Copyright © Christian Joppke 2017
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First published in 2017 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-9211-1
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Names: Joppke, Christian, author.
Title: Is multiculturalism dead? : crisis and persistence in the constitutional state / Christian Joppke.
Description: Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016015421 | ISBN 9780745692111 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780745692128 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780745692159 (Epub) | ISBN 9780745692142 (Mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Multiculturalism. | State, The.
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I have frequently thought and occasionally written about multiculturalism, mostly on the critical side. In 2012, on two occasions, in Berlin and Seoul, I shared the podium with Will Kymlicka, arguably the most important writer on the topic. It was obvious that I was supposed to be “against.” That was no easy task, because a greater admirer of his imposingly clear prose and safe liberal instincts is difficult to find. However, as I enjoy a good contest, there was no problem. After the Seoul encounter, I approached him with the idea of writing a short and punchy “debate” book together. I even had a picture of us, done by a photographer in Seoul, perfect for the book jacket, I thought – my moment of megalomania. Kymlicka did not say “no”; he merely “postponed.” It amounted to the same. He left me with a note to consider the strong national grounding of multiculturalism in Canada, and the complete absence thereof in Europe, as a starter to the conversation that didn't happen. In the end, I went ahead without him. Despite the change of plan, this book is still a critical but appreciative dialogue with his “liberal multiculturalism,” which remains the benchmark work in the field.
The value added, I hope, is to locate liberal multiculturalism more completely in the established institutions of liberal democracies, especially liberal constitutionalism, than previous works have done. Previous, empirically minded accounts of liberal multiculturalism, by Will Kymlicka himself (2007a), but also by Anne Phillips (2007), have mainly grounded multiculturalism in the liberal value of equality. So did, most recently, Alan Patten, in his immediately acclaimed Equal Recognition (2014). A philosophically correct restatement of Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship (1995), its one difference is to tie liberal multiculturalism to the idea of neutrality, which is otherwise shunned by multiculturalists, and which he understands as the liberal state’s mandate to recognize all cultures equally, without privileging a Favoritvolk. Patten thus abandons Kymlicka’s tandem of liberal multiculturalism and liberal nationalism. This move, however, may make this theory less practicable in the real world, because how could the democratic state, even one that is also pristinely liberal, not favor majority society?
In contrast to these equality-centered accounts, I propose a thinner, mainly liberty-focused account that is even further removed from conventional calls for culture or identity preservation and public recognition. The centerpiece in this respect is a provocative comparison of gays and Muslims, which demonstrates liberal law's inherent capacity to accommodate diversity. Many will doubt that the “multiculturalism of the individual” advocated in these pages is “multiculturalism” at all, because any groupist element is purged from it. But I would still insist on calling it thus to fend off a contemporary tendency of liberalism to be hostile to difference and to thicken into a substantive ethic or “fighting creed,” as Charles Taylor (1994) put it memorably. This risk is apparent in Europe's Islam struggles and the current security and antiterrorism mania, which is more dangerous to liberalism than any external attack on it.
This is the last of four small books on big topics written for Polity over the past eight years. I thank its editors, Emma Longstaff (who in the meantime has left the press) and Jonathan Skerrett, for soliciting them and for being persistent. Now that it's done, I step into the void.
