What can Ireland learn from the experience of others? Is the choice between the coerced conformism of the "melting pot" or the socially atomised "salad bowl", recognising the autonomy of each culture and the commonality of none?

Or does integration have another culinary metaphor in it? In Ireland, models of integration are typically distinguished by means of a binary opposition between assimilationism and multiculturalism. Better to think of it as a spectrum, argues Piaras Mac Éinrí of the Irish Centre for Migration Studies at UCC.

"Although no one country could be said to be entirely multiculturalist or entirely assimilationist, most can be located somewhere along a spectrum; a few may even reflect policy approaches based on both of these two perspectives."

The French policy of civic integration - in fact very far in origin and ambition from classic assimilationism - draws on enlightenment universalism and sees the nation as a political community of equals inhabiting a secular state with universal rights.

People may belong to any culture or religion, but in the public domain the secular republican state makes no allowance for difference. It doesn't collect data on colour or ethnic identity, for instance, because in the words of the constitution, the republic is indivisible.

Sceptics of the French model saw vindication in the riots that shook Parisian banlieues last year, seeing in them the outcome of decades of wilful state neglect of minorities' needs.

European multiculturalism as developed in Britain and the Netherlands from the 1960s and 1970s respectively is more tolerant and laissez-faire than the state-directed policy of Canada and Australia. It recognises different ethnic groups but tends to leave the integrating to them. Critics say it has failed to promote interaction or equality by failing to acknowledge racism and the reasons for higher poverty and unemployment, for example, among minority ethnic groups.

There are clear difficulties in applying others' experience to the Irish case. Though its aboriginals might disagree, Canada sees itself as an immigrant nation that has been negotiating a three-way accommodation between ethno-cultural groups for centuries.

Britain and France each has one predominant immigrant group drawn by colonial links (south Asians in Britain, north Africans in France), and much of the alienation that concerns policy-makers is found among the second and third generations. But the price of failure is common everywhere.

All European states have had some difficulty in dealing with immigration and diversity, says Mac Éinrí, and two radically different official approaches in France and Britain have not averted serious social problems in each: most disturbingly, riots in France, bombs in Britain.

"No perfect model has yet been developed for a functioning diverse society. But . . . one finds that by and large those states which are proactive and which support a policy of respect for diversity are better places to live in. A certain effort and investment, in terms of policy and resources, is required to achieve these practical improvements," he argues.

The Government and Irish NGOs prefer to speak of "interculturalism" - suggestive of an interactive exchange, framed in large part on the Canadian model - as a desired third way between the theoretical poles of assimilationism and multiculturalism, and the concept guides many important policy initiatives here.

"Developing a more inclusive, intercultural society is about inclusion by design, not as an add-on or afterthought, with a particular emphasis on interaction and equality," says Philip Watt of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism.

Some of the measures that could be considered under the broad intercultural rubric are the active recruitment of minorities to the Garda, the review of criminal legislation to ensure its effectiveness in addressing hate crime and the development of strategies to encourage participation by young immigrants in sport, alongside promotion of the cultures and histories of new arrivals.

Debate on integration in Ireland is still at an early stage, but Watt believes that from our vantage it is possible to trace the mistakes made elsewhere while drawing on ideas that have worked. Whatever policy emerges will have to be strong enough to withstand "shocks" such as 9/11 and their security-driven responses, he says.

Thanks to a strong economy and a continuing need for immigrants, Ireland has a "precious window of opportunity" to straighten out its thinking on incorporating new arrivals, Mac Éinrí believes. "The result of inaction now will be a form of forced, resented and almost certainly failed de facto assimilation over time."