Mainstreaming and Interculturalism’s Elective Affinity

Abstract

This chapter focuses on interculturalism as an emerging policy paradigm for diversity management. I concentrate my core contribution in arguing that in migration-related diversity management, we are in the process of a policy paradigm change, going from a multicultural to an intercultural policy paradigm, and that mainstreaming is a core driver of this process. Given this key argument, I will also defend that mainstream interculturalism is a more appropriate framework for dealing with the complexity of current super-diverse societies and transnational mind. I will conclude that one of the advantages mainstream interculturalism in need of further research is that it can be argued that it seems to contribute to xenophobia reduction, namely reducing ethno-national narratives, racism, prejudice, false stereotypes and negative public opinions, which restrict contact between people from different backgrounds.

Mid-eighteenth century (as elective attraction): originally a technical term for the preferential combination of chemical substances, it was widely used figuratively in the nineteenth century, notably by Goethe (in his novel Elective Affinities) and by Weber (in describing the correspondence between aspects of protestantism and capitalism). In its common use ‘elective affinity’ means: ‘A correspondence with, or feeling of sympathy or attraction towards, a particular idea, attitude, or person’ English Oxford Living Dictionaries: @OxfordWords https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/elective_affinity