Practices of difference: Analysing multiculturalism in everyday life

The considerations we wish to make here arise from a profound dissatisfaction with the current debate on multiculturalism. We perceive that there is a growing gap between the main ways of reading and interpreting the presence of difference in contemporary society and what we see, hear and at times experience in our field work. The current debate on multiculturalism often seems to acquire an ideological character which tends more to indicate how we would ideally like things to be, as in the case of the approaches of political philosophy and social policy, rather than attempting to represent it by looking at the dynamics, the tensions, the intentions and the meanings of those who produce it in their daily lives. In this chapter we will then follow a double path: in first stance we will highlight the theoretical positive foundations of our conception of “Everyday Multiculturalism”. Then, we will sketch briefly “ambiguity” and “space” as two key dimensions through which exploring the empirical making of multicultural societies