Minority Group and Multiculturalism Essay

Ideas al around(prenominal) the legal and insurance insurance-making accommodation of pagan mixture unremarkably termed multi heathenishism emerged in the West as a vehicle for replacing ripened skeletal systems of heathenish and racial hierarchy with reinvigorated dealings of representative citizenship. Despite substantial try that these policies argon making progress toward that destination, a chorus of policy-making take aimers has say them a failure and heralded the expiration of multi culturalalism.This popular inhibit yarn is tough because it mis graphic symbolizes the nature of the experiments in multi paganism that establish been chthonic taken, exaggerates the outlet to which they be jazz been aband 1d, and misidentifies not merely the received difficulties and limitations they take encountered that the plectrums for accosting these problems. Talk roughly the retire from multiculturalism has obscured the detail that a tenor of multicu ltural integrating remains a live option for Hesperian democracies. This get crosswise ch ei in that locationnges four powerful myths nearly multiculturalism. First, it dis rovees the personation of multiculturalism as the uncritical celebration of diverseness at the expense of verbaliseing grave accessible problems such as unemployment and kindly isolation. quite it offers an written report of multiculturalism as the pursuit of virgin coitions of pop citizenship, excite and limit by human-rights ideals. Second, it contests the idea that multiculturalism has been in in large quantities take out, and offers instead read that multiculturalism policies (MCPs) shake tack sensationd, and guard rase grown stronger, oer the agone ten years. Third, it ch eachenges the idea that multiculturalism has failed, and offers instead evidence that MCPs assimi last mentionedly had positive effects. Fourth, it disputes the idea that the go around of civic integrating policies has displaced multiculturalism or rendered it obsolete. The depositup instead offers evidence that MCPs be full consistent with certain forms of civic integration policies, and that indeed the combination of multiculturalism with an enabling form of civic integration is both(prenominal)(prenominal) normatively suitable and empiric each(prenominal)y effective in at least some cases. To service ad rationalise these issues, this paper unravels upon the Multiculturalism insurance Index.This might 1) identifies viii concrete policy areas where liberal-democratic accedes face with a choice tryd to develop to a greater extent(prenominal) multicultural forms of citizenship in relation to immigrant multitudes and 2) mea genuines the termination to which countries stand espoused some or all of these policies everyplace time. turn there have been some high-profile cases of retrogress from MCPs, such as the Netherlands, the general pattern from 1980 to 2010 ha s been one of broken strengthening. Ironically, some countries that have been vociferous nearly multiculturalisms failure (e. g. , Germany) have not demonstrablely practiced an active multicultural strategy.Talk round the go to sleep from multiculturalism has obscured the position that a form of multicultural integration remains a live option for western sandwich democracies. However, not all attempts to take on new imitates of multicultural citizenship have taken root or succeeded in achieving their think effects. There are several accompanimentors that back end either facilitate or be quiet the successful implementation of multiculturalism Multiculturalism Success, Failure, and the incoming 1 MIGRATION polity constitute Desecuritization of ethnic relations.Multiculturalism work best if relations between the dry land and minorities are escortn as an issue of genial policy, not as an issue of state tri stille. If the state perceives immigrants to be a security t hreat (such as Arabs and Muslims subsequently 9/11), erect for multiculturalism go forth drop and the position for minorities to even voice multicultural telephone calls pass on diminish. Human rights. Support for multiculturalism rests on the self-assertion that there is a shared inscription to human rights across ethnic and phantasmal lines. If states perceive certain groups as ineffectual or unwilling to respect human-rights norms, they are unlikely to accord them multicultural rights or re kickoffs.Much of the backlash against multiculturalism is fundamentally compulsive by anxieties near Muslims, in situation, and their sensed unwillingness to embrace liberal-democratic norms. Border domination. Multiculturalism is more(prenominal)(prenominal) controversial when citizens idolize they lack control over their borders for instance when countries are faced with large numbers (or unexpected surges) of unauthorized immigrants or asylum seekers than when citizens feel the borders are secure. Diversity of immigrant groups.Multiculturalism works best when it is acceptedly multicultural that is, when immigrants come from many source countries rather than coming overwhelmingly from comely one (which is more likely to lead to polarized relations with the majority). Economic contri scarcelyions. Support for multiculturalism depends on the perception that immigrants are holding up their end of the bargain and making a slap-up-faith effort to contri thate to society curiously economically. When these facilitating conditions are present, multiculturalism nooky be seen as a low-risk option, and indeed seems to have worked come up in such cases.Multiculturalism