In the mid-1990s, Canadian scholarship introduced an important distinction between different types of minority groups and their status-related entitlements for rights and recognition. Charles Taylor was the first to promote the concept of Québécois and aboriginal peoples' ‘deep diversity’.Footnote 2 According to Taylor, a Québécois, Cree or Déné can be a Canadian by virtue of being a member of his or her national community. Taylor distinguishes the ‘deep diversity’ of community-based belonging from the ‘first-level diversity’ of Canadian multiculturalism that is a relative homogenizing expression of individual-based belonging to the Canadian nation shared by ethnic minorities of immigrant-origin and English-speaking Canadians. Similarly, Will Kymlicka differentiates between two types of diversity. In multination states, he argues, ‘cultural diversity arises from incorporation of previously self-governing, territorially concentrated cultures into a larger state’.Footnote 3 National minorities such as the Québécois and Canadian aboriginal peoples have developed a ‘societal culture’ and should therefore be entitled to more substantial autonomy. By contrast, in multicultural states, ‘cultural diversity arises from individual and familial immigration’.Footnote 4 According to Kymlicka, ethnic groups derived from immigration no longer possess a vibrant societal culture and/or have ‘waived’ their right to it by immigration.Footnote 5 They nevertheless deserve some multicultural rights, which are viewed as fostering their integration into the mainstream culture. Kymlicka states that countries such as Canada are both multinational and multicultural.
The contributions of Taylor and Kymlicka are important. In addition to their relevance for normative theorizing – which is not under consideration here – these theories helped to clarify a widespread conceptual confusion. National minorities and ethnic groups emerging from immigration are indeed analytically distinct in respect of their degree of institutional completeness,Footnote 6 as well as in terms of their types of claims for political autonomy.
While the distinction between various types of ethnic/national groups is crucial for Taylor's and Kymlicka's influential theories, the relations between different types of national and ethnic struggles for rights and recognition have remained unexplored not only in the work by these two authors but also in much of the subsequent scholarly literature. This omission is particularly astonishing in Canada, where multiple forms of ethnocultural diversity and their accommodations have become an integral feature of citizenship and national identity.Footnote 7 However, the gap in the literature is by no means limited to the Canadian case.Footnote 8
This article starts from a theoretical position where different types of diversity – although analytically distinct – are viewed as highly interdependent in practice.Footnote 9 After all, by being incorporated as ‘traditions’ within the organization of the nation state, historical group relations define the cognitive and moral horizon for reinventions of who ‘we’ are. Thereby, they also influence the possibility of multicultural citizenship rights. The type of pluralism that is implemented – such as federal arrangements, pillarization, multinationalism or multiculturalism – depends on complex negotiations and power relations between the national majority/ies and minority groups (defined in terms of power rather than demography). As a consequence, there is reason to believe that different types of pluralism such as multinationalism and multiculturalism affect each other – as the compromise reached by two groups affects the balance of power – as well as the horizon of normatively accepted possibilities of group accommodation.
If these considerations are correct, for multiculturalism to be successful it seems to matter: (1) whether or not the ‘host society’ is characterized by historically established diversity; and (2) whether there is conflict or agreement over ethnoculturally motivated arrangements between the groups that have become recognized as forming part (at different degrees) of the state. Tracing the trajectories of multiculturalism in three different countries, this article aims to raise awareness for the multinational heterogeneity of the so-called ‘host societies’ into which immigrants are supposed to integrate, and which are often neglected in recent analyses of the backlash against multiculturalism. More specifically, it asks the following question: to what extent does the absence (in Germany), discontinuation (in the Netherlands) and exacerbation (in Canada) of ethnocultural claims by traditionally incorporated groups influence the willingness of the national majority/ies to grant multicultural rights to immigrants?
