New Multicultural Identities in Europe

Front matter

New Multicultural Identities in Europe Religion and Ethnicity in Secular Societies

CURRENT ISSUES IN ISLAM Editorial board

Baderin, Mashood, SOAS, University of London

Part I: Post-Migrant Interactions/Identifications

2. New and Old Identity Patterns of Religious Young Muslims in Germany

Cüneyd Ding

3. Connecting Home and School: on the Second generation Muslim Children’s Agency in Belgian Schools Goedroen Juchtmans

4. Immigrant Identity, Social Adaptation and Post-Secular Society in Europe Marcel Mečiar s. Manufacturing Self-Respect: Stigma, Pride and Cultural Juggling among Dalit Youth in Spain Kathryn Lum

6. A Case of Euro-Muslimness in Poland? The Polish Tartars Katarzyna Warminska

Part II. Non-Migrant, Anti-Islam Interactions/Identifications ‘Anti-Islamisation of Europe’ Activism or the Phenomenon of an

7.

Allegedly ‘Non-Racist’ Islamophobia Vincent Legrand

8. Discourses on Religion and Identity in Norway. Right-Wing Radicalism and Anti-Immigration Parties Frédérique Harry

9. Competing Forms of Identity and the Concept of Sovereignty in Europe Murat Sevencan

10. Democratic Theory and the Autonomy of Non-Christian Religious Courts in the UK Ephraim Nimni

it Islamophobia and the Rise of Europe's Multiculturalism Chris Allen

12. Ethnic-Religious Intersections and New Multiculturalism

CHAPTER I The Manifestation of Identities in a Plural Post-Secular Europe Global - local identifications

In 1969 the Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth published his Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. In his words, it is not cultural stuff that creates social borders, but flexible social borders which create culture. He was not the only one, though, to ask for attention to be drawn to the constructive chemistry which takes place in ethnic boundary creation. Leach (1954), prior to the time of Barth, had already emphasized the constructive and flexible character of social boundaries. And also Moerman (1965) had taken a similar approach, finding the earlier approach adopted by Weber (1922) to be insufficient, and instead contending that ethnicity is a useful concept.

However, people who studied in the 1960s and who completed their first fieldwork undertakings in the 1970s will remember how the range of their research field changed dramatically from the 1990s on. The context started changing very fundamentally. Globalization created a new horizon. By the beginning of the 1990s, one of the first interesting theorists of the global, Roland Robertson (1992), had reacted to McLuhan’s homogenizing ‘global village’ concept (1962) by opposing the idea that globalization would lead to homogenization. In his words, it was not homogenization that would be the outcome, but glocalization. He predicted a search for fundamental truths (religious and nationalistic) as well as what he called a particularization of the universal. In this logic, globalization would not de-ethnicize religion. Of course, the global would have an impact on it, since the tools and instruments would belong to the world of the global.

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But this would lead in some cases to local enclaves of religious and national identification, stretching even as far, on more than one occasion, to religious fundamentalisms. It is about specific ethnic-religious dynamics in such a cluster of processes in today's Europe that the authors of this book will bring us some empirical information and the results of their reflections.

What Robertson did not foresee, perhaps because it was not that active at the beginning of the 1990s, is that the global, with its transnationalism and transnational social movements, would also become the site of the beginning of a lot of ‘in between’ trans-border median spaces (in Barth's 1994 phrasing). Barth proposed to distinguish three levels of processes that evolve by themselves: a micro (or personal) level, a macro level (of ‘state policies’), and a median level, where processes "create collectivities and mobilize groups for diverse purposes by diverse means" (Barth 1994:21). The impact of the global on the median level (where the internet has become an important factor) is very clear from the mid 1990s on, not least among religious identifications. “What happens is that the inner boundaries inside the transnational faith communities are removed. This de-territorialisation, so typical of virtual communication in the Web, leads to the enlargement of existing communities which adhere to the same branch ofa religion" (Leman 2009: 199). In 1974 Barth also accepted that cultural practices as such may have an impact on the way social processes develop (see also Cerroni- Long 2007), an idea that should be taken into consideration when studying today’s ethnic-religious developments in Europe.

These developments bring us to the core of the issues that the reader will find considered in the chapters of this volume. The religions that will be treated are: Islam (in most chapters), Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism (this last as viewed through the eyes of the Indian Spanish Dalit community). Islam will be the focus, and this is not surprising since, surely from ‘nine eleven’ (2001) on, it has been Islam and Muslims that are at the heart of the debate on multiculturalism in Europe. The fields that have been studied are situated in Turkey, Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Poland, Norway, Sweden and Belgium, but also Europe in general.