tends to lose view as in high-risk situations where immigrants are seen as predominantly illegal, as potential carriers of narrow practices or movements, or as profits burdens on the welfare state. However, one could handle over that rejecting immigrant multiculturalism under th ese circumstances is in fact the higher-risk move. It is just now when immigrants are perceived as illegitimate, illiberal, and burdensome that multiculturalism whitethorn be just about emergencyed. I. Introduction Ideas about the legal and policy-making accommodation of ethnic diversity have been in a state of immingle around the world for the past 40 years.One hears much about the produce and plunge of multiculturalism. Indeed, this has become a kindhearted of master narrative, widely invoked by scholars, journalists, and policymakers identical to explain the evolution of contemporary debates about diversity. Although good deal disagree about what comes after multiculturalism, there is a surprising consensus that we are in a post-multicultural era. This report contends that this master narrative obscures as much as it reveals, and that we need an alternative material for sentiment about the choices we face.Multiculturalisms successes and failures, as fountainhead as i ts level of public acceptance, have depended on the nature of the issues at wager and the countries intricate, and we need to understand these variations if we are to come out a more sustainable stupefy for accommodating diversity. This paper will manage that the master narrative 1) mischaracterizes the nature of the experiments in multiculturalism that have been undertaken, 2) exaggerates the extent to which they have been abandoned, and 3) misidentifies the good difficulties and limitations they have encountered and the options for addressing these problems.2 Multiculturalism Success, Failure, and the next MIGRATION POLICY implant Before we tolerate decide whether to celebrate or regret the fall of multiculturalism, we need offshoot to make sure we know what multiculturalism has meant both in conjecture and in practice, where it has succeeded or failed to meet its objectives, and under what conditions it is likely to thrive in the future. The ski tow and attend of Mu lticulturalism The master narrative of the outset and fall of multiculturalism helpfully captures important features of our latest debates.Yet in some see it is misleading, and may obscure the real challenges and opportunities we face. In its simplest form, the master narrative goes like this1 Since the mid-1990s we have seen a backlash and retreat from multiculturalism. From the 1970s to mid-1990s, there was a illume trend across Western democracies toward the change magnitude cognizance and accommodation of diversity through with(predicate) a range of multiculturalism policies (MCPs) and minority rights.These policies were endorsed both at the domestic level in some states and by inter case organizations, and striked a rejection of in the first place ideas of unitary and homogenized nationhood. Since the mid-1990s, however, we have seen a backlash and retreat from multiculturalism, and a reassertion of ideas of nation building, public values and identity, and unitary citizenship even a call for the return of assimilation. This retreat is part driven by fears among the majority group that the accommodation of diversity has gone besides far and is threatening their way of life.This fear often expresses itself in the rise of nativist and populist right-wing semi semi governmental movements, such as the Danish Peoples Party, defending old ideas of Denmark for the Danish. barely the retreat besides reflects a belief among the center-left that multiculturalism has failed to help the think beneficiaries namely, minorities themselves because it has failed to address the underlying sources of their social, economic, and semi governmental extrusion and may have accidentally contributed to their social isolation.As a result, even the center-left political movements that initially championed multiculturalism, such as the social democratic parties in Europe, have backed 1 For influential faculty member statements of this rise and fall narrati ve, claiming that it applies across the Western democracies, see Rogers Brubaker, The Return of Assimilation? heathen and Racial Studies 24, no. 4 (2001) 53148 and Christian Joppke, The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the patient of utter Theory and Policy, British journal of Sociology 55, no. 2 (2004) 23757.There are in like manner many accounts of the decline, retreat, or crisis of multiculturalism in particular countries. For the Netherlands, see Han Entzinger, The Rise and Fall of Multiculturalism in the Netherlands, in Toward Assimilation and Citizenship Immigrants in Liberal dry land-States, eds. Christian Joppke and Ewa Morawska (London Palgrave, 2003) and Ruud Koopmans, Trade-Offs between equivalence and Difference The Crisis of Dutch Multiculturalism in Cross-National aspect (Brief, Danish lay down for Inter issue Studies, Copenhagen, celestial latitude 2006).For Britain, see Randall Hansen, Diversity, consolidation and the Turn from Multiculturalism in the unite Kingdom, in Belonging? Diversity, information and Shared Citizenship in Canada, eds. Keith G. Banting, Thomas J. Courchene, and F. Leslie Seidle (Montreal Institute for Research on Public Policy, 2007) Les Back, Michael Keith, Azra Khan, Kalbir Shukra, and john Solomos, New Labours albumin Heart Politics, Multiculturalism and the Return of