Intercultural Dialogue in the European Education Policies

Front matter

(6) Open Access paloraverpivot

Intercultural Dialogue in the European Education Policies

Tuuli Lähdesmäki Aino-Kaisa Koistinen Susanne C. Ylönen paloreve Macmillan

Preface

This book stems from the intensive collaboration of three scholars whose divergent academic backgrounds create a multi- and interdisciplinary space in which to analyse European education policy documents. The book seeks to combine our expertise in critical cultural studies, art education, children’s culture, research of identities and cultural diversities, transmedia research, policy analysis, and European and European Union studies. We build our approach from our manifold but overlapping interests, which are penetrated and brought together by a common framework. We share interests in discursivity, performativity, and affectivity of language.

The Dialogue and Argumentation for Cultural Literacy Learning in Schools (DIALLS) project seeks to advance intercultural dialogue through the creation, implementation, and research of a Cultural Literacy Learning Programme. During sessions within this programme, classroom discussions are catalysed by a selection of 45 wordless picture books and films produced in and around Europe. These are chosen from a broader bibliography of 145 wordless picture books and films created in the project that correspond to an increasingly multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multilingual social landscape of places, people, and ways of living in Europe, and promote DIALLS’ core dispositions of tolerance, inclusion, and empathy for cultural encounter. DIALLS also implements this programme by facilitating a pupil-authored manifesto for cultural literacy and a virtual gallery of pupils’ cultural artefacts created as part of the programme. As a research-based outcome, DIALLS provides comprehensive guidance for developing cultural literacy in schools by creating a scale of progression for cultural literacy learning.

vi PREFACE

The DIALIS project started with an examination of national and European education policy documents. This task was led by Tuuli Lähdesmäki, and it included scholars from three universities: the University of Jyväskylä, Finland; the University of Vilnius, Lithuania; and the University of Cambridge, UK. We focused on a broad range of concepts identified by the principal investigators at these universities as important for the concept of cultural literacy. The aim of this analysis was to form a common Cultural Analysis Framework for further activities in the project, such as selecting the wordless picture books and films and creating the Cultural Literacy Learning Programme. The European education policy documents were analysed by the authors of this book—Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, and Susanne C. Ylönen from the University of Jyväskylä. Our analysis of the education policy documents produced by the Council of Europe and the European Union yielded draft texts, findings, and remarks that went beyond the original scope of the task and thus were not delivered to the European Commission. This book is based on the extension of our analysis, refocusing it on the core policy concept in our data— intercultural dialogue. We hope that the book provides useful information and research-based evidence on European education policies for decision-makers, policy-writers, scholars, educators, and teachers dealing with intercultural dialogue in Europe and beyond.

We want to thank our colleagues from the University of Vilnius, Irena Zaleskiene, Lilija Duobliené, and Sandra Kaire, and from the University of Cambridge, Fiona Maine, and Victoria Cook, for their inspiration and smooth collaboration in the creation of the Cultural Analysis Framework. The writing of the book has benefited from Lähdesmäki?s work as a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge in spring 2019, supported by the Academy of Finland. Due to our interest in contemporary Europe and its transformation influenced by recent political, social, and humanitarian challenges, our research is part of the University of Jyvaskyla’s current research profiling area Crises Redefined: Historical Continuity and Societal Change (CRISES), also funded by the Academy of Finland and co-led by Lähdesmäki. Part of the open access costs of the book has been covered by CRISES. This book has been proofread by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson, who deserves thanks for her detailed work in language editing. We also want to thank Senior Editor Eleanor Christie and Senior Editorial Assistant Rebecca Wyde from Palgrave Macmillan for seamless cooperation in the publishing process, as well as Palgrave’s anonymous reviewers for their fruitful comments, which helped us sharpen our arguments. Finally, we

PREFACE vii want to thank the core financer of the DIALLS project, the European Commission, and its Horizon 2020 Programme, for the project funding under grant agreement no. 770045, which made this book possible.

