Multiculturalism revisited

The massacre of dozens of young people in Norway was evidently motivated by some perverted attempt to protect a national, European or even Christendom 'identity' in the face of a perceived encroachment of an Islam bent on world domination.

Bearing in mind how reminiscent this paranoia is of early 20th Century anti-Semitism, we should be very careful to reflect on how our dominant discourses may contribute to the formation of modes of thinking which make hatred, fear and ultimately extremist violence, even mass violence, seem necessary to some. 

I’m not simply talking about the obvious candidates, those whom Breivik cited in his manifesto such as jihadwatch et. al. Europe’s leaders of late have played a populist frostiness towards immigrants, and attacking a government’s laxity in the face of immigration has become the norm for oppositions. Of course, leaving aside France where a disturbing authoritarianism has taken hold of the mainstream, the consensus is not explicitly anti-immigrant or culturally chauvinist as such. When Merkel announces that “multiculturalism has failed” or Cameron proclaims its consequences as deep segregation, it’s hard outright to dismiss their thinking. 

Where they transgress however is in insisting upon adoption of a centrally-defined identity as a prerequisite to immigration. The right to cohabit in a space becomes about being one sort of person and not another sort, rather than abiding by the law which demarcates officially acceptable behaviour. That this provides fertile soil for racist ideology and fear-filled hatred is clear. 

Furthermore, there is a naivete to the post-multiculturalism consensus as a measure of multiculturalism is a fact of life. Taking culture to be all of the socially communicated symbols and norms a person integrates into their psychological development, the cultures of an Anglican aristocrat in Yorkshire, a Liverpudlian Catholic docker and a North London Jewish shopkeeper in 1910 would have seemed as mutually unintelligible (and potentially threatening to one another) as any of the combinations in our globalised 21st Century. The interaction of such different people has led to the demise of some group identities and the flourishing of new ones, and that's natural.

Cameron likes to allude to hospitality which involves a measure of reciprocity. He’s right, but do we want people, in return for hospitality (a right which of course has been won through the blood of colonised peoples), to pledge allegiance to the Queen or assert a centrally-defined British identity which will be as foreign to the people on my terraced street in Insch as to Afar nomads? Of course not, and the point is that it is the people on my street that will be actually providing hospitality, not ‘Britain’ or ‘Europe’.

The goal is not integration or assimilation and certainly not segregation, but is willing participation in local community life, perhaps even through the expression of origin cultures. This is no less difficult than it is necessary, and it certainly cannot be enforced from the centre. Instead, it falls to local communities to find ways of including the other, making space for and hearing from new arrivals and working out how different cultures can benefit one another. While it is unclear how national or European-wide policy-making can make this happen, unlike perhaps more accountable and democratic local government, I believe that the prevailing national identity discourse is hugely risky. It makes this kind of urgent hospitality to the other seem unnecessary or even treacherous, and a change of tone is overdue.