Continuities and Discontinuities in EU Cultural Policy Discourses and Practices. Overcoming the Tension Between Super-Diversity and Increasing Inequality?

The economic crisis has worse affected migrant and ethnic minorities. In today’s Europe, these vulnerable groups have fewer opportunities to be included in the institutional space through their access to education and employment. The tension between the Europe of super-diversity and the Europe of increasing inequality requires policy responses in terms of social justice and cultural democracy. This is particularly relevant for a EU cultural policy aimed at articulating a European cultural space on the basis of the principles of cultural inclusion and cultural representativeness. This paper aims at assessing the responsiveness of EU cultural policy to the impact of the economic crisis on the potential loss of cultural diversity of the European cultural space. By comparing elements of continuity and change between the Culture Programme 2007-2013 and the Creative Europe Programme 2014-2020, the paper examines to what extent new EU cultural policy discourses and practices are sensitive to current processes of cultural homogenization of the institutional domain. The analysis will be based on the qualitative analysis of legal documents and institutional discourses and will be complemented with qualitative interviews with policy-makers and institutional agents. The paper will identify new elements in discursive attitudes and philosophies and in the design of policy practices in order to assess the degree of accomodation of the problem of inequality in the post-2008 construction of a European cultural space.