ASSIMILATION IN MULTICULTURALISM: THE EUROPEAN UNION SAMPLE

Every manner of social sciences, as the name implies, is related to society eventually and beyond a doubt, culture is one of the most substantial components of a society. In today's world, culture, which is still the building block of society, is being the main subject of many problematics in societies with issues about the continuation of its existence. Although recognition policies become widespread in multiculturalism, assimilation comes to the fore more. In this respect, the main issue is why societies and ethnic groups leave their culture without any visible pressure. Culture, such a concept that affects norms, identities, economies, art branches and many other fields, transpires extremely slow. Yet, the transformation of culture is getting far faster because of many grounds as globalization, nation-states, and the unconsciousness level of societies and so on. That’s why “assimilation” is a very well-known and much researched topic. In the literature, multiculturalism has generally been considered as a solution to the assimilation problem. However, for some scholars, multiculturalism is not seen as a solution to assimilation, it even appears as a factor that leads to further assimilation. In this regard, during the globalization period, the multiculturalist discourse, the creation of a high-culture and the erosion of subcultures are observable all over the world. The main aim of the authors is to critically examine the concept of multiculturalism from different perspectives and aspire to find the effects of multiculturalism that cause assimilation. As a multicultural entity, the European Union will be the case study of this study. Assimilation in multiculturalism can be observed in the European Union, which includes nations with various social models. In this study, how multiculturalism led to assimilation in the European Union with globalization will be discussed by comparing and contrasting the different approaches in the literature