Empowering Interculturalism for a Europe in Crisis: new perspectives on encountering difference
1. Linguistic, Educational and Intercultural Research 2015
Vilnius University
17 September 2015
Dr. Alan Bruce
ULS
Dublin
2. Entering the time of Crisis
Globalization: the impact of change
Interculturalism and diversity
Culture and Identity: threat or opportunity?
Engaging with rights
3. How wrong can you get? Fukuyama and the
End of History (1992)
Sociologies of dislocation
The end of certainty: change or chaos?
Narratives of movement
Motivation: departing and arriving
European dimensions
4. • Accelerating and pervasive
• Meltdown and re-structuring since 2008
• Devaluation of the public sphere
• Stratification and inequity – issues of social justice
• Labor market transformation
• Mobile capital and global investment linkage
• Right to inclusion – token or real?
• Access, quality and innovation in education
• Generational demographics
5. End of stable socio-political norms
Uncertainty, fluid identity and unease
A world turned upside down
The poetry of quest – fromYeats to Kavafy
A deep shiver of guilt – what have we done?
What have we become?
The ghosts that will not rest
End of assumptions about European identity
6. Jena 1806: Phenomenology of Spirit
Philosophy meets History
Theory of the gaze - master-slave dialectic
Desire, struggle and recognition
The visibility of the Other
7. The old world is dying.
The new world struggles to be born.
Now is the time of monsters. Antonio Gramsci
8. Persistence and increase in inequality
Permanent hopelessness of excluded
Embedded violence
Internal underclass
Invisibility and ethnic difference
Seeking scapegoats and creating victims
9. Mutual interaction or structured exclusion?
Community values or communal rituals?
Linkage to realities or past models?
Shared memories or shared hatreds?
10. Explosion in communication
Immediacy of social media
Learning from difference
Adapting to innovative linkage
Enhanced quality of interaction
Added value from interaction
11. Learning in chaos: where are we?
End of history or start of the unknown?
Hidden lives, silent voices: secret
communities?
Fractured identities: who are we?
Values and vision: why do we need
intercultural policy?
12. Seismic shift in human relationships
Competitive pressures
New forms of work organization
New diversities
Instant, multidimensional communications
Quality standards
13. Constant often unexpected change
Permanent migration mobility
Identity and threat: where are we?
Threat and reaction to threat
End of welfare: demographic time-bombs
Knowledge, innovation and democratic
deficits
Structural imbalances
14. Urban futures
Ecological crisis and resource wars
Outsourcing production
Plural identities - end ofWestphalian
statecraft
Privatized everything
Embedded difference and restricted access
15. • No return to ‘normal’
• Polymorphic media
• Planet of Slums (Mike Davis): hypercities of
the future
• Informal economies
• Casualized employment
• Constant connectedness and information
explosion
16. Education as both structure and process
Education systems mirror world and society and
of which they are part
Education systems as constraining as liberating
Forum for ideas or market for products? Or
both….?
Commodification of knowledge
Impact on education systems (Freire, Illich, Field)
Impact on work (Braverman, Haraszti, Davis)
Impact on community
17. End of linear models of learning
Cognitive dissonance: what is needed is not
being provided
Alienation and anomie in a changing world
Labor market flux and the loss of autonomy
Adaptability and innovation as norm, not
exception
Globalized paradigms; fractured community
Elephants in the room: power and ownership
18.
19. Understanding dimensions of human
difference
Framing the themes of ‘culture’
Is difference negative?
