Group Integration and Multiculturalism

Theory, Policy and Practice

Dan Pfeffer

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349562343, 9781137498410
• eBook ISBN: 9781137498434
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

With immigration fulfilling the role of population maintenance in many Western democracies, how should newcomers be welcomed? Pfeffer argues that states ought to promote group integration for communities that have settled through immigration, facilitating the development of group institutions that enable communication with the receiving society.

1

Introduction

Multiculturalism is in crisis. Critics have proclaimed ‘the end of multiculturalism’, and Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, went as far as declaring that the application of this concept has been an ‘utter failure’ (Weaver, 2010).¹ Is multiculturalism in as dire straits as many scholars and statespersons would have us believe? To answer this question, it is first necessary to have a baseline understanding of multiculturalism. There are three different ways of characterising the concept, and while two of these three have been confronted with considerable obstacles, it is scarcely disputed that business is booming for multiculturalism by its third definition.

The first area in which multiculturalism is said to be in crisis is with respect to policy. The Netherlands is perhaps one of the most studied cases thereof (Entzinger, 2003; Koopmans, 2006; Vink, 2007). In the mid-1970s, the government was committed to providing special courses for the children of immigrants in primary schools to ensure that they would each receive some instruction in their parents’ mother tongues (Driessen, 2012: 38); however, by 2005, the majority of Dutch parliamentarians supported the ban on wearing the niqab and burka in all public spaces (Phillips, 2007: 6–8). Australia is another case that is often cited as quintessential in regard to the decline of multiculturalism (Ang and Stratton, 1998). Once touting Australian identity to be multicultural, the government has scaled back this idea, referring more directly to specific characteristics that define the country, such as its British heritage. The failure of multiculturalism as a policy has become almost a populist slogan, with not only the British prime minister, David Cameron, echoing Merkel’s words but even Nicolas Sarkozy pronouncing its failure, despite France not really being representative of a clear embodiment of this policy (Laborde, 2011). More recently, a Quebec minority parliament tabled legislation that would entrench so-called values that would outlaw the wearing of ostentatious religious symbols for all public-sector employees.² These cases receive considerable media attention, so it is no wonder that the policies of multiculturalism are perceived of as being in retreat.

Second, multiculturalism as a political theory has come under fierce criticism.³ Objections include that (i) it mistakenly advocates that different cultures are of equal worth (Sartori, 2000); (ii) multiculturalists, as Brian Barry puts it, are guilty of ‘an unargued move from fact [of diversity] to norm’ that should be valued (2001: 22); and finally, (iii) multiculturalism takes complex identities and simplifies them into non-representative ideal types. On the one hand, a rigid conception of culture leads to groups being misrepresented and to the oppression of vulnerable minorities, as their viewpoints are glossed over. On the other hand, multiculturalism needs to be able to simplify cultures and represent them as overly uniform in order to have a target for policy. Thus, critics argue that multiculturalism has no exit from this dilemma.

The third way of approaching multiculturalism is simply by way of describing the empirical fact of pluralism. In this sense, there has been no retreat, since we can say that the world is suffused with diversity. To help avoid confusion caused by this way of understanding the term, Bhikhu Parekh aptly distinguishes between multicultural and multiculturalist societies (2000: 6). The former refers to societies that are constituted of a diverse population, and the latter refers to societies that have accepted the need to apply theories of multiculturalism to govern this diversity.

But even this tripartite understanding of multiculturalism is too simple to allow us to hone in on what exactly it is about multiculturalism that is in crisis. It is not clear, for example, that all policies of multiculturalism are in retreat. According to Will Kymlicka (2010), only one of three policy areas has seen some retreat, while the other two have clearly advanced. More specifically, states and international bodies have come to recognise the rights of aboriginal communities, as well as national minorities. Protections for aboriginals have been entrenched in international law and national minorities continue to obtain more rights (Kymlicka, 2010: 104). Cases such as Scotland, where a referendum on secession was recently held, and Catalonia, where Catalans are still fighting for the right to decide on their position within Spain (Lopez, 2011), suggest that there is still a long way to go in terms of negotiating rights for national minorities. However, it is important to note that both of these cases have, over the last decades, considerably advanced their rights as national minorities within their respective multination states.

