I understand that it has failed. This believe it based on the mulculturalismo not have at his command the means of industrial production, academic or scientific.

Globalization is responsible enough to homogenize society.

I do not think that multiculturalism did fail in Europe; Europe does not contain multi-cultures.

@Abedallah. Really, How so?

Dear Mohamed,

Some years ago I read a couple of German articles on this subject. Their conclusion was that there had not been at all multiculturalism in Germany. Only the Germans thought that it was but from the side of people with entirely different cultural backgrounds there had been no readiness to penetrate into German culture and way of life. However, I may be wrong, I have only read some articles.

Dear Mohamed,

What about the situation in France and Great Britain?

Dear Andras,

I must say that, in my opinion, Great Britain is multi-cultural. There are various forms of official cultural expressions in British life in general. Diversity is institutionalised and its manifestation is clearly seen on a daily basis both in public and political life. And although I have been living in France only for the last three years, I am failing to identify any similarities with Great Britain.

Multiculturalism does only exist as a "marginal integration" that does include "culture" in the most restricted sense -religion and cultural traditions such as clothing or food- but not political or economic aspects of the different cultures. In order to understand what is happening in the UK or in France, I would recommend the book on neoliberal multiculturalism by Zizek.

I have read Slavoj Zizek extensively. He does make some interesting points and his analyses make a lot of sense. However, let's not restrict our discussion to countries like Germany, France and Great Britain. How about the eastern block? How about Nordic countries?

Mohamed, It depends on the meaning of multiculturalism. In any society there is need for some coherence. Anyway when multiple traditions (cultural, religious, language) are iving on the same territority and are supposed to live under the same administration there must be some convergence to a common denominator. That does not avoid frictions between different traditions. However these frictions can be integreted in a common discours about the public area.

What about the Nordic countries. Sweden tried to build up a multicultural society. Was it succesful? I think it was except the situation in cities with a lot of habitants. But big towns have particular problems everywhere, also monocultural cities.

Dear Mohamed;

How would you define multiculturalism in a country.

Is it helping and supporting a group of people from a different culture to practice it as they like. I suggest for example to compare the budget that is offered by EU countries and Canada for this purpose.

I think the diversity is increasing with time and what you may see is the effect of this increase in rate.

Dear Mohamed,

I have heard and read that the limits of multiculturalism in Great Britain can be found clearly when applying for a job at a local council.

Dear Mohamed,

I feel there is no multiculturalism in Hungary. Please visit our country home page and have a look at the population data.

Thanks Andras, I will.

@Macias-Diaz

Thank you for this enlightening thought. I was more concerned with the peaceful cohabitation of a diversity of cultures without prejudice and in the absence of racial tension.

Dear All,

Multiculturalism? a case story:

I have had a very good friend in Sudan. We were room-mates for four years at the Gödöllő University in Hungary.

Five years ago we (the remaining Hungarian old students) organised a meeting for celebrating the 30th anniversary of our studies.

I have had an official letter of invitation prepared for my friend in which letter I personally proved my incomes and promised I would accept responsibility for his all possible future deeds and troubles in Hungary. My friend went with this letter to the German Embassy in Khartoum (In Sudan there is no Hungarian Embassy). The German clerk asked him to take out a very expensive insurance. He took it out and when he went back with it, the clerk informed him that his motivation for travelling into Hungary was not founded and refused the visa. Later, I wrote a letter to the Hungarian Foreign Minister in this case and got an answer that everything was in order and because I had no official authorisation from my friend so I could get no more information.

Recently, I have got an unofficial information that Hungary has no right to allow to enter people in the EU from countries like Sudan.

Now, we would like to organise our next meeting. What to do?

Hi,

it depends of what kind of multiculturalism are you talking about... like foreign policies, it depends of nationalities...

Relationships between European citizens (communitarian ones) seems work and lots of things are possible for sharing culture and values...