Approaching diversity: concept and reality
Designing for difference
Eliminating threat and fear
20. Agreed definition of multicultural
Adjustment and accommodation
Melting pot or mosaic
Separate development
Beliefs, values and practices
Symbols, language and behaviour
21. Radical re-structuring
Interconnected information/communication
Differential access to resources
Professional competence
Dealing with transformational change
Ensuring recognition and respect
22. Diversity vs. equality
Role of legislation
Relationship to community
Justice and enforcement
Tokenism and surface approaches
Ascertaining facts
23. Interculturalism training
Disability awareness competence
Mentoring: diversity champions
Researched best practice: reviewed
Linguistic skills
Comfort with difference: trust
Contact and observational listening
24. New frameworks of social difference
Classical formulations
Challenges and conflict
Integration or assimilation
Discovery and engagement
25. Response to crisis
Earlier patterns
Family and tradition
Traditions of out-migration
Acceptance of in-migration
Never solitary act – always communal
Vulnerabilities of movement - exploitation
26. PostWorldWar II dislocation and refugees
Post colonial impacts
“Guest worker” systems
Development of EU free movement
Planned systems: labor market needs and
demographics
28. Unlike the self-proclaimed countries of
immigration of the New World – the US, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand – Europe has found it
difficult to come to terms with the fact of
immigration. Many sections of European societies
have been profoundly reluctant to welcome and
incorporate immigrants, especially those coming
from non-OECD countries who are perceived to
have significantly different cultural and ethnic
backgrounds.
29. Anti- immigrant sentiment has manifested itself
in:
public support for restrictive immigration and
asylum policies
negative reporting on immigrants and
asylum-seekers in the popular press
discrimination against resident ethnic
minority groups
racist or anti-immigrant harassment and
violence.
30. Significant challenges in terms of work and
labor market
Higher unemployment rates
Discrimination in recruitment and career
development
Lower pay and lower job grades
Exposure to harassment and bullying
Stress and communication difficulties
31. Urbanized futures – the second
generation
Permanent exclusion and inequality
Invisible otherness – frustration and
resentment
Trajectories of developmental progress
Policy fractures: assimilation;
multiculturalism; discrimination; integration
Embedded violence – from trafficking to
revolt
32. Spectres at the gates
Searching for meaning
Searching for values
Lampedusa to London: the trek of despair
Learning systems and critical reflection
Asserting identity: from gästarbeiter to
citizen
33.
34. New frameworks of social difference
Classical formulations
Challenges and conflict
Integration or assimilation
Discovery and engagement
Intercultural imperatives
35. Recognizing difference
Accepting difference
Responding to difference
Difference is permanent
Creating opportunity through learning
Managing diversity
36. Creating shared meaning in uncertain
times
Providing support and inclusion
Valuing difference as a critical
advantage
Shaping futures not reacting to them
37. Constitutional rights: life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness
All men are created equal… but
Final frontiers: integration and assimilation
Uncertain directions: from Abu Ghraib to
Guantanamo
38. Rights of man: liberty, equality,
fraternity
Thematic mythologies: social inclusion
Hidden pasts: colonialism, fascism,
exterminism
The Union in crisis
42. Promoting tolerance not enough
Racism requires policies on diversity,
laws, anti-discrimination measures
Ongoing issues around cost implications,
ambiguities, resistance, rights
43.
44.
45. Integrating in civil society
Paramount importance of labour market
Citizenship
Language competence
Multi-agency partnerships
46. Not always negative
Critical added value
Integration problematic- depends on host
attitudes
Can create advantage
Homogeneous is better?
47. Class
Disability and health
Religion
Customs and traditions
Citizenship and loyalty
Gender
48. Developing comfort and expertise
Reasserting law and justice perspectives
Developing networks
Developing knowledge
Developing competence
49. New communities
Responding and trust
Early childhood interventions
Music and creative performance
Positive profile of the Story
Internal creativity
Innovation
50. The new racism: acceptable discrimination
European policy in denial
Breivik, Fortuijn, Le Pen…. Conspiracies of
fear
Xenophobia in a time of general crisis – back
to the future?
Sartre and The Roads to Freedom
Creating rights and space for all – the
guarantees of inclusion
We are all refugees at some point
51. Valued diversity
Democratic engagement
Community empowerment
Mutual benefit
Legislative underpinning
From tolerance to recognition
Rights are rights for all
Shared learning
Acknowledged pasts - shared futures
52. Challenging norms - what is indigenous culture?
Challenging stereotypes
Talent, competence and communicative empathy
Engagement with difference
Embedded vision
Recognition - seeing the Other
seeing ourselves
53. Dr. Alan Bruce
ULS Dublin
abruce@ulsystems.com
Associate Offices: BARCELONA - HELSINKI - SÃO PAULO - CHICAGO