So what is meant by the argument that policies of multiculturalism are in retreat? Kymlicka (2010) explains that what is really at stake here is the question of immigrant-based diversity. Even so, to suggest that policies of multiculturalism regarding immigrants have retreated, according to Kymlicka, is still not entirely clear-cut. Yes, there has been an important retreat in policies accommodating of immigrants in Australia and the Netherlands. However, Kymlicka argues that people scarcely talk about multicultural policies that have advanced since this retreat, citing cases of more inclusive policy in the Dutch military, and policy at the state level in Australia (Kymlicka, 2010: 105). Moreover, Canada, outside of Quebec, continues to have strong policies in favour of multiculturalism, while Quebec ultimately opted to reject the divisive bill outlawing religious symbols for public servants. So while there has been some retreat in various jurisdictions, the result is not as clear as some may suggest.

If there is one aspect of multicultural policy that needs to be further theorised, it is clear that it is with respect to the rights of groups based on immigration, since this aspect of the theory has met most resistance. This book is aimed squarely at this facet of multicultural theory and policy. It is also important to take into account the theoretical critiques of multiculturalism. I will return to this point when outlining the fourth chapter herein.

In particular, I advance an argument in favour of what I call ‘group integration’, which is the process through which a group develops its own institutions and becomes a participatory member of its host society.⁴ I do not mean to say that individual group members ought to participate in their host society, since other scholars have convincingly made this point. I also do not intend to contest the importance of differentiated collective rights for national minorities and aboriginal groups that have been explicated through the scholarship of liberal multiculturalism (Kymlicka, 1995, 2001), nor do I wish to argue for the broad institutional separation of immigrant groups (Bader, 2007). Instead, I argue that immigrant groups themselves should be participatory partners in their host societies. It should be clear that this participation within the host society is distinct from the kinds of rights held by national minorities and aboriginal groups who possess rights to self-determination. Immigrant groups ought to participate in their host society through developing well-articulated associations and organisations that can explain group practices, lobby government when their interests have been (perhaps non-maliciously) overlooked, and facilitate the transition of newly arrived group members by helping them access existing programs of integration. I argue that group integration not only helps to expedite the integration of individual newcomers, but is also important for reasons of justice and democracy. Group integration helps address the justice concern regarding what constitutes the fair treatment of groups, and it enables individuals to participate in democratic politics without needing to check their religion or culture at the door. So rather than having a right to self-determination, immigrant groups each ought to have the ability to deliberate as a group, and then put forward a position to the larger society.

Take, for example, the following case involving Canada’s Jewish community, which demonstrates how group institutions can help communicate the needs of group members to their host society.

In the mid-1980s, the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith Canada lobbied the federal government to pass legislation that would mitigate a gender-biased provision in Jewish family law. Notwithstanding Canadian family law, to be considered divorced according to Orthodox Judaism requires that both the man and woman sign a religious document called a ghet (Cobin, 1986: 407). The husband needs to initiate this process by providing a ghet, following which the wife needs to sign the ghet to finalise the divorce. A woman not having received the ghet, but divorced by Canadian law, is in the unfavourable position traditionally referred to as an agunah, meaning that a future marriage, and any future children she may have, would be considered illegitimate in Orthodox circles (Jacobs, 1999; Moon, 2008: 37). In contrast, a man that provides a ghet that is not approved by his wife can appeal to rabbinical authorities to grant him a divorce by rabbinical dispensation, and can therefore remarry and have children with a new wife (Jukier and Van Praagh, 2008: 384). This is clearly a sore spot for Canada’s Jewish community. The practice ends up restricting the future marriage of many women and posing a relatively small inconvenience to numerous men. The fact that one person can hold prolonged control over the status of another person is widely criticised within Judaism (Fishbayn, 2008: 95–96). It appears as though there is some sort of structural roadblock to changing this law in the Orthodox community.⁵ For one thing, there is no central rabbinical institute that decides what Jewish law is, and so it is unclear where such a change in doctrine should come from.

