European
Union, Islam & the Challenges of
Multiculturalism:
Rethinking the
Problematique*
Sami
ZEMNI & Christopher PARKER
Center For Third World
Studies/Middle East Institute
Ghent University, Belgium
I
Accompanying the accelerated drive toward
European Union (EU) integration and expansion has been an effort to
construct and promote a concept of common European identity and
culture. More specifically, it has been posited that European
national cultures share a common essence, or values set—e.g. democracy,
tolerance, respect for human rights, etc.—that allow the continent’s
national communities/polities to collaborate within a coherent European
civilizational constellation. The underlying premise has been
summed up in the
Charter of European Identity:
“Europe is above all a community of
values. The aim of unification is to realize, test, develop
and safeguard these values. They are rooted in common legal
principles acknowledging the freedom of the individual and social
responsibility. Fundamental European values are based on
tolerance, humanity and fraternity. Building on its
historical roots in classical antiquity and Christianity, Europe
further developed these values during the course of the renaissance,
the Humanist movement, and the Enlightenment, which led in turn to the
development of democracy, the recognition of fundamental and human
rights, and the rule of law.” (n.p.)
These values are presented as growing organically
and inevitably out of a uniquely European history. It is
taken for granted that European national cultures have been
fundamentally shaped by this history.
Reference to local European cultures within the
context of EU integration serves to ease public and political anxiety
regarding the pace and uncertain consequences of rapid political and
economic union. It ameliorates feelings of loss of control by
the European citizen. It creates the link of
equivalence between local identities and the grand project; to be
Flemish, for example, is to be European, and thus to have a culturally
grounded link with the above mentioned values. The European
identity is in turn linked to the project of EU integration, thus
completing the circle. At a time when political and economic
rules of the game are being changed through and in support of the
process of EU integration and expansion, the references to culture lend
the project a mantle of stability and continuity. This
construction of a “multicultural Europe” has thus become an ideological
cornerstone of European integration. It lends the project its
aura of teleological fulfillment, its universal pretensions, and its
moral veneer. It sets the ideological framework for inclusion
and, significantly, for exclusion. Indeed, inasmuch as other
cultures / civilizational projects contain these quintessentially
European values, it is seen as largely by virtue of proximity to and
interaction with Europe.
It must be noted up front that in spite of its
universalist and essentialist claims, the European multiculturalist
vision serves specific interests that limit the meanings that can be
attached to it. It is a notion de-legitimizing local
opposition to the frictionless movement of capital and goods across the
continent; it protects European labor and farmers against the proximity
of cheap labor/production in Europe’s periphery; and it offers capital
an ever more efficient political base from which to exploit this
proximity. Accordingly, after the collapse of the
Soviet Bloc, it was the economically interesting countries (e.g.
Hungary, The Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia) that were eligible for
inclusion in the Union. The ideological legitimation of this enterprise
was based on the so-called existence of ‘Central Europe.’ Detrez has
shown how this idea of Central Europe was created during the eighties
by and around well-known intellectuals and writers such as Konrad and
Kundera (Detrez). The idea was given a new content in the
1990s. Central Europe became the ‘natural’ extension of the
European Union as it shared those cherished values of tolerance,
democracy and freedom.
The concealment of the economic logic behind
European expansion is not the work of a ‘conspiracy’ of managers,
bankers or industry lobbies. It is the outcome of the late capitalist
logic at work in a context of globalisation where the economy is seen
as a value-free field responding automatically to the wants and needs
of the people. As capitalism is unquestioned, (there is no compelling
“European” alternative at hand), it seems that critical people have
engaged in the outlet of the fight for multiculturalism, the right(s)
and protection of cultural differences. Of course these two enterprises
are dialogical, as the growing success of cultural discourses (on
religion, identity, ethnicity, local community, etc.) covers up and
gives credentials to the idea of the ‘neutrality of
capitalism’.
The Union posited three basic conditions for
membership: European identity, democratic status and respect for human
rights (Delgado-Morieras). The vagueness and abstract character of
these conditions make them very malleable instruments of
policy. In any case, European culture is reduced to those
histories, myths, ideas and patterns of expression that justify and
promote the economic and political project of European
integration. That fascist or military regimes held power in
current European Union (EU) states such as Greece, Spain and Portugal
as late as the 1970s can be excused by the mythmakers as an aberration,
not recent takes on an essentially European theme. Indeed,
bringing these three nations into the EU was seen as an important
obligation aimed at nurturing their “truer European essence.”
