Search

It may be the case that all of the attempted models of integration are in crisis. We can, however, have a better sense of what the issues are if, firstly, we recognize that discourses on integration and multiculturalism are exercises in conceptualising post-immigration difference and, as such, operate at three distinct levels: as (implicit) sociology, as a political response, and as a vision of what is the whole in which difference is to be integrated. The term "difference" primarily refers to the way people are identified, how they identify themselves, how they identify others, and how others identify them. I suggest some possible scenarios after having identified "group difference" as the main concept for understanding the normative guidelines and their implicit sociology, assimilation, individualist-integration, cosmopolitanism, and multiculturalism. Each mode offers a different approach to freedom, equality, and civic unity. The enlargement, hyphenation, and internal pluralizing of national identities is essential to an integration in which all citizens have not just rights, but also a sense of belonging to the whole as well as to their own "little platoon". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]