The Reports of Multiculturalism's Death are Greatly Exaggerated
| Author | Patti Tamara Lenard |
| Published date | 01 October 2012 |
| Date | 01 October 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9256.2012.01442.x |
| Subject Matter | Research Article |
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P O L I T I C S : 2 0 1 2 V O L 3 2 ( 3 ) , 1 8 6 – 1 9 6
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9256.2012.01442.x
Research Article
The Reports of Multiculturalism’s Death
are Greatly Exaggeratedponl_1442186..196
Patti Tamara Lenard
University of Ottawa
Multiculturalism has been declared dead across Western Europe and, surprisingly, in Canada. In
this brief article, I argue that the declaration of its death is premature. Instead, I argue that whether
policies designated ‘multicultural’ produce integration or segregation is in large part determined by
the context in which they are implemented; in some cases, integration is proceeding smoothly
while in others recent discourse concerning ‘integration’ of migrants bears an uncomfortable
resemblance to historically discredited calls for ‘assimilation’. Finally, I argue that to the extent (and
this extent is limited) that Muslim minorities are failing to integrate, the failure is caused by host
country actions that signal their hostility towards Muslim migrants.
Keywords: multiculturalism; guest workers; Germany; Islam; Muslims
If the news is to be believed, multiculturalism is having a bad time of it: Angela
Merkel declared that multiculturalism in Germany has failed, and David Cameron
then joined her in announcing multiculturalism’s contribution to the segregation,
isolation and alienation of minority communities in the UK. In Canada, perhaps the
most self-consciously multicultural of nations, a national newspaper recently ran a
headline calling for the removal of ‘multicultural’ from the nation’s vocabulary
(Burns, 2011; Connolly, 2010; Globe and Mail, 2010). Twenty years ago, we were all
declared to be multiculturalists; instead, we are all ‘post-multiculturalists’ now
(Glazer, 1998; Ley, 2008). This short article evaluates these trends, with the purpose
of arguing that the reports of multiculturalism’s deaths are, as the title suggests,
greatly exaggerated. That said, as I shall argue, the nature of the policies adopted to
integrate immigrants have shifted significantly towards increasing the costs, for
migrants, of integration; as such, some attempts to integrate migrants bear an
uncomfortable resemblance to discredited forms of assimilation.
I begin with some observations about the terms of the debate we are witnessing –
in particular, that critics of multiculturalism accuse it of promoting isolation and
segregation (Barry, 2001; Bissoondath, 1998; Fukuyama, 2007; Gitlin, 1995) and
that its defenders challenge these claims, and argue instead that multiculturalism
encourages the accommodation of difference and thereby the full inclusion of
minorities in the public sphere (Kymlicka, 1996; Parekh, 2002; Young, 1989). Here,
I argue that whether policies encourage integration or segregation is in large part a
matter of context and therefore that the political and social environment in which
these policies are adopted determines to a considerable degree whether they will
© 2012 The Author. Politics © 2012 Political Studies Association
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encourage segregation or integration. I then compare ‘integration’ to ‘assimilation’
and suggest that, at least in some contexts, what is now termed ‘integration’ carries
shades of the ‘assimilation’ that multiculturalists and many others have rejected.
Next, I consider the specific case of Muslim migrants, who are alleged to cause
integration challenges that are distinct from those that democratic nations have
faced historically. I deny that this is the case, and conclude by pointing to a series
of actions being taken by host countries that pose challenges for the integration of
Muslim migrants. Fundamentally, the trends I identify suggest the importance of
re-evaluating the meaning of integration in multicultural democracies.
Multiculturalism, critics and defenders
Multicultural policies are extraordinarily diverse: policies that support separate
schools systems, that fund media services in minority languages, that support
minority community neighbourhood organisations, that allow modifications of
uniform requirements or that provide for kosher and halal food in school cafeterias
are all designated ‘multicultural’ (Parekh, 2002). Stephen Vertovec and Susanne
Wessendorf argue that ‘multiculturalism can best be described as a broad set of
mutually reinforcing approaches or methodologies concerning the incorporation
and participation of immigrants and ethnic minorities’ in receiving states (Vertovec
and Wessendorf, 2010, p. 4). Multicultural policies are united by a shared purpose: to
accommodate cultural and religious difference with the objective of facilitating the
full and fair participation of minority citizens in the public sphere (Kymlicka, 1998).
For critics, however, multicultural policies do no such thing. Rather, the policies
that have flowed from attempts to ‘recognise’ minorities have only served to
produce alienation and isolation of minorities, and therefore have served to erode
the social cohesion that ought to bind members of the nation (Gitlin, 1995;
Goodhart, 2004). For example, British Prime Minister David Cameron recently
proclaimed the failure of multiculturalism in Britain, as a result of its encourage-
ment of isolation: Britain’s multicultural policies have permitted migrant commu-
nities ‘to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream’ (quoted in
Burns, 2011). Critics of multiculturalism focus on cases such as the demands made
by new Muslim migrants in Winnipeg to exempt their children from music and gym
classes or the policy adopted in Sweden for some years that exempted Kurdish
communities from minimum marriage laws, and therefore enabled parents to
coerce their 15-year-old girls into marriages against their will (Martin, 2011; Wikan,
2004). These policies, critics of multiculturalism claim, serve only to isolate and
marginalise minority communities and must therefore be abandoned.
Whereas the two policies just described above are evidently intended to allow the
separation of minority communities from a host community, however, others may
not necessarily do so. Permitting Sikhs to wear a turban rather than the traditional
Stetson facilitated their inclusion in Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a major
Canadian national institution, and the willingness to staff voting booths with
women to enable the verification of the identity of Muslim women who cover their
faces in public facilitates their access to political participation. Although these two
policies appear to be focused on inclusion, and those described in the prior
© 2012 The Author. Politics © 2012 Political Studies Association
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PAT T I TA M A R A L E N A R D
paragraph appear to facilitate segregation, in fact whether so-called multicultural
policies are inclusive or isolating depends on a series of contextual considerations,
including the motivation for adopting the policies and the specific conglomeration
of adopted policies. In order to understand the importance of context, consider the
policies adopted in Germany and the Netherlands – two nations in which multi-
culturalism has been declared dead or is struggling – which encouraged, and
perhaps even forced, minority cultures to sustain separate and parallel lives.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, guest workers in Germany, most of whom hailed
from Turkey, were permitted, and indeed encouraged, to live in enclaves, to educate
their children in Turkish and so on (Barbieri, 1998; Chin, 2007). For years, West
Germany largely refused to acknowledge its status as a country of immigration, in
spite of millions of long-term foreign residents who had, in effect, permanently
settled in Germany (Castles, 1985, p. 517). The policies adopted with respect to
their guest workers indicated the widespread view that these workers were tem-
porary and could therefore be treated as disposable: efforts were made to ensure
that workers did not travel with their families and to ensure that the labour force
itself ‘rotated’ so that new workers entered...
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