This can be viewed in contrast to the EU’s stance toward Turkey, which
has been excluded in spite of its intensive campaign for
membership. While European leaders do have objective and
legitimate concerns about practices of the Kemalist state, the
underlying tone of the European discussion about Turkey’s membership is
that the Turks are culturally “not up to it.” In other words,
the repressive and exclusivist practices of the Turkish state are not
mere slips on the path toward the fulfillment of the European
enlightenment project, but reflect a fundamental incomprehension of
it. Eastern Europe, on the other hand, became an ideal
vantage-point for the European Union to see itself as an idealized,
loveable entity.
II
Against this
backdrop, Islam has been reconstructed in the European discourse as
something of an “anti-Europe:” a civilizational concept diametrically
opposed and potentially in conflict with that of Europe. The
Iranian revolution, the Rushdie affair, the surge of Islamist
inspired anti-occupation and anti-regime militancy, the authoritarian
Arab regimes themselves, the rise of the Taliban: all have been held up
as examples of a fundamentally different cultural dynamic and
trajectory. That the dynamics underpinning these phenomena
are in fact strongly inter-related to and share interdependence with
the European and global systems is not considered. For
example, the thought that Islamist movements are challenging not the
capitalist system per se, but rather the distribution of resources and
power within that system is ideologically difficult to consider, given
the current hegemonic notion of capitalism’s neutrality. The
notion that violence in Europe’s periphery is ethnic or cultural
conceals the possibility that many current conflicts might represent
the instrumentalization of violence in ways that afford new actors
relatively efficient access to this capitalist system. Add to
this the European and US support for authoritarian regimes that protect
their economic interests, and phenomenon like the Cold War inspired US
support for Afghani mujahidin, and one clearly problematizes the
intellectual construction of exceptionalism and uniqueness.
In any case,
that the supposed cultural differences have the potential to express
themselves in conflict with Europe—a notion most prominently expressed
through Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis—has taken a
strong hold in European political discourse and popular
consciousness. For example, in the early 1990s, Willy Claes,
the then NATO secretary-general, pinpointed ‘Islamic fundamentalism’[1]
as the new threat to Europe. As the former enemy had disappeared, NATO
had to look for a new scapegoat. It is beyond the scope of
this paper to challenge the assumptions of this thesis in detail.
Suffice it to say that the notion is based on a large degree of Western
self-idealization. It also elevates culture to the status of
independent actor in political and social processes (i.e. it supports
the notion that the decisions that lead to conflict are not rational
considerations of structural opportunities and constraints, but the
inevitable outcome of a cultural logic). It grounds itself in a rather
superficial reading of the empirical dynamics and interests that
motivate actors and drive conflict. But problematic though
these assumptions might be, they have profoundly influenced the
dominant discourse of European cultural exceptionalism.
That Europe’s
immediate periphery is populated by Muslims, and that this periphery
has contributed strongly to the significant increase in migration to
Europe over the past decade (reaching a highpoint in 2000 and early
2001) has allowed this subjective discourse to take shape against
events in the real world. Public and political
anxieties—justified or not—have been given a palpable focus.
Most significantly for the focus of this essay, there has been a strong
tendency to express these anxieties not in terms of the challenges that
this migration poses in terms of humanitarian assistance (i.e. finding
shelter and jobs), but in terms referring to a supposed threat
migration poses to local European cultures, and to the grand European
cultural values in general. The expression of suspicions
and/or anxieties in terms that highlight a supposed challenge or threat
to parochial identities and norms are legitimate, (as long as they are
not expressed in violent or overtly racist terms), because the
particular local culture is logically seen as the bulwark against the
threat to the European idea as a whole.
III
This brings us to a second arena in which the
concept of multiculturalism has been applied and contested—the
perceived failure of migrants/immigrants of non-European origin to
integrate into host societies. The
social construction of the migrant—and the Muslim migrant in
particular—as a problematic participant in European social and
political life has occurred against the backdrop of two objective
demographic movements during the last half-century. The first
is the migration of laborers and their families from developing
countries to fill low wage jobs in European economies between the early
1950s, when migration was encouraged, and the 1970s, when economic
downturns led most European states to impose immigration
stops. The second trend regards the dramatic increase in the
numbers of people fleeing conflict and/or political and economic
insecurity in their home countries and arriving in Western Europe since
the end of the Cold War.
