Literature and Culture

The multicultural model of integration of immigrants adopted primarily in
Great Britain, but also in Canada, Australia and Sweden, can be understood
as a long-term process of integration of miscellaneous groups based on
various ethnic and cultural allegiances to a particular community. Apart from
the abovementioned privileges of the communities, integration is based on
equal rights, but also upon obligations of the minority groups as well as the
majority society. So far, it is still the most relevant theoretical model of
integration emerging from the aforementioned assimilation model, within
which nation is defined as a political entity with a constitution, law and
citizenship, and immigrants are considered as assimilated only if they respect
the legal system and national culture of society based on common principles.
The multicultural model also requires a political society based on
constitution, law and membership, but immigrants do have all the rights and
privileges ensuring their cultural differentiation. However, they still need to
adopt legal and political acceptance of the host country, in full respect of its
cultural values. Thus, the process of integration still has a strong tendency to
naturalisation.
In recent years, the question of the further development of the
multicultural model has been raised. The experiences of the first adult
immigrant generation are important for the future of later established groups
or ethnicities, but even more decisive is the subsequent fate of their children.
Some of the new prognoses suggest a procedural state which stays culturally
neutral and leaves the individual and a group to influence each other freely,
with only minimal procedural intervention. Despite the fact that such a
constitution would be a highly decentralised unit, under the impact of
continuing migration and globalization, the ability to organise different
identities in one country is, from a future perspective, undoubtedly
unrealistic.
It is important to consider that immigration, together with the
incorporation of national minorities, are the two most common sources of
cultural diversity in the modern state. However, it needs to be mentioned
that there are some groups that would not exactly fit into either the national
minority or voluntary immigrant group. Those are, for example, refugees,
who, like immigrants, came to the country as individuals or families, but their
arrival cannot be marked as ‘voluntary’. There are also immigrants who
actually came through choice, but only because they had been previously
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