A word of caution is necessary. This article argues that the relationships between the established groups affect the possibilities for the transformation of national identity/ies in multicultural terms. However, these relations are not the only aspects that determine immigrant multiculturalism's success or failure. Recent scholarship demonstrates the importance of other parameters, such as the amount and the type of immigrants (e.g. skilled workers versus low-skilled labour migration), their ethnoreligious background (Muslims, racialized groups versus Western Europeans) and economic integration (e.g. the recognition of credentials).Footnote 10 The success of multiculturalism is also dependent upon the state of the economy in the receiving country, the immigration status (refugee, family unification, or economic immigrant) and the type of claims being made (group-based versus individual). Furthermore, scholars have suggested that the differences between Old World and New World countries and between so-called ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ national identities will affect the outcome. Finally, it has been pointed out that international group relations (e.g. relations with neighbouring countries and diasporas) affect representations of multiculturalism.Footnote 11
Consequently, this article does not propagate a monocausal interpretation of multicultural trajectories in historically divided societies; this would be a highly reductionist undertaking. Rather, the article aims to identify and illustrate some of the factors in the complex relationship between traditionally incorporated groups and public perceptions of (and state responses to) more recent immigration-induced diversity. It is not the objective here to provide a fully developed model of these relations, which would need a study of a large set of cases. This article pursues a more modest goal: it is, as the title suggests, ‘in search of’ common patterns. Future studies will need to provide an encompassing, systematic model of the relations between national and ethnic minorities.
The article first situates the trajectories of multiculturalism in the three countries within their respective historically diverse (multinational) contexts. It then discusses some of the underlying mechanisms that influence how multinational arrangements affect multicultural immigrant integration.
FROM POSTNATIONAL MULTICULTURALISM TO REPUBLICAN INTEGRATION
It is unusual to study Germany when examining trajectories of multiculturalism in historically diverse societies; Germany is not generally considered particularly multicultural, nor is it viewed as a country marked by historically established diversity. On the contrary, Germany is usually seen as the prototype of the notorious ‘ethnic nation’, characterized by strong ethnic homogeneity, shared descent and a blood-based citizenship law (ius sanguinis). However, treating Germany as a nationally united country neglects the fact that Germany was effectively a divided country during much of the twentieth century or, to be more precise, it was considered a nation divided into two states. As such, the German case is an interesting starting point.
The former Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) refused to be a ‘nation’ in the strict sense. After the shameful experience of the Holocaust, a positive German identity in ethnocultural terms had become impossible. As a result, the FRG defined itself by the economic well-being of its citizens (DM-Nationalismus) and an absence of national pride. The term ‘multicultural society’ began to be applied to the FRG in the 1980s when it became obvious that the presence of Ausländer (foreigners) in German society was neither temporary nor an exception. In academia, a number of scholars rediscovered Germany's history of migration and studied the integration of first- and second-generation guest workers into the German social fabric. In public discourse, however, multiculturalism was ‘only secondarily about immigrants’.Footnote 12 Rather, ‘The proponents of multiculturalism [were] trying to bury the dreadful ghost of the voelkisch[ethnic] national tradition and to build a postnational community.’Footnote 13 Multiculturalism as an ideology was a radical way to break away from Germany's notorious legacy as an ‘ethnic nation’. In fact, multiculturalism in Germany, as Joppke puts it, was ‘not so much about redefining [German national identity] as about transcending nationhood altogether’.Footnote 14 As such, it went hand in hand with the quest for European integration and a postnational commitment to human rights.
In stark contrast, the Christian Democrats (CDU) under Chancellor Helmut Kohl pedantically insisted that ‘Germany is not a country of immigration’. This seemed an outlandish claim in the face of approximately 1.8 million residents of Turkish origin in the late 1980s. However, the government's official reasoning cannot be reduced to xenophobia. Defining Germany as a single ethnocultural community remained essential for the image of a divided nation: one people, two states. It was an indispensable justification for the FRG government that, for a long time, claimed to be Germany's only legitimate representative. Indeed, the German reunification in 1990 depended strongly on the revival of nationalist sentiments to reunite one people. Germany was reconstituted as a sovereign political unit by demanding sacrifices – imposing the Western political system upon the population of East Germany and requiring material solidarity from the population of the West – in the name of a single German nation and the unity of its people. The latent ambiguity of this process was unveiled by the resurgence of nationalist semantics with völkisch connotations in the years after the reunification.
As a result of the failure to reform Germany's outdated citizenship law from 1913,Footnote 15 migrants were accepted or rejected depending on their cultural background and ethnic origins. Unlike long-term ‘foreigners’ of non-German background, Germans from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and large numbers of ethnic German ‘resettlers’ from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union received German citizenship automatically. In January 1991, the admission of non-EU migrants was restricted through a reform of the Ausländergesetz (Foreigners' Law). Only three years later, in June 1993, xenophobia and official anti-immigration rhetoric culminated in changes to the constitutionally guaranteed right of asylum in order to reduce the number of asylum seekers.
