Minorities and Migrants: ‘models’ of multiculturalism in Europe and Canada

In order to understand multiculturalism, both national and immigrant minorities have to be considered. Societies are normally plural, what means that they are multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, multi-religious, before the project of constructing a nation-State produces cultural internal homogenisation. Any debate on multiculturalism must take into account this “typical European invention” represented by nations and nation-states. The main character of the nation-state consists in a specific way to deal with internal diversity and foreign countries Nations and nation-states show a great ambivalence in relationship to diversity: on one side, nation-states exasperate differences at the “horizontal” level that means, among them (opposing strongly to the other nation-states beyond the borders); on the other side, they want to eliminate all differences at the “vertical” level, that is, internal diversity. The distinction that Will Kymlicka makes, between multicultural societies that are “multinational” -because of national minorities- and societies, which are “polyethnic” -because of immigrants- (, is extremely useful to question the usual politics of the nation-states in front of differences, that is their attempts to build linguistic and cultural homogenisation. This approach allows the rejection of the simplistic discourse that considers “cultural difference” as the barrier to immigrant minorities’ integration.