Intercultural Dialogue: Visions of the Council of Europe and the European Commission for a Post-Multiculturalist Era

Intercultural Dialogue

Visions of the Council of Europe and the European Commission for a Post-Multiculturalist Era

Óscar García Agustín

Aalborg University - Denmark

Introduction: The post-multiculturalist era

Multiculturalism has been strongly contested in recent years, both in the academic literature (Joppke 2004; Modood 2007; Phillips 2007) and in the political sphere. European leaders such as David Cameron, Angela Merkel, and Nicolas Sarkozy have stated that multiculturalism has failed in their respective countries. While political debates continue in national arenas, there is an increasing convergence in integration policies at the European Union (EU) level.

In policy terms multiculturalism emphasizes the distinctiveness of ethnic, cultural and religious minorities whereas assimilationism does not recognise such differences and places the responsibility of integration on immigrants (Emerson 2011). Multiculturalism is being abandoned even in countries that once embraced it, such as England and the Netherlands, and very few countries aspire to an assimilationist approach to deal with cultural diversity (Watt 2006). Civic integration now seems to be the hegemonic integration model. Developed in countries such as Denmark, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, it consists of strengthening the obligations of immigrants and requiring them to learn the norms and values of the host society.

Another approach to integration in the post-multiculturalist era is interculturalism, which aims to establish a dialogue between coexisting cultures. Differences must be mitigated in order to eliminate conflicts and achieve harmonic relations between cultural groups (Megías Quirós 2008). Belgium, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden have adopted this approach for their integration policies in the form of intercultural dialogue (ICD), which combines social cohesion and emphasis on host country values with respect for diversity (ERICarts Institute 2008). Interest in ICD has increased in the last decade in international organizations such as the United Nations, the Council of Europe (CoE), and the EU. The EU's cultural policies in the 1990s have been criticized for lacking definition (Barnett 2001; Shore 2006). In the 2000s ICD became one of the main objectives of EU's cultural policies (Wilk-Wos 2010) but vagueness remains and a coherent policy has not been developed (De Kock 2010; Näss 2010).

In this article, I examine the significance of ICD at the European level and how it has developed in the CoE and in the European Commission (EC). The...