Discrimination, Diversity and Multiculturalism in the Policies of the European Union after the Enlargement: A First Assessment of the Harmonization Process (original) (raw)
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Ethnicities, 2022
For twenty years, researchers at the University of Bristol’s Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship have led both academic and public debates about Muslims, racisms, multiculturalism, different forms of minority identity, and the place of religion in public life. In November 2019, in order to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Centre’s work, a conference entitled Multiculturalism, Nationalism, Secularism and Religion took place at the University of Bristol. This special issue of Ethnicities gathers together the papers given by the plenary speakers. Individually, each article, by leading figures in their field, insightfully analyses the directions that debates about religious and cultural diversity are currently taking, and they make intriguing proposals about the new directions that these debates should take in the future. This includes the relationship between majority and minority cultural rights, the politics and politicisation of cultural practices, the role of religion and religious identity in achieving important social goals, the development of the study of nationalism through a series of distinct phases, and the evolution of political policies towards minorities from forms of inclusion to forms of securitisation.
Rethinking Liberal Multiculturalism: Foundations, Practices and Methodologies
Ethnicities
The article introduces a special issue on “Rethinking Liberal Multiculturalism: Foundations, Practices and Methodologies.” The contributions presented in this special issue were discussed during the conference « Multicultural Citizenship 25 Years Later », held in Paris in November 2021. Their aim is to take stock of the legacy of Kymlicka’s contribution and to highlight new developments in theories of liberal multiculturalism and minority rights. The contributions do not purport to challenge the legitimacy of theories of multiculturalism and minority rights, they rather aim at deepening our understanding of the foundations of liberal multiculturalism and of its practical implementation, sensitive to social scientific dynamics of diverse societies. Without abandoning the general idea that cultural minorities should be granted special minority rights, the essays presented raise new questions about three dimensions central to liberal multiculturalism: its normative foundations, its practical categories of minorities or groups, and its fact-sensitive methodology. Taken together they shed light on the renewed variety of theories of liberal multiculturalism highlighting their complexity and internal disagreements. To introduce these articles, the article first draws a brief historical overview of the debates on multiculturalism since the 1990s (section 1). It then highlights the distinctive aspects of Kymlicka’s contribution (section 2) and identifies recent research trends (section 3). Doing so, it explains how the articles gathered here both expand on those distinctive aspects and explore those new research avenues. The section 4 summarizes the contributions.
The Life and Death of Multiculturalism
Federalism and the Welfare State in a Multicultural World, 2019
Not least among Keith Banting's many significant contributions to the study of public policy has been his analysis of the nature and functions of multiculturalism. Alongside, and often in collaboration with, Will Kymlicka, he has championed the Canadian version of liberal multiculturalism, and sought to explain to its many critics, in Europe especially, why celebrations of its death are not only exaggerated but misguided. In particular, he has defended, persuasively, and with appeal to solid evidence, the following three propositions:
This text deals with the type of multiculturalism that is proper to Europe and analyses the relationship between such multiculturalism and the European political integration process. In so doing, it distinguishes between multiculturalism at the level of the European nation-states and multiculturalism at the level of the European Union envisaged as a whole. The analysis considers the diverse aspects of multiculturalism, especially the role of language, religion, history and the different ways in which the process of secularization has developed in the European member states. The text notably discusses: 1) the distinction made in Canada between multiculturalism and interculturalism and Charles Taylor’s suggestion that interculturalism is best suited to European nation-states (see Charles Taylor, Philosophy and Social Criticism, May/June 2012 38: 413-423); 2) the transition, in Habermas’ reflections on Europe, from the idea of a post-national European Federation to that of a European transnational democracy (see Die Postnationale Konstellation. Politische Essays, Frankfurt-am-Main, Suhrkamp, 1998; Die Verfassung Europas, Berlin, Suhrkamp, 2011). Finally, the chapter relates the question of cultural pluralism in Europe to the much-debated issue of federalism in the European Union.
Rethinking Multiculturalism After its “Retreat”
American Behavioral Scientist, 2015
At the beginning of the 21st century, many countries until the 1990s implemented multicultural policies that have backtracked. This article examines how multiculturalism as an idea and normative framework of immigrant integration evolved in Canada, the country that initiated it. Juxtaposing two recent time periods, the 1990s and the early 2000s, I conduct an analysis of dominant media and government discourses, which are interpreted against the backdrop of relevant policy changes. The theoretical framework underlines the relevance of socioethnic leveraging, which takes places as one group is constructed as socially, culturally, or morally more (or less) deviant from the dominant norm than the other. The outcome of leveraging can be fairly integrative. It can also reinforce minority marginalization. The analysis documents the importance of Québécois nationalism for the construction of Canadian multicultural identity in the 1990s and its relative absence during the reinvigoration of an Anglo-Saxon Canadian national core in the following decade. The article concludes that, from a comparative perspective, multiculturalism in Canada remains strong. However, its meaning has changed from being "about us" to being "about them." Hence, although it was originally meant to be a national identity for all Canadians, it now risks becoming a minority affair. The fact that even in Canada multiculturalism has lost much of its original meaning should serve as a wake-up all. It suggests, among others, that the relationship between the national majority and minority groups need rethinking.