Multiculturality And Inter-Cultural Concepts

4. The multi- and inter-cultural concepts

Multiculturality and multiculturalism are two different notions that designate different social realities. While the former refers to “the cohabitation of different cultures in one society, within the borders of a modern State” (loose translation, Anderson 105), the latter appertains to an inclusive diversity management model based on recognition or encouragement of cultural difference rather than assimilation (Vermeulen 7). This distinction is important to keep in mind because of both of these notions are often used under the same token ‘multiculturalism’ (in English).

Another pair of concepts that developed parallel to multiculturalism are ‘interculturality’ and ’interculturalism’. Interculturality

But with globalisation developed a voluntary intercultural perspective, namely in fields such as international relations, business, immigration… (Demorgon 1). Imported from North America, the inter-cultural concepts have been firstly used in Europe in the 70’s with the official end of labour immigration (Varro 1). Immigrations for family reunification superseded labour immigrations, generating new challenges such as the schooling of the immigrant children (Martiniello and Rea 2013:21-25). In 1976, a resolution from the European Community Council of Ministers advocated specific measures in favour of the migrant workers and their families (Varro 1). The notion of interculturality designated all of the measures devoted to the interaction between social actors that belong to different cultural or linguistic background (Bourse 2008) (e.g. the ‘intercultural activities’ organised in French elementary schools in 1978 (Varro 1)). Conversely to multiculturality that refers to a state of affairs, interculturality operates an (inter)action and focusses on the individual rather than on the group. It implies a reflexive thought on one’s own culture as well as the other’s culture. As such, interculturality refers to the way one conceives the Other and the way he/she perceives himself/herself through this otherness (Bourse

Interculturality

In the corpus, ‘intercultural’ and ‘interculturality’ are few mentioned (in 4 out of 47 articles) and exclusively used by the institution of Saint-Josse. Their contexts involve systematically a relation to otherness. For instance, in the article n°14 to which we has just referred in the previous section, the deputy of Saint-Josse designates Belgium as an intercultural mosaic and advocates some intercultural activities to foster social cohesion:

The Other is here the Moroccan and Turkish communities, ‘but also all the communities’. Likewise, the article about the anniversary of Moroccan and Turkish immigration celebrate the intercultural wealth of Saint-Josse:

In the following article about Early-childhood, the Other is vaguely designated as ‘from an immigrant background’:

In this last excerpt, the institution of Saint-Josse describes a culinary activity organised to encounter the Other. The Other is no more named when overtly