A new trend emerged in 1998. The newly elected coalition of Social Democrats and the Green Party openly acknowledged that Germany had become a de facto ‘country of immigration’, and addressed some of the issues related to citizenship and immigrant integration. By means of a new citizenship law, which took effect on 1 January 2000, Germany officially took the step ‘from ethnic nation to universalistic immigrant integration nation’.Footnote 16 The law reduced the residence requirement for naturalization from fifteen to eight years and introduced an unprecedented ius soli (law of the soil) through which children born on German soil now automatically become German citizens.Footnote 17 Germany's legal transformation into a ‘civic nation’ conformed with a change in political discourse where ‘ethno-nationalist’ arguments have become rare.Footnote 18 However, with the official opening of German citizenship to immigrants of other cultural backgrounds, a new element has entered the debate, namely a strong republican overtone. According to Gerdes and Faist,Footnote 19 there are two overlapping versions of republicanism in German public debates: a liberal equal rights perspective, and a more communitarian conception of citizenship.
In recent years this later interpretation of German citizenship has become more widespread. Indeed, I would argue that citizenship in Germany has regained many of its ethnocultural connotations, which are now – in contrast to the years before reunification – stated explicitly. For example, in March 2000, the vice chairman of the CDU/CSU caucus, Jürgen Rüttgers, opposed the government's plans to grant 20,000 work permits to IT specialists from non-European countries to fill jobs for which the industry could not find suitable applicants in Germany. His notorious slogan Kinder statt Inder (‘Children instead of Indians’) set off a debate on Germany's declining birth rate and the importance of educating native Germans over the immigration of ‘foreigners’. In October of the same year Friedrich Merz, then parliamentary leader of the CDU, used the idea of a German Leitkultur (leading or core culture) to describe his party's approach to ‘integration’. With a nucleus of Christian Western values, the Leitkultur was supposed to set the rules for interethnic coexistence and assimilation. The notion of German Leitkultur generated much criticism from the wider public as well as from a wide range of minority groups. It even forged an unlikely alliance between the representatives of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany and the Central Council of Jews in Germany.Footnote 20
Despite this broad rejection, the Leitkultur debate can be seen as symptomatic of a new view of German citizenship as being legitimately rooted in a unified German culture and identity – to which non-German ‘Others’ have to adapt.Footnote 21 This new trend has become predominant not only in public discourse, but has also been codified in Germany's recent immigration law in 2005. The Zuwanderungsgesetz (Immigration Law), to give its short title, actually mentions immigration very little. Instead, it meticulously avoids the term and has not significantly increased the number of newcomers. Rather, the new law emphasizes control and delimitation and stipulates stricter requirements for integration through language courses and orientation courses in German culture, society and politics. At the same time, the emphasis on integration has been flanked by a stark delegitimization of multiculturalism in public and political discourse. In sum, in Germany, the political stand-off (in the pre-unification years) between postnational multiculturalism and ethnic nationalism has increasingly been replaced by republican integration with strong nationalist overtones.
TOO MUCH MULTICULTURALISM IN A DEPILLARIZED SOCIETY?
Unlike Germany, the Netherlands has been known as one of the first and few European countries that implemented multicultural policies with respect to the integration of newcomers. When guest workers from the Mediterranean and Surinam entered the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s, Dutch authorities encouraged them to retain their cultural identity and set up their own associations and consultative bodies. In doing so, they seemed to transpose a traditionally accepted way of dealing with religious and ideological diversity upon new populations.
The 1983 Minorities' Policy laid the groundwork of Dutch multiculturalism. Aiming to combat social deprivation through diverse support measures, to promote equal treatment and to encourage emancipation through the preservation of the communities' cultural identities, it adopted a path of integration that was similar to the one that had worked for the religious ‘pillars’ in Dutch society: it ‘extended “pillarization” (verzuiling) and the Dutch commitment to equality to new groups’.Footnote 22 In adapting to Dutch society and to the dominant discourse surrounding them, ‘immigrants made use of the principles of the system of pillarization’ when voicing their claims for rights and recognition.Footnote 23 As a consequence, for many years, Dutch multiculturalism was viewed as an extension of previously established arrangements of pluralism, a continuation of, rather than a rupture with, tradition. The 1984 Equal Treatment Act, the 1985 introduction of local voting rights for immigrants, relatively easy naturalization (through the 1986 Nationality Act) and the toleration of dual citizenship were part of a societal project that assumed Dutch society would acquire ‘a permanent multicultural character’.Footnote 24
Criticism of multiculturalism began to surface in 1989. The Scientific Council for Government Policy observed that the Minorities' Policy had not been able to prevent the economic marginalization of immigrants. In light of the Rushdie affair in Britain and the ‘headscarf affair’ in France, Frits Bolkestein, then leader of the Dutch Liberal Party (VVD), publicly questioned the compatibility of Islam with ‘Western values’. In the 1994 parliamentary elections the traditional supporters of pillarization, the Christian Democrats (CDA), were defeated. Under the new government – a coalition of Labour (PvdA), VVD and Democrats (D66) – a shift in policy took place, from respecting cultural diversity to promoting immigrants' social participation and integration (e.g. the 1997 Newcomers' Integration Act, which rendered civic integration courses mandatory).
