Multiculturalism and cultural policy in Scandinavia - Essay Example

As a prescriptive phenomenon, it refers to settlement policy that works towards promoting the perspective of institutionalizing cultural diversity. This paper expounds on this concept of multiculturalism and cultural diversity, with Sweden being a case study (CRAFT, 2011). Sweden has a reputation of having the most immigration policies in Europe. Behind such an image, their lies a more complicated reality. The current transformations are turning the explicit commitments regarding multiculturalism towards a cultural suppression that tends to conceal the power structure underlying ethnic, gender, racial, and the class inequalities (TCHIBOZO, 2013).

As compared with Britain, and many other European nations, some of the multiculturalism paradoxes have been largely examined. This was established through critical reassessment of the dominant institutional, academic, and political discourses (TCHIBOZO, 2013). They tend to focus on changes with regards to the refugee policies, the representation of the immigrant youths and women, as well as the limited voice accorded to the contemporary social movements and the immigrant communities. In the course of discussing the kind of dilemma that is faced by welfare state especially under the localization and globalization threats, a greater focus has been redirected on the perspective of trans-ethnicity.

Doing so, exposes the necessity for the more comprehensive description of politics, state, class, everyday life, and the civil society (CRAFT, 2011). With regards to the international comparison, the Swedish nationalism has perhaps been relatively calm, but nevertheless, there were stronger assimilating pressures that were put on both the immigrant communities and the traditional minorities (CRAFT, 2011). Rather than the ethno-nationalist fanaticism, there was a greater elementary ideology of integrating the members of cultural and ethnic minorities into the