Conflicts and Normative Transactions in Multicultural Work Contexts

Like gender, the multicultural/intercultural issue runs through contemporary workplaces. This issue has become particularly complex in societies that have been transformed demographically and culturally by the migratory flows that have been intensified by globalization.

Like societies, companies and workplaces more specifically are in some way inhabited by actors bearing an ethnicity (dominant or dominated) who are led to work together and to share situations of social interaction where their various ethnicities meet. In addition to language barriers, which are not insignificant, working relationships, whether within collectives or in interactions with clients (patients or beneficiaries in the case of public services), are scenes of intercultural encounters that are not without their own tensions, or even normative conflicts, and phenomena of racialization that are part of relationships of domination or exploitation.

This call is therefore structured around a set of guiding questions: how and about what does the question of interculturality arise in today's workplaces? What are their consequences? In what way and how do they affect work collectives or workers/customers relationship? How are normative tensions experienced and managed, at the level of the worker, the collectif or the organization? Are they conflictual or do they manage to build a sustainable multicultural or intercultural modus vivendi?