Death Of Multiculturalism Research Articles

Multiculturalism and vulnerability in the 21st century: Reviewing recent debates and a way forward

AbstractThe death of multiculturalism has been pronounced many times. In spite of this, this political program has proven resilient and the fact of cultural diversity remains inescapable in most liberal democracies. Still, with the rise of the far right, the migrant crises in the United States and Europe and with social movements pushing the boundaries of multicultural theory, it is high time to review multiculturalism, a movement of the late 20th century, and see where it is headed in the 21st century. This article has two objectives. First, after reviewing three debates—anti‐essentialists versus multiculturalism, interculturalism versus multiculturalism and multiculturalism versus the welfare state—I argue that the normative core of multiculturalism is still viable. Second, I argue that multiculturalism remains unable to contribute to some of the most pressing issues of the 21st century and point to a novel approach to the justification of multicultural policies. This justification relies on the concept of vulnerability, a concept that plays an important but undertheorized role in current multicultural theories.

The Musical Bridge—Intercultural Regionalism and the Immigration Challenge in Contemporary Andalusia

The ideals of tolerance and cultural exchange associated with the interfaith past of Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) have become a symbol for Andalusian regionalism and for the integration of Moroccan communities. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than in the context of music. In cities such as Granada, Moroccan and Spanish musicians actively promote the ideals of intercultural dialogue through the performance of repertoires such as flamenco and Arab-Andalusian music that allegedly possess a shared cultural history. In this article, we examine the interrelationship between music and ‘intercultural regionalism’, focusing on how music is used by public institutions to ground social integration in the discourse of regionalism. Against a backdrop of rising Islamophobia and the mobilization of right-wing populist and anti-immigration rhetoric both within Spain and internationally, the authors consider how music can be used to promote social integration, to overcome Islamophobia and to tackle radicalization. We advance two arguments. First, we argue that the musical interculturalism promoted by a variety of institutions needs to be understood within the wider project of Andalusian regionalism. Here, we note that musical integration of Spain’s cultural and historical ‘Other’ (Moroccans) into Andalusian society is promoted as a model for how Europe can overcome the alleged ‘death of multiculturalism’. The preferential way to achieve this objective is through ‘intercultural regionalism’, envisioned as the combination of regional identity-building and intercultural interactions between communities that share a common cultural heritage. Second, we assess some of the criticism of the efficacy of al-Andalus as a model for contemporary intercultural exchange. Combining approaches in political science and ethnomusicology, we focus on one case study, the Fundación Tres Culturas (FTC). Through interviews with figures within the FTC, we examine why this model has become partly insufficient and how it is borne out in the sorts of musical activities programmed by FTC that seek to move beyond the ‘andalusí’ myth. We conclude by recognizing the continuing regional and international importance of this myth but we question its integrating capacity at a time of radical political, economic and environmental upheaval.

Multiculturalism by Liberal Law

AbstractThere has been much talk about the retreat or even death of multiculturalism. Much of this discussion confounds multiculturalism with explicit policy under that name. I argue in this paper that liberal law itself, in particular majority-constraining constitutional law, requires multiculturalism, understood as multiple ways of life that cannot and should not be contained by a state that is to be neutral about individuals’ ultimate values and commitments. The workings of legal multiculturalism are demonstrated through a comparison of benchmark jurisprudence on gays in America and Muslims in Europe. An interesting difference is that for Muslims, liberal law has also functioned as constraint, not only as resource, especially in the post-2001 period of heightened integration concerns.

Medborgarskapandets paradoxer

Paradoxes of citizen formation: Citizenship positioning in stories about belonging in an era of migrationThis article analyzes the formation of citizenship in today’s multi-ethnic Sweden with a particular focus on how migration renders visible existing citizenship ideals, defined in terms of similarity and difference on the basis of ethno-cultural background. Analysing three individual stories of women who have migrated to Sweden, with different biographies and stories of how they ended up in Sweden, the article focuses on negotiations of the boundaries and contents of citizenship in multi-ethnic Sweden. The point of departure for the analysis is a post-structuralist and discursive approach. In all, the stories address the crucial question of who should be included into the social community and on what conditions – and who should be left out? This particular question is also at the very centre of the political debate in today’s Europe. On the one hand, there are strong arguments about the ’death of multiculturalism’ and demands for new forms of ethno-culturally graduated citizenship – also in Sweden. On the other hand, in Sweden as well as in other European countries, claims for the development of a new and more inclusive societal community have been raised, expanding the rights of citizens to accommodating also those who have been excluded from them.

