Rethinking Multiculturalism After its “Retreat”

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century, many countries until the 1990s implemented multicultural policies that have backtracked. This article examines how multiculturalism as an idea and normative framework of immigrant integration evolved in Canada, the country that initiated it. Juxtaposing two recent time periods, the 1990s and the early 2000s, I conduct an analysis of dominant media and government discourses, which are interpreted against the backdrop of relevant policy changes. The theoretical framework underlines the relevance of socioethnic leveraging, which takes places as one group is constructed as socially, culturally, or morally more (or less) deviant from the dominant norm than the other. The outcome of leveraging can be fairly integrative. It can also reinforce minority marginalization. The analysis documents the importance of Québécois nationalism for the construction of Canadian multicultural identity in the 1990s and its relative absence during the reinvigoration of an Anglo-Saxon Canadian national core in the following decade. The article concludes that, from a comparative perspective, multiculturalism in Canada remains strong. However, its meaning has changed from being “about us” to being “about them.” Hence, although it was originally meant to be a national identity for all Canadians, it now risks becoming a minority affair. The fact that even in Canada multiculturalism has lost much of its original meaning should serve as a wake-up all. It suggests, among others, that the relationship between the national majority and minority groups need rethinking.