By the mid 1980s, observers looking into the
phenomena of migration and settlement began referring to “the realities
of a multicultural Europe.” This did not refer to the
positive interaction of distinct communities in a common project, but
rather the challenge or threat posed by apparent inability of immigrant
groups to “get ahead” in the European context. In the
political discourse that has emerged since the late-1980s, this
apparent failure to integrate has been viewed in cultural terms—i.e. as
a failure to adopt styles and practices of daily life considered
compatible with the norms of hegemonic national cultures.
Furthermore, while in the 1970s the Other was a guest-worker from
Turkey, Morocco or Algeria, today they are all Muslims. The shift in
this image is synchronic with the advent of Islamist movement in the
Arab World and the world political scene. Suddenly, Islam was something
in movement, something in resurgence or revival. Migrants, whose
‘problems’ had been seen as a consequence of their low socio-economic
status during decades, were now perceived as ‘culturally different’.
Through this ‘intellectual operation’ the whole debate on ‘communalism’
gained prominence. By de-linking the migrant from
nationality, and linking her/him onto a civilizational/cultural matrix,
it became possible to problematize the migrant’s presence without
appearing prejudiced, but indeed with the pretense of defending
European values. The Individual Other seemed to disappear, as
he was being revamped as a mere component of a community. The
foreigner/stranger is repatriated into his group of origin whether he
likes it or not.
The notion that
the migrant is engaged in and responding to a variety of sociological
processes that influence attitudes and choices is generally considered
of secondary significance, if it is considered at all. The
debate on Islam is couched in cultural terms and not in terms of flows
of migration, societal discrimination or class politics. Indeed, the
assumptions underpinning what is really meant by the notion of
integration are rarely questioned or challenged.[2] That
this observation arose against the backdrop of the current European
project is probably not coincidental. It seems clear that
these two discourses have fused and interacted in ways that reinforce a
notion of culture as a primary determinant of political behavior, and
which take for granted that different cultures represent fundamentally
fixed, closed and opposing visions of social and political life.[3]
Consequently, embedded within this discourse is a suspicion that the
migrant—being essentially determined by his or her culture of origin—is
inherently incapable of meeting and respecting the demands and
responsibilities of citizenship in the “secular” European state.
Thus, to the problematique of
“Islam and Europe” discussed above, one can add the
socially constructed problematique of “Islam in
Europe.” The construction of this discourse at both levels
profoundly influences the way European publics and policy makers view
and interact with Europe’s Muslim communities, and have real
consequences for the Muslims themselves. These consequences
have implications for how Muslim immigrants/migrants perceive the
possibility and desirability of broader civic participation.
In particular, the way in which the discourse might acutally legitimize
certain discriminatory practices puts the migrant in a socially
defensive position.
Methodologically, there is a real problem with the assumptions of the
problematique becoming self-fulfilling. For
example, one never asks whether or not the Muslim migrant whose social
and political engagement / awareness does not extend far beyond the
horizons of his neighborhood and family is really fundamentally “less
integrated” than the Flemish inhabitant of a working class neighborhood
whose horizons similarly do not extend too far beyond the local
pub. The question of integrated into what?, and how?, seldom
arises. Of course, given the hegemonic nature of the
discourse of European identity, the observer is equally disinclined to
analyze the Flemishs’s tendency to vote for the extreme right Flemish
Bloc party in terms of trends in Catholic thought that had a strong
hold in Flanders around the turn of the last century, or in terms of
post-Enlightenment romanticism of the nation—a uniquely European
contribution to the history of ideas and conflict. Similarly,
the idea that Islam can actually contribute to the migrant’s potential
for a constructive and peaceful social and civic life in the host
state—while explored and confirmed in some scholarly research—is not
even considered in the mainstream of social and political
discourse. That “Islam in Europe” poses a “problem” for, or
“challenge” to, European norms (both as bearers of alternative values,
and as provocateurs of Europe’s fascist and rightist inclinations) is
simply taken for granted.
