Interpreting Interculturalism: Comparative Insights from Spain, Canada, and Australia

Over the past decade, the idea of the ‘intercultural city’ has garnered global traction as a novel municipal-level diversity policy approach. Variously understood as an alternative or essential complement to multicultural policy frameworks, it has been established in Europe for more than two decades, and is now adopted in cities in Asia, the Middle East, North America and Australia. To date, the adoption of the approach in increasingly diverse regions of the world has received little scholarly attention. This paper draws on preliminary findings from an international comparative study to help to address this gap in the literature. Using findings from four cities in Spain, Canada, and Australia, the paper investigates differences and similarities in how interculturalism has been interpreted and implemented in these national contexts. The paper argues that while these nations’ distinct socio-historical and policy-political diversity contexts have shaped the meanings attributed to and policy expressions of the approach, they share elements of a common discursive and practical project: a bi-directional conception of immigrant integration; a transversal methodology; and a mobilising logic. The paper concludes with a brief reflection on implications which can be drawn regarding theoretical “multiculturalism and /interculturalism” debates.