ISET Spring Seminar Series: NEW DIMENSIONS IN CITIZENSHIP
launches on Wednesday 9 March 2011 with a talk on
How to combine Integration and Diversities? The Challenge of a European
Union Multicultural Citizenship
Dr Marco Martiniello
The European Union displays a wide variety of ethno-cultural and
national affiliations and identities. This diversity is not set to
disappear under the pressure of globalisation, though the trend towards
uniformity of the mass culture cannot be denied. Can various forms of
cultural, ethnic, national, religious and post-national identities
emerge in the public sphere and reconstruct themselves as a response to
uniformity?
In that context, the relationships between states, supranational
organizations and a population that is increasingly diversified
constitute a major concern in the necessary reflection on the subject of
democratic consolidation. Several questions have emerged that remain
unsolved. What political responses surface in response to identity
claims and to demands for the preservation of a cultural specificity?
How can the nation states and the European Union intervene in the
management of cultural and religious diversity? How can the European
Union deal with its de facto multicultural, multi-religious, multiethnic
character while simultaneously reasserting its democratic requirements
and dealing with growing social and economic inequality and exclusion?
The concern at the beginning of the third millennium is not to choose
between the construction of a multicultural European society and the
construction of a culturally homogenous society. Rather, each society,
including the European Union, is being challenged to fashion a variety
of multiculturalism adapted to its population and to its history in
order to reconcile observable cultural and identity-based diversity with
the necessary social, economic and political cohesion. In other words,
how can the European Union combine the search for a more united and
integrated society while at the same time making the most of the various
facets of its diversity and fostering more social and economic equality?
This is the challenge of a multicultural citizenship of the European Union.
Marco MARTINIELLO is Research Director at the Belgian National Fund for
Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS). He teaches Sociology and Politics at the
University of Liège and at the College of Europe (Natolin, Poland). He
is the director of the Center for Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM)
in the university of Liège. He is also member of the executive board of
the European Research Network IMISCOE (International Migration and
Social Cohesion in Europe) and President of the Research Committee n°31
Sociology of Migration (International Sociological Association). He is
the author, editor or co-editor of numerous articles, book chapters,
reports and books on migration, ethnicity, racism, multiculturalism and
citizenship in the European Union and in Belgium with a transatlantic
comparative perspective. They include La nouvelle Europe migratoire.
Pour une politique proactive de l’immigration (Labor, 2001), Citizenship
in European Cities (Ashgate, 2004), Migration between States and Markets
(Ashgate 2004), The Transnational Political Participation of Immigrants.
A Transatlantic Perspective (Routledge 2009), Selected Studies in
International Migration and Immigrant Incorporation (co-edited with Jan
Rath, Amsterdam University Press, 2010)
Seminar will take place between 6-7.30 in The Old Staff Cafe, T1-20,
London Metropolitan University
Tower Building
166-220 Holloway Road
London N7 8DB
ALL WELCOME - refreshments provided
Please show a copy of this at reception to gain entry to the seminar.
Future Seminars:
Wednesday 16 March
Dr Joyce Outshoorn, University of Leiden
Sexual and Bodily Citizenship
Tuesday 22 March
Dr Angharad Beckett, Leeds University
Disability and Vulnerability; a disability politics perspective
Wednesday 30 March
Dr Sasha Roseneil
Intimate Citizenship: an agenda for research and politics
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Administrator
Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET)
London Metropolitan University
166-220 Holloway Road
London N7 8DB
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7133 2913
www.londonmet.ac.uk/iset
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