Immigrant
Multiculturalism and Multi-nation Federalism.
New challenges
1. Two
ideas/two
trends | 2. The relationship between these two
trends | 3. Europe and
Eastern Europe |
4. Building European identity
Immigrant
multiculturalism
Immigrant multiculturalism is different from the idea old
model in which immigrants were expected to assimilate entirely to their host society. By
‘assimilate entirely’ I mean that, under this old model, immigrants were
expected to become virtually indistinguishable from other citizens: indistinguishable in
their talk, in their dress, in their cuisine, in their habits and pastimes, in the
newspapers and radio and entertainment that they watched, and so on. So this was the model
that was applied to immigrants, at least in my country, in Canada, and in many other
immigrant countries in the past. We’ve shifted in all these immigrant countries
toward a model which I’m calling immigrant multiculturalism. Not that every country
uses that term, but what we see is a clear shift toward the idea that immigrants are
expected to integrate in the sense that they should learn the language of their host
society and participate in public institutions so that there’s a linguistic and
institutional integration, but they’re not expected to become indistinguishable from
other citizens. It’s expected that they will want to maintain a distinct ethnic
identity, they’ll want to express it, and they’ll want public institutions to
adapt, to accommodate their distinct identity. So public institutions like schools,
hospitals, the police force, the media, should make efforts to reflect and to accommodate
the distinctive identities of immigrant groups.
I think this model is now quite well-entrenched, certainly in the major immigration countries like Canada, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, but also, I think, in many European countries. Britain has adopted a multicultural policy, the Netherlands, Sweden and even those countries that don’t have an official multiculturalism policy are moving in the direction of accepting this principle that while immigrants should integrate in terms of learning the dominant language and participating in public institutions. In all these countries, it is expected and appropriate that they maintain a distinct identity and that public institutions should accommodate them.
Multi-nation
federalism
With respect to national minorities, i.e. groups that think of
themselves as distinct nations on their traditional historical territory which have been
incorporated into larger states, usually against their will. When I called it in the book
self-government rights I now think that institutionally one of the most promising and
productive ways to respect the self-government of national minorities is what we can call
multi-nation federalism. The idea behind multi-nation federalism is that the state as a
whole, the country as a whole, accepts the principle, unlike in the old days, where it was
a problem that national minorities wanted to maintain. In the old days, nations thinking
of themselves as forming distinct nations within a larger state, used to be seen as a
source of instability and disloyalty and as a threat to the state. So in the old days,
states used to try to suppress any manifestation of minority nationalism.
We now see a shift toward what I call multi-nation federalism, which accepts the principle that national minorities will exist into the indefinite future as distinct societies with their own languages and institutions. It’s no longer viewed as necessary or desirable to eliminate this sense that these groups form distinct nations within a larger state, and that the mechanism for accommodating this sense of distinct nationhood is some form of territorial autonomy, of which federalism is just one example. But this would involve drawing the boundaries of internal sub-units so as to enable national minorities to form a local majority and to exercise self-government through the institutions of territorial autonomy. So we see that in Canada with the Quebequois; we see it in a different form with Puerto Rico in the United States; we see it now, obviously, here in Spain; we see it very recently in Britain with territorial devolution to Wales and Scotland; in Belgium; of course, it’s been in Switzerland for a very long time; and we see a different version of it with respect to indigenous peoples in the Nordic countries, who have different forms of territorial autonomy, as with indigenous peoples in North America and increasingly in South America and in New Zealand, too. All these are forms of federal and quasi-federal territorial autonomy for national minorities.
So to my mind there are two very clear trends. There are exceptions: not every Western country has moved in this direction. France is the obvious exception which resists any movement toward either immigrant multiculturalism, that is, the idea that public institutions should adapt to immigrant necessities, and rejects any principle of territorial autonomy, most obviously in Corsica. But there are other countries like Switzerland, which obviously reflect the principle of multi-nation federalism. Switzerland is the paradigmatic case of multi-nation federalism, but doesn’t accept the principle of immigrant multiculturalism.
Although there are exceptions, but still, as a general trend, it seems to me quite striking that several Western democracies - I think most Western democracies - have moved in one or both of these directions. And the question is why. The simple answer is that the old model simply didn’t work. The old models of trying either to assimilate immigrants didn’t work, and immigrants very stubbornly maintained their sense of distinct identity.
Also, the attempt to assimilate them was unnecessary. In any event, immigrants who maintained their distinct ethnicity were not a threat to the democratic process, they were not a threat to the stability of the state or to the functioning of institutions. So it was unworkable and unnecessary to try to assimilate immigrants. On the contrary, this move toward immigrant multiculturalism has been quite successful. In all the countries I mentioned that have adopted it, we have tended to see that there’s a reduction in tension, in ethnic tension, and we find that immigrants do better in terms of economic equality, and in the level of political participation.
Similarly with national minorities, that attempts to crush national minorities - Catalonia is a perfect case - simply didn’t work, that even when extensive plugs of coercion were used against national minorities or indigenous peoples. They simply failed to eliminate the sense that these groups formed distinct nations, and it actually was a source of instability, to try to crush the sense of nationhood among these national minorities. If we look at multi-nation federations, they’re all, I think, quite strikingly successful in many dimensions, none of the democratic multi-nation federations --Canada, Spain, Britain-- have fallen apart. They’ve all managed, they’re all stable, they’re all democratic, they’re all prosperous. So, on virtually any criteria that I think should matter, particularly to liberals. These are countries that respect individual freedom, individual rights, they resolve their differences peacefully and democratically, and they’re all economically prosperous. So all these countries seem to me, at least on liberal criteria, to be very successful.
So my view is, and this may sound overly optimistic, that these two trends toward immigrant multiculturalism and multi-nation federalism are good trends, they’re working well, and I expect they’ll continue. More and more countries within Western democracies will fully embody these principles of immigrant multiculturalism and multi-nation federalism.