Main interests

The book we present is concerned with looking at the extensive phenomena of identifications in Europe at the beginning of the 21* Century. The identifications will reveal themselves to be expressed in various alternative forms of religious-ethnic manifestation and they will overlap with migrants, students, religious figures, multicultural politics and lifestyles. The book is not just about identity; rather the chapters analyse the issues relating to the question of identification and the expression of identity in multiple forms in new glocal, transborder contexts. It explores the concrete experiences and positions of subjects in terms of transborderless and trans-ethnic communities, for example Polish Tartars, Belgian Turks or German Muslim Turks, .... From a political-science perspective, Brubaker’s idea of ‘ethnicity without groups’ relevantly poses the question of changing the characteristics of ethnicity in relation to religion, symbols, nation, territory, memory, institutions, networks, categories and schemes (Brubaker 2004: 4). Such complex identifications cannot be encompassed by just race-ethnicity, gender and religion alone; the multiple cultural-situational-political elements can also produce identities which are shaped by the new circumstances of de-territorialization.

Identities are developed in relation to one’s nation, religion, gender, class, language, and daily life practices. They are not fixed/static and they are constructed in many, complex ways. Identity is about similarity, difference, recognition and representation in the public area (Helicke 2002). It is constructed through the interaction between different frames, schemes, symbols and cultures. The concept of identity is over-used and has expanded so much that it has lost its specificity. For this reason, in this book the emphasis is on the manifestation of identities in a plural Europe, where some identities are becoming more visible. Through the lens of post-migrant societies, we will try to analyse the mobility of identities in some specific religious communities and groups.

It is important to note that in post-migrant societies alternative, marginal identities may also become a part of the mainstream identity. In order completely to understand this re-localization of the mainstream, we need also to look at the blurring of boundaries such as those between orthodoxy-heterodoxy, localglobal and individual-community. The use of information technology and the advancement of mass media have transformed the character of the mainstream identity. In other words, a particularization of the universal has appeared. The identities have been pluralized, fragmented and de-territorialized during the last decade. It is not clear where the boundaries exist and where they are recreated into new forms of identification. The blurred identity raises concerns about the problematic nature of boundaries and borders between various ethnic-religious groups, as well as within the same ethnic-religious communities.

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Through the findings and reflections from the various chapters, we will try to make three main points: 1) the emergence of transnational and translocalglocal identities and communities is tied to the logic of globalization and the network society (Castells 1996). In these networks, the multiple loyalties and de-territorialized identities are formed during daily life practices, discourses and policies. 2) Transnational subjects (Muslims, Jews, youth, female, political activists...) have a direct influence and impact on the discussion of multiculturalism. The new multiculturalism is post-secular, more trans-migrant coloured and border widening. 3) The new communities having de-territorial identifications pose some challenges to the existing political-social models of society which re-activate an indigenous anti-migrant and anti-religious formulation of reaction to the new multiculturalism. The new communities brought into play the old-new hostilities and conflicts in the public sphere, especially in relation to religious ones.

Some questions will arise on more than one occasion and will be answered in a variety of ways. What is the impact of social and economic transitions on the globalization processes, and on ethnic and religious identifications? What are the roles of transnational social movements in these macro-processes? What are the challenges for the classic ethno-religious identity debate? In our conclusion (chapter 12), which will also be our final reflection, we will pick up the idea that the ethnic-religious identifications are changing due to trans-border and glocal intersections, relating more broadly to the global.

The authors — sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and other social scientists — are from a variety of different countries. This international and interdisciplinary background has nourished their reflections, as the reader can plainly observe from the quality of the presentations. It also puts the editors and the authors for some challenges: what does an author in a precise discipline mean by words such as ethnic identification; globalization, glocality and transnationalism; multiculturalism and being a post-migrant; the secular and post-secularism? We will define them shortly before continuing our introduction.

Ethnic identification For our definition of ethnic identification we opt for an anthropological approach.