On 15 February 1990, the House of Commons amended Section 21.1 of the Divorce Act, stipulating that upon civil divorce, the judge can (on a discretionary basis) withhold the divorce until such time as the roadblocks to religious divorce have been eliminated.⁶ In other words, unclear on how to change their own religious doctrine, the Canadian Jewish community worked in tandem with the federal government in order to attack gender bias in Jewish divorce law.⁷ On 4 May 1990, Justice Minister Kim Campbell explained the government’s intentions in making this amendment: ‘The purpose of this bill is to assist Jewish citizens whose spouses are withholding a religious divorce, which is called a get, in order to obtain concessions in a civil divorce’ (Canada, 1990: 11033–11034). In this case, a well-integrated group seemed to be able to work within the apparatus of the state in order to continue to define, and redefine, itself. What is striking about this case is that the Jewish community had the confidence and the ability to use the Canadian state to liberalise one of their practices. The 1990 legislation successfully perpetuated the distinct practice of the ghet, while at the same time almost entirely ending the ability of one person to control the status of another (Joseph, 2011: 324).

This case shows that group institutions can be integral to inter-group communication, and that this communication can help a community grapple with a controversial practice. It also suggests that inter-group communication can further an understanding of group practices which would be helpful to cases of accommodation.

In this book, I argue that states are normatively obliged to fund and promote the integration of groups. The theoretical framework is explicated in the second chapter. I start with an overview of liberal multiculturalism to understand how it has come to pass that liberalism, initially concerned with individual rights, has been extended into the realm of group rights. This extension, I argue, is not without its problems. Using the work of Iris Young on oppression, I argue that one key problem with liberal multiculturalism is that there are relatively large inequalities in the social standing of groups in our society, despite the fact that these groups hold the same rights. Minority perspectives are often not sufficiently understood, nor taken seriously enough to meaningfully contribute to mainstream views.

To address this problem of inter-group communication, I turn to James Tully’s deliberative model of multiculturalism. Some key theorists inform Tully’s work, including Hannah Arendt, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Quentin Skinner, and Michel Foucault. But Foucault’s contribution appears to be counterproductive to the goal of meaningful inter-group dialogue, inasmuch as it advocates for the transcendence of rules as though this transcendence itself is something to be desired. While liberal multiculturalism does not provide sufficient room for dialogue between groups, Tully’s agonistic model does not provide sufficient structure to ensure that inter-group deliberations will lead to normatively justifiable results. I argue that Tully’s deliberative framework is a more useful tool with which to govern inter-group relations when it jettisons these Foucaultian underpinnings and is anchored in normative rights. Upon using this anchor, we are able to marry Tully’s deliberative approach with liberal multiculturalism. The combination of these two approaches sets the bedrock for group integration, since we have a commitment to group rights, and an understanding of why it is important to have groups participating in their host society on fair terms.

Chapter 3 turns directly to the concept of integration. I start the chapter by analysing the distinction between the concepts of assimilation and integration. Some argue that integration is not conceptually distinct from assimilation, and that the difference in these two concepts is simply a matter of the extent of the same phenomenon. Rather than characterising integration as a more gentle form of assimilation, I argue that integration is a distinct concept insofar as its focus is on participation within the host society. Next, I define the concept of group integration, and compare it to our current understanding of integration, which is based solely at the individual level. Integration is typically studied in terms of benchmarks that ought to be attained by individual newcomers, or in terms of the percentage of newcomers belonging to a particular group that have attained these benchmarks. Group integration analyses the degree to which a group has integrated in terms of group characteristics. These group characteristics include institutional completeness in general, and more particularly, the quantity and quality of group associations and lobbies that represent the community. I end this chapter by distinguishing my proposal for group integration from two other models that advocate for stronger group institutions, the first advanced in Veit Bader’s associative democracy and the second in Ayelet Shachar’s transformative accommodation.