Jyväskylä, Finland Tuuli Lähdesmäki September 2019 Aino-Kaisa Koistinen Susanne C. Ylönen

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has been supported by the European Commission and its Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 770045. Dialogue and Argumentation for Cultural Literacy Learning in Schools (DIALLS) is a broad research consortium funded from the Horizon call ‘Understanding Europe — Promoting the European Public and Cultural Space? under the topic ‘Cultural Literacy of Young Generations in Europe”. The project runs from 2018 to 2021. It includes ten partner universities from Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, and the UK, and is led by Dr Fiona Maine from the University of Cambridge. See DIALLS’ website for more information: https://dialls2020.eu/. Part of the book’s open access costs has been supported by the Academy of Finland under Grant SA311877 (the University of Jyväskylä's profiling area Crises Redefined: Historical Continuity and Societal Change, CRISES). The content of this publication does not reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Responsibility for the information and views expressed therein lies entirely with the authors.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation Programme under grant agreement No 770045 a XO — e:

Contents

Introduction: What Is Intercultural Dialogue and Why It Is Needed in Europe Today?

Data and Methods: A Conceptual Approach to Intercultural Dialogue

Definitions and Contexts of Intercultural Dialogue in European Policy Documents

Index

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Tuuli Lähdesmäki (PhD in Art History; DSocSc in Sociology) is an adjunct professor and senior researcher at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä (JYU), Finland. Her research interests and publications focus on governance of diversity, cultural identities and identity politics, belonging, cultural heritage, strategies of interpreting the past, populism, and the European Union and the Council of Europe and their policies. Lähdesmäki is leading the research project entitled Legitimation of European Cultural Heritage and the Dynamics of Identity Politics in the EU (EUROHERIT), funded by the European Research Council. She is also leading JYU’s consortium partnership in the DIALIS project, funded from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme. In addition, she is one of the three leaders in JYU’s research profiling area entitled Crises Redefined: Historical Continuity and Societal Change (CRISES). She has previously worked in various research projects exploring the roles of art and culture in contemporary societal and political contexts.

Aino-Kaisa Koistinen (PhD in Contemporary Culture Studies) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Koistinen’s expertise lies in cultural and media studies, such as performing close contextual analyses of cultural images and texts. Currently, Koistinen is working in the projects Legitimation of European Cultural Heritage and the Dynamics of Identity Politics in the EU (EUROHERIT), funded by the European Research Council, and Dialogue and Argumentation for Cultural xiii xiv ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Literacy Learning in Schools (DIALLS), funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme. She has previously worked in projects such as TRANSMEDIA LITERACY: Exploiting Transmedia Skills and Informal Learning Strategies to Improve Formal Education (funded from the Horizon 2020 Programme); global audience research in the World Hobbit Project (the Finnish sub-project funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation); and Abusive Sexuality and Sexual Violence in Contemporary Culture (funded by Kone Foundation).

Susanne C. Ylönen (PhD in Art Education) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Music, Arts and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research focuses on cultural differences, especially in the context of the high/low culture divide and the valorization of children’s culture. The study of children’s culture has familiarized her with Finnish national education policy, and she has first-hand experience of cultural differences, being born into a German-Finnish family and having lived abroad for study and work on multiple occasions. Ylönen has worked in the project Dialogue and Argumentation for Cultural Literacy Learning in Schools (DIALLS), funded from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme. She investigates children’s literature in her project Disturbingly Funny and Freakishly Cute: Aesthetic Sublation as a Mode of Pop Cultural Meaning Making, funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Chapter 1

Introduction: What Is Intercultural Dialogue and Why It Is Needed in Europe Today:

Abstract The authors introduce the concept of intercultural dialogue and how it has been utilized as a policy by the Council of Europe and the European Union since the early 2000s. First, we explore intercultural dialogue’s relation to and differences from other concepts commonly used to describe different stances in the governance of diversity, ranging from assimilation to integration and from multiculturalism to interculturalism. These different conceptual stances are contextualized by exploring the recent transformations in Europe and their impact on the political aims, goals, and discourses of the Council of Europe and the European Union. Second, we review the previous research on the concept of intercultural dialogue and discuss the criticism of the concept and its meaning and uses in policy discourses.

