Multi-what?

After reading Ian Rankin's book where the issues of immigrants and multicultural modern Scotland are a background for the story.

With immigration on its highest, what is happening to people thrown together in a random way with all the cultural misunderstandings, racial issues and instinctive fear of the unknown? There's the political correctness going wild on one hand and immigrants themselves staying in their own closed groups on the other. Middle ground doesn't seem to exist at the moment, officially it is encouraged to mingle and ask and explore another culture and language and interesting customs, in real life it's live and let live and every group stays out of others way. I guess that when you go somewhere foreign it's simply comforting to stay in a familiar group of people that share your cultural heritage and language. In a uniting world we are living among strangers, and although I meet people from all over the world on a street every day I still know nothing in depth about their collective background or individual hopes and dreams. There's the optimistic vision of different cultures merging into united multicultural society. There's the grey street level truth of different immigrant groups staying away from colurful but soulless unity. Although we could use a solid middle ground between society multicultural and multicoloured, it's not just going to appear beneath our feet. And because it is another bit of hard work in a life already full of such, are we going to make it or lazily drift into whatever comes next...?