ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that three political and discursive realities are of central importance in understanding and acting upon the present growth in Europe of violence, xenophobia and nationalism. First, governmental management of social diversity and migration in Europe. Second, the mediation of issues concerning immigrant communities and academic concepts of ‘otherness’. Third, the crucial role which formal and non-formal education have to play in demonstrating alternatives to chauvinism, xenophobia and violence. The European nation states have indigenous diversities on the basis of religion, language, and social class through regional or national minorities. The notion of a European culture separated from the world south of the Mediterranean is a mythical construction. The rise of ethnic, culturalist and fundamentalist nationalisms in Europe at the present has had dire consequences for nation states as currently constructed.