Keywords Intercultural dialogue ¢ Interculturalism ¢ Multiculturalism e Assimilation * Integration

There is an increasing need for a respectful cultural encounter, mutual understanding, and constructive dialogue in today’s pluricultural, but polarized, Europe. This book is motivated by the current condition of European societies that have transformed quickly during the past decades due to global cultural flows, the influence of social media on culture and communication, and the forced and voluntary movement of people to and

© The Author(s) 2020 1 T. Lähdesmäki et al., Intercultural Dialogue in the European Education Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41517-4 1 within Europe. While Europe has become an increasingly diverse continent where many people simultaneously identify with multiple different cultural and social groups, monoculturalist views and cultural purism have also struck back in many cultural contexts, (social) media, and political debates. European societies have faced a rise in populist, nationalist, and extremist movements that have incited xenophobic, anti-immigration, racist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic political attitudes and actions, as well as a selective defence of ‘us’ as a monocultural group. Attacks motivated by extremist ideologies have influenced people’s views and notions of Europe and how to build its future.

European societies have commonly recognized cultural pluralization as a richness that, however, entails diverse challenges if cultural encounter is not based on mutual respect and an interest in understanding differences. The recent transformations in Europe are transnational, and prejudiced attitudes to and intolerance of differences present challenges to the whole continent; therefore, they have to be addressed also at the European level. The continent’s core international organizations—the Council of Europe and the European Union—have sought to respond to the challenges that diversification and a lack of interest in understanding differences may entail by promoting policies that engender inclusion, tolerance, and respect for diversity. The ultimate goal of these policies is to strengthen social cohesion in inclusive societies. During the past decade, intercultural dialogue has been a core policy instrument in these attempts—commonly repeated in the policy discourses of the Council of Europe and the European Union.

Education is a key sector through which inclusion, tolerance, and respect for diversity can be advanced. It is, however, a profoundly national sector with distinct national education acts, policies, and curricula. The Council of Europe and the European Union have actively sought to impact on this sector through their conventions, declarations, policy recommendations, programmes, and projects aimed at children and young people, including educating them to encounter cultural differences. This book focuses on the education policies of these two European organizations and how they address, give meanings to, and utilize the concept and idea of intercultural dialogue in their education policy discourses.

Intercultural dialogue has been approached in previous research as a practice connected to various social and societal domains in contemporary societies. Scholars have explored diverse practices of intercultural dialogue, for example in intercultural education (e.g. Portera 2008; O’Grady 2010; Kowalczyk 2011; Ganesh and Holmes 2011; Zay 2011; Besley and Peters 2012; Strajn 2018); intercultural communication (e.g. Houghton 2009; Hoskins and Sallah 2011; Ganesh and Holmes 2011); governing of diversities (e.g. Wiesand et al. 2008; Wilk-Wos 2010; Lähdesmäki and Wagener 2015); and art and urban design in today’s culturally diverse environments (e.g. Wood and Landry 2008; Sandercock and Attili 2009; Leikkilä et al. 2013; Gongalves and Majhanovich 2016). Intercultural dialogue has also been broadly discussed in academia in relation to the debate between multiculturalism and interculturalism—briefly explored later in this chapter. The previous research still lacks an in-depth examination of the complex meanings intertwined with the conceptualization of intercultural dialogue in education policies at the European level. This kind of conceptual analysis is needed since intercultural dialogue has become an ideal commonly repeated in various contexts in Council of Europe and European Union policy discourses. Moreover, the meanings of several other concepts commonly used in connection with intercultural dialogue in these discourses, such as identity, culture, heritage, and diversity, may remain vague, so these concepts may serve as rhetorical tools to promote diverse political goals beyond intercultural dialogue as such (see Wagener 2012; Lähdesmäki and Wagener 2015).

