed in this contrast as a means to inquire into the broader implications of multicultural discourse. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in suburbs to the north and west of Paris, I push against tendencies to take these emergent identity claims at face value, to reflect rather on the interests they serve and the tensions they mediate. Situating these phenomena within the context of a globalizing economy, I argue that these trends need to be seen as efforts to grasp at readily comprehensible sources of inequality at a moment when opportunity has moved off-shore, altering the meaning of local life and politics, and diffusing the promise of social integration upon which the French republican contract depends.