In the first decade of the new century, the paradigm shift in Dutch public opinion and policy-making became even more noticeable and dramatic. In January 2000, Paul Scheffer, a prominent member of the PvdA, published a widely debated op-ed article in the leading newspaper NRC Handelsblad on the supposedly illiberal ideas of a growing Muslim population. In the wake of the events of 9/11 in New York and Washington, populist politician Pim Fortuyn was able to gain public support for his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim agenda. In 2004, the filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh was assassinated by a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent. In this climate of increased sensitivity regarding immigrant allochtonen (immigrants and their descendants) in general and Muslims in particular, the government headed by the Christian Democrat Jan Peter Balkenende – in power, with diverse coalitions, from May 2002 – has publicly distanced itself from multiculturalism.
Recent legislation such as the 2006 Civic Integration Act imposes on newcomers and long-term residents of non-EU origin the duty to integrate (inburgerinsplicht) and a ‘civic integration exam’. The Civic Integration Abroad Act of the same year obliges people who apply from abroad (mainly for the sake of family reunion) to take an exam on Dutch language and society in their country of residence. The information package for this exam emphasizes, among other things, the free expression of nudity and homosexuality as ‘normal’ components of life in the Netherlands. It thereby underlines the particularities of the Dutch debate: the emphasis on civil liberties and secularism. Surprisingly, to paraphrase Entzinger, a country that has long prided itself on its religious tolerance is now accusing its Muslims of practising a ‘backward religion’.Footnote 25
In trying to come to terms with the rise of Dutch monocultural nationalism, proponents of multiculturalism now concur that support for multiculturalism was never as unequivocal as stereotypical depictions of Dutch integration policies would have it. Immigrants never really had the power to establish their own pillar(s) and – according to the more radical version of this argument – were never meant to achieve this.Footnote 26 Indeed, in hardly any country have immigrant minorities been granted the same amount of structural rights as groups that have become recognized as national minorities. This, however, does not necessarily imply that multicultural policies are meant to be racist, as some commentators claim.Footnote 27 Limited amounts of ethnicization are unavoidable within multiculturalism, which always contends with the tension between the recognition and the construction of difference. However, ethnicization is not inevitably negative; its connotation and consequences vary according to the context. Depending on the circumstances, ethnicity can be turned to advantage through group closure and political mobilization. As mentioned above, in the recent past, immigrants did make use of the discursive and institutional structure that would allow them to operate as groups.
What seems to have changed, however, is the context. Making claims for multiculturalism in the name of a national tradition of pluralism only carries weight if this tradition is still invested with meaning. This seems to be no longer the case in the Netherlands. Dutch society is increasingly described as depillarized and secular.Footnote 28 For an outsider, this national self-understanding is astounding since the traditional pillars are still reflected in social structures and institutions such as such as schools, hospitals, social support agencies, newspapers, trade unions, political parties and radio and television broadcasting organizations. The orthodox Protestant Political Reformed Party (SGP), for example, which claims to derive its principles from a strict interpretation of the Bible, does not allow women to run for political office. The SGP holds two seats in the Dutch Parliament.
