Topic: Does Culture Matter for Integration? Empirical Patterns and Regulation of Difference
Keynote speaker for the 2nd WZB Annual Address on Migration and Diversity is Richard D. Alba (CUNY Graduate Center).
Increasing global migration flows have brought about a parallel increase in cultural and religious diversity in receiving societies. As a result, conflict actually and allegedly arising from cultural differences, including religious differences, between immigrant minority and native majority populations has become one of the most controversial issues in the political discourse of the receiving societies.
The role of culture in integration, assimilation, and incorporation processes, as they are variously called, and its repercussions for social cohesion and conflict have been examined by different social science disciplines. Sociological and social-psychological perspectives have described patterns of cultural difference and investigated the fundamental social mechanisms at play in immigrant integration. Political science and legal scholarship have focused on the question of how cultural difference is regulated in various polities. Social science scholarship, therefore, has the analytical tools to provide empirical answers to many of the questions implicitly underlying polarized political debates around immigration.
This multi-disciplinary conference on the role of culture in integration processes seeks to advance the analytical understanding of the role of culture and religion in shaping integration trajectories of immigrants and their descendants, the degree and the determinants of cultural assimilation, and the role of receiving and sending society institutions in regulating cultural diversity arising from immigration. What is the relationship between different dimensions of cultural integration? What role does religion play? How does rejection by the mainstream, for example through discrimination and harassment, affect cultural integration outcomes? How do we measure integration outcomes? How are native majorities affected by these processes? How do states around the world accommodate, resist and regulate cultural diversity arising from immigration? What are the outcomes of such policies in terms of social cohesion and immigrant integration?
Corona Pandemic Rules
The current Corona pandemic rules at WZB can be found here.
Accessibility
The venue is wheelchair accessible. Please let Friederike Theilen-Kosch (friederike.theilen-kosch@wzb.eu) know if you need special assistance.