In addition to broadening the scope of previous research on intercultural dialogue by scrutinizing the policy discourses of the Council of Europe and the European Union, our aim is to offer a new methodological approach to the topic. Our research is firmly grounded in the practical application of in-depth concept analysis. In this book, we scrutinize how, and with what effect, intercultural dialogue—and the diverse concepts through which it is defined, explained, and discussed—is dealt with in the education policy documents of the Council of Europe and the European Union (hereinafter the European education policy documents). We approach concepts in these policy documents as ‘actants’ that generate meanings for the idea of intercultural dialogue and simultaneously either explicitly or implicitly frame a set of values related to it, construct the actors whom it concerns, and guide and govern the action included in it. Through an in-depth concept analysis, our research reveals the kinds of ideologies and political goals related to and beyond intercultural dialogue that are included in the policy discourses within the Council of Europe and the European Union.

4 T. LAHDESMAKI ET AL.

Our book is structured into six chapters, of which this introduction explores intercultural dialogue’s relationship with other concepts commonly used to describe different stances in the governance of diversity. These different conceptual stances are contextualized by exploring the recent transformations in Europe and their impact on the political aims, goals, and discourses of the Council of Europe and the European Union. The introduction is followed by a detailed description of our method, our data, and the character of the Council of Europe and the European Union as promoters of intercultural dialogue and creators of policy documents regarding it. Our analysis is divided into three chapters. In the first one, we focus on the explicit meanings of intercultural dialogue in European education policy documents and how these meanings are both explicitly and implicitly produced in relation to other concepts and terms. This includes an in-depth analysis of the occurrences, co-occurrences, and thematic overlapping of these concepts. In the second analysis chapter, we focus on analysing ‘densities’ of interrelated concepts in policy documents. We scrutinize instances in the documents where many of the core concepts of intercultural dialogue appear in clusters. Our third analysis chapter brings a novel theoretical twist to the concept analysis of education policy rhetoric. In it, we discuss the ‘politics of affect’, as our conceptual approach includes an examination of affective rhetoric in general, and in particular of the affective nature of concepts used in the European education policy documents.

At the time of writing, a decade after the leading European politicians declared that multiculturalism had failed, a decade after the Council of Europe and the European Union started to actively promote intercultural dialogue as a response to this ‘failure’, and a decade after the differences and similarities between multiculturalism and interculturalism have been debated in academia, it is time to critically review the European policy documentation on intercultural dialogue and the meanings of the concept constructed in it. Our aim is to rethink the concept of intercultural dialogue and explore how policies regarding it could be developed. The final chapter of the book provides suggestions for improving future policies to better encompass the concerns connected to the lack of dialogue in a pluricultural and increasingly diversified, but also polarized, Europe. Lastly, we introduce a new conceptual tool—cultural literacy—to enhance intercultural dialogue in education in practice.

CONTEXTS FOR INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE IN Topay’s EUROPE

