Progressive multiculturalism: the British experience

Maleiha Malik

It is precisely because the 'multiculturalism' debate touches on issues that are of profound importance to all British citizens, and not only a small group of minorities, that it is often so heated and politically charged. The public debate about multiculturalism acts as a form of 'symptomatic politics'. As well as raising issues about minority integration, it frequently masks anxieties and confusion about the public identity of all British citizens. Within this form of 'symptomatic politics' controversy over historical events such as slavery takes on a particular significance because acts of 'national remembrance' are not solely about the past; they are also a vital public discourse in the present that allows individuals to form their identity as public citizens in the here and now. This chapter sets out an overview of the British model of multiculturalism. In the first section I set out some of the distinctive features of the 'multiculturalism' as compared with other models for integrating minorities. In the second section I set out a historical overview of the British response to the challenge of integrating minorities. I then move on to an evaluation of British multiculturalism: why is it perceived to have failed; has it failed or succeeded; what risks does it pose; what are its weaknesses?

Multiculturalism as a model for minority integration

What are British values? What are the norms into which minorities are being asked to integrate? These issues are often neglected in an analysis of multiculturalism in favour of a focus on the beliefs and conduct of minorities. This issue is often a hidden assumption in debates about minority integration but it becomes more prominent where multiculturalism is proposed as a model for integration. In addition, a number of other criteria are relevant to issues of minority integration. One broad categorization is the contrast between separation, assimilation and integration. More specifically, other 'markers' of integration include, inter alia: social and economic mobility, geographical dispersal, social assimilation and cultural distinctiveness. Racism in the form of anti-Semitism against British Jews and anti-Catholic discrimination is relevant to understanding the treatment of British minorities before the twentieth century.

Different models of integration give weight to different aspects of these criteria. For example, models of integration that assume that assimilation is an appropriate goal will problematize cultural distinctiveness, unlike more pluralist models that seek some accommodation of cultural difference. However, there are dangers in describing the debate in terms of a clash of models, such as 'British multiculturalism' versus 'French integration'. Such a reductionist analysis underestimates the complexity of terms such as 'multiculturalism', which have, as set out below, a variety of different meanings. This stark contrast also distorts the way in which a model that has been labelled 'British multiculturalism' includes many of the same components as other models which seek 'integration' as a more explicit goal.

Multiculturalism: descriptive versus normative

Popular myths about multiculturalism make it more difficult to delineate a precise definition for this form of minority protection. There are a number of ways in which the term can be used. Multiculturalism is used in the British context in two ways. First, at a descriptive level, it is used to describe the factual changes that have occurred in Britain which have resulted in a more marked racial, ethnic and cultural diversity. Second, at a normative level, it is used as a term to describe a state response to this increasing diversity which advocates policies of 'recognition' and 'accommodation of difference'.

At a descriptive level 'multiculturalism' refers to the increasing cultural diversity of modern liberal democracies. 'Culture' is a term that can include a wide range of attitudes, beliefs and practices. Sometimes the terms 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism' are used to include differences based on gender or sexuality, or differences that are a fundamental 'lifestyle' challenge to the predominant values that govern public life, such as the anti-globalization or environmental movements. This is diversity that is based on different beliefs about lifestyle and values. Bhikhu Parekh sets out a detailed distinction between 'wide' definitions of cultural diversity, which include 'perspectival diversity' such as challenges to the public structure by feminists or gays and lesbians, and 'narrow' definitions, which limit the use of the term 'multiculturalism' to a 'communal diversity' focusing on factors such as race, ethnicity, religion and language, and groups organized as distinct cultural communities. This chapter focuses on 'multiculturalism' in its more narrow sense (Parekh, 2006: 3–4). Here, the word 'culture' serves to capture a number of important distinct sources of diversity. First, it includes the traditional sources of 'difference' that are associated with marking out a social group as a distinct minority within a larger political community: for example, colour, race and ethnicity, religion and language. These social groups can be recognized as communities that are distinct from the prevailing culture of the nation-state.

There have always been recognizable and distinct cultural communities in Britain; that is, social groups that can be distinguished by reference to criteria such as race and ethnicity, region, religion or language. Prominent and well-established social groups that fall into this category includes Jews, the Roma and also the Celts. Concepts such as 'cultural pluralism' and 'multiculturalism' are now being deployed to describe such a wide range of phenomena that they are at risk of losing their intellectual power. Nevertheless, these terms convey the important social changes that have taken place in the European liberal democracies in the last fifty years. At a descriptive level 'cultural pluralism' or 'multiculturalism' usefully describes the increasing diversity of culture, race and religion of citizens in liberal democracies. Some, although not all, of this diversity is the result of increased migration into European liberal democracies of people from non-Western cultures. This type of diversity is also encouraged by political liberalism and is an inevitable by-product of modern liberal democracies. John Rawls, for example, writes:

A modern democratic society is characterized not simply by a pluralism of...