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Trajectories of Multiculturalism in Germany, the Netherlands and Canada: In Search of Common Patterns1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2013

Elke Winter
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Abstract

In the mid-1990s, Canadian scholarship introduced an important distinction between historically incorporated national minorities and ethnic groups emerging from recent immigration. While the former may be accommodated through federal or multinational arrangements, multiculturalism has come to describe a normative framework of immigrant integration. The distinction between these analytically different types of movements is crucial for Taylor's and Kymlicka's influential theories, but the relations between different types of national and ethnic struggles for rights and recognition have remained unexplored in much of the subsequent scholarly literature. This article starts from a theoretical position where different types of diversity are viewed as highly interdependent in practice. Tracing the trajectories of multiculturalism in three different countries, the article aims to identify common patterns of how changing relations between traditionally incorporated groups affect public perceptions of and state responses to more recent immigration-induced diversity. More specifically, it asks the following question: to what extent does the absence (in Germany), discontinuation (in the Netherlands) and exacerbation (in Canada) of claims on ethnocultural grounds by traditionally incorporated groups influence the willingness of the national majority/ies to grant multicultural rights to immigrants?

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , 2010 , pp. 166 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2010.

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Footnotes

1

The research for this article has been made possible by Government and Opposition's Ghi?a Ionescu Travel Scholarship for the Study of Comparative Politics. It is part of a larger project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). I am grateful for comments by members of the SIAS group on Migration and Citizenship (Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin), the Canadian Network for the Study of Identities, Mobilisation and Conflict, as well as by the journal's anonymous reviewers. The usual disclaimers apply: all errors and shortcomings are mine.

References

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5 Ibid., p. 96.

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8 See, for example, R. Máiz and F. Requejo (eds), Democracy, Nationalism and Multiculturalism, London and New York, Frank Cass, 2005.

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15 The Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz, implemented in 1913, defines citizenship exclusively upon descent (ius sanguinis).

16 F. Heckmann, ‘From Ethnic Nation to Universalistic Immigrant Integration: Germany’, in F. Heckmann and D. Schnapper (eds), The Integration of Immigrants in European Societies: National Differences and Trends of Convergence, Bamberg and Stuttgart, European Forum for Migration Studies (EFMS), Lucius & Lucius, 2003.

17 At the age of 23, these children have to decide whether they want to remain Germans or take up the citizenship passed down to them by their parents.

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38 In the aftermath of the 1995 referendum, Quebec's Premier Jacques Parizeau blamed ‘money and the ethnic vote’ (meaning anglophone Québécois and immigrants) for losing the referendum. Québécois of all origins criticized Parizeau's statement and forced him to resign.

39 Winter, E., ‘Les logiques du multiculturalisme dans les sociétés multi-nationales: une analyse des discours canadiens’, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, 24: 3 (2008), pp. 7–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 In Weber's interpretive sociology, causal relationships are always complex and multifaceted, as social action is never predetermined.

41 I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers, whose helpful comments allowed me to clarify my argument in this matter.

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