Here we go again with the “multiculturalism debate”. The release of the results of the survey conducted by the Leipzig University for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation is bringing again multiculturalism and immigration on the first pages of the newspapers.
As if the problem is not a constant issue in European societies, the topic top up again as a piece of news. Angela Merkel didn’t lose time and intervened during the meeting of youth representation of CDU and CSU, calling for a new project of integration. Merkel said that “the multicultural model failed, absolutely failed” and that foreign people living in Germany should study also the language, and not only the institutions and the laws.
Suddenly everyone stands up again to say their own views about it. Multiculturalism, immigration, integration, and last but not least Christianity and Islam. No real changes in the topics and in the way the topics are developed and the measures are taken to cope with them. What is the real news?
Germans are scared of immigrants and of Muslims and they think that they are stealing their citizens’ jobs and welfare assistance. Is this the news?
Foreign people would better know the language of the country they live in, in order to aim to integration in the new society. Is this the news?
The point is that real energies should be spent to build a system which can take care of the integration of foreigners in society: free language courses, intercultural counseling offices, cultural associations. The excuse “there is no money” cannot work or shouldn’t work.
But taking care of the integration of immigrants is just one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is how to integrate the “pure” citizens with the new cultures, how to train them to be tolerant and to teach them that the relativism of culture is not scaring, but only interesting. The age of “one culture” is finished. And that’s why we talk so much about cultures.
It is pointless to come up once in a while with alarming titles and speeches about multicultural and immigration. It is a rhetoric that just loops itself with no real changes into society. Newspapers and the media can have their responsibility as well. How hypocritical it is to come up with the “surprising” news that people are scared of immigrants when the articles of the same newspapers are the ones who spread this fear?
It is the logic at the basis of this rhetoric that should be changed. A drastic choice should be made: focusing on how to render immigration as a normal phenomenon and not as a threat.
