Migrations: between diversity, richness and transculturality

We live in a new “era of migrations”: today, with a disruptive impact, migrations are once again one of the most visible and controversial factors that change our societies. For some it is the dawn of a new world, characterized from métissage and universal brotherhood; for most people, it is the beginning of an invasion. However, who are the immigrants? Immigration is always a matter of boundaries: who is “we”? Who is “they”? The receiving society has the power to define, classify and construct the social category of immigrants intended as foreigners coming from poorer countries, who are allowed to stay in a temporary way and to certain conditions: therefore, immigrants are those coming from poor countries or from countries whose culture is perceived as very different from ours. In (brutal) summary, we can say that the definition of immigrant is closely linked to our mental boundary, which appears to be mobile and porous. A negro is perceived as immigrant, while a wealthy Arab as a friend: the “wealth has the power to bleach”. So, if the phenomenon is constituted “simply” by the passage from the “poor” to the “rich” side of geography of a world terribly unequal, from a cultural point of view there are deep and multiple implications. In this paper we analyze the relationship between migration and immigration, complementary in the sociology of Abdelmalek Sayad and of Pierre Bourdieu, to attempt a definition of “cultural pluralism” capable of holding at least three perspectives: intercultural, multicultural and transcultural.