Summary of february 2001
"Migrations and multicultural citizenship"

by Karine Boyer
(Facilitator of the topic)

The notion of "multicultural citizenship".

°°° Abstract: The notion of "multicultural citizenship" was challenged by your contributions. °°°

There is no general agreement on the title of our work group "multicultural citizenship"!
As the first word refers to a legal concept and the other to a social concept, it seems necessary to you to dissociate the two words.

A long discussion on the semantics of the term multiculturalism, used since the recent migrations, was launch.

The reality of this notion would encourage the affirmation and the exaggeration of the cultural differences between the groups while concealing the individual's ethnic-based plurality. Opening the way to the communalism and to its excesses (monolithic ethnic-based demand, withdrawing into oneself, indifference towards the other...), this model would push to the "ethnicisation" of the social questions which would put in danger, eventually, the social cohesion.

The children resulting from immigration, simultaneously similar and different from the "natives" are the first to suffer from an identity prescribed by the outside: this ethnic-based hindrance is at the origin of a real feeling of exclusion or a fantasy. Multiculturalism can take on a meaning of a non hindrance to the ethnic-based affirmation of the individuals. To live in a more satisfactory and sustainable way together, it is needed to look for a balance between diversity and cultural universalism. The human rights, horizon toward which every culture must tend, must be recognized as a reference point allowing to reach it.

In my message to come on the "new leads of discussion", I will propose you to consider the notion of multicultural citizenship under another angle: the one of intercultural citizenship.

My next message will be dedicated to the causes of the migrations toward Europe and on the opening of the borders.

The migrations: the causes of the departure and the opening of the borders.

°°° Abstract: The migrations are linked for a large part to economic and political reasons simultaneously in the North and in the South. These are the same reasons that hinder the opening of the borders! °°°

Fantasies, fears, irrational elements, false ideas get in the way of the good understanding of the reality of the migrations and hinder the setting up of a fair and efficient policy.

The causes of the departure.

In the context facilitating globalization, the migrations (as a majority being South/South and not South/North) are motivated by the deplorable economic and political conditions in the countries of departure, linked in part to the models of development to which they are imposed. The need of less expensive manpower by the employers-profiteers of the North, under the accomplice look of the governments which refusing to regularize them, encourages their exploitation, is also an explanation for departure.

The reassuring argument, still existing, on the application of the rights: the police controls are more numerous than those of the work inspectors. It seems that there is a confusion in the identification of the guilty parties!

The inconsistency of the counter-arguments to the opening of the borders.

The departure, allowed with only the possession of an identification card, is free but, on the contrary, it is at the arrival that a visa is asked for. This closing of the borders, symbolic of the national sovereignty is, in the facts, an illusion. Too often the economic arguments act as alibi to this closing. Some preconceptions circulate on the interrelationship existing between the rates of immigration and unemployment although no survey has demonstrated it. Same thing about the immigrants who are considered like a supplementary cost for the social protective system whereas they contribute and pay more for the taxes compare to the benefits they perceive.

In my next message, I will summarize your very numerous contributions concerning the right to vote of the non community foreigners in Europe.

The migrations: the right to vote of the non community members in Europe.

°°° Abstract: In the framework of the European Union, the citizenship has been dissociated of the nationality only for the nationals of the EU, entailing situations of discrimination for the nationals out of EU. The possibility to vote for them was one of the points that you have the most discussed on.°°°

While dissociating the citizenship of the nationality, the article 8 of the Maastricht treaty opened a constitutional breach. The nationals of the EU established in other countries of the EU than their original countries have the right thus to vote in the municipal and European elections: the European nationality leads to the European citizenship. The nationals of a third country (out of the European Union) to whom the host country didn't granted this right (Austria, France, Spain, Portugal) are then victims of discrimination. In spite of the fact that the right to vote concerns a fundamental right (reference to the human rights) and that a foreigner has the same rights and duties than any European living on the French territory. The Maastricht treaty in asking for no criteria (degree of integration, seniority of residence...) to reach the right to vote makes obsolete all the arguing against the discussion on the right to vote to the foreign residents.

So the citizenship of residence is a matter for a major political challenge. The question that arises then is the choice of the moment of its acquisition.
According to the determination of the European countries, the conditions required for the obtaining of the right to vote vary. For a lot of you, one of the criteria for acquiring it is the desire manifested by the national out of EU when they want to be included in the electoral lists. This action is perceived as the proof of integration and the sign of implication in the political life of the country where they live.

However some among you consider that before obtaining the right to vote, the most important for the improvement of the living environment of the foreigners is to help them, to encourage them to be organized into organization in order to be able to tie a dialogue with the whole society.

My next and last message of summary will concern new possible discussion leads.

New possible discussion leads.

°°° Abstract: In order to consider other subjects or to enrich some of it, I propose new possible discussion leads. Besides, at the light of your contributions, I believe that it is necessary to modify the "multicultural citizenship" notion to adopt the one of "intercultural citizenship." °°°

Like you, it seems important to me to go back and solve the expression "multicultural citizenship."

We saw that the dissociation between citizenship and nationality is necessary. In these conditions, the citizenship is an element of the "living together" in European societies, in fact, multicultural. It is to say that they contain in there bosom several or multiple cultures. But the term of multiculturalism do not specified anything on the relations between the cultures, unlike the term " intercultural" which highlight the effective interaction between the cultures and the influence that it exercise one on the other. According to the pursued aims, the intercultural citizenship notion could be a more appropriates title for our work group.

Here are some questions which, I hope, will orient our discussion toward concrete proposals:

1. What methodology should be used to concretely encourage the dialogue between people of different culture and to reach an intercultural society?

2. How to transform the negative image that the Europeans have of immigration? On what arguments, others that economical, it is necessary to rely to get the best out of the potential of enrichment that immigration represents for the host country?

3. What do we mean precisely by opening of the borders (partial, total opening, etc.) ? What quantitative and qualitative criteria do these choices justify?

4. Is the freedom of organization enough for citizens participation of the foreign residents? What more brings the right to vote?

5. Is the determination manifested by the foreign resident to vote enough to grant it to them?
Is there a risk of instrumentalisation of a community for political reasons?

6. The emotional and symbolic responsibility as well as the institutional skills are not the same depending on the elections (municipal, regional, national, European), what is the level of relevance of the right to vote of the foreigners?