Ethnic identification will then always give some weight to a “subjective, symbolic or emblematic use... of any aspect of culture, in order to differentiate... from other groups” (Brass 1991: 19). It will do so on the basis of “a feeling of continuity with the past, a feeling that is maintained as an essential part of one’s self-definition” (De Vos 1975: 17). Doing this, it will provide “reservoirs for renewing humane values” (Fischer 1986: 176). It is not “the cultural stuff that it encloses” that fundamentally determines the borders, but it is “the ethnic boundary that defines the group” (Barth 1969: 15); this boundary is primarily social in nature. This brings us once again to Leach (1954) and Barth (1969). Ethnicity is selfascribed and flexible and is not imposed by others. Ethnicity, as a kind of selfidentification, concerns the “categories of ascription and identification by the actors themselves” (Brettell 2007:10). Boundaries are places of social interactions "that mark difference and shape identity" (Brettell 2007: 10-11). Very often ethnic processes use kinship terminology as a kind of glue in the group. While ethnicity may have become marketable (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009), it has also become absorbed in religious median structures, namely in faith communities. Research shows that such religious communities very often have their origins and ethnic connotations in specific countries and shift into religious, de-ethnicized movements once they leave their countries of origin (due to migrations) and become integrated in a more global context. The findings in this book will show that this has become quite common in the European post-migrant landscape and in the West in general.

What is striking is the immigrants’ normal developing momentum, the rate at which they settle themselves, which is applied with respect to fields as diverse as the labour market, housing culture and existing regulations, and to the already existing cultural context in the country of destination. Schools ensure that their children and grandchildren will hasten this process further. An emotional attachment to the region of origin over several generations is maintained and reinforced in some cases, especially through their private culture, but also by religious structures. In other situations they create something new. Commitment to the country of origin as well as the creation of something new brings about the resulting loyalties, ethnic, supra-ethnic, meta-ethnic (Leman 1999).

But even indigenous people, for whom ‘home’ — where their parents, grandparents and earlier generations have lived — is not a neutral space but full of affections, do not remain inactive. We may expect that some among them will use features that allow them to distinguish themselves from migrants and their latter generations. They can rely on a long historiography that they, not without some arbitrariness, claim to occupy. For their ethnic compositions, the antimigrants will go in search of historical matrices and historical emblems in their

‘own home’ and of ‘cultural stuff’ in the essentialized cultural past of the (mostly Islamic) migrants to convince themselves that multicultural cohabitation is impossible.

Globalization, glocality and transnationalism

We are aware that the notions of ‘globalization; ‘glocality’ and ‘transnationalism’ each in itself may cover a lot of slightly different processes. They require more precision when applied to very concrete situations. With the definitions that we will propose we want adequately to cover the clusters of realities which the authors will refer to in their chapters, though giving each notion a more precise content when needed.

Globalization in our text is “what happens when the movement of people, goods, or ideas among countries and regions accelerates” (Coatsworth 2004). The “global society [is] a network society” (Castells 1996), with a “global interconnectedness, suggesting a world full of movement’, and in this sense it becomes a complex mixture of processes which often also produce conflicts, disjunctures and new forms of inequality (Carling 2006; Giddens 1999: 15-18). There are economic factors at work, but at least so important are the social “contacts and linkages” (Xavier Inda and Rosaldo 2001:2).

As some social scientists tell us about the difficulty of naming and describing the social locations of migrants, we prefer to use transnational and glocality as a response to globalization and mass media communication. When the global is the “macroscopic aspect of contemporary life, glocalization becomes its “conjunction with the local, in the sense of the microscopic side of life” (Robertson 1993: 173). But at the same time, “many immigrants today build social fields that cross geographic, cultural, and political borders" and “we define ‘transnationalism’ as the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement” (Basch, Glick Schiller and Blanc Szanton 1994: 6). Researchers have studied transnational identity formation in economic, social, political and religious areas (see Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc 1994; Ebaugh and Chafetz 2002; Faist 2000; Fraser 2007; Vertovec 2003).

Multiculturalism and being a post-migrant

We subscribe to Baumann’s point of view that “multiculturalism is not a patchwork of five or ten fixed cultural identities, but an elastic web of crosscutting and always mutually situational, identifications” (Baumann 1999: 118). But where migrants have a myth of return ideology this is no longer the case with most of the second generation, or with almost all of the third generation ‘migrants’ who are really no longer migrants (see, among many other authors, Ali and Holder 2006). Nevertheless they continue for some generations to develop a relationship with the country of provenance of the first generation that remains different from the feelings of the classic tourist (Wagner 2008, 2011), and in the country where they are born they most of the time have also to struggle to be recognized by others no longer as migrants but as full citizens on an equal basis. That is why we call them 'post-migrants: In the case of the Polish Tartars (chapter 6), we will even speak of a post-‘post-migrant’ situation, since the relationship with a home country of provenance does not exist at all and finds support only in the fact that they know that other Tartars just like them are living as minorities in neighbouring countries.

