MULTICULTURALISM
The public policy of ‘multiculturalism’ was inaugurated by Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau in 1971. It was described as an approach that promotes interest in and knowledge about different cultures and their equality and mutual respect. This was in contrast with previously widespread policies of cultural assimilation, based on the expectation that ethnic minorities should adapt to the dominant culture. The approach was also different from the US concept of ‘the melting pot’, which presupposed mixing components from many different backgrounds to produce a common culture. In the Canadian context, it was also a step forward from previous policies that advocated biculturalism and bilingualism, with the idea that this would build trust and enhance communication between the country’s anglophone and francophone citizens.
Following the Canadian example, the concept of multiculturalism was adopted in most of the countries that today make up the European Union as well as in many other democratic countries around the world. In general, the multicultural approach was taken to refer to the coexistence of multiple cultural groups within a society, and to the practices aimed at promoting tolerance and equality among diverse cultural, ethnic, and religious communities. In public, cultural, and educational policies, the emphasis was placed on inclusivity and respecting cultural diversity.
However, despite its widely accepted common aim, several distinct approaches to multiculturalism took form. These included liberal multiculturalism, advocating the formal principles of equality and the central position of the individual in relation to the community; cooperative multiculturalism, based on the idea of coexistence without the interweaving of different ethnic groups; left-liberal multiculturalism, emphasising the struggle for social and legal equality; and critical multiculturalism, affirming equality in difference.
Debates between the advocates of different approaches to multiculturalism led to a conception in which it was seen as a means to achieve unity without cultural uniformity. Such an approach to the term was seen as reconciling different pressures in the intellectual and policy fields, also because there was no agreement on whether the very idea of multiculturalism was neutral or itself provoked further rifts in society. The resulting static conception of multiculturalism amounted in large part to a description of the differences between different ethnic, language, cultural, or religious groups living on a given territory.
In this new context, the term multiculturalism started to be associated not only with integration but also with the negative processes of cultural self-containment as well as with the isolation and segregation of minority and marginalised groups. At the beginning of the 2010s, several leading European politicians brought the idea of multiculturalism into question, claiming that it had not succeeded in securing mutual respect and coexistence among different cultural and ethnic communities. Nevertheless, the idea that political unity can be achieved without cultural uniformity, and that plural cultural identities do not necessarily weaken the sense of citizenship and national identity, has remained powerful. (ITK, MP)