The strange non-death of multiculturalism

Abstract

One of the strange features of the ‘Multiculturalism is dead’ discourses is that they now define ‘multiculturalism’. It is now commonplace for even neutral commentators to define multiculturalism as a view which emphasises difference at the expense of commonality, separatism rather than mixing, group rather than national identities, relativism rather than a defence of democratic values. Yet no evidence is ever offered by reference to academic texts, political speeches or actual policies that any of this has ever been promoted by multiculturalists. This rhetorical strategy has been so successful that even those who defend multiculturalism today prefer to use a vocabulary of ‘multiculture’ and ‘interculturalism’. I challenge this strategy by arguing that multiculturalism is a mode of integration, which can be contrasted with other modes such as assimilation, individualist-integration and cosmopolitanism, and like the others it is based on the core democratic values of liberty, equality and fraternity/unity.