Political interculturalism and the integration of immigrants: the Portuguese case

The immigrant integration policy aims to promote social cohesion and to forge a sense of identification with the national community, by establishing bonds of solidarity and the sharing of values and practices among all residents in the territory. In Portugal, in recent years, interculturalism has been presented as one of the structuring principles of such a policy. In this article, we intend to show how this policy is reflected in the two first Plans for the Integration of Immigrants, selecting and assessing the measures more directly related to promoting interculturality. We found that the vast majority of measures announced as being intercultural in both documents aims to show the existing cultural diversity and enable the public administration to deal with diversity. While these measures are important to promote and facilitate the integration of immigrants, they are nevertheless not enough to show the intercultural approach of the Portuguese integration policy.