Secularization and post-secularism

“The shift to secularity ... consists, among other things, of a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace” (Taylor 2007: 3). Charles Taylor refers to mainline secularization theory asa point of view that "sees religion shrinking further and further" (2007: 766). Rodney Stark sees five arguments and/or characteristics among social scientists who support secularization theories: (1) modernization as a “causal engine dragging gods into retirement’, (2) a “primary concern with individual piety, especially belief”, (3) “it is science that has the most deadly implications for religion”, (4) “once achieved (secularization) is irreversible", (5) it is a global process, and it concerns not only Christianity (Stark 1999: 252-253). Stark however remarks that secularization theory “never was consistent with empirical reality” (Stark 1999: 249). Taylor also foresees “another future, based on another supposition” (2007: 768). He expects a double move: “[s]ome will want to move further ‘inward’, towards a more immanentist position ... and some will find the

I5 present equilibrium confining, even stifling, and will want to move outward” (2007: 770).

Habermas reflects on this second move. Looking at European continental countries, he describes modern societies as ‘post-secular’ referring to a change in public-private consciousness (Habermas 2008). In his view, these changes come from three phenomena: the global conflicts that are presented as religious strife, the gaining of religious influence in national-international politics and the movement of people, specifically the immigration of people of faith.' These three phenomena transform the public secular consciousness which delegates religious identity to the private sphere. All European societies have faced this change of consciousness in the last two decades and they simultaneously remain diverse and plural societies; however, there is a slight change in the fact that we have more religiously pluralistic societies. In this plurality, the flow of people who keep their religious affiliations, beliefs and identifications creates religious chains of memory (Hervieu-Léger 1996). The implication of newcomers religion, beliefs and their visibility is, according to Habermas, challenging the modus vivendi in continental Europe that exists between citizenship and cultural-particular difference which ought to take into consideration the observance of the plural identities in Europe. This modus vivendi has been drastically questioned, as we see in debates on multiculturalism in Europe, where secularism was highly determined during the 20" century by French ‘laïcité, much more than has been the case in the Anglo-Saxon world.

This recasting of religious change in continental Europe requires more studies in the field to show how traditional-modern-transnational religious loyalties and identifications are resurfacing. This indeed has an impact on secular continental Europe, referred to now as a post-secular. It is an important objective of this book to present empirical findings and reflections that may nourish the debate.

Redefined boundaries in post-migrant societies

The flow of ideas and migrant people at the end of the 20% century and the beginning of the new millennium does not attenuate the role of existing borders. In his seminal work, Barth, whom we have already discussed, tried to show that the borders distinguish between two distinct things through ethnic-cultural markers such as dress, food, and language (Barth 1969: 14). Boundaries mark the limits of group awareness. The dispersal of people coming from the same group (ethnic, religious or cultural) in such diversity invites us to examine in what way boundaries are fabricated and reformed. Thus, the locally constituted ethnic identity, after spreading out into new geographies, is dis-corporated from the existing/original identity. Immigration and mobility are giving rise to the possibility that individuals will exchange one identity for another, even though the boundary between two groups is maintained in terms of cultural difference. Crossing borders, real or imaginary, is part of a dis-corporation and displacement of the identity issue. The borders may be rigid or fluid, but they are always changing, transforming and challenging the existence of fixed identities. The variety of ethnic-religious communities poses some challenges, such as adaptation to new cultures, loyalty to the practices of parents.

A consciousness marked by dual or multiple loyalties and identifications may arise. The coexistence (specific or not) of several identities of the migrant communities maintains a new hybrid identity. As Clifford (1994) points out, these immigrant communities strengthen solidarity and connection among themselves. This connection makes a difference.

The intersection of religion, identity and ethnicity is a complex phenomenon and raises very important questions in public debate. There is no accepted clear definition of the relationship between ethnicity and religion. In recent times, scholars have begun to pay more attention to the intersection of ethnicity and religion, particularly as a consequence of mass media, the use of the Internet, the use of communication, mass immigration and the flow of people. Throughout this book, the reader will observe the different ways of using symbols, narratives, networks and schemes which emerged as clusters of ethnic-religious practices and discourses. In post-migrant societies a growing number of people define themselves in terms of these multiple symbols and schemes of identity (Caglar 1997: 169). These clusters of practices and discourses define ethnicity in terms of recognition. “What cognitive perspectives suggest in short, is that race, ethnicity, and nation are not entities in the world but ways of seeing the world” (Brubaker 2004: 81).