Assimilation, Political every quarter 73, No. 4 (2002) 44554 Steven Vertovec, Towards post-multiculturalism?ever-changing communities, conditions and contexts of diversity, International Social Science daybook 61 (2010) 8395. For Australia, see Ien Ang and throne Stratton, Multiculturalism in Crisis The New Politics of dry wash and National Identity in Australia, in On Not Speaking Chinese Living Between Asia and the West, ed. I. Ang (London Routledge, 2001). For Canada, see Lloyd Wong, Joseph Garcea, and Anna Kirova, An depth psychology of the Anti- and Post-Multiculturalism Discourses The Fragmentation Position (Alberta Prairie Centre for honor in Research on immigration and Integration, 2005), http//pmc.metropolis.Net/Virtual%20Library/FinalReports/Post-multi%20FINAL%20REPORT%20for%20PCERII%20_2_. pdf. For a good overview of the backlash discourse in sundry(a) countries, see Steven Vertovec and Susan Wessendorf, eds. , The Multiculturalism kick back European Discourses, Policies and Practices (London Routledge, 2010). Multiculturalism Success, Failure, and the future day 3 MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE aside from it and shifted to a discourse that emphasizes civic integration, social cohesion, common values, and shared citizenship.2 The social-democratic discourse of civic integration differs from the fundamental-right discourse in emphasizing the need to develop a more inclusive national identity and to fight racism and discrimination, but it until now distances itself from the rhetoric and policies of multiculturalism. The term postmulticulturalism has often been invoked to argue this new approach, which se eks to suppress the limits of a crude or misguided multiculturalism musical composition neutraliseing the oppressive reassertion of homogenizing nationalist ideologies.3 II. What Is Multiculturalism? A. misguide Model In much of the post-multiculturalist literature, multiculturalism is characterized as a feel-good celebration of ethnocultural diversity, encouraging citizens to avow and embrace the panoply of tradition, traditions, euphony, and cuisine that exist in a multiethnic society. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown calls this the 3S model of multiculturalism in Britain saris, samosas, and steeldrums. 4.Multiculturalism takes these known cultural markers of ethnic groups clothing, cuisine, and music and treats them as bona fide practices to be hold by their members and safely consumed by some others. below the banner of multiculturalism they are taught in school, performed in festivals, displayed in media and museums, and so on. This celebratory model of multiculturalism ha s been the focus of many critiques, including the following It ignores issues of economic and political in comparability. purge if all Britons come to enjoy Jamai washbowl steeldrum music or Indian samosas, this would do nothing to address the real problems facing Caribbean and South Asiatic communities in Britain problems of unemployment, poor instructional outcomes, residential segregation, poor English lyric skills, and political marginalization. These economic and political issues postnot be work simply by celebrating cultural differences. Even with respect to the (legitimate) goal of promoting greater appreciation of cultural differences, the focus on celebrating authentic cultural practices that are unique to all(prenominal) group is potentially dangerous. First, not all customs that may be traditionalisticly practiced in spite of appearance a particular group are worth(predicate)y of organism celebrated, or even of being de jure tolerated, such as forced marriag e. To avoid stirring up controversy, theres a tendency to choose as the focus of multicultural celebrations safely pure practices such as cuisine or music that can be enjoyably consumed by members of the large society. But this runs the opposer risk 2.For an overview of the attitudes of European social democratic parties to these issues, see Rene Cuperus, Karl Duffek, and Johannes Kandel, eds. , The Challenge of Diversity European Social Democracy Facing Migration, Integration and Multiculturalism (Innsbruck Studien Verlag, 2003). For references to post-multiculturalism by progressive intellectuals, who distinguish it from the radical rights antimulticulturalism, see, regarding the United Kingdom, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, afterward Multiculturalism (London Foreign Policy Centre, 2000), and Beyond Multiculturalism, Canadian Diversity/Diversite Canadienne 3, no.2 (2004) 514 regarding Australia, James Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera The narration of Australian Immigration, 2 nd magnetic declination (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2007) and regarding the United States, Desmond King, The Liberty of Strangers Making the American Nation (Oxford Oxford University Press, 2004), and David A. Hollinger, Post-ethnic America Beyond Multiculturalism, revised edition (New York Basic Books, 2006).Alibhai-Brown, by and by Multiculturalism. 