O interculturalismo político e a integração dos imigrantes: o caso português

Abstract

The immigrant integration policy aims to promote social cohesion and to forge a sense ofidentification with the national community, by establishing bonds of solidarity and the sharing ofvalues and practices among all residents in the territory. In Portugal, in recent years, interculturalismhas been presented as one of the structuring principles of such a policy. In this article, we intend toshow how this policy is reflected in the two first Plans for the Integration of Immigrants, selectingand assessing the measures more directly related to promoting interculturality. We found thatthe vast majority of measures announced as being intercultural in both documents aims to showthe existing cultural diversity and enable the public administration to deal with diversity. Whilethese measures are important to promote and facilitate the integration of immigrants, they arenevertheless not enough to show the intercultural approach of the Portuguese integration policy.