Globalization, Foreigners’ Social Integration into Western Multicultural Societies and Intercultural Education

Abstract

Throughout the modern era, nationalism and its basic principles that create a multitude of nationalist, state political shapes seem to have been domineering up to the present day. Globalization, with its advantages and disadvantages, is a process of the postmodern era and society, which combats the former modern rationale. Thus, in the modern era, especially after 1989, the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the “cold war”, multicultural societies were formed, in which racist and nationalistic ideas are still prevailing and creating conflicts and difficulties in the course towards globalization. However, another cause of reviving nationalism is the struggle against the global social Americanization. This can be understood as a means to respond to a globalization attack in a negative sense, that is equalizing different cultures while their being homogenized into a common American way of living. Education and school aim at eliminating fanaticism and racism on the one hand, respecting ethnic differences instead and through social integration of various ethnic, religious and cultural groups into a broader multicultural society, to achieve a globalization of solidarity based on an intercultural approach of knowledge and various cultures.