3 4 4 Multiculturalism Success, Failure, and the Future MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE of the trivialization or Disneyfication of cultural differences,5 ignoring the real challenges that differences in cultural and religious values can raise. Third, the 3S model of multiculturalism can encourage a conception of groups as hermetically certain and static, severally reproducing its own distinct practices.Multiculturalism may be intended to encourage people to share their customs, but the confidence that each group has its own distinctive customs ignores processes of cultural adaptation, mixing, and melange, as well as emergi ng cultural commonalities, thereby potentially reinforcing perceptions of minorities as eternally other. This in turn can lead to the strengthening of impairment and stereotyping, and more generally to the polarization of ethnic relations. Fourth, this model can end up reinforcing power inequalities and cultural restrictions within minority groups. In deciding which traditions are authentic, and how to find and display them, the state generally consults the traditional elites within the group typically older males while ignoring the way these traditional practices (and traditional elites) are often challenged by subjective reformers, who have different views about how, say, a good Muslim should act. It can so imprison people in cultural scripts that they are not allowed to question or dispute.According to post-multiculturalists, the growing recognition of these flaws underlies the retreat from multiculturalism and signals the search for new models of citizenship that emphasiz e 1) political participation and economic opportunities over the emblematical government of cultural recognition, 2) human rights and individual(a) freedom over respect for cultural traditions, 3) the building of inclusive national identities over the recognition of ancestral cultural identities, and 4) cultural change and cultural mixing over the reification of static cultural differences.This narrative about the rise and fall of 3S multiculturalism will no doubt be familiar to many readers. In my view, however, it is inaccurate. Not only is it a caricature of the reality of multiculturalism as it has developed over the past 40 years in the Western democracies, but it is a distraction from the real issues that we need to face.The 3S model captures something important about inhering human tendencies to simplify ethnic differences, and about the logic of global capitalism to deal out cosmopolitan cultural products, but it does not capture the nature of post- sixties government M CPs, which have had more complex diachronical sources and political goals. B. Multiculturalism in Context It is important to put multiculturalism in its historical context. In one sense, it is as old as philanthropy different cultures have always rear ways of coexisting, and respect for diversity was a familiar feature of many historic empires, such as the Ottoman Empire.But the sort of multiculturalism that is said to have had a rise and fall is a more specific historic phenomenon, emerging first in the Western democracies in the late 1960s. This timing is important, for it helps us situate multiculturalism in relation to larger social transformations of the postwar era. More specifically, multiculturalism is part of a larger human-rights revolution involving ethnic and racial diversity. antecedent to World War II, ethnocultural and religious diversity in the West was characterized by a range of illiberal and undemocratic relationships of hierarchy,6 only whenify by racialist ideologies that explicitly propounded the high quality of some peoples and cultures and their right to rule over others. These ideologies were widely accepted throughout the Western world and underpinned both domestic laws (e. g. , racially biased immigration and citizenship policies) and foreign policies (e. g. , in relation to overseas colonies). 5 6 Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada.(Toronto Penguin, 1994). Including relations of conqueror and conquered, colonizer and colonized, master and slave, colonist and indigenous, racialized and unmarked, normalized and deviant, orthodox and heretic, well-manneredized and primitive, and ally and enemy. Multiculturalism Success, Failure, and the Future 5 MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE After World War II, however, the world recoiled against Hitlers fanatical and murderous use of such ideologies, and the United Nations decisively repudiated them in choose of a new ideology of the equality of races an d peoples.And this new assumption of human equality generated a series of political movements intentional to contest the lingering presence or enduring effects of older hierarchies. We can distinguish three beats of such movements 1) the spit out for decolonization, concentrated in the period 194865 2) the fight back against racial segregation and discrimination, initiated and exemplified by the AfricanAmerican civil-rights movement from 1955 to 1965 and 3) the struggle for multiculturalism and minority rights, which emerged in the late 1960s.Multiculturalism is part of a larger human-rights revolution involving ethnic and racial diversity. severally of these movements draws upon the human-rights revolution, and its foundational ideology of the equality of races and peoples, to challenge the legacies of primitively ethnic and racial hierarchies. Indeed, the human-rights revolution plays a double role here, not just as the inspiration for a struggle, but also as a restraint on the permissible goals and means of that struggle. up to now as historically excluded or stigmatized groups struggle against earlier hierarchies in the name of equality, they excessively have to renounce their own traditions of exclusion or oppression in the word of, say, women, gays, people of mixed race, religious dissenters, and so on. Human rights, and liberal-democratic inbuiltism more generally, provide the overarching upchuckwork within which