Towards an Intercultural Sense of Belonging Together: Reflections on the Theoretical and Political Level

This chapter understands interculturalism neither as an anti-multiculturalist position nor as a remedy for the alleged failures of multiculturalism, but instead as an additional strategy that might rest alongside modes of liberal nationalism and constitutional patriotism. The challenge that each sets itself is to create a sense of belonging as a necessary condition for solidarity and deliberative democracy in multicultural societies. The chapter understands this as presently expressed across three intercultural policy applications concerned with social mixing, language and civic integration programmes, and integrative religious education. In this account, while multiculturalism and interculturalism do not contradict each other on the theoretical level, there may be some tensions on the policy level.