In the 2000s, Europe—as a part of a globalized world—has faced various challenges ranging from climate change to humanitarian tragedies, and from political turbulences and extremist attacks to social adversities within, at, and beyond its borders. Moreover, the European Union has been struggling with diverse crises—as political and media discourses in Europe have called them—that have impacted on European societies and their current politics. These interrelated crises range from the economic crisis of the eurozone and European financial markets to diverse political crises stemming from the so-called legitimation and democratic deficits of the European Union and the increase of Eurosceptic political parties seeking to exit the eurozone and/or the Union. The recent ‘refugee crisis’ has impacted on the political crises in the European Union, as the political actors in the Union and its member states have contradictory views on how to respond. Instead of as a ‘refugee crisis’, scholars have approached these intertwined challenges as Europe’s border crisis (Vaughan-Williams 2015) or racial crisis (De Genova 2018). Moreover, and as closely related to all other challenges and crises, scholars have long perceived that the European Union is struggling with an identity crisis (e.g. Hoffmann 1994; Weiss 2002; Jenkins 2008). This identity crisis focuses on a difficulty to define what Europe is, what and who belongs to it, who Europeans are, and which elements a European identity or identities could or should be based on a Europe full of diverse political, material, and symbolic divisions and distinctions (Jenkins 2008; Lähdesmäki et al. 2020). The Council of Europe and the European Union have sought to respond to these intertwined challenges and crises in Europe by advancing the idea of unity and a new European narrative—along with respect and tolerance for diversity—and by enhancing both symbolic and concrete integration in and of European societies (Lähdesmäki 2016; Lähdesmäki et al. 2020).

Besides the Council of Europe and the European Union, various populist and radical right movements and parties around Europe have been interested in contributing to the European narrative and unity in Europe from their exclusive ideological bases. Besides ‘the national’, these movements and parties commonly identify with European roots and inheritance, particularly when they feel threatened by non-European others—immigrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia (see Lähdesmäki 2015, 2019; Brubaker 2017; Kaya and De Cesari 2019).

6 T. LÄHDESMÄKI FT AL.

Interpretations of the European past and narratives of its present and future are tools utilized by all parties across the political spectrum. All of them seek to advance what they see as best for the people. In populist and radical right movements and parties, the ‘discourse of the people’ (see Hellström 2006; Mudde 2007) plays a particular role: either explicitly or implicitly, it constructs the idea of the nation. Mudde (2017, 4) has emphasized that one of the ideological cornerstones of populism is nativism, which he defines as an ideology that holds that states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group (the nation), and non-native (or alien) elements, whether persons or ideas, are fundamentally threatening to the homogeneous nation-state.

Nativism as an ideology combines nationalism and xenophobia. It links and lays the groundwork for diverse discriminative attitudes and practices among European populist and radical right parties, such as white supremacism, welfare chauvinism, misogyny, and homophobia. The emphasis on generational ties, ancestral roots, and ‘bloodlines’ presents the nation as a container, as a family to which one has access and belongs by birth (Norocel 2013; Wodak 2015, 76-77). In this ideology, the nation means a limited and sovereign community that exists and persists through time and is tied to a specific territory (space), inherently and essentially constructed through in/out opposition (Wodak 2015, 76-77). The populist and radical right parties’ objection to the European Union and its integration stems from this nativist ideology. For these parties, the promotion of a pluralistic model of society and supranational institutions and political actors in Europe represents an attempt to destroy nations and the ‘natural’ order of nationalism, and thereby a sense of belonging and identity (Betz and Johnson 2004).

The fervour for national identities among the radical right and in populist parties, and their xenophobic, anti-immigration, racist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic political attitudes and actions have been explained from various social, socio-economic, and psychological points of view that do not require further discussion here. What is more relevant for this book is to understand the recent challenges and crises in Europe not as reactive to a ‘chaotic European reality? but as proactive. Challenges and crises must be tackled and new policies created to respond to the transformed conditions. As Jenkins (2008) claims regarding the European Union, challenges, crises, and a lack of consensus enable and justify attempts to increase stability and consensus in and by the Union. For him, the lack of consensus on the idea of Europe is not a state of emergency in the European Union, either, but rather normality that may even be a source of its strength. Similarly, Eder (2014) notes how diverse crises, stemming from the problems with political, economic, and structural systems of the European Union, create opportunities to invent a European community in a new way.

