Rethinking 'Us' & 'Them': Integration and Diversity in Europe

Lots of interesting perspectives in this chapter! I think these days we're dealing with a kind of double standard on immigration: on one hand, most leaders (except for a small - but loud - minority) are still open about immigration, and indeed most countries continue with similar immigration policies. On the other hand, we're doubling down on what's "acceptable" or not for immigrants to be in receiving countries. I think if you're going to end up arguing that newcomers "will never be truly like us" then you might as well stop immigration at all. Either you show some flexibility on what you consider a "real" citizen of your country, or just admit you simply don't want anybody coming in (which, personally, I think is pretty silly).

Multiculturalism is, I think, a tricky thing. Overall, I believe the idea of a pluralist society is a good one, but I also think you need to have something strong that binds that society together in order to make it work and prevent it from breaking apart, or becoming a series of nations within nations. The main reason it works so well in Canada, it seems to me, is that they've always struggled with a self-admitted lack of national identity/strong culture (honest - this struggle is about as old as the country itself). It's almost like when Pierre Trudeau officially declared Canada a multicultural country, he finally gave it an identity, i.e. "if we don't know who Canadians are, then everyone is a Canadian". That, coupled with coherent government policy and strong binding symbols, like the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, made it work perfectly.

Europeans, on the other hand, seem to be struggling with multiculturalism for similar reasons: Germany, Italy, France, etc, are countries with old, strong ideas of national identity (it doesn't matter how many of those ideas are real or myths, they're still there). It's complicated to say you're officially multicultural when those ideas are still strong, so I feel they can't quite figure out how to make both things work together.

I feel absolutely blessed to have Italian citizenship, but at the same time I sometimes feel it's a bit silly that I was able to get it: the only reason I have it is that my great-grandfather was Italian. Up until a couple of years ago, I hadn't even set foot in Italy, yet I have an Italian passport, and am even allowed to vote in some (limited) elections. At the same time, if an immigrant who moved to Italy years ago, lives and works there, speaks perfect Italian, etc, has children, they're not automatically Italian. Again, I'm happy to be a citizen - but that concept always seemed a bit strange to me.