The national identities of the ‘death of multiculturalism’ discourse in Western Europe

Since the late 1990s, multiculturalism is discussed, in newspapers more than in scientific discourses, as a public policy failure in West European nations. The Netherlands was one of the first to have declared multiculturalism ‘dead’. In the UK, the death of multiculturalism followed mainly from the 2005 London bombings. In Germany, the story of the failure of multiculturalism became popularized with the publication of Thilo Sarrazin's bestseller Germany is Abolishing Itself [Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab] in 2010. This article seeks to highlight key rhetorical expressions of the climactic period of 1 June 2010–1 March 2011. The twofold argument is that (1) the death of multiculturalism discourse in the Dutch, German and British newspapers manifests an attempt to reinforce particular monoculturalist visions of a national identity through the sociocultural construction of the other, the Muslims; and (2) in the different national newspapers, the death of multiculturalism discourse, with the corresponding media stereotyping of Muslims (as expressed in slogans, metaphors, neologisms, and so forth), varies according to the rhetorical usages of national legacies. In what follows now, three issues that recurrently appear in the death of multiculturalism discourse are discussed, namely, un-enlightenment, cultural imperialism and totalitarianism.

Vigilance and Apprehension: Multiculturalism, Democracy, and the ‘Kurdish Question’ in Turkey

The aim of this paper is to discuss the ‘Kurdish question’ in Turkey within the framework of the current debates on the ‘death of multiculturalism’. Contra what I would call ‘multikulti-sceptics’, I contend that it is too early to compose an epitaph for multiculturalism, both as practice and as ideology, that there is no binary opposition between a form of rights-based multiculturalism on the one hand, and universal human rights, democratic constitutionalism or social cohesion on the other. The paper also focuses on ‘multicultural constitutional citizenship,’ based on democratic deliberation and dialogue, as a solution to Kurdish demands for the public recognition of their identities. I juxtapose Kurdish claims with similar demands made by national minorities in other contexts, and conclude by delineating the normative contours of multicultural constitutional citizenship and outlining the practical measures that are required to sustain it.

Changing directions: young people and effective work against racism

This article explores effective approaches against racism in work with young people, and the relevance of new policy agendas in the UK. Since the 2001 disturbances, the UK has controversially prioritised ‘Community Cohesion’, with the accusation that this new direction represents the ‘death of multiculturalism’. Drawing on empirical evidence from a project established to work with the racist views of White children in Leeds, and from youth work in Oldham, it explores how such work positively disrupts the public realm and re-thinks the previous framework of ‘anti-racism’. It is suggested that anti-racist educational policies and practice have created a moral code which young people can either subscribe to or be punished by and that by failing to engage within a framework of inclusion and openness with young people who express racist views, educationalists risk alienating them from a positive recasting of those views. The article argues that the failure of past policies as one form of multiculturalism has promoted the alienation of those most in need of intervention regarding racism, and that ‘Community Cohesion’, as actually practiced at ground level, can offer a productive way forward to engage with racism within more intersectional understandings of youth identity and its formation.

