Immigration, Cultural-Ethnic Diversity and Integration Policies

The recent waves of immigration to Europe have led to a number of challenges in the adoption countries at the cultural, as well at the social, structural level. The varied contrasts between the native culture of immigrants and the culture of the host societies can lead to dissensions and even social conflicts. Discussions, both theoretically and practically, on possible solutions to such problems can be found on a broad spectrum, its possible poles being the ideas of acculturation and interculturation. Moreover, the debates are not limited only to the field of culture and social interactions, but they also focus on the initiation of some actions at the social level of policies and concrete measures to facilitate the integration of migrants. The present paper is a sociological approach to these aspects, the main purpose being, on one hand, the conceptualization of the terms of diversity and integration, as well as those of acculturation, interculturation and multiculturalism, and on the other hand the delimitation of the links between the cultural level of the practices, values and symbolic representations and the structural level of integration policies. In this respect, there is analysed and discussed the extent to which public policies are characterized, besides an inherent logic of socio-economic nature, also by a logic of cultural, identitarian nature.