Bern, May 2016
Long before the age of religious terror, multiculturalism had been declared dead. In the 1990s, “too many Asians” was the battle-cry against Australian multiculturalism (see Joppke 2005: 80–90). It did not amount to much, and a kind of nationalist multiculturalism, which Australia shares with Canada, persisted. The more recent death-notices are Western European, like those pronounced in rapid succession by the political leaders of Germany, Britain, and France, in late 2010 and early 2011. There was immediately a lively debate about whether this was merely symbolic or indicative of a real change of law and policy. The answer depends on one's definition of multiculturalism. This is notoriously difficult. If even countries that never had an explicit multiculturalism policy as Canada or Australia know it announce the death of multiculturalism, what exactly is being declared dead? Certainly not gay marriage and the liberalization of homosexuality, which are marching on at the very moment that a retreat of multiculturalism has been diagnosed for Europe. And, of course, there is no questioning of the self-government rights of indigenous people, like the First Nations (in Canadian parlance), or of national minorities, like Scots, Basques, Catalans, and so on, which long predate the age of multiculturalism. This suggests that it is not cultural pluralism in general that is put in question, but mostly the ethnic or religious variant that stems from international migration. Here a closer look reveals that not any migration, but particularly Muslim migration, is central to the crisis of European multiculturalism – each of the three mentioned death-notices by German Chancellor Merkel, British Prime Minister Cameron, and French President Sarkozy, was a commentary on specific difficulties, perceived or real, surrounding Muslim and Islamic integration in their respective societies. But, to repeat the above question, what is it that is being declared dead if it cannot be a law or policy that never was?
The answer is that a non-policy of not intervening or laissez-faire in what is perceived as immigration-caused, ethnic fragmentation of society, more specifically the rise of an unassimilable counterculture of Islam, is no longer deemed sufficient. Instead, the new, post-multicultural dictum is that if there is policy on part of the state, it should not reinforce the centrifugal tilt of multi-ethnic immigrant societies (as multiculturalism is suspected of doing). On the contrary, policy should contain this tilt through centrist policy that binds newcomers and their offspring into mainstream institutions and values. In Paul Collier's (2013) concise formula, the task of the day is diaspora absorption. This policy turn is registered under the rubric of civic integration, which has become the main approach in Western Europe toward immigrant integration. Civic integration constitutes the one policy that signals a real (not only rhetorical) departure from a “multicultural” past (even one that never was).
However, it would be mistaken to conclude from civic integration that multiculturalism is “dead.” The nature of the new policy is disputed, partially reflecting its different appearance in different countries. From a Canadian perspective, civic integration is no alternative to but complementary to multiculturalism. This is because Canadian multiculturalism itself has a nationalist hue, having become part of Canadian self-definition. In Europe, the constellation is different. Nowhere in Europe has multiculturalism become part of national self-definition. On the contrary, it is everywhere perceived as the property, or privilege, of immigrants and ethnic minorities, and this is why it has come under fire here. For Europe, there are two alternative views on civic integration. In one view, it is a convergent policy of post-multiculturalism, which expects liberal norms and values to be accepted, if not even liberal identities to be adopted by newcomers as the price for admission (Joppke 2007a). Indeed, in its emphasis on instilling liberal values and principles, the new policy would not be comprehensible unless brought against a putative “illiberal” minority, which Muslims are suspected to be. In an alternative view, civic integration is a way of “fortifying” nationally distinct citizenship regimes and traditions (Goodman 2012, 2014); or it is even seen as a “cultural defense of nations” (Orgad 2015), in which majorities besieged by predominantly non-Western (and thus extra-alienating) immigration reclaim the right to an identity that in a multicultural past was the privilege of minorities. Despite their different nuances, both views are not that far apart. That civic integration, with its centrist touch, differs from, or is even opposed to, multiculturalism seems incontrovertible, even to Canadian eyes (which, after all, are capable of distinguishing between civic integration and multiculturalism). In any case, the vexed relationship between multiculturalism and civic integration is to be centrally addressed in this book.
