Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

Migration and cultural diversification 109
itself in the mirror of other cultures, to contest itself, and the European universalism
implies a persistent habit of introspection. The discussion and monitoring of
contemporary racism going on in Europe prove this assumption correct.
In Western European host countries, racist attitudes followed by social exclusion
has been condemned for breeding ethnic minority enclaves (Castles 1993: 28). 7
They, in turn, augment exclusionary practices and maintain marginalised ethnic
communities whose members are feared and excluded (Riggs 1991: 449). 8 The
persistence of migrant enclaves is further augmented by the ‘structural discrimination’
that is neither deliberate, nor directed against individuals (Entzinger
1990: 281). It results from the fact that all major social institutions are governed,
formally or informally, by habits, rules, and regulations derived from the dominant
culture. Familiarity with these rules and regulations permit access to those
institutions. It follows that migrant ethnic enclaves may be perceived as persisting
‘peripheral cultures’ vis-à-vis a cultural centre. The establishment of migrant
enclaves has a considerable, direct impact on the recipient country’s culture as they
expose its dominant position, and often question it. This is related to the issue of
the management of ethnic and cultural pluralism that results from international
inflows addressed in the next section.
International inflows have yet another impact on symbolic culture resulting
from the contacts between the newcomers and the members of the host society
as they perpetuate, or assist the creation of new ethnic stereotypes. These developments
influence the collective and individual identity of both parties. Research
on the political discourse on immigration in Greece and Italy reveals that in Greece
the image of immigrants has been shaped by a presumed national character of the
nation from which they originate. For instance, ‘according to some of the people
interviewed, Poles have “a different attitude” . . . “they impose themselves”’
(Triandafyllidou 2000: 197). Confronting this with the research on undocumented
Polish migrants, carried out in Greece in 1993, one discovers the development of
a counter-stereotype about Greeks amidst Poles, who ‘frequently expressed –
seemingly an already common belief among the Polish undocumented – that
‘Greeks are difficult to put up with’ (Romaniszyn 2000b: 128). Importantly, such a
stereotype had not been found in Polish culture before the era of massive labour
migration to Greece. The two independently carried-out studies register the two
aspects of the same phenomenon, both parties – the indigenous people as well
as the newcomers – are prone to perceive each other through the spectacles
of stereotypes, already existing or just being developed. The fact that political
discourse on immigration draws upon collective identity poses the issue of this
identity stimulation so that it ‘immunises’ itself against intolerance. Otherwise,
left to themselves the two sides of the encounter – the immigrants and the indigenous
people – may breed ill feelings of mutual intolerance. The more so as the
intensification of contacts between people of different cultural backgrounds, forced
by mass international migration, tends to result in intolerance and negative
stereotyping.
The analysis presented validates the initial thesis that international migration has
a considerable impact on the culture of the societies involved, leading to their