IV
The notion of the Muslim as cultural provocateur
is apparent in daily life and in policy discourse. While
immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America are perhaps viewed
as refugees from an artifact culture aspiring towards European cultural
norms, Muslims are often seen as unwilling to adopt dominant styles and
rituals. European policy makers and publics have read
fundamental rejection into these differences in style. The
European worker who takes a five minute break to smoke a cigarette is
exercising a right and is not seen as disrupting the workplace, while
the request of a Muslim for a five minute break for prayers is
dramatized and seen as problematic. Furthermore, non-Muslim migrants
have been regulated by and interact with the state as
individuals. Due to both the structural circumstances of
their migrations, and the assumption of policy makers about their
communities, European states have tended to interact and attempt to
regulate people of Muslim origin with reference to groups, often in
cooperation with the migrants’ country of origin.
Although it would seem very important to try and
understand “the problem of integration” with reference to the variety
of processes and situations within which Muslims in Europe engage in
the politics and decision making of daily life, this is very rarely
done in practice. Indeed, as suggested in the above
discussion, the very ways in which we think about what integration
means and how it is constituted is problematic. Is the 20
percent of the Flemish population that voted for the right wing Flemish
Bloc party in recent elections un-integrated? Perhaps this is
indeed the case, depending on the criteria used. The point
emphasized here, however, is that it is too often taken for granted
that “integration” is a self-evident and easy to grasp concept, when in
fact it is a very subjectively constituted concept. Indeed, as self-respecting democracies cannot
pass racist laws, they are not keen on proposing any substantial
criteria that could be enforced through law.[4] The fact is
that positing criteria would lead also to the possibility of using
these criteria to check “the Flemish-ness of a person of Flemish
origin” or the “Belgian-ness of a ‘native’ Belgian”. Fortunately, this
seems ludicrous to most of the autochthonous population as
well. In practice, integration refers first and foremost to
the conditions that migrants have to fulfill in order to benefit from
their presence in European societies. It is a politically
constructed and politically contested concept; there are no “objective”
criteria attached to it.
Talking about integration also makes it easier on
the autochthonous population to bypass the structures of
racism. Defining Europe along the idealized lines discussed
above makes it possible to see multiculturalism as generic part of its
identity. Multiculturalism becomes self-validating in the sense that is
not conceptualized as a ‘societal project to be constructed’ but as an
element that has always been part of the European identity. Thus, if
there are ‘cultural tensions’ within society (whether they take a
religious or ethnic form) it is easy to pinpoint the ‘Other’ as a cause
of these conflicts. If we are multicultural and there still persist
some conflict, this means that the Other has not adapted himself to
European culture. The debates are formulated in such a way that the
Muslim communities should integrate into multicultural reality and if
they do not succeed than this has something to do with ‘their
culture’. It is the Other that has to ‘assimilate’ things,
and in evaluating “assimilation,” stylistic differences are often
elevated to crucial ideological distinctions. The consequence is that
the Other, and especially the Muslim, can be easily seen – instead as a
victim of discrimination – as an offender, as the provocateur of
Euro-racism. Remi Hauman, a Belgian orientalist has no qualms writing
in a mainstream and largely diffused daily: “With Islam an
intolerant worldview has penetrated our societies and is nourishing
intolerant groups from within our ranks (the Flemish Bloc)”
and “The sometimes nagging mentality [of Muslims] can annoy
some people and is the basis on which the extreme-right prospers”.
(Hauman, 17) Islam is problematic even as a subaltern[5]
feature of the “ideal” European landscape.
V
It is here again a notion of Islam, and not the
individual Muslim, that is the presumed actor on the social and
political stage. The above mentioned mechanisms make clear
that the debate is structured around the key concept Islam much more
than around Muslims. The agency of Muslims seems to disappear
underneath the leaden weight of a ‘cultural system’ that conditions,
regulates and explains all behaviour of Muslims. “When it has the
occasion it [Islam] tends automatically to absolute domination and is
therefore undemocratic” (Hauman, 17). Hauman should review
the histories of the French Revolution, the Inquisition, Zionism, and
nationalism, etc to see that the same is true of any ideological
tendency. In any case, Islam becomes the
actor in this line of thinking. It is not Muslims who produce
their history, but Islam that conditions the behaviour and identity of
Muslims. In the end a Muslim is reduced to an automaton,
endlessly perpetuating the religious prescriptions of Islam.
The structural weight accorded or ascribed to Islam stands in sharp
contrast with the individualism attributed to ‘European attitudes’.
