When did multiculturalism end some reflections on useful european mythologies

1. When did multiculturalism end? Some reflections on
useful European mythologies

2. Reflecting back to look forward?
 What was ‘it’? Multiculturalism as a space to talk
about race, identity, legitimacy and belonging
 Did it actually end? „Integration‟ politics as
multiculturalism
 Cohesion: If cultural difference was the problem, why
is cultural sameness now the answer?

4. Gilroy in After Empire (2004)
 „The noisy
announcement of its
demise is itself a
political gesture, an act
of wishful thinking. It is
aimed at abolishing any
ambition towards
plurality and at
consolidating the
growing sense that it is
now illegitimate to
believe that multiculture
can and should be
orchestrated by
government in the

5. Reflecting back on what?
 Vagueness: a „spongy
discourse‟, a „grab bag‟
 „Strong‟ and „weak‟
 Rhetoric vs reality
 Historical absence,
contemporary truth

6. The multiculturalism paradox: not meaning what it
says, not saying what it means
 As empirical reality
 As ideology or philosophy
 As policy or programme
 As praxis/governance
 As critical discourse
 As „code‟
(Adapted from Fleras, Augie [2009] The Politics of Multiculturalism)

8. Idioms of crisis:
 Multiculturalism as a single, powerful orthodoxy or doctrine;
 As a doctrine that stifles debate;
 As a practice that fostered seperateness
 As a refusal of common values
 As a form of political correctness that denies problems
 As a relativist excuse for harmful practices
 As an incubator of extremism and terrorism

9. Recited multiculturalism:
 …Muslim immigrants bring with them cultural practices and
even dress codes that are totally different to our Irish way of
doing things. So where do we draw the line between
respecting their traditions and asking them to adapt to ours?
We don‟t have to look very far to see that the consequences of
getting this wrong could be disastrous. For 50 years the rest of
Europe has followed the social policy known as
„multiculturalism‟, which basically means allowing separate
religious communities to develop independently alongside that
of their hosts. Today the evidence is overwhelming that this
policy has failed. Because the countries made little or no effort
to integrate their new citizens (sic), they created ghettos that
became breeding grounds for violent extremists. In recent
years we‟ve seen the long-term results in the shape of race
riots in France, the assassination of the controversial politician
Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands and the 7/7 bombings by
British Muslims in London…Ireland doesn‟t have these
problems – yet (The Evening Herald 28 May 2008).

10. Cultural racism in the 1990s:
 There is a growing
propensity in the popular
mood in Europe to blame all
the socioeconomic ills
resulting from capitalist
readjustments…on
immigrants who lack „our‟
moral and cultural values,
simply because they are
there…immigrants and
refugees…who seek shelter
in the wealthy North, have
all over Western Europe
come to be regarded as
undesirable, threatening
strangers, aliens
 Verena Stolcke (1995)

11. The licences of crisis…

12. The licences of multicultural crisis:
 Racism‟s new alibi: it was partly our fault (the failed
experiment)
 The War on Terror and civilizationism at home
 The re-stabilization of national identities and „national
values‟ as particular and universal (and as the basis for
integration)
 Populism and political re-animation
 The role of culture in governance in a neoliberal era

13. The culture in multicultural backlash:
 „Culture was said to be
the cause of differences
between France and its
Muslims. .. This idea of
culture was the effect of
a very particular,
historically specific
discourse‟
 Joan Whallach Scott,
The Politics of the Veil
(2007: 7)

14. Culture as a mode of governance:
“Culture is a
resource…it is being
invoked to solve
problems that were
once the province of
politics and economics”
George Yúdice (2003)
The Expediency of
Culture: Uses of Culture
in the Global Era,

17. Expanding multiculturalism?
 Mutual accommodation through collective action
 Multiculturalism that embraces the whole society
 Equality and full participation
 Engaging with racism and racial discrimination as
fundamentally embedded in the „histories, cultures,
traditions and institutions of western democracies‟
(Ellie Vasta, 2009)

18. Racism?
 „If you understand how
immigration, Islam and
native European culture
interact in any Western
European country, you
can predict roughly how
they will interact in any
other‟
 (2009: 19)