PROJECT: INTERCULTURAL APPROACH TO AN ACTIVE EUROPEAN CITIZENCHIP
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Who is afraid to multicultrualism?
The opium of the intellectualsIntellectuals have debated the concept of multiculturalism since the 1960s. Some regard it as an opportunity; others refuse to believe in it. After World War II a stream of immigrants poured into Europe from the continent’s former colonies. Germany and the Nether...
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Melting pot or salad bowl?
What is the difference between melting pot and multiculturalism?
How can we manage this diversity in Europe?
How was multiculturalism born?
The melting pot is at the origins of multiculturalism. It is considered to be the historic foundation of American integr...
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The Project
Nowadays Europe’s multiculturalism is a reality and its diversity of cultures, languages, religions, races and geographic origins, in short, the condition of difference is constituent of our own European social reality even though in many aspects it is still being seen as homogeneous.
In this project named “An Intercultural Approach for an Active European Citizenship”, we are interested in the consequences derived from the migratory flow and its enormous increase during this last years. The implicit diversity is a fact and that inevitably leads us to the need to transform or, better said, redefine the condition of European Citizenship.
Nowadays and as shown by facts in the TCE in force (Art. 8) the condition of European citizenship is bound to the condition of national citizenship, to the members of the national and political community in contrast to the foreigners. Those who are not members of the national community, therefore, have no right to citizenship. The foreigner can’t aspire to the “contract” of citizenship with all the rights and duties embedded in it, but to another contract, partial and transitory that is the immigration “contract”.
It is true that step by step more flexible models are being worked on and carried out (mostly in the Third Sector). These models accept diversity and are aimed to integrate immigrants and share with them our values and our society, and even grant them rights in the same terms as citizens, but not all, a distinction between citizen and foreigner is still mantained.
Last but not least, we are very interested in the possibility of a European identity, which can only proceed on the basis of the acceptance of its multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-cultural character, and this acceptance needs a material basis in immigration and naturalization policies, in multiculturalism in the education system, and in the openness of the media, and of cultural institutions to the diversity of cultural expressions constituent of the European reality (Castells 2004).