The problem of domestic violence, for example,
clearly illustrates this differential approach. When a Belgian man is
accused of beating his spouse, he is negatively judged by society. His
violence is seen as a personal flaw. People try to understand his
behaviour by looking for reasons that could account for it. Maybe he
was himself a beaten child, maybe the family had financial problems,
etc. When a person from Muslim background is accused of the same thing
however, this contextualization disappears. The beating of a
wife is explained through Islam, and reference can always be made to
one or the other Koranic verse that “proves” the deterministic relation
between religion and the specific action. The difference in approach is
very important for the European self-image. Domestic violence is seen
as the outcome of deviant individual behaviour, and not as the outcome
of structural and/or cultural features of European civilization. The
same mechanism is at work in the analyses of racism. Racism is
understood as obnoxious behaviour but not as a structural feature of
Europe[6].
The sense that the growing visibility of Islam in
Europe—i.e. the publication of Islam; its entrance into the public
sphere—somehow poses a threat rather than a “normal” interest based
mobilization in a pluralist society seems clearly related to the rise
of the European culturalist paradigm. The growing societal demands of
Muslims are not seen as evidence that Muslims feel at home in Europe
and that they want to find their place within these societies. Instead,
the demands for the building of mosques, the possibility of eating
hallal food in schools, or the introduction of certain religious
holidays is seen as a threat to European civilization or a danger for
secular democracy.
VI
European states react to and deal with Muslims in
different ways. Many “Islamic” organizations are regulated by European
states in collusion with relevant ministries in a migrants country of
origin (a fact that should certainly be considered in evaluations of
integration processes and their meanings).[7] The
strength of individual organizations, their commitment to lobbying, an
organization’s specific policies concerning the ‘integration’ of
Muslims, the presence of stronger or weaker xenophobic political
parties, colonial histories, the accessibility of citizenship are only
some of the contextual factors that influence the relationship between
migrants and host European states. Today, one can say that
the policy decisions surrounding regulation is situated within a
“post-political” context. Slavoj Zizek has defined
post-politics as the situation in which
“the conflict between the ideological
world-visions—as embodied in different parties that are in competition
over the exercise of power—is being replaced by the cooperation of
enlightened technocrats (economists, opinion polls, etc) and liberal
multiculturalists. This leads to compromises that are
attained by way of negotiation and the watching of interests, and that
are presented as more or less a universal consensus”
(Zizek, 25)
With the watering down of ideological positions,
Islam has assumed the role of an issue around which parties can
generate political distinctions, and mobilize public anxieties in the
service of getting votes. Barry Buzan argues that a ‘societal
Cold War’ between Islam and Europe is in fact functional for the latter
as it would serve to strengthen European identity at a crucial time for
its ongoing unification. Etienne Balibar comes to the same conclusion
when he states that the ‘immigrant’ (not only the Muslim) is by
definition a ‘second class citizen’ because while the “real” content of
European identity is increasingly taken for granted, immigrants are
excluded from full inclusion in the Union they are helping to build. As
Delgado-Moreira argues, the construction of a European
identity is neglecting the cultural demands of the minorities within
the member-states and fails to produce a pluralist reading of identity.
For politicians, politics is ultimately the game
of getting elected and getting re-elected. When in power, politicians
try to hegemonize their analyses and solutions of the situation.
Multiculturalism has become a key “empty signifier” that is
consistently used to legitimate European democracies. Empty
signifier here refers to a term or notion that can acquire, or be
filled with, various meanings and contents according to the interests
of those who invoke it, and according to understandings of the
structural and discursive contexts within which it is invoked. Culture
as political agent and determinant of relevant and legitimate political
difference, and multiculturalism in particular, have become paradigms
accepted by most actors in the mainstream political spectrum, even if
there are debates over the limits and precise content of the
concept. While a monoculturalist notion of polity can
traditionally be attributed to conservative and rightist European
political movements, the culturalist tendency—in its multiculturalist
expression—now predominates at the left and center of the political
spectrum as well. Even most mainstream European conservative
parties have adopted the multiculturalist discourse (Britain being a
notable exception). The far right political parties, on the
other hand are very clear in rejecting multiculturalism, and tend to be
situated between the monocultural positions of traditional European
national conservatism (which accepted that other races could join the
polity if they adopted national “norms, beliefs, and practices”) and
outright racism. They oppose the idea of peacefully living
together with different ‘cultural’ communities and perceive the
stranger as a danger for romantically understood national
community. Alternatively, the Other is seen as a threat to
one’s own culture and/or personal economic security.
