The Social Construction of Diversity

Though the composition of the populace of industrial nations has changed dramatically since the 1950s, public discourse and scholarship, however, often remain welded to traditional concepts of national cultures, ignoring the multicultural realities of most of today''s western societies. Through detailed studies, this volume shows how the diversity affects the personal lives of individuals, how it shapes and changes private, national and international relations and to what extent institutions and legal systems are confronted with changing demands from a more culturally diverse clientele. Far from being an external factor of society, this volume shows, diversity has become an integral part of people''s lives, affecting their personal, institutional, and economic interaction.

Though the composition of the populace of industrial nations has changed dramatically since the 1950s, public discourse and scholarship, however, often remain welded to traditional concepts of national cultures, ignoring the multicultural realities of most of today's western societies. Through detailed studies, this volume shows how the diversity affects the personal lives of individuals, how it shapes and changes private, national and international relations and to what extent institutions and legal systems are confronted with changing demands from a more culturally diverse clientele. Far from being an external factor of society, this volume shows, diversity has become an integral part of people's lives, affecting their personal, institutional, and economic interaction.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Recasting Canadian and European History in a Pluralist Perspective
Christiane Harzig and Danielle Juteau

Part I: Diversity in Everyday Life

Chapter 1. Assimilation and Ethnic Diversity in France
Ida Simon-Barouh

Chapter 2. Antagonistic Girls, or Why the Foreigners Are the Real Germans
Nora Räthzel

Part II: Economic Encounters

Chapter 3. Transnational Migration and Entrepreneurship of Migrants: Between Turkey, Europe, and the Turkic World
Stéphane de Tapia

Chapter 4. “Too Busy Working, No Time for Talking”: Chinese Small Entrepreneurs, Social Mobility, and the Transfer of Cultural Identity in Belgium, Britain, and the Netherlands at the Margins of Multicultural Discourse
Ching Lin Pang

Chapter 5. Transnationalism and Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Iranian Diasporic Narratives from the United States, France, England, and Germany
Minoo Moallem

Part III: Incorporating Diversity in Institutions and Legal Systems

Chapter 6. Democratic Institutional Pluralism and Cultural Diversity
Veit Bader

Chapter 7. Multiculturalism, Secularism, and the State
Tariq Modood

Chapter 8. Should National Minorities/Majorities Share Common Institutions or Control Their Own Schools? A Comparison of Policies and Debates in Quebec, Northern Ireland, and Catalonia
Marie McAndrew

Chapter 9. Family Norms and Citizenship in the Netherlands
Sarah van Walsum

Chapter 10. Global Migranthood, Whiteness, and the Anxieties of (In)Visibility: Italians in London
Anne-Marie Fortier

Part IV: Recasting the Master Narrative in Society

Chapter 11. Canada: A Pluralist Perspective
Danielle Juteau

Chapter 12. Of Minority Policy and (Homogeneous) Multiculturalism: Constructing Multicultural Societies on a Nationalist Model - the Post–World War II “Western” Experience
Christiane Harzig

Chapter 13. A State of Many Nations: The Construction of a Plural Spanish Society since 1976
Xosé-Manoel Núñez

Afterword: Difference and Policymaking
Tim Rees

Index