Analysis of migration processes in the EU and the theory of multiculturalism: current state and prospects

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of the migration crisis that has hit the EU. Since 2015, there has been a sharp increase in the number of refugees from the region, to which European countries were not ready. By the end of 2019, Europe has already exhausted its economic capacity to receive and accommodate refugees, but their flow is continuing. Over the last 5 years, more than 4 million refugees from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia have come to Europe. In 2015, the flow of migrants was over 1.5 million people, in 2016 - 900 000, in 2017 - 650 000, in 2018 - 600 000, in 2019 - almost 550 000.The main causes of large-scale movement of migrants to Europe have been identified. Among them are wars and conflicts that destabilize the situation in their native countries; demographic outbreak in Africa and the Middle East, deteriorating funding for refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, exacerbation of the 2018-2019 Syrian crisis; the availability of high social guarantees and diaspora relatives in many EU countries.The political, social, cultural consequences of the migration crisis for individual countries and the EU are analyzed. The increasing flow of refugees has exacerbated in European societies the problems of terrorism, the increase in crime rates, the poor cultural compatibility of the local population with refugees, the increased right-wing sentiment and the high social costs of migrant adaptation.The importance of the ideology of multiculturalism for the current migration crisis in the EU is substantiated. The phenomenon of multiculturalism is compared with the phenomena of globalization and shows the impact on the situation in society, which lead to conflict. Multiculturalism has recently been perceived as a means that can mitigate the negative (primarily for traditional cultures, ethnic and religious groups) consequences of globalization, but narrowing the philosophical view of the phenomenon of multiculturalism to the institutional level, modern representatives of the humanities and practices in Europe (political scientists, sociologists, politicians) faced with the fact that the interaction of cultures has not been adequately reflected in theory and held in practice.