Peter A. Kraus
CEREN, Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki
 
New heterogeneity, multilingualism and political integration in European cities
 
The paper starts by making two basic assumptions: it argues, firstly, that the use of language in urban contexts can be taken as an indicator of significant processes of social and political change related to immigration and, secondly, that the linguistic differentiation at work in contemporary cities is a topic which deserves specific research efforts in its own right, as it raises important normative questions related to the "politics of recognition" in our societies.
 
Against this background, it will be shown how the "new" heterogeneity in European cities, breaking with the legacy of the "golden age" of nation-states, is causing a thorough transformation of many urban settings, one of its most salient indicators being an increasing overlap of the patterns of stratification and linguistic differentiation which may well have a "neo-medieval" character. This general assessment will be substantiated by empirical evidence taken from west European metropolitan areas in which the dynamics of language and heterogenization seems to bear a particularly great political significance, such as Brussels, Barcelona or Berlin.
 
Finally, the paper outlines a normative frame which, by linking the transnational and the local level, aims at finding a balance between recognizing different cultural and linguistic identities and building a "common public culture".