Multiculturalism and Contemporary British Fiction: Londonstani and The Islamist

EUROPE IN BLACK AND WHITE Lisbon , 12-14 May 2008 ABSTRACT MULTICULTURALISM AND CONTEMPORARY BRITISH FICTION ADRIANO ELIA - UNIVERSITY OF ROME "ROMA TRE" At the beginning of the 21 st century, the need to move beyond post-colonial and cultural studies somewhat abstract categories seems to be stronger than ever. In order to analyse all-encompassing issues such as ‘Europe', ‘black' and ‘white', a reification of post-colonial theoretical tools is made possible by an ever-increasing permeability of the boundaries between subjects such as literature, sociology, contemporary history, political science, international relations, anthropology. By pursuing an interdisciplinary and pragmatic approach, one finds it difficult to identify a persuasive idea of ‘Europe' when even its ‘capital' Brussels has to face an identity compromise between Flemish and Walloons (Castells, AlSayyad: 2002); by the same token, it is hard to imagine that, say, Scottish people would define themselves first as Europeans, and then as British and Scottish - the opposite sequential order is much more likely. Traditional categories such as ‘black' and ‘white' are also being repeatedly challenged and disrupted, witness the recent publication of novels such as Gautam Malkani's Londonstani (2006) and Ed Husain's The Islamist (2007). The former displays a religion-free kind of identity describing the life in Hounslow of apolitical British-Asian teenage rude-boys ironically embracing the traditionally opposed black hip-hop culture. The latter, instead, is based on a real account of a British Muslim who, after becoming an Islamic fundamentalist, rejected political Islam and returned to normal life. My essay aims to investigate this anti-essentialist notion of the South-Asian community in contemporary Britain by reflecting on the passionate debate between those who keep celebrating multiculturalism as the necessary path to a more tolerant society, and those who blame the policy of appeasement that supposedly fostered the growth of Muslim fundamentalism in Britain. Bearing in mind the diverse colonial histories and the dangers of historical revisionism (Ferguson's ‘Anglobalization': 2002), rather than devising yet another facile theoretical classification in order to explain what is impossible to be pinpointed in all its complexities, I will conduct a socio-historical analysis of post-7/7 alleged death of multiculturalism - by cultural relativism and political correctness - based on the case studies described in the above-mentioned novels. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Adriano Elia Department of International Studies Faculty of Political Science University of Rome ‘Roma Tre' aelia@uniroma3.it

Researching community and its moral projects

The study of community is a key area of concern in sociology and anthropology. In this paper it is argued that community should be understood as a moral project as well as a state of affairs or a set of social relationships. Through reviewing the current debate on the ‘death of multiculturalism’ the political and ethical dimensions of research practice are explored. The paper argues for the development of a cosmopolitan method that reworks the relationship between technology, art and critical social science. Accounting for the complexities of community require a research imagination that is supple enough to attend to the interplay between local and global levels in order to find new ways of describing how people live in and across social divisions. Drawing on 20 years of research on the meanings of community in south London the paper explores the limits of interviewing and quantitative measures as they apply to social cohesion or social capital. It argues for a sensuous mode of scholarship in which the social relations of sound, smell, touch and taste can alert us to the ways in which community is inhabited and lived. The aspiration of this sensuous and multimodal agenda for researching community is to create vital forms of research that capture the conflicts as well as the opportunities that arise in city life.

European Diversity, Religion and Citizenship

After the terrorist attacks on the London transport network on 7 July 2005 some academics and journalists announced the ‘death of multiculturalism’ in Europe. Multiculturalism, however, cannot be dead because it is a social reality for millions of Europeans. Not only these who live in the global cities like London, Paris, Rome, and others, but also those who live in small ones like the Italian City of Peace, Rovereto. All the European societies from east to west and from north to south have become increasingly diverse, multicultural, multiracial and multi-religious. This diversity is producing not only high levels of uncertainty, but also lack of social cohesion. As Putnam notices in his latest large-scale study of social solidarity in American society, in the ethnically diverse areas there is less trust and civic engagement.2 Such areas lack, above all, meaningful social encounters.

Intersectionality, Citizenship and Contemporary Politics of Belonging

The paper examines the effects of intersecting social divisions on constructions of multi‐layered citizenships and the politics of belonging in contemporary Britain. It starts with conceptual clarifications of the notions of citizenship, belonging and intersectionality and then turns to examine contemporary politics of belonging in contemporary Britain, focusing on the current debate on the ‘death of multiculturalism’ and on ‘social cohesion’. It illustrates how the use of civic and democratic values as signifiers of belonging can end up as exclusionary, rather than inclusionary in that discourse.