But the main argument is that, underneath the ebb and flow of (civic) integration policy, multiculturalism is necessary in a liberal society. While the term may have fallen into disrepute, the fact that there are other terms to do much of its work, such as “interculturalism” or “diversity,” signals that there is a persistent reality that will not go away, despite a change of fashion. That persistent reality is one of multiple ways of life (or “cultures,” as a shorthand) that cannot and should not be contained by a state that is to be neutral about people's ultimate values and ethical commitments, unless third parties or social peace are harmed or put in danger. The test case for this is the liberalization of homosexuality, which – I shall argue – should be considered a multicultural issue, and which is advancing unabated despite the loud retreat from multiculturalism in the immigrant domain. One may object that these policies relate to different groups and issues (ethnic v. ethical) and thus cannot be meaningfully paired. But the liberalization of homosexuality gives an insight into a deeper transformation (or, rather, maturing) of the “liberal” state, which has lost the capacity to impose a thick public morality over all members of society. There still is a public morality, an ethic, in the liberal state. But it is becoming tantamount to the protection of the individual and her or his rights. The individual is the true motor of multicultural claims-making, even if it is couched in the groupist hue of “gays” or “Muslims” or others. Hence what I shall advocate in this book is a “multiculturalism of the individual”. This may appear absurd, a contradiction in terms or yet another vacuous exercise in name-branding. But it is derived from observation of what is happening on the ground.
Multiculturalism is necessary in a liberal society, and its main source (apart from markets that satisfy and amplify the needs of pluralized lifestyles and groups) is constitutional law. I thus come to a rather opposite conclusion from James Tully (1995: 58), who had influentially denounced “modern constitutionalism” as imposing an “empire of conformity…designed to exclude or assimilate cultural diversity.” Far from it: constitutionalism protects structural minorities from democratic majorities. Since John Hart Ely (1980), this has been the dominant understanding of modern constitutionalism, and it corresponds closely to actual state practice, not only in America, but in Europe also. As long as constitutionalism is in place, we live in societies that are set to become more and more multicultural. A case in point is the emancipation of gays in America and of Muslims in Europe, which is an unusual but effective pairing in this respect. Gays have become a part of America, I concede, above all through cultural change preceding legal change – there has been an astounding shift among younger people toward accepting unconventional sexuality and family forms (see Rosenfeld 2007). But in the end the American Constitution's freedom (“due process”) clause, aided by its equality (“equal protection”) clause, were instrumental. Unaided by popular sympathies, to put it mildly, Muslims have become a part of Europe in a much more direct way through state constitutions and a regional human rights convention that all protect religious freedoms. Importantly, there was no need for a multiculturalism policy in much of Europe because the individual rights clauses in liberal state constitutions and in the European Convention of Human Rights, as well as a general principle in the secular state to treat all religions equally, have done most of the necessary work.
So this book will argue that, while multiculturalism may be under attack at the level of policy, with centrist policies of civic integration as intended moving away from a (most often imagined) “multicultural” past, at the level of liberal-constitutional law there is no alternative to multiculturalism. Will Kymlicka (1995) has got it right: liberalism requires multiculturalism. But he unnecessarily pairs normative justification (liberal justice as requiring “multicultural citizenship”) with explicit policy under the heading of “multiculturalism.” He thus ignores or downplays the legal-constitutional infrastructure of individual rights, particularly rights to freedom, which propels multiculturalism even when it falls short of that name.
The story is more complicated in the context of antidiscrimination law and policy, which revolves around a second key liberal value, equality. There is no multiculturalism theory or policy that would not claim to fend off discrimination against minorities. However, the relationship between antidiscrimination and multiculturalism is not straightforward. Antidiscrimination is about eliminating difference, to the degree that it causes disadvantage; multiculturalism is about protecting and perpetuating difference, understood as a matter of identity. So there is tension between the two. However, there is an opening from within the logic of antidiscrimination to move toward multiculturalism. This is because antidiscrimination may be either formal or substantive, protecting everyone or only specific groups (“minorities”) that have been victimized in the past and continue to be so in the present. So, antidiscrimination may (to be effective, perhaps even should) go multicultural, as an inherently group-focused project to bring about substantive equality for disadvantaged minorities. Note that in the context of equality law, multiculturalism is in a much stronger sense “groupist” than in the constitutional law of liberty. However, “multicultural” is not the way in which antidiscrimination is currently understood and practiced, either in America or in Europe. On both sides of the Atlantic, a formalistic and individualistic approach to antidiscrimination predominates, with a fight in the United States, and quite without one in Europe.