However, these ‘traditions’ are neither strongly publicized nor problematized; rather, they are taken for granted. As a consequence, cultural-religious claims-making on behalf of any of the established groups has become rare. New minorities are deprived of discursive tools to invest their claims with the type of legitimacy that is associated with the idea of ‘extending a tradition’. They also lack real or potential allies in their struggle for rights and recognition. In fact, the current conflict is perceived – by critics and defendants of multiculturalism alike – as an us/them dichotomy. The (weakened) presence of pillarization no longer appears in arguments for or against multiculturalism. The pillars are deconstructed; the relevant players seem to be a relatively homogeneous Dutch society of autochtonen on the one hand, and non-European, non-Christian allochtonen on the other. A common ground of struggle shared by new and old minorities is no longer available. In sum, a history of pluralism alone seems to be insufficient to sustain multicultural immigrant integration; a contemporary component seems to be missing. The Dutch case suggests that the multicultural transformation of national identity is an ongoing process of group relations. Once the power equation has altered in favour of one set of groups rather than another, it seems difficult for the latter groups to make their claims heard within the public arena.
BALANCING NATIONAL DUALISM AND IMMIGRANT MULTICULTURALISM
It is an often overlooked ‘coincidence’ that Canadian multiculturalism – first implemented as state policy in 1971 – only became a publicly endorsed dominant discourse at the very time when the country was also characterized by a profound conflict between its two linguistically defined ‘founding nations’. This conflict was highlighted by the Quebec referendum on independence in 1995.
The 1995 referendum was preceded by a series of constitutional discussions, first launched in the 1960s. These talks quickly entered into an impasse because of concerns over the status of the French-speaking province of Quebec within Canada. The vision of a pan-Canadian bilingual and bicultural nation, promoted by the federal government, conflicted with Quebec's own nationalist aspirations. The 1971 multiculturalism policy ‘within a bilingual framework’ worsened the relations between Quebec and the English-speaking rest of Canada. While ethnic groups of immigrant origin who had been lobbying the federal government for the recognition of their linguistic and cultural rights embraced multiculturalism as a new Canadian identity, francophone Québécois and aboriginal peoples rejected the policy because it reduced their claim for independent nationhood and treated them as two ethnic groups among many.
In the early 1990s the failure of five unsuccessful rounds of constitutional negotiations left many English Canadians wondering about the future of their own national community.Footnote 29 For many francophone Québécois, the failure of the constitutional talks was an incentive to continue with the project of building a Québécois nation based on French language and culture within a territorial state. In the 1980s, interculturalism – a policy of normative pluralism similar to multiculturalism – slowly led to a better integration of immigrants into Québécois society. However, as communautés culturelles they remained at the margins of the French Canadian nation, and few of them identified with the project of national sovereignty. In the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty partnership, 95 per cent of non-French Québécois voted against the prospect of independence whereas 60 per cent of francophone Québécois voted for separation. The referendum was defeated by the extremely narrow margin of 50.6 per cent to 49.4 per cent.
The narrow outcome of the Quebec referendum prompted the federal government to increase its efforts to redefine national belonging in Canada. Under review since 1994, the goals of multiculturalism became identified as ‘build[ing] a more inclusive and cohesive society by addressing three objectives: social justice, identity and civic participation’.Footnote 30 As commentators have put it, ‘the policy of multiculturalism turn[ed] into anti-racism’,Footnote 31 and this without much protest from ethnic and immigrant associations. At the same time, Canada was ‘increasingly described as a multicultural country in…dominant discourses’,Footnote 32 namely in those discourses that had previously warned of multicultural ‘Balkanization’. In short, while the conflict between nationalists in Quebec and English-speaking Canada might have caused another wave of criticism against multiculturalism, exactly the opposite was the case: support for multiculturalism, lowest in 1994 and 1995, rebounded quickly in the following years.Footnote 33
The reasons for the quickly rebounding support for multiculturalism may in part be found in the ‘diluted’ multiculturalism of the 1990s that promoted mainstream agencies serving a multi-ethnic clientele rather than mono-ethnic associations, and thereby lost its assumed threat for social cohesion.Footnote 34 In light of Québécois separatism, Anglo-Canadian elites and the federal government also desperately needed to reinstate a Canadian identity that went beyond bilingualism while avoiding both Anglo-centrism and too many parallels with the American melting pot. Multiculturalism as a collective identity rather than as a group-driven policy lent itself readily to this purpose.
