Cultural Change in Post-Migrant Societies: Re-imagining Communities Through Arts and Cultural Activities

Abstract

Where do we stand between the exclusion of migrants as others from national narratives and traditions invented in the nineteenth century and the emergence of new narratives that include them and enable their social, political and cultural participation? This is what we discuss under the label cultural change in this volume, Cultural change in post-migrant societies: Re-imagining communities through arts and cultural activities. Since history has shown that arts and cultural activities have the potential to effectuate cultural change, we focus on the question of whether and how far they contribute to such a change in post-migrant societies. In the introduction, I explain the theme and objective of the present volume. Subsequently, I place it in the wider debate on social and cultural change in migration and cultural studies. I then explain in more detail where and how this volume moves beyond the state-of-the-art. Finally, I discuss our results in the light of recent changes in migration studies.