The contributors to this volume encourage a re-thinking of the very notion of culture by examining the experiences, situations and the representations of those who chose - or were forced - to change cultures from the nineteenth century to the present day. Beyond a simple study of migration, forced or otherwise, this collective work also re-examines the model of integration. As recent entrants into new social settings may be perceived as affecting the previously-accepted social equilibrium, mechanisms encouraging or inhibiting population flows are sometimes put in place. From this perspective, "integration" may become less a matter of internal choice than an external obligation imposed by the dominant political power, in which case "integration" may only be a euphemism for cultural uniformity. The strategies of cultural survival developed as a reaction to such a rising tide of cultural uniformity can be seen as necessary points of departure for an ever-growing shared multiculturalism. A long-term voluntary commitment to make cultural boundaries more flexible and allow a more engaged individual participation in the process of defining the self and finding its place within a culture in movement may represent a key element for cultural cohesion in a globalized world.
About the Author: Martine Raibaud is Senior Lecturer of Chinese Language and Civilization at the University of La Rochelle. She studied at the University of Peking and holds a doctorate in Far Eastern Asian Studies from the University of Paris 7 Diderot. She recently published Enjeux identitaires (with S. Ryan and J. Bonnevin, les Indes Savantes, 2013). Miceala Symington is Professor at the University of La Rochelle. A graduate of Oxford University (Keble College), she is "agregee" and holds a doctorate and "habilitation a diriger des recherches" from the University of Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her most recent publication is Actualite et inactualite de la notion de postcolonial (with Jean Bessiere and Joanny Moulin, Champion, 2013). Ionut Untea received his PhD degree in December 2013 at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), Paris, and has taught in the Department of Applied Foreign Languages at the University of La Rochelle. The topics explored in his research are early modern, modern and contemporary English, American and European history, philosophy, and political theory. David Waterman is Professor at the University of La Rochelle, France, where he is Director of the Department of Applied Foreign Languages and a member of the research team CRHIA (Center for Research in International and Atlantic History). David Waterman is currently working on Pakistani history, culture and literature in English, and has served on the editorial team of Pakistaniaat. His most recent publication is Where Worlds Collide: Pakistani Fiction in the New Millennium, forthcoming with Oxford University Press.