Conference Announcement "Citizenship, Ethnos, Multiculturalism: North American Models in Comparative Perspective" International Conference University of Toronto Canadian Embassy in Berlin Heinrich-Böll-Foundation Berlin (Germany) 7-9 November 2005
This conference is a follow up meeting to the conference held in Toronto in October 2003. While the earlier conference had been focused primarily on German and European conditions, we will now address the North American situation in greater detail. First, we shall need to present and analyze basic issues in North American migration at large, sketching how it has evolved since 1945 and focusing on new developments since the early 1980s. We will then look at the ways in which the citizenship debate has proceeded and how the problem of citizenship, in relation to immigration, has been dealt with by Canada and the United States. We need to take a look, furthermore, at how migrants have responded to their situation. What sort of institutional structures have they elaborated and how can these structures - religious organisations, migrant communities, political and other types of ethnic clubs - relate to the host society. More specifically, we shall address a number of case studies that highlight how North American and European structures may differ, and we will organise respective sessions, accordingly: 1. Political Representation and Integration (Political parties and immigrants) 2. Religion in Secular Democracies (Immigrant religious institutions; the headscarf debate; the turban debate in Canada) 3. Labour and Employment (Potential of Labour migration; a new ethnic proletariat?) 4. Diversity and Coherence (The debate on core culture (Huntington) and Leitkultur; Whats wrong with Parallelgesellschaften?) This conference is charged with the task of drawing comparisons to the incorporation of immigrants in Europe. Canada has long been pointed to as an example of successful incorporation and its multiculturalist policies have served as a model. Although there are apparent differences, the same holds for the United States. It is expected, therefore, that the the participants will enter into a dialogue with Americans and Canadians in order to further not only their knowledge of the North American conditions, but also of their understanding of the European situation and of migration at large. Conference Programme: http://www.boell.de/downloads/conference_programme.pdf Contact: Mekonnen Mesghena Dep. Migration/Citizenship/Diversity Heinrich-Böll-Foundation Rosenthaler Str. 40/41 D-10178 Berlin Germany fax: +49 (30) 28534 108 email: [email protected] _________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org/ Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://agd.polylog.org/cal/