It is not the same with extra-community citizens, and still, it seems worst

(I'm currently working in intergroups relationship (Black-White) in France

(Giblin, B. (2012). Extrême droite en Europe: une analyse géopolitique. Hérodote, 144(1), 3 – 17. doi:10.3917/her.144.0003

or

Orfali, B. (2012). L’adhésion à l'extrême droite: étude comparative en France, Hongrie, Italie et Roumanie. Paris: L’Harmattan.

or

TeO Survey: http://teo_english.site.ined.fr/)

@Carlos

Relationships with different cultures is not bound by geography or nationality. If this is the case, then perhaps we have never been modern. It is regrettable to know that particular events in the 21st century point to a regression in tolerance and openess compared with past times..

Mohamed,

Its not as simple as it seems... I'm agree with you about the geographic considerations... the problem is about the way that we categorize people, concerning theirs origins....

Be born here or there is not the real question... the real question is that people think about people who were born here or there? (representations, stereotypes...) that's why geographical considerations become important.... because the stereotypes regulates our behaviour against the others.

@Carlos

Why do you have to categorise people? Human beings is the only cxategory

Stereotypes regulate the behaviour of people who lack the openess and tolerence required for peaceful and harmonious cohabitation. In addition, we should not let stereotypes guide our behaviours because they regulate the behaviour of the least educated minority.

This a very interesting debate. This might help:

Rodríguez-García, Dan (2010) “Beyond Assimilation and Multiculturalism: A Critical Review of the Debate on Managing Diversity”. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 11(3): 251-271.

Online Access: http://www.academia.edu/515358/Beyond_Assimilation_and_Multiculturalism_A_Critical_Review_of_the_Debate_on_Managing_Diversity

Thanks Dan for the reference.

Mohamed, Ida

You ask: Why do you have to categorise people? Human beings is the only category.

I don't try tu justify discrimination, I just tell that categorisation it a normal process on intergroup relationships. Everybody categorizes.. it's a psycho-cognitive form to approaches the world.

(Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. The social psychology of intergroup relations, 33, 47.; Billig, M., & Tajfel, H. (1973). Social categorization and similarity in intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology, 3(1), 27-52.))

I'm agree with the idea that human being is the only category. (supra-group).. but in real life is not at al like that... we use differences for built our personal and social identity (nationals- forgings; black - white; rich - poor; men - women....)

The solution is not to create a supra-group, but to understand differences and create options to work and live together, even if difference.

@Carlos

Real life carries the noble virtues of tolerance and mutual respect. Those who suggest that reality is other than what it is, are those who develop practices and behaviours that run countercurrent with the evolution of civilised behaviour. Indeed you seem to assert that social psychology aims to stregthen the divide between cultures and people. Social psychology does not aim to explain collective behaviour. Psychology is fundamentally a branch of science that aims to understand individual behaviour. An any attempt to generalise to the collectives is an atomistic fallacy. This means that it is not possible to aggregate the behaviour of individuals to the behaviours of groups.

Social psychology theories are specifically focused and not general. So I remain greatly surprised at the attempt to make general statements from it!

I'm not totally agree with your definition of social psychology... but that's another topic. However, in my humble opinion, the time that social psychology (and psychology in general) explains just individual behaviour (without his social and intergroup context) its quite old.

I didn't tell that social psychology try to justify the differences between groups, but that social psychology try to explain why it exist. I'm sorry but even if I wish, I don't know a single culture where tolerance and mutual respect are true for everybody, no matter their group belonging.

All that, make me think that values are not as universal as you propose... values are social constructions and, in that way, it can change across cultures...; that why it is impossible to make psychology without culture/social considerations

Of course Values are culturally contingent, this is not what I am claiming. The point is to embrace difference with an open heart, not categorise people -as you said earlier- on the basis of their origins. Preaching difference and putting people in box does not help anyone. As a matter of fact, it backfires as far as social stability is concerned. Thank you.

Thanks Ida for your elaborate answer.

European leaders during recent years officially declared that multiculturalism have failed.

German chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday 17 October 2010 addresses young members of Christian Democratic Union party saide: "This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed,"

Nicolas Sarkozy on 11 Feb 2011declared multiculturalism had failed.

