The concept of intercultural opening aims to achieve equal access for all to supply structure services. It originated in the late 1980s when the move away from social work with foreigners towards migration work started. Intercultural opening processes can be initiated with a claim for social justice and equal opportunities or with reactions to changing basic conditions.


Intercultural Opening in practice

The intercultural opening of an institution or a company is a process that takes time and occurs on several different levels. The extent to which a range of perspectives are enabled and other interpretative approaches are permitted is constantly checked introspectively in this process. This requires a stance of subject orientation, equality and recognition, a stance of appreciating diversity on the basis of shared humanity.

Structure

As a cross-sectional task, interculturality requires a structural basis. This must be reflected both in the conception (e.g. by means of guiding models) and in practice. Targets were formulated according to an individual assessment of needs: How/to what extent can we make our institution/company intercultural?

Staff

Attention should be drawn to mechanisms that exclude certain people or groups of people and these mechanisms should be subjected to critical reflection: What are the barriers to access and how can they be broken down? Do our offerings reach all people with and without an immigrant background? Measures to be taken could be training courses and further training for staff members, but also a different choice of staff that reflects the social diversity in the employee structure.

Offers and Services

The target group must be involved if offers and products are to be developed in a targeted way and with an intercultural focus. Offers and concepts are adapted by taking account of findings made. New offers can also be designed.

Cooperation and Networking

Networking and the creation of new cooperations is an important component of an intercultural opening process. Very often, a start is made in public relations work, for example by translating flyers or, by intergrating intercultural aspects, redesigning flyers.

Glossary

Intercultural: The term refers to the meeting of two or more cultures that mix or overlap: they are in interaction or communication with each other. This is a variable and dynamic process in which the cultures involved or parts of them are not just added. Much rather, they form a new "culture" - that is mutually influencing - an interculture. Today's world would be inconceivable without interculturality because the coming together and exchange of cultures is a key and continuing process during cultural development.

Culturalization/ethnicization: The subject of interculturality is based on an extended understanding of the word culture: Furthermore, the cultural and ethnic facets of a person are understood as only one of many dimensions (incl. gender, religion and world view, education and social status) that influence his/her actions and interactions. Culturalization/ethnicization takes place if, for example, an argument between people is seen as an intercultural conflict because one of the conflict partners is of Turkish or Russian origin. In such cases, the conflict is rashly interpreted as an intercultural problem even before the causes have been thoroughly examined. This is followed by a reduction to the cultural dimensions that is usually equated with ethnic origin.

Intercultural orientation stands for a socio-political attitude that recognizes difference, allows participation with equal opportunities and acknowledges all groups in society as users of a facility/institution and as part of society.

Intercultural opening is the name for the implementation of the attitude of intercultural orientation with the aim of breaking down access barriers and enabling participation. It deals with migration and with the plurality of real-life concepts and thus goes beyond the subject of "culture". Intercultural opening is not value-neutral; rather it sets a process of self-reflection in motion: What is my personal attitude to the subject of migration and how open am I to this subject? Where are the opportunities, what is the added value and what are the limits? These considerations also mean getting to grips with discrimination, racism and power structures.

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