Multiculturalism and Social Instabilities: Causes and Issues

Our societies receive and reproduce differences, but they invent it, including under the seal of the tradition. Each of us, in the most immediate circle of acquaintances, is confronted with the raid of new identities, even with conversions; we observe the development of cultural movements. We also notice that our own experiences of a cultural sense of identity, including the most stable seemingly, are not inevitably definitive, that personal changes are always possible, susceptible to lead us up to the pure and simple renunciation of an identity, to adopt if necessary a piece of news. In the contemporary debate on the integration, the multiculturalism occupies a central place. The visibility growing of the multicultural question is connected to the conjunction of several phenomena. First of all, the rediscovery of the cultural and identical diversity in a world where this one acquires more and more importance for different groups of origin and style of life, forced to find a mode of cohabitation. Furthermore, the renewal of the social question, the corollary in the post-industrial era, places the culture in the heart of the community demands which the political impact is evident.