Prime Minister David Cameron on junary pronounced his country's long-standing policy of multiculturalism a failure, Mr. Cameron Speaking at a security conference in Munich on February 4, 2011 said the multiculturalism policy — one espoused by British governments since the 1960s, based on the principle of the right of all groups in Britain to live by their traditional values — had failed.

Deae  Francesca,

I find it interesting that you associate culture and religion. Though, in my view you do point ot the exception rather than the rule. However, what can be observed is certainly a great discontent and feeling of insecurity amongst endogenous European cultures in the face of the European integration efforts as well as globalisation. It would be interesting to see what are the views in this regard.

 Of course it has failed, but keep in mind that one cannot understand multiculturalism without connecting this policy to mass immigration into Europe, and all Western countries. Mass immigration is a phenomenon taking place only in Western countries, and multiculturalism, with an ism is the corresponding ideology that rationalizes mass immigration. Even if you have mass immigration without multiculturalism, the ideology of multiculturalism will emerge, as people from non-European lands will never assimilate to European cultures when they come in large numbers.

So the question should be: is the policy of accepting hordes of Africans and Muslims into Europe working? No; consider, for starters, the rape epidemics introduced into England, Sweden, Norway, and other European nations by African and Muslim immigrants. Just Google "Rape by Muslim or Pakistani gangs in England". In town after town in England girls are being systematically rape by Pakistanis. Sweden used to have next to no rape, but now it has one of the highest rape incidents in the world!

Here is one source among hundreds: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5386/british-girls-raped-oxford

Moreover, what benefit can Europeans get from bringing people from failed nations and cultures? Why are Europeans the only ones called racist if they don't accept hordes of Africans, but Asian countries with very low fertility rates don't allow immigrants? In fact, no country in the world outside the West has open border policies. If they have multiculturalism it is to deal with their own historic minorities. 

Ida's reference to the "cultural genocide" of Natives in Canada is a standard trope in academia to silence any criticism of immigration, as if Natives are benefiting from mass immigration from Asia and Africa, when they well know that these immigrants don't feel any obligations to them, that they come from cultures where exploitation of natives is standard practice to this day, as in China's treatment of Tibetans and Uighurs. Why would Chinese treat Canadian natives better than they treat their own natives?

The fact is that Whites have treated their minorities better than any other race on this planet, and that only European nations developed liberal democratic institutions and that there are no examples in history of liberalism outside the West unless it was brought by the West; and there are no examples of multi-racial societies that are liberal. Europe's liberal institutions developed in very racially homogeneous states. 

The claim that Europe was always multicultural is a falsehood spread by the corporate and leftist world to brainwash European natives into accepting mass immigration and invasion by Africans and Muslims. Take Canada, as of 1971, when multiculturalism was introduced, 96% of the population was ethnically European; the entire country was created by Europeans, and Europeans were not immigrants but nation builders and pioneers. This is confirm by the historical record. 

Here is how we should reason about the migrant crisis:

The Truth About the Migrant Crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BDqzmG-rH8

Dear Katerina,

Thanks for enritching this discussion with your inputs. I just wanted to add that mass migration is not relevant to Europe alone. Some countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, Malaysia, South Africa, Australia, Canada...etc have immigration policies that not only work, but add significant value to the local culture and economy. The proportion of immigrant populations in the former countries exceeds 50%...and there is no disruptio to the social or cultural order.

However, to remain focused on Europe, considering socio-economic background needs a bit more clarity. Perhaps you mean to say socio-professional background ?

In my view, this argument hints that european society is hemogeneous. In other words, all social strata are equal. Is it really the case in Europe? What happens when an Indian surgeon is recruited in the UK to work in a hospital? what would be his socioeconomic background ?

I think yes. Multiculturalism is about tolerance, which today has lost the boundaries of discursiveness. What is called tolerance today is no longer tolerance at all, but a tool for promoting one's own interests. Contemporary European multiculturalism is politicized tolerance.

Very interesting discussion. I am slightly more optimistic. I would argue that, as a general trend, European societies are more multicultural and diverse today than in the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's etc. Of course, this generates a more fierce reaction from some parts of the society and some political circles. At least, this is my impression.