Multiculturalism and Interculturalism

People often confuse these two concepts, and since I was one of those people, I decided to do a little research to clarify it.

Multiculturalism: relates to communities containing multiple cultures. The term is used in two broad ways, either descriptively (cultural diversity in a specific place) or normatively (ideologies or policies that promote this diversity or its institutionalization).

A multicultural society is one where people from different cultures, nationalities, ethnic and religious groups live in the same area but are not necessarily in contact with one another. What we actually see is that the mutual differences are often the basis for discrimination, where minorities may be tolerated, but are seldom fully accepted or valued. Sometimes, even the law isn’t applied equally to everyone, despite the fact that legal rights exist to counteract these practices.

Interculturalism refers to support for cross-cultural dialogue and challenging self-segregation tendencies within cultures.

An intercultural society is one where people from different cultures, nationalities, ethnic and religious groups live in the same area and keep an open and impartial relationship with one another, within an environment that promotes and encourages the dialog and interaction.

Multicultural education:

• Considers only performing actions in schools where are students from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
• It focuses only on the curricular aspects.
• Recognizes the school as a space to recreate ethnic relations, from the static conception of cultures, and considering as a priority interest the differences between them.
• Basically, looks for educational interventions focused on contact strategies of different groups approach.
• Includes numerous cultural topics in the curriculum.

Intercultural education:

• It means to write objectives that incorporate criticism, the free explanation of ideas and open spaces where to express without prejudice. Is working together with the will of all concerned, changing attitudes that predispose to the acquisition of a more relative perspective of the world.
• It has a comprehensive approach that incorporates educational proposals in social projects and is moving towards the establishment of peer relationships.
• Facilitates and promotes exchange processes, interaction, and cooperation between cultures with equal treatment of them.
• It focuses not only on the differences but also similarities.
• Assumes a dynamic concept of culture and cultural identity. 
• Analyzes and critiques cultures.
• Rejects cultural gaps and the organization into a hierarchy of the cultures.
• Shows clear concern among difference and equality.
• Understands cultural diversity as an enriching element, not as a conflict that confirms more differences. But talking about multiculturalism requires to consider the social and educational perspective of the cultural differences. The socialization of students in multicultural contexts is a dynamic and complex process that lasts a lifetime, going through phases of varying intensity.