By contrast, ‘ethnicizing, even racializing “slips” about Quebec, Quebeckers, Lucien Bouchard, and the sovereignist government’– which had previously been limited to a number of extremist prejudices – intensified in the post-referendum years.Footnote 35 According to Potvin, ‘by exposing the myth of the Canadian nation, the results of the 1995 referendum have activated an identity crisis among English Canadians, a breakdown of universalist ideas, and a desire for revenge’.Footnote 36 In the Canadian English-language media, francophone Quebec is identified as an inferior Other, its difference is naturalized, and its population seems vulnerable to the conspiracy and irrational appeals of political agitators. Ten years after the referendum, the tone of the debate had even become tougher.Footnote 37 In fact, if Quebec's nationalism had over long years been portrayed as a predecessor of multiculturalism, in the post-referendum years, its seemingly ethnic separatism – as symbolized in the Parizeau affairFootnote 38 – was used as a counter-image to Canadian multicultural nationalism. The result of the 1995 referendum was a powerful example of both the fragmenting self-government demands of minority nations and the unifying pan-Canadian multiculturalism expressed by ethnic minorities. The ethnic vote in opposition to Québécois independence provided ethnic minorities with a tremendous increase in legitimacy. They were no longer represented as conditional insiders at the margins of the dualist nation; they became portrayed – and depicted themselves – as multicultural allies of the pan-Canadian nation.Footnote 39
Today, several years into the new century, Canada's commitment to immigrant multiculturalism as a normative idea remains strong, even though multiculturalism's structural and financial dimensions have been heavily circumscribed. Admittedly, the events following from 11 September 2001 and the ‘war on terror’ have introduced new fears and forms of discrimination. I do not want to deny these new challenges and the threats they pose to multicultural society-building. Rather, I argue that the exacerbation of the conflict between Canada's so-called founding nations has helped to render immigrant multiculturalism socially acceptable by underlining its inclusiveness. It thereby contributed to the delay in questions of terrorism and Islamophobia coming to the fore in Canada. The recent debates on Sharia tribunals in Ontario and reasonable accommodation of religious minorities in Quebec are undoubtedly a test for Canada's self-understanding as a multinational and multicultural nation.
DISCUSSION
How can the trajectories of multiculturalism in Germany, the Netherlands and Canada improve our understanding of immigrant integration in historically diverse societies? Overall, the preceding analysis has identified three patterns: (1) when a unified dominant group is defined in ethno-national terms, as in Germany, there is little prospect for immigrant multiculturalism; (2) when there is ongoing conflict between two powerful historical groups, as in the Canadian case, there is greater room for immigrant multiculturalism; (3) when there is a shrinking importance of historically pluralist arrangements, as in the Netherlands, the support for immigrant multiculturalism will be negatively affected. While these relationships can be traced in the three countries at hand, they should be treated as likelihoods or elective affinities, to use a Weberian term, rather than necessarily binding causalities.Footnote 40 In other words, we must be careful not to jump to conclusions. Instead of putting forth a fully fledged causal model,Footnote 41 we have to proceed more carefully to examine what exactly the analysis of the trajectories of multiculturalism in Germany, the Netherlands and Canada can teach us about immigrant integration in historically diverse societies. Three elements come to mind.
First, for a relationship between (some sort of) multinational arrangements and multiculturalism to emerge, immigrants must be perceived as operating on a similar basis for claims-making and recognition as a given country's historically established groups. This insight seems banal. However, its relevance is underlined in the case of Switzerland. Switzerland is usually depicted as one of the few European success stories in cultural diversity management. It has implemented generous accommodations of its historical German, French, Italian and Romansh groups, but is resolutely opposed to immigrant multiculturalism. In fact, Switzerland manages the potentially divisive force of its ‘own’ multinational, multireligious diversity through institutional solutions, legal provisions and administrative compromises that do not lie in cultural factors.Footnote 42 Downplaying the existence of (or the need for) any kind of culturalist identity formation, the Swiss have managed to uphold a ‘strict separation of how indigenous and immigrant groups are [perceived and, consequently,] treated’.Footnote 43
In both Canada and the Netherlands, by contrast, a logical connection developed between the groups that became recognized, historically, as forming part (to different degrees) of the nation(s) state and those of immigrant origin. In Canada, the connection was initially established by ethnic groups of predominantly European origin who asked a question that has since preoccupied Canadians: if it is valuable for French Canadians to maintain their distinctive culture and identity, why is it not so for other groups?Footnote 44 Thereby they situated their claims within a Canadian tradition and argued that ethnic groups (like national minorities) deserve rights of cultural recognition too. In 1971, this question was addressed by the implementation of ‘multiculturalism within a bilingual framework’ as an official state policy and essence of Canadian identity. In the Netherlands, stronger than in the Canadian case, the logical connection between old and new forms of diversity was first established by government authorities for whom the ‘approach of creating separate facilities based on community identities was nothing new’.Footnote 45 Whether or not this approach was genuinely rooted in the extension of traditional rights to new populations or intentionally aiming at the marginalization of guest workers is a question that must remain open here.Footnote 46 In any case, the recent developments in the Netherlands suggest that the extension of rights need not be linear. As no compromise is eternally stable and historical group relations are reinterpreted, the conditions for multiculturalism also change.
