Diversity Management in Public Administration Organisations:

Lessons from Best Practice

Centre for Public Policy

PROVIDUSRiga, Latvia

June 2011

The European Public Sphere in Cosmopolitan Societies:

A critical approach to multilingualism and interculturality in professional education

Manuela Guilherme

U N I VE R SI D AD E L U SÓ F O N Ade H u m an id ades e Tecn o logias

H u man i n i hi l a li en u m

2010

Foreigners living in the EU are diverse and largely younger than the nationals of the EU Member States. Looking for example at the current age structure ofnationals and non-nationals separately reveals that non-nationals bring a younger population to the EU.Ten most numerous groups of foreign citizens usually resident in the EU

Member States (in millions) and as a share (%) of EU total foreign population, EU-27, 2009 China (2.1%) Germany (2.5%) UK (2.9%) Portugal (3.1%) Albania (3.2%)Italy (4.0%) Poland (4.6%) Morocco (5.8%) Romania (6.2%) Turkey (7.5%)

(a) globalisation/ Europeanisation; (a) multiculturalism / interculturality; (b) intercultural competence; (c) ‘intercultural responsibility’; (e) critical cosmopolitanism; (f) international and intercultural

negotiation.

OVERVIEW

Globalisation Europeanisation

PORTUGAL

CENTRE

N

N

S

S

LATVIA

Europeanisation2. Declaration by the European ministers of education on intercultural

education in the new European context :

We, the European ministers of education of the forty-eight States Parties to the European Cultural Convention, meeting on the occasion of the 21st session of the Standing Conference in Athens, from 10 to 12 November 2003, adopt the following declaration:

11. Request the Council of Europe …

In this connection, it should:

a. resume conceptual research on intercultural education with a view to adapting terminology and clearly defining the content and context of intercultural education;

…

Multiculturalism / Interculturality

Multiculturalism » “the culturally diverse nature of human

society”

criticality

Interculturality » the “evolving relations between cultural

groups ”

criticality

UNESCO Guidelines on Intercultural Education, 2006: 17

Democratic citizenship

Human Rights

Multiculturalism

Intercultural Dialogue

Paradigm ShiftParadigm Shift

Equality

Difference

Equity

Strategy ChangeStrategy Change

ASSIMILATION

INTEGRATION

PARTICIPATION

Guilherme, M. (2002) Critical Citizens for an Intercultural World. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters

‘Operations’ available for a critical negotiation of meaning across cultures inter- and intra-nationally:

Yet, final (definitive) judgements suspended (susceptible to be reviewed)

Decisions are to be taken‘Negotiation’ is intertwined with other operations

Action is to be taken

These operations are not necessarily to be performed in total or in this order. They are suggested as being

available for intercultural performance

Intercultural Competence

» “it is the ability to interact effectively with people from cultures that we recognise as being different from our own” (Guilherme, 2000: 297)

» “may be defined as complex abilities that are required to perform effectively and appropriately when interacting with others who are linguistically and culturally different from oneself” (Fantini, 2009: 458)

» “intercultural competence is very much the competence of navigating in the world, both at the micro-level of social interaction in culturally complex settings, and at macro-levels through transnational networks like diasporas and media communications” (Risager, 2009, p. 16)

INTERVIEWS with experienced professionals in multicultural

teams

It is very important for a working team that each member individually feels responsible for learning and growing with the group. That they are willing to exchange experiences, that is, that they not only want to grow individually but that they also want to pass on to their colleagues what they had learned previously so that others can also grow. (Int. 18, D1- Business)

INTERVIEWS with experienced professionals in multicultural

teams

Group cohesion is developed through the search for common values … it is easy to find common values, respect, human dignity, and it is on the basis of these values that the team grows. Therefore, team members are motivated to develop these values, to keep them even though they may disagree about the ways to accomplish their goals… If there are not any common values, differences become irreconcilable. (Int. 20,I2 - NGO)

INTERVIEWS with experienced professionals in multicultural

teams When you work in a multicultural team you tend to understand

certain behaviours in some way to which they do not eventually correspond. Therefore, the big challenge is to get to know the characteristics of each one of your peers so that you can work well with them and build some sort of routine in working with them. For example, … I remember this Swedish colleague with whom I got on really well, the Swedish have this idea that only they work in a democratic regime, only their regime is transparent. That all the other regimes, and I am obviously exaggerating but this defines people’s behaviours, tend to hide information … because there are confidential documents issued by the committees, for example, which they simply refuse to keep confidential. … So, if I respond negatively to something it is not because I disagree with what we wrote, but because I work according to a certain paradigm … (E2, Transnational Organisation)

Biography

Emotional Management

Ethnography

CommunicativeInteraction

DiversityManagement

Intercultural Interaction

InterculturalResponsibility

Working in Multicultural Teams

Intercultural Competencefor

Professional Mobility

» a dimension that aims to go beyond a

straightforward notion of intercultural competence

» aims to dig deeper into the relationships established between people in social and professional contexts

Intercultural Responsibility

Intercultural responsibility also implies that every member is responsible not only for identifying and recognising the cultural idiosyncrasies of every other member-in-interaction, but also for developing full and reciprocally demanding social and professional, and perhaps personal, relationships with them.

Intercultural Responsibility

Multicultural Human Rights

… people have the right to be equal whenever difference makes them inferior, but they also have the right to be different whenever equality jeopardizes their identity.

Santos, B. S. (1999) Towards a multicultural conception of human rights. In S. Lash & M. Featherstone (eds.) Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World. London: Sage, 214-229.

Both the idea of Cosmopolitanism and Interculturality entail “the recognition of reciprocal incompleteness and weakness” of cultures and demand simultaneous “local identification” and “translocal intelligibility” (Santos 2005:

18).

They also call for the creation of an “ecology of knowledges”, whereby different epistemological frameworks complement each other (Santos 1999; 2007).

Santos, B. S. (1999) Towards a multicultural conception of human rights. In S. Lash & M. Featherstone (eds.) Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World. London: Sage, 214-229.

Santos, B. S. (2005) The future of the world social forum: The work of translation. Development, 48:2, 15-22.

Santos, B. S. (2007) Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of knowledges. Review, 30:1, 45-89.

Critical Cosmopolitanism

(Inter- and intra-national) Intercultural Negotiation

It helps you be a good international and intercultural

negotiator, if you become:

- plurilingually competent;- conceptually dialogical;- culturally critically aware;- critically cosmopolitan;- interculturally responsible.

OBRIGADA pela sua atenção!(THANK YOU for your attention)