The Unchartered Territories and Untested Assumptions of Multiculturalism

• In Event: Contemplating the Openness and Closure of Citizenship and Borders I

Abstract

This paper is part of a larger study that questions "Canadian exceptionalism" in the success of multiculturalist policies. It argues from a historical institutionalist perspective that multiculturalism in Western countries has been limited to the accommodation of certain immigrant traditions and practices, and never involved a notable degree of promotion or celebration of diversity. Most policies that pass as multiculturalist today are in fact mere extensions of the arrangements that have long accommodated national minorities in the West. In other words, contemporary policies toward immigrant cultures are built on an “ideological prior” (Fetzer and Soper 2005) that existed long before the waves of immigration into Western countries, and were actually a result of the core democratic principle of equality. Advanced democracies have accommodated immigrant cultures to large extents, sometimes despite popular resistance, but that was primarily due to the institutional constraints on state policies, rather than a will to promote or celebrate immigrant cultures. Measuring multiculturalism only by the state accommodation of particular minority traditions and practices is thus incomplete, and potentially misleading. Therefore, as a more encompassing alternative, this study proposes two interrelated and intertwined measures based on inclusivity and neutrality. The study then uses these measures to reassess multiculturalist policies, past and contemporary. This task allows to reevaluate, among other things, the claim that advanced democracies have retreated significantly from multiculturalist policies. Results indicate that accommodation-based measures overestimate the inclusiveness of advanced democracies. Moreover, they trivialize a set of monoculturalist assumptions on which multiculturalist arguments were originally based. These findings raise questions about both the retreatment argument in general, and about claims such as Canadian exceptionalism in particular.

Author

• Serdar Kaya, Simon Fraser University