Furthermore, the logical connection between the rights of historically recognized groups and newcomers is not self-evident. In Canada, both francophone Québécois and aboriginal First Nations reacted to the policy of multiculturalism by refusing to be viewed as immigrant ethnic groups and by intensifying their claim to nationhood. In New Zealand, a similar phenomenon can be observed with regard to the Maori peoples, who fear that granting multiculturalism to Asian immigrants would enable the white Pakeha population of European descent to escape their responsibilities towards the ‘tangata whenua’, the first people of New Zealand. As a consequence, in New Zealand, ‘biculturalism has occupied the pre-eminent place of political and policy debates, and there has been little room for multiculturalism’.Footnote 47
Accordingly, historically recognized multinationalism is not necessarily more advantageous for the implementation of multiculturalism than is the monocultural or mono-national conception of the polity. However, and this brings me to my second point, there seems to be some advantage if at least one of the established groups is framed in ethocultural terms, as a dominant, unified majority is less likely to view multiculturalism as an essential part of its national identity. This is most obvious in the Canadian case. Here, multicultural claims-making seldom questions unnamed majority rights (e.g. those enjoyed by English Canadians). Rather, the presence of the named (claimed/granted) minority rights of francophones and aboriginal peoples offers a better reference for attack than does camouflaged mono-nationalism. In Canada, at the time of the implementation of multiculturalism as a policy, the historically established segments of society were defined in linguistic-cultural terms. In the Netherlands, they were framed in religious-ideological terms. In both countries, a multiculturalism that worked well was said to have emerged from long-standing pluralist traditions. East Germans, by contrast, were originally viewed as ideological opponents. Although having become a ‘minority within their own country’Footnote 48 after reunification, they remain defined in terms of ethnocultural similarity. Not surprisingly, multiculturalism is seldom perceived as being an intrinsic part of German national identity. Even when it served as a counter-ideology to German ethnocentrism, it was more about overcoming German nationhood than about redefining it from within.
Is it possible to deduce the relatively robust multicultural policies that exist in Sweden, Australia and the United Kingdom from this type of argument? Again, we have to be careful not to jump to conclusions. It could indeed be argued that these countries all have their fair share of national minorities. In Sweden we find the Lapps and the Finnish minority; in Australia aboriginal peoples are recognized; the United Kingdom is – as implied in its name – divided into several political jurisdictions and has granted its nested nations diverse linguistic rights and devolved parliaments. Nevertheless, in contrast to Canada and the Netherlands, in Sweden, Australia and the United Kingdom the implementation of multiculturalism has not publicly been portrayed as a natural outcome of historically pluralist arrangements, and we should be careful not to reduce it to the latter. As argued in the introduction to this article, there are many factors that affect the success of multiculturalism. The preceding analysis uncovers some of the underlying mechanisms influencing the cognitive and moral framing of newcomers in historically divided societies, but it does not support the hasty conclusion that multiculturalism is exclusively triggered by historical and/or multinational diversity and may never be sustained durably in countries that have previously been defined in monocultural terms.
A third dimension is highlighted when we compare the trajectories of multiculturalism in Germany, the Netherlands and Canada. This dimension relates to the question of whether the pluralist compromise reached by the established groups is characterized predominantly by conflict or by agreement. The preceding analysis suggests that if the current multinational arrangements meet the full agreement of all established groups involved, the debate is stifled and newcomers find it difficult to have their claims heard and understood. They will either have to open an entirely new chapter of claims-making or connect to other pre-existing discourses to make their voices heard. This is precisely the case in Germany, where cleavages between East and West Germans remain, but are not framed in terms of ethnocultural differences. Since East Germans do not lend themselves as allies in the struggle for multicultural accommodation, long-term immigrants in Germany are deprived of making claims in the name of a pluralist tradition. A similar development can be observed in the Dutch case. Although traces of the religiously motivated pillarization can still be found in society, there is now a widespread agreement that secularism has become an important element of Dutch national self-understanding. As a consequence, claiming multiculturalism in the name of pillarization no longer makes sense; multiculturalism is no longer seen as being part of Dutch tradition. Within public discourse, ‘their’ (illiberal, communitarian, backward) multiculturalism is now commonly represented in opposition to ‘our’ (liberal, tolerant, progressive) national identity.