The emphasis on intercultural dialogue in the Council of Europe and the European Union can be interpreted as an attempt to increase stability in Europe and to create a new narrative about European community and communality (see also Wilk-Wos 2010). This attempt has motivated the European Union’s recent idea to work jointly towards a European Education Area. In the European Commission’s communication titled Strengthening European Identity through Education and Culture this work is justified as follows:

When our European values and democracies are tested by awakening populist forces at home and abroad or by the spreading of ‘fake news’ and the manipulation of our information networks, it is the moment when European Leaders and the EU institutions must react. (EC 2017, 2)

Quoting the president of the Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, the communication declares:

Education and culture are the key to the future—both for the individual as well as for our Union as a whole. It is how we turn circumstance into opportunity, how we turn mirrors into windows and how we give roots to what it means to be ‘European’, in all its diversity. (EC 2017, 1)

Even though diverse tensions, confrontations, and controversies between population groups commonly receive much media attention, peaceful and respectful everyday living in pluricultural Europe has become the norm. During the past few decades, most European societies have changed rapidly through cultural diversification, and recognition of and increasing openness towards various differences. Contemporary European societies have been perceived as ‘super-diversified’ (Vertovec 2007), in which diversity itself is broad, multidimensional, and fluid (Vertovec 2007; Blommaert and Rampton 2011), and characterized as ‘complex’ (Krauss 2011) when different positions—whether cultural, ethnic, national, social, religious, or linguistic—intersect. Fluid social ties, statuses, positions, and competences blur and complicate any simple categories or structures of diversity.

The increasing super-diversity of European societies normalizes intercultural dialogue as practice but also creates challenges for policy discourse. Policymakers need greater sensitivity to the complexities and fluidity included in today’s diversity. This understanding should be reflected in the conceptual language used in their policy documentation.

LOCATING INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE WITHIN Diversity POLICIES

To support social and cultural well-being in diversified societies and to tackle the real or imagined problems, conflicts, and tensions that diversification may entail, societies have developed policies to govern diversity and initiatives, programmes, and projects to implement them in practice—with mixed results. The ERICart report surveyed diversity policies in 34 European countries in 2008. From their main policy approaches concerning majority-minority relations, the report identified a scale ranging from ‘homogenization’ to ‘open intercultural dialogue’ with intermediate steps of ‘assimilation’, ‘cohesion-led integration’, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘diversityled integration’, ‘affirmative /positive action towards diversity’, and ‘intercultural encounters’ (Wiesand et al. 2008, 89). According to the report, none of the surveyed countries could be clearly located in the category of ‘open intercultural dialogue’.

The differences in diversity policies have been described with varying terms and concepts. There is no standard or single accepted definition for them, but their meanings vary between and within countries—and over time (see Mulcahy 2006; Barrett 2013, 17-19). One of the conceptual dimensions that are often used within these policies is the distinction between ‘assimilation’ and ‘integration’. According to Barrett (2013, 24), “the term ‘integration’ denotes the incorporation of minority cultural groups into mainstream society through a two-way interaction process in which both cultural minorities and the cultural majority make accommodation to each other”, while in assimilation “the accommodation is made only by cultural minorities”. However, Meer and Modood (2013, 25) have noted how, in political discourse, the term ‘assimilation’ has often been replaced by ‘integration’, but this term has been given an assimilative interpretation.

Perhaps the most used terms within diversity policies—and the most debated conceptual pair—are multiculturalism and interculturalism. Multiculturalism is commonly described as “a shared commitment in multicultural society to recognise, maintain, and to accord respect and value to the different cultures that coexist within a territorially defined space” (Wiesand et al. 2008, 13). Although it includes many variances, it involves rejection of the idea that minorities should abandon their distinctive cultural beliefs and practices and assimilate into the dominant majority culture. Instead, multiculturalism sees that, by adjusting and adapting laws, rules, and regulations, societies should enable minorities to adhere to their own cultural practices (Kymlicka 1995, 2003; Barrett 2013, 16; Levrau and Loobuyck 2018).