In the fourth chapter, I turn to two potential critiques of my proposal to implement state-sponsored group integration. The first critique comes from scholars that I refer to as ‘post-culturalists’, since they view culture as something fluid and reject tangible characterisations of cultures. This is one of the theoretical critiques of multiculturalism cited in this introduction. The post-culturalist argument can be understood as a critique of current conceptions of culture in the literature of multiculturalism. Post-culturalists argue that theories of multiculturalism ought not to essentialise groups, that is, represent culture as having a fixed and necessary set of rules and practices. Essentialism is not only an inaccurate description of culture, but it galvanises the position of group members that do not want their culture to change. However, if multiculturalism were to rely on a fluid definition of culture, there would be an insufficient ability to identify the groups that policy would want to target. Upon analysing the works of Alan Patten and David Peritz, I argue that this critique is overstated. The second critique, related to the first, is that by funding group institutions, we would be strengthening the hold of group elites over their group members, thereby exacerbating the problem of minorities within minorities. In response, I argue that when implementing group integration, one ought to ensure that any intra-group minorities are both represented and part of the dialogue process.

Chapter 5 is focused on the case of long-settled immigrant groups in Quebec. Through looking at the Italian and Jewish communities, it becomes apparent that group integration does exist, and that there is variance in the degree of communal organisation. Quebec is a particularly interesting setting in which to study group integration, since groups that are now long settled integrated under vastly different conditions than newer groups that arrived once the 1977 Charter of the French Language was in place. I argue in this chapter that group integration is not just about fostering the growth of communal infrastructure for new groups, but is also about protecting group institutions that have long been established. In this regard, concern for group integration suggests differential treatment of differently situated groups. In the first section of the chapter, I look at how integration is currently understood in Quebec. In the following section, I look at some tensions between my proposal for group integration and Quebec nationalism. I argue that a pluralist account of nationalism, along the lines advanced by Dimitrios Karmis, works seamlessly with the application of group integration. In the third section, I turn to the case of schooling in the Quebec Jewish community for students that are ineligible for English-language instruction. The predominantly English-speaking Jewish community, in a bid to cater to these ineligible students, has created French sections within otherwise English-speaking schools. I argue that these kinds of accommodations are important in terms of respecting the institutions set up by groups that settled through immigration. In the last section of the chapter, I turn to the case of funding for denominational schools in Europe. After a brief overview of some of the challenges that Islamic schools face in different jurisdictions, I use the framework of group integration to argue for publicly funding denominational schools, or, at least, allowing groups to participate meaningfully in the public school system and offer therein some targeted education to group members.

It is of course true that groups will not always fall perfectly within categories that theorists may have constructed. With this in mind, in Chapter 6 I explore the case of a group that is not clearly defined as a national minority nor as an immigrant group. Anglophone Quebec, despite being predominantly composed of immigrant communities, does not constitute an immigrant group. Despite being a historic minority, this group does not fit neatly into the national minority box either, especially once we consider that this group is thought of as being the descendants of conquerors, and not as a group that was conquered. I explore some rights that this group ought to have, and discuss potential inequalities that less integrated groups may face, since they were not integrated into the anglophone community. Lastly, I discuss the similar, yet distinct, case of Castilians in Catalonia. Despite widespread success in Catalonia’s ambitious project of uniting constituents through the C...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Philosophical Framework of Group Integration
• 3. Group Integration
• 4. Post-Culturalists and Minorities within Minorities
• 5. Québécois Society: Pre- and Post-1977 Immigration
• 6. Beyond Ideal Types: The Case of Anglophone Quebec
• 7. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index