The theories and practices of assimilation

Résumé du document

"The main noise (…) has been about asylum-seekers and how to keep them out. But the real issue is the immigrants, and their descendants, who are already inside. Integrate these, and European societies could cope well enough with the relatively few asylum-seekers." According to this sentence, taken from an article of the Economist (published in May 2003), the main problem with the burning issue of immigration is the implementation of appropriate integration policies. Indeed, the journalist implies that if efficient integration policies really existed, societies could easily welcome all the asylum-seekers without any problem. The study of the theories and practices of assimilation, examining the French and the American examples, can enable to us to reflect upon those issues of integration.

Extraits

[...] In the Netherlands, this practise is recurrent. In Italy, women can keep their chador for passport photos. Yet, sociologists argue that there is a crisis of the Republican institutions in France, particularly regarding public schools and public services. As a result, people have more and more the feeling that a cultural threat has reached France. They want to maintain their traditional national answer, the Republican ideal of integration. Yet, it cannot be denied that the institutions which guarantee integration no longer exist, therefore, using the reference to the Republican myth can be dangerous as it may be used in a repressive way, according to Dominique Schnapper, sociologist and member of the Constitutional council. [...]

[...] The theories and practices of assimilation "The main noise ( ) has been about asylum-seekers and how to keep them out. But the real issue is the immigrants, and their descendants, who are already inside. Integrate these, and European societies could cope well enough with the relatively few asylum-seekers." According to this sentence, taken from an article of the Economist (published in May 2003), the main problem with the burning issue of immigration is the implementation of appropriate integration policies. [...]

[...] A more fashionable concept appeared in the 70's, the concept of “integration”. This notion is to be applied to the whole society, not only to migrants: it is thus seen as less discriminatory. Integration aims at increasing the level of interaction between the different groups that coexist within a society. II/ France and assimilation: an exception France appears as an exception as far as integration is concerned. It is strongly attached to Republican values and of course to the principle of secularism, with the 1905 law, which imposes a radical separation of political and religious spheres. [...]

[...] Mixed marriage is the key point of the French conception of assimilation. So the current definition of assimilation would be a system in which migrants should lose their specific differences to melt into their new society, of which they would become regular citizens, with the same rights and duties as the others. Today, assimilation appears as a political basis/theory, but the word itself is less and less used as it was used in colonial times, as it is now considered as a derogatory word. [...]

[...] The traditional emphasis on the history and culture of White European civilisation is now considered as racist and incomplete, so new programmes have been implemented in most universities: African-American studies, Chicano studies, Asian studies. Language is another issue linked to multiculturalism in the US. The growing extent of Spanish is outstanding: some experts reckon that Spanish will be the first language of the US, considering the rapid population growth. As a matter of fact, “Spanglish” new language mixing both languages) is getting popular: a dictionary was even published in 2000. Sources John J. [...]