ABSTRACT
As J.W. Berry and J.A. Laponce (1994) have pointed out, ethnicity, far from losing ground as was believed twenty years ago, runs the risk of becoming in the twenty-first century what social classes represented in the twentieth century: a major source of social tension and political conflict as well as an outstanding source of creativity and diversification, giving rise to enormous academic research, explanation and theory. However problematic the connotations associated with these concepts may be, pluri-ethnicity and multicalturalism form essential dimensions of the 'research scene' and discussions within the social sciences, whether the research is fundamental reflection or action oriented. This research leads one to question the significance of coexisting within both belonging and difference (Bastenier & Dassetto, 1990; Brun & Rhein, 1994; Haug, 1995). The distance to be covered is today considered crucial in order to pass from co-presence to interaction. The defence of an identity does not need to be inscribed in 'an absolute cultural relativism which necessarily leads to segregation and the ghetto' or to become an 'obsession combined with the refusal of all difference' (Touraine, 1996). Of course, C. Raffestin (1993) would say, 'the frontier is fundamentally a regulating mechanism which guarantees existence against the dangers of chaos'. The fact remains that if 'the defence of minorities and their rights can appear at first glance as a manifestation of multiculturalism', 'it often leads in the opposite direction, in that of hermetically closed communities and as such hostile to the coexistence with different cultures'.
