Multiculturalism and "Core Culture" and Segregation

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I came across this interesting article about a proposal in Germany to help with integration for the new arrivals and with Germany as a whole. The phrase "parallel societies" was quite striking to me because it would seem like a mild form of cultural segregation: if there are separate cultural identities and they can't be diluted as part of a whole... Then what does that leave? Socially acceptable segregation? Or sub-cultures fiercely protective of their identity that "integration" is seen as a threat to their identity? Or the majority or the right-wing feel threatened by sub-cultures and "parallel societies" which have different values to the countries main values?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-19/we-dont-wear-burkas-germany-unveils-cultural-integration-initiative-immigrants

 

So this is a thread about multiculturalism, "Core Culture" (common values within a country and its citzenry) and segregation. Has multiculturalism made things more harmonious and peaceful between the majority and the minorities? Between the non-religious and the religious? Or has it inadvertantly caused things to move back culturally and accidently create segregation?

This seems like a pertinent issue today!

[matias93 7,535]

I think the base problem there is that is almost impossible to define (and to arrive to a consensus about) what is a core culture, or what is uniquely own of the culture of one nation (less even of a country). I suppose that there have to be several polls about this, but I really doubt that people have been capable of finding characteristical cultural traits that are strictly unique to their nation and no one else.

While I'm writing, I'm trying to do the same exercise for the chilean culture, with no positive results: religious affiliation? completely imported, our typical food is basically a mix of poor man dishes from europe with indigenous ingredients, and is shared by the entire continent, our typical dance is a weird version of an afrocaribbean ritual that no one knows how arrived here, there is no typical clothing outside the most obvious and basic attires to avoid the cold, we are attenuant on the language as british people is, we talk fast and have words lent from argentinians, our most interesting drinks and dishes are from Perú, even the culture of the main indigenous nation here is very similar to the ones from the Alps, the Scottish highlands or the central Asian platteaus: same instruments, similar clothes. 

There is nothing characteristical, excepting for the precise mixture of all the aforementioned things, and that mix was (and is) given precisely because the tumultuous process of transculturation: no extant group decided who came and who stayed here on isolation, but people from all places came and went, fighted to stay, made use of regrettable ways, etc. We cannot embark on the idea of defending a culture that is only defined by its plasticity, except by one key condition: this transcultural process depends on the plasticity of both sides; the locals adopt the new practices of the just arrived ones, and their adapt to the long standing uses of the locals. Nobody really gets into the nation if insists on isolating themselves, on keeping their culture apart from the rest of the people living here; the ones that had tried to do that eventually vanish, go away or end surrendering their isolation.

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2 hours ago, matias93 said:

There is nothing characteristical, excepting for the precise mixture of all the aforementioned things, and that mix was (and is) given precisely because the tumultuous process of transculturation: no extant group decided who came and who stayed here on isolation, but people from all places came and went, fighted to stay, made use of regrettable ways, etc. We cannot embark on the idea of defending a culture that is only defined by its plasticity, except by one key condition: this transcultural process depends on the plasticity of both sides; the locals adopt the new practices of the just arrived ones, and their adapt to the long standing uses of the locals. Nobody really gets into the nation if insists on isolating themselves, on keeping their culture apart from the rest of the people living here; the ones that had tried to do that eventually vanish, go away or end surrendering their isolation.

Good point about the plasticity. A quid pro quo thing to some extent? I'm not sure.

[matias93 7,535]

I don't think it is deliberate, but more of a fact of the matter: cultural isolation is really hard to achieve, and its condition for survival, which is a firm connection with the mother community, is almost always a cause of the demise of the diaspora as diaspora; eventually, having a firmer link to the mother community makes the members of the diaspora to go back whenever the opportunity arise, the only ones who stay are the ones more comfortable on the foreign culture they settled between, and they are prone to assimilation for that very fact.