The ambiguity concerning a re-definition of identity through new discourses and practices becomes more puzzling when seen through the lens of trans-border identification and transnationalism. In considering these multiplicities, three chapters (Ding, Lum and Nimni) set out the challenges to the endurance of religious-ethnic identities. The relational construction of other social dimensions such as lifestyles, gender, festivities (Lum, Juchtmans) forces ethnic-religious identityinto ongoing change and transformation. In ourviewit was very interesting to insert a chapter on a non-Muslim community (Lum), so that the reader should be very aware that most of what is written about Muslim communities also remains valid for other, non-Muslim minorities of non-Christian provenance in Europe. The new communities, including the virtual ones, with particular reference to the religious and ethnic settlement in the new lands, are created thanks to globalization and the Internet (Leman 2009). They are between states and borders, neither here nor there, but they are present and active in both.

Glocal and transnational ethnic-religious identities

After Vertovec, but also after other authors, the concepts of transnationality and glocality gripped social scientists’ attention for a while. This means indeed that it can be a part of the theoretical base to approach the changing characters of identities and structures, and of the everyday networks and practices emerging in daily life (Vertovec 2002). In these new networks, we leave migration behind to depict the problem of in-between situations in terms of transborder and post-secular societies and communities. It should be noted that the appearance of transnational ethnic-religious identity is coming to terms with questions and problematics around mobility, multicultural hybridity, hyphenation (namely double ethnic identification) (Caglar 1997), and other creative practices which are the keywords to explaining how being in a state of glocality throws objects, identities and ideas into flux (Mercer 2008). In post-migrant societies, this fluidity is rehearsed, re-articulated and re-shaped along with ethnic-religious creativity.

A closer look at the study of this problematic religious identity in translocal and transborder cases shows some particular challenges in describing and formulating the new boundaries of identification. Firstly, we have the non-fixed elements of religious life and the dynamic shared meanings, symbols and attachments used in different ways by religious people and religion itself in non-bounded and framed situations. Many features of religious life are implicitly lived and hard to define as public expressions (Levitt 2001). “They are deeply felt but often difficult to express, says Levitt to describe this first challenge of the transnational religious identity. Some public expressions and visible patterns of religion in public space do not explain religious feeling as an identity or an ideology. Thus, framing a religious identity in a given space and time is (a thin) problematic, not just about an expression (Hetherington 1998).

Percentage and estimated number of all immigrants in the European Union by religious group*

Hindu - n — Buddhist p 296 E

Jewish 096

Other Religions 3%

Percentage and estimated number of immigrants in the European Union (excluding migration within the European Union) by religious group*

770,000

*Population estimates are rounded to ten thousands. Percentages are calculated from unrounded numbers and may not add to 100 due to rounding.

Figure 1 - Religious Composition of Immigrants in the European Union

The second challenge comes from the mobility of people and issues relating to migration. It is manifested as a question of maintaining the adaptation and of the sustainability of this form of identity in new circumstances. The process of adaptation is crucial anda considerable research question in transnational religious identity (Vertovec 2002). Here attention toa religious change and transformation has gained significance among migrant Muslim communities in Europe (Cesari

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2007). Host-home country relations affect and change the religious identity of religious communities (Helicke 2002). Migration and mobility generate alternative places and patterns of identification, so that religious identities and symbols are reshaped across national borders. Transnational religious identity however is not post-national and it does not make us deny the nation-state. But the host-home country incorporations give more impetus to this new spectrum of religious identifications. The identification issue is reinforced by the search for an authentic experience among young migrants in their new lands in Europe.

Post-secular Europe, immigration and religious identity

The new arrivals recast religious identity and secular space in Europe. Immigration still continues, and as reports show, in the future for example people who identify with the Christian tradition are likely to continue to move and arrive in Europe in larger numbers. This means that the traditional religious identity may reappear. It is also useful here to consider the ways in which religious identity in Europe has been transformed due to the arrival of immigrants since the 1960s. The new immigrants and their descendants (second and third generation) differ both from the native population and the host societies in terms of their religious practices. By the way, it is also interesting to note that according to the findings of the report by the Pew forum on Religion and Public life, Europe has more Christian than Muslim immigrants. The report states that the United States is the primary destination for Christian and Buddhist migrants (Pew Report 2010). The report also identifies most Christian immigrants living in Germany and Italy as coming from other European countries. A similar picture is also valid for the United Kingdom, whereas in Spain it was found that there was a large Christian migrant population from Latin America (Pew Report 2010: 28).