Officially, this rejection of multiculturalism is not a publicly lauded
discourse.
However, even those parties who on the surface
would seem to have the most inclusive and open understanding of the
multicultural idea in fact maintain the mechanism of cultural
exceptionalism in thought, and, it must be said, in practice.
While the far-right is trying to control Islam by ‘getting rid of it’,
the others are trying to control it by pushing forward their ‘own
Islam’. Blommaert and Verscheuren (1992), for example, have shown how
several Belgian governmental institutions, NGOs and intellectuals are
pushing forward an agenda that clearly tries to shape Islam and Muslims
the way they want them to be.
Muslims are hardly
heard in this debate in spite of the fact that a growing elite within
European Muslim communities is steadily growing and engaging in
intellectual work. The overrated threat of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ is
used as an easy excuse to lessen the influence of these voices as they
are not directly reflecting what “we” Europeans want to hear. The
project of debunking some of the multicultural discourse might just
depend in part on their ability to “rediscover” the politics at the
heart of the “problematique of Islam in Europe.”
VII.
The notion that Islam—in the form of Muslim
migrants/immigrants—poses a threat or challenge to European identity or
culture is largely a product of a discourse that has grown around
culture as a defining element of polity and international
relations. Somewhat ironically perhaps, this essay has
suggested that the notion of Islam/Muslims as a threat or challenge to
European identity and culture grows intrinsically out of the discourse
of European multiculturalism. It rounds off with four
concluding observations.
The discourse that has grown up around the idea
of integration into a multicultural Europe must also ultimately be
evaluated in its relation to more mundane issues of polity and
society. Ultimately, it is in the context of the
latter—buried in the accumulated politics and choices of daily
life—that meanings of the multiculturalist idea, and the implications
of its hegemony, can be explored with regard to understandings of
integration, and all that the term implies with regard to the rights
and obligations of Muslims living in Europe. “Foreigners” are
now a definitive part of European societies. Their social
position and access to civic participation must not be held hostage to
the methodological double standards, nor to the stylistic fetishes of
prevailing “national” norms, that characterize some applications of
culture within scholarly, political, and public discourses.
The problem with the communitarian thinking
embodied within the multicultural ideology is that it can never really
obtain what it is looking for: the combination of equality and
diversity. It has difficulty going beyond a perspective of
“separate but equal.” By locking the foreigner into a
presumed entity of origin (whether in terms of nationality, race,
religion, etc.), both the foreigner and the autochthon deny the
realities of interdependence that are not always so apparent on the
surface. It assumes that state, society, and the phenomenon
of culture in the broadest sense lack mechanisms that allow for
communication across stylistic and ritualistic distinctions of
particular cultures. It is misleading to see European
national communities as unified, single and homogenous entities that
are trying to secure their rightful place within a seemingly monolithic
European Union. The sheer diversity of languages, traditions, religions
and lifestyles within the Union are already an acknowledgement of a
pluralist Europe. For Muslim communities, the same argument
applies. As public discourses over-emphasize communal
essentialism[8],
particularly as applied to the relationship between the Muslim migrant
and Muslim communities, the danger that social and regulatory processes
conflate to create a “communitarian cage” into which all Muslims are
expected to fit becomes very real.
Similarly, the multicultural ideology engages in
the act of creating otherness in order to reaffirm the myth of European
tolerance. Indeed, extreme tolerance that comes with cultural
relativism encompasses the danger of seeing the Other as completely
different within his “communitarian cage”, and thus obliterating every
possible idea of universal humanity. The notion of authenticity as
expressed through group-identity is presented as the ultimate freedom.
This paradoxically means that tolerance can lead to its opposite: i.e.
the creation of incommensurable boundaries between “Us” and “Them”
(Finkielkraut). In the post-political context, this also serves to
generate and politicize the political distinctions that drive
mobilization—and that win votes—in an adversarial political system.
There is a potentially circular and self-fulfilling relationship
between the ideology as manifested in the practice and exercise of
public policy, and the processes that lead to an awareness of cultural
distinction as a problematic feature of the European social landscape.
Finally, the myth of a multicultural Europe needs
to be reexamined for the double standards that it sets, and the
discriminatory practices and standards that it established beneath the
veneer of “the noble project.” Insofar as multiculturalism
might offer useful perspectives on, and set an agenda within, a complex
European reality, it is a concept still awaiting definition.
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Update: 26 oktober 2005