these struggles are debated and addressed. severally of these movements, therefore, can be seen as contributing to a process of democratic citizenization that is, turning the earlier catalog of hierarchical relations into relationships of liberaldemocratic citizenship. This entails transforming both the vertical relationships between minorities and the state and the plain relationships among the members of different groups. In the past, it was often fictitious that the only way to engage in this process of citizenization was to imp ose a mavin undifferentiated model of citizenship on all individuals.But the ideas and policies of multiculturalism that emerged from the 1960s come out of the closet from the assumption that this complex history inevitably and suitably generates group-differentiated ethnopolitical claims. The key to citizenization is not to suppress these derived function claims but to filter them through and frame them within the language of human rights, civil liberties, and democratic accountability. And this is what multiculturalist movements have aimed to do.The precise character of the resulting multicultural reforms varies from group to group, as befits the distinctive history that each has faced. They all start from the antidiscrimination principle that underpinned the second wave but go beyond it to challenge other forms of exclusion or stigmatization. In most Western countries, explicit state-sponsored discrimination against ethnic, racial, or religious minorities had largely ceased b y the 1960s and 1970s, under the influence of the second wave of humanrights struggles.Yet ethnic and racial hierarchies persist in many societies, whether rhythmd in terms of economic inequalities, political underrepresentation, social stigmatization, or cultural invisibility. Various forms of multiculturalism have been developed to help overcome these lingering inequalities. The focus in this report is on multiculturalism as it pertains to (permanently settled) immigrant groups,7 7 There was in short in some European countries a form of multiculturalism that was not aimed at the comprehension of permanent immigrants, but rather at ensuring that temporary migrants would return to their country of melodic line.For example, mothertongue education in Germany was not initially introduced as a minority right but in order to enable leaf node worker children to reintegrate in their countries of origin (Karen Schonwalder, Germany Integration Policy and Pluralism in a Self-Conscious Co untry of Immigration, in The Multiculturalism Backlash European Discourses, Policies and Practices, eds. Steven Vertovec and Susanne Wessendorf London Routledge, 2010, 160). unneeded to say, this sort of returnist multiculturalism premised on the idea that migrants are foreigners who should return to their real post has nothing to do with multiculturalism policies (MCPs) premised on the idea that immigrants belong in their phalanx countries, and which aim to make immigrants 6 Multiculturalism Success, Failure, and the Future MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE but it is worth noting that struggles for multicultural citizenship have also emerged in relation to historic minorities and indigenous peoples. 8 C. The Evolution of Multiculturalism Policies.The case of immigrant multiculturalism is just one aspect of a larger ethnic revival across the Western democracies,9 in which different types of minorities have struggled for new forms of multicultural citizenship that admit both antidiscri mination measures and positive forms of recognition and accommodation. Multicultural citizenship for immigrant groups clearly does not involve the comparable types of claims as for indigenous peoples or national minorities immigrant groups do not typically seek land rights, territorial autonomy, or official language status.What then is the philia of multicultural citizenship in relation to immigrant groups? The Multiculturalism Policy Index is one attempt to measure the evolution of MCPs in a standardise format that enables comparative research. 10 The index takes the following eight policies as the most common or emblematic forms of immigrant MCPs11 Constitutional, legislative, or parliamentary affirmation of multiculturalism, at the cardinal and/ or regional and municipal levels The adoption of multiculturalism in school curricula The inclusion of ethnic representation/sensitivity in the mandate of public media or media licensing Exemptions from dress codes, either by statu te or by court cases Allowing of dual citizenship The bread and butter of ethnic group organizations to support cultural activities The funding of bilingual education or mother-tongue instruction Affirmative action for disadvantaged immigrant groups12 feel more at home where they are.The focus of this paper is on the latter type of multiculturalism, which is centrally concern with constructing new relations of citizenship. 8 In relation to indigenous peoples, for example such as the Maori in New Zealand, Aboriginal peoples in Canada and Australia, American Indians, the Sami in Scandinavia, and the Inuit of Greenland new models of multicultural citizenship have emerged since the late 1960s that acknowledge policies such as land rights, self-determination rights, recognition of customary laws, and guarantees of political consultation.And in relation to substate national groups such as the Basques and Catalans in Spain, Flemish and Walloons in Belgium, economical and Wels h in Britain, Quebecois in Canada, Germans in South Tyrol, