Interethnic conflicts in urban neighbourhoods.: Ethnisation and culturalism as a framework for interpreting conflicts between residents and migrants

New immigration into urban neighbourhoods has been followed by conflicts between established residents and newcomers recently. In public opinion these conflicts tend to be viewed as interethnic conflicts. Accordingly, political attempts to moderate these conflicts on a local level are made under the assumption that they have been caused by "ethnic" or "cultural" differences of the groups involved. This paper presents some selected results of a qualitative analysis of individual interpretations of conflicts made by participants of a local non-governmental institution engaged in political moderation processes in a West German city. It puts particular accent on the question to what extent these interpretations have been affected by thinking in terms of ethnisation and culturalism.