'Youth, Ethnic Identity and the Future of Multiculturalism in Europe'
- When?
- Wednesday 21 July 2004, All day
- Where?
- University of Surrey
- Open to:
- Staff, Students, Public
A One Day Seminar at the University of Surrey
Halima Begum, Erling Bjurstrom, Bruce Cohen, David Garbin, Katharine Tyler
Presented by British Sociological Association Youth Study Group and the Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (CRONEM)
Speakers include:
- Tahir Abbas (Birmingham)
- Erling Bjurström (Linkoping)
- Bruce Cohen (Humboldt, Berlin)
- David Garbin (Tours)
- Cy Grant
- Rupa Huq (Manchester)
- Alex Seago (American Univ, Richmond)
- Katharine Tyler (Surrey)
The influx of migrants into the European Union over the last twenty years has forced increasing attention among EU states upon issues of cultural pluralism and 'European polity-building'. Such attempts to promote multiculturalism in Europe, however, remain deeply problematic. Thus, distinctions continue to be made in public debates between 'foreign' and 'local' populations and between the needs of the economy for more skilled migrant labour and the introduction of tougher immigration policies. Similarly, both migrant groups and established ethnic minorities in EU states continue to be targets for racist groups. Additionally, it is increasingly clear that the term 'multiculturalism' itself is fraught with problems in that, semantically speaking, it suggests a discourse of harmony, bridge-building and, ultimately, inclusion. However, it does not follow that multiculturalism is a 'natural' or positive solution to cultural displacement.
As research has demonstrated, relocation by culturally displaced groups inevitably involves a process of (sometimes conflictful) negotiation, where new forms of hybridised identity are created through the interplay between elements of majority ethnic group cultures and cultural practices from the countries of origin. Such processes of negotiation have been extensively studied in relation to youth. As Back (1996) and Kaya (2001), for example, have demonstrated, young people have proven to be particularly resourceful in formulating creative strategies through which to carve out new spaces of identity in European urban settings. In particular, resources such as music, fashion, dance and street art have been used in highly effective and distinctive ways by young people from different minority ethnic backgrounds in the construction of what Hall (1992) has described as 'new ethnicities', which challenge attempts to construct exclusivist traditions of a pure `white' nation.
This one-day seminar will, therefore, explore the strategies employed by young people in the creation of these new identities in different European cities and the ways in which they challenge exclusivist, racialised traditions. At the same time we want to examine the ways in which the construction of new traditions by some young non-white people may reject new ethnicities and the process of hybridity. Furthermore, we want to debate the implications of these countervailing tendencies for multicultural discourse in Europe.