At the end of the 2000s, European societies faced a ‘backlash against multiculturalism’ as many of the leading European politicians accused it of creating social problems and controversies between people rather than solving them (Bauböck 2008; Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010; Modood and Meer 2012; Barrett 2013). Also in scholarly debates, multiculturalism was criticized for encouraging members of different cultures to live separately in parallel communities without deeper interaction with and trust in one another, for emphasizing instead of blurring boundaries, and for focusing mainly on ethnic and national issues instead of the intersectional diversity in societies (e.g. Rodriguez-Garcia 2010; Taylor 2012; Barrett 2013). The critics of multiculturalism have discussed contemporary intersectional diversities with the concept of interculturalism, emphasizing the importance of creating new opportunities across cultures and of supporting interaction between different cultural communities (Cantle 2013).

Several scholars have pointed out that the concepts and policy goals of multiculturalism and interculturalism are discursively fluid and that it is difficult to draw any clear or stable demarcation between the two (Levey 2012; Modood and Meer 2012; Wieviorka 2012; Taylor 2012; Barrett 2013; Meer and Modood 2013). As Modood and Meer (2012) and Modood (2017) have noted, the qualities that are often used to promote interculturalism (such as encouraging communication, recognition of dynamic identities, promotion of unity, and critique of illiberal cultural practice) are equally important (and on occasion foundational) features of multiculturalism. Some forms of the latter approach, which Parekh (2006)

has called *dialogical multiculturalism?, particularly emphasize open and egual dialogue between cultural communities in multicultural societies.

Advocates of multiculturalism have also emphasized the politicization of the concept in public debates. On the one hand, the European attack on multiculturalism has been interpreted as stemming from the political failure to implement it in practice: multiculturalism has been blamed for certain phenomena of ghettoization and alienation of immigrants, instead of recognizing the political failures to promote integration and combat discrimination (Taylor 2012, 414). On the other hand, some scholars have noted how hostility to multiculturalism is mainly an exercise in avoiding the term rather than a retreat from implementing it: multiculturalist policies are still being implemented in most Western countries, although alongside new civic integration policies (Levrau and Loobuyck 2018). Moreover, scholars have pointed out how the whole discussion about the failure of multiculturalism and the need for new diversity policies has circled around the debates on Muslim communities in Western societies (Parekh 2008; Cantle 2013; Meer and Modood 2013). In fact, the policies promoting interculturalism have also been perceived to implicitly address the ‘Muslim other? (Lähdesmäki and Wagener 2015). In both multiculturalism and interculturalism, the term ‘culture’ may hide explicit references to ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, or ‘religion’ (see Bunjes 2013, 49) and, thus, include hierarchical power dynamics implicitly discussed with cultural terms.

Although the roots of the concept of interculturalism as a diversity policy reach back to the 1980s and 1990s (Portera 2008; Besley and Peters 2012; Cantle 2013), its growing use in policy discourse dates to the debate on the failure of multiculturalism. Interculturalism is often seen as built on the ideas of equality and non-discrimination. Critics note the ‘failure’ of multiculturalism to create cohesion among the different cultures living side by side (or in their own enclaves) in multicultural societies and have presented interculturalism as a solution to this. Interculturalism is located in a stronger emphasis on ‘community cohesion’—in Cantle’s (2001) terms—interaction, exchange, and dialogue (Cantle 2013; Barrett 2013, 26). It is, thus, seen as helping people to develop an understanding of different cultural beliefs and practices; fostering mutual understanding; increasing interpersonal trust, tolerance, and mutual respect; reducing prejudice and stereotypes; facilitating relationships between different communities; and fostering integration (Barrett 2013, 26). As interculturalism stems from the critical view of multiculturalism and/or attempts to improve its shortcomings in practice, some scholars, such as Levrau and Loobuyck (2018, 7), have approached it “as a particular multicultural theory that has stressed some specific elements that other streams within the multicultural paradigm have somewhat neglected”. The critics have, however, seen interculturalism as so fundamentally different from multiculturalism that they cannot be seen only as different emphases within the same diversity policy (Zapata-Barrero 2016, 2017).