ABSTRACT
No matter which words we use – integration, assimilation, incorporation, or insertion – all of these normatively loaded terms hold the promise of equality for immigrants. Nonetheless, the other side of the coin reveals manifold inequalities, such as high unemployment, residential segregation, or religious extremism. Diversity, along with assimilation, has been one of the main paradigms of integration and of policy aimed at addressing such inequalities. And even though diversity may mean many different things – a demographic description, an ideology, a set of policies, or a political theory of modern society – one can discern a core tenet in its normatively oriented intellectual lineage: to overcome social inequalities based on cultural markers (heterogeneities) by shaping cultural, civic, political, and economic relations via public policies. In essence, diversity as a concept and a set of – not necessarily coherent – policies, programmes, and routines straddles several worlds: it appeals to those who emphasize individual economic competence and self-reliance of migrants (‘neoliberals’), those who cherish the public competence of immigrants in public affairs (‘republicans’), as well as those, like the European Commission, who push for structural reforms to turn incorporation into a two-way process. In particular, the adaptation of organizations to ‘cultural’ factors, the economic use of soft skills, and the delivery of service to a culturally heterogeneous clientele come to the forefront. While the focus of assimilation is on individual migrants passing into mainstream society and of multiculturalism, in some varieties, on the rights of migrants as a means to increase their sense of recognition and belonging and also overall national unity, the emphasis of diversity approaches can be seen to lie on the level in between – on organizations. The problem is that diversity as a management technique in organizations does not address issues of social inequality. Therefore, we need to go beyond an understanding of diversity as an organizational technique and start with considering diversity in the sense of heterogeneities along the boundaries of, for example, class, gender, religion, ethnicity, age, and transnationality. This understanding will allow the tracing of the mechanisms of how differences or diversity turn into social inequalities (Diewald and Faist 2011).