Religious identity is relied upon in order to maintain ethnic boundaries and culture among immigrant communities in Europe. With this in mind, the major themes that were explored by researchers were the flow of people in post-migrant societies who were concerned with adaptation, adjustment, negotiation, differentiation and institutionalization (congregational form) of identities. Warner identifies these four types of themes involving religious identity among the immigrant communities (Warner 1998). According to other research (Young and Ebaugh 2001), there are other themes in the recurrent studies on the nexus between immigration and religion. The first is the reformulation of religious identity that is reshaped by returning to theological foundation sources. The second, as pointed out by these scholars, the claim for a more open and universalist discourse rather than an exclusivist one, is really grounded in the immigrant activities. In some cases, there is a move from the purely ethnic institutionalization of religious identity to more cosmopolitan inter-ethnic religious gatherings. But mostly the immigrant communities transplant and settle their religious heritage and baggage in their new lands to continue and foster their transnational links with creating new spaces (Metcalf 1996), living in their ethnic enclaves. For these new-comers in the host land, their religion is a central site to remember, to rehearse the connection with the cultural-historical past, meaning that it is an important source of social capital.

As a consequence, nowadays, the ‘pre-existing’ secular character of the public sphere that emphasizes secular citizenship in the public realm is questioned on the one hand, with the overlapping of the ethnic-national and religious identity and the new transborder ones, while the religious identification is maintained ‘as it was before’ in political debates and discourses in the migrant countries in Europe. In many European countries, on the other hand, referring to religious heritage, signs and symbols of religion in the public domain (for example the crucifix in Italian public schools, public holidays, reference to Judeo-Christian principles) remains a question of identity which reveals the functional roles of cultural norms and traditions (Casanova 1994; Góle 2011).

Rethinking multiculturalism: will it be post-secular and borderless?

It is commonly assumed that public life is plural and basically secular in Europe. Multicultural policies have been used to manage cultural-religious diversity in the public sphere. At the same time, there has been rising doubt about multiculturalism; more recently its ‘death’ has been celebrated in most political speeches.* These kinds of discourses question the concept of multiculturalism. The rhetoric against multicultural policy in Europe is largely shared by politicians and by public opinion (Kymlicka 2012; Prins and Slijper 2002). Arguably, multiculturalism is in perpetual crisis. The backlash from multicultural policy has been analysed in recent studies (Jopke 2004; Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010). Nevertheless, the crucial question is formulated as what kind of pluralism and diversity is possible and manageable. During the 1990s a number of scholars made such philosophical and political contributions on multiculturalism (Kymlicka 1995; Taylor 1994; Werbner and Modood 1997).

There are many forms of ethnic-religious and cultural pluralism, and according to different understandings many states develop political models to manage cultural and political diversity from assimilation to separatism (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010: 3-4). Grillo argues that in post-industrial societies three modes of pluralism have emerged: multicultural pluralism, institutional pluralism and hybridity (Grillo 1998: 189). These policies and forms oscillate between two main arguments: proponents of homogeneous, monocultural societies and the heterogeneous, plural model of societies (Goldberg 1998: 20). The argument against multicultural society resides in the logic of the necessary requirement to form a community, a society. The idea of homogeneity is based on two logics. First, homogeneity is a natural condition, exemplified by a socio-biological claim. Secondly, historically people find and select their category according to their tradition, customs, history and past. Homogeneity serves this continuity of a historical past and identity (Goldberg 1998: 21). A homogeneous society and culture provide tools and means to preserve the virtues and values of the society and the group. To maintain cultural boundaries it is essential to maintain and refer to common values that have been historically transmitted. The reaction observed against migrant people who change and transform the character of public life, its values and symbols reflects a popular attitude in Europe today. The questions in the multiculturalism debates embody concern about identity issues and their visibility in the public sphere (Farrar, Robinson and Sener 2012; Garner and Kavak 2012). Exploring the multiculturalism debates in Europe permits us to see in what way transnational and transcultural identities will be formulated.