Chapter 2, “Multiculturalism: Not One but Many Things,” points to the instability and changeability of the concept of multiculturalism, which notoriously impairs its analytical value. At the level of theory, different approaches have given different meanings to it: a “communitarian” defense of group over individual claims, with an ambiguous relationship to liberalism (Taylor 1994); a “radical” critique of the false universalism of individual rights and citizenship that masks particularistic group power (Young 1990); and, most persuasively, a “liberal” complementing of individual rights with minority rights (Kymlicka 1995). Even if one agrees on a minimal definition of multiculturalism, as a politics of identity, the latter plays out differently across its typical markers: sexual orientation, language, religion, and race. Finally, multiculturalism means different things in different parts of the world, from a nation-building device in Canada and Australia to an increasingly contested, if not repudiated, migrant policy in Western Europe.
Chapter 3, “Retreat of Multiculturalism and Civic Integration,” tackles head-on the question what in the most recent “retreat” of multiculturalism in Western Europe is real and what is more in the realm of rhetoric. Undoubtedly, problems of Muslim and Islamic integration are central to multiculturalism's sinking star. However, to varying degrees, the impulse of accommodating difference lives on in the substitutes of “interculturalism” and “diversity,” though with a new accent on the individual as the unit of integration. The clearest instance of real policy change is civic integration for immigrants, which I conceive of as a liberal policy of diaspora absorption (following Collier 2013). While civic integration is national-level policy, at the local level, particularly in heavily immigrant-populated cities, multiculturalism tends to persist, in a pragmatic key, and often under a different name.
Chapter 4, “Why Multiculturalism is Necessary: Liberal Law and the Empowerment of Gays and Muslims,” presents the central argument of this book, which is that liberal constitutionalism naturally generates multiculturalism. The pairing of gays and Muslims in this respect is unusual, because the real world has seen both groups in conflict with one another. But the dynamic of their respective emancipation is similar. Constitutions constrain majority power, protecting in turn structural minorities that have lesser chances to use the political process in their favor. However, apart from the national minority problematic (which is outside the scope of this book1), constitutions mostly do so not through group protections but through individual rights (especially freedom) clauses. At least, it has been so in our two cases. Again, the individual is posited as the unit of integration. This is not to deny that liberal law is more complexly involved in the Muslim case, where it may also function as a constraint on certain “illiberal” claims; there is interestingly no equivalent to this on the gay side.
Chapter 5, “Multiculturalism v. Antidiscrimination,” is about the ambiguous relationship between multiculturalism and antidiscrimination, with a comparative look at the United States and Europe. Antidiscrimination builds on the principle of equality (not freedom), which naturally tilts in a group-recognizing direction. The groupist impulse has been especially strong in America, where racial discrimination against black Americans is the source of its civil rights laws. America's singular race problem, grounded in the legacy of slavery, has pushed its antidiscrimination in an asymmetric, remedial direction, called “affirmative action,” which overlaps closely with a multicultural agenda. However, under a conservative Supreme Court, the groupist impulse has been largely suppressed in favor of a symmetric and formalistic understanding of antidiscrimination. Short of a race problem, European antidiscrimination has taken this direction from the start. It is unlikely, as I speculated earlier (Joppke 2010c), that through the recognition of indirect discrimination a groupist, traditionally multiculturalist agenda will be furthered on the antidiscrimination front.
In the concluding chapter, “What Remains: A Multiculturalism of the Individual,” I argue that what remains is a multiculturalism of the individual, while an unreconstructed multiculturalism of groups has few supporters today. The multiculturalism of the individual shares many elements of Will Kymlicka's liberal multiculturalism, but it is distinguished by a less clear-cut boundary between liberal constitutionalism and explicit “multiculturalism.” We still should retain the word “multiculturalism,” to ward off the threat of illiberal liberalism which has grown in the age of Islamist terrorism and is the main threat to liberty in the West today.