To Canada, the call for more integration of immigrants is not alien. As argued above, in the 1990s, Canada's multiculturalism policy became severely circumscribed. Nevertheless, as the two founding nations were struggling to agree what it means to be Canadian, Canadians of non-French and non-English origin demonstrated their commitment to a unified Canada. The 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty provided an example not only of the centrifugal effects of minority nationalism and demands for self-government rights, but also of the centripetal power of pan-Canadian multiculturalism. Due to the ethnic vote against Québécois independence, immigrants became the unifiers of the nation. The publication of Kymlicka's influential philosophy of Multicultural Citizenship in the same year further catalysed this discourse. Kymlicka's distinction between rights granted to minority nations and those granted to ethnic groups of immigrant origin served to distance immigrant minorities from the potentially secessionist intentions of minority nations. Ethnic groups do not ask for self-government or political autonomy. Rather, their claims for multicultural rights should be interpreted – so the new discourse goes – as quests for more inclusion. Rightly or wrongly, the debate following the demands by Muslim organizations for separate, religious-based family arbitration (which was also available to members of other faiths) in Ontario has put this interpretation of multiculturalism to the test.
Conflict between established groups can be favourable for the establishment of immigrant multiculturalism for two reasons: first, it helps to uncover and name some cultural accommodations – or injustices – that otherwise would remain unspecified (see the argument above). Second, conflict between established groups increases the need for allies. Caution is necessary once more. In Belgium, which is characterized by a deep cleavage between its historical groups, only the Flemish side has opted for some sort of multiculturalism, namely the acknowledgement and recognition of immigrants' ethnic diversity: ‘one could say that, through structural homology, the Flemish elite no longer wishes to impose on their ethnic minorities what they themselves endured as a former minority group’.Footnote 49 In francophone Wallonia, by contrast, attitudes towards immigrants are clearly inspired by French republicanism. It seems thus impossible to infer theoretically whether the power of immigrant groups as potential allies of the multinational adversaries will facilitate the implementation of multicultural rights or lead to assimilation. Furthermore, if we think of a place such as Northern Ireland before 1998, the notion of conflict must be qualified. There cannot be immigrant multiculturalism when (parts of) the established groups are fighting each other with arms. Conflict between established groups can only be conducive for immigrants' minority rights if it refers to legitimate political adversary in a peaceful democratic state.
CONCLUSION
The preceding analysis of multiculturalism in three countries can only be a first step in the search for common patterns that explain how relations between traditionally incorporated groups affect public perceptions of and state responses to more recent immigration-induced diversity. More case studies and systematic research of the relations between established groups and newcomers have yet to be done. However, by tracing the trajectories of multiculturalism in Germany, the Netherlands and Canada, this article has revealed an important gap in the literature. It has shown that, although analytically distinct, different types of diversity, as well as their representations and accommodations do not – as their treatment in the current literature suggests – exist separately from each other. On the contrary, they are characterized by a strong logical, discursive and political interdependence. Being incorporated as traditions within the organization of the nation state, historic group relations define – but do not determine – the horizon of possibilities for the implementation of multicultural citizenship rights and for reinventions of who ‘we’ are.
This article has also revealed some of the underlying mechanisms at play in the complex relationship between traditionally incorporated groups and in the diversity produced through immigration on the other. As newcomers to the social and political arena of established societies, immigrants are often perceived and classified in relation to existing divisions and social categories. On the one hand, they are cast and treated according to pre-existing multi-ethnic or multinational compromises. On the other hand, immigrants adapt their claims to the discourses on legitimate divisions in society in the hope of borrowing some of the authority from movements that are seen as predecessors. When analysing the current backlash against multiculturalism in many Western countries, we should therefore take into account pre-existing groups in society and the changing parameters of institutionalized national group rights. As the nature of the agreement between the established groups changes – even tips over in enmity or moves to stronger agreement – the horizon of normatively accepted possibilities for newcomer accommodation, such as multiculturalism, is also altered.
