Twentieth-century ‘developed’ societies are part of a world that is generally considered to be characterized by a range of mobilities, with such societies frequently attempting to define themselves as ‘open’ to a range of flows. In the case of the European Union project, attempts to build up an economic system based on a ‘knowledge society’ – facilitated by the present regulations on tariffs, taxes and visas – are not simple measures contributing unproblematically to member states’ national growth: they are unequally distributed over the regions and sometimes counter-oriented. Indeed, in all the countries, internal socio-economic inequality contributes to an uneven access to – and relationship with – ‘knowledge’, an inequality that challenges the very notion of ‘open’ societies. However, even with this unequal context, multicultural-ization remains a process which attempts to open societies to a ‘world society’ (Habermas 2001). If we accept the concept of a world society, it assumes no territorial borders of the sort that define the nation-state's sovereignty, national identity and culture. Hence the question is not so much to qualify multiculturalism but to see how it develops and how the different cultures and languages manage to co-exist in one society and to share political and economic resources. We must consider the question of political organization and that of the orientation and mandate of these institutions at the same time.