Immigration, Identity and Mobility in Europe: Inclusive Cultural Policies and Exclusion Effects
European cultural policy programs, such as European Capitals of Culture (ECC) seek to develop new forms of civic cohesion through inclusive and participative cultural events. The cultural assets of a city elected "ECC" are mobilized to attract a wide range of new audiences, including populations poorly integrated into local cultural life and consequently distant from pre existing cultural offers. In the current context of increasingly heterogeneous individual perceptions of Europe, the ECC program aims to promote cultural forms and institutions intended to accelerate both territorial and cross border European cohesion. This new cultural consumption pattern is conceived to stimulate integration and mobility, but also to create a legitimate and transnational ideal European citizen type. However, cultural struggles and identity conflicts that are emerging in contemporary Europe, especially in the context of increasing immigration issues, raise new challenges for European cultural policies to address inclusion and integration with populations poorly integrated into local cultural life. Our comparative research addresses the contrasting cases of "European Capitals of Culture" from southern and northern Europe, cities which have recently been affected by the ECC political mechanism, and cities that had been elected as ECC in the past. This paper aims to explore the impacts of European policies on institutions, as well as to understand current obstacles to their efficient implementation. For this, we analyze the urban cultural geography through innovative statistical and cartographical methods.