Rebooting European Identity: intercultural citizenship for building the future of a Diverse Europe

Abstract

In this article, I will defend interculturalism as a main methodology to reboot the same European identity. My focus will combine normative, epistemological and policy-oriented scholarship and documentary analysis. After contextualizing the terms of the debate within the on-going project of Europe, I will follow six main streams. First, as a matter of Diagnosis, I underline that the current European identity crisis is related to the core ontological values that make Europe a collective project. Second, I will highlight as a Premise 1 the main features of the intercultural policy paradigm. Thirdly, Premise 2 is on how interculturalism basically penetrated Europe during the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. Then in the fourth stream, I will defend Argument 1, the need to open a reflection on how the EU building process is missing the historical opportunity to include migrants within its own identity building process. The fifth stream will signal, as Argument 2, the danger that if things remain the same, the EU could become a machinery generating frustrated second-generation migrants. Then I will conclude, as a sixth stream, on the need to incorporate interculturalism as one of the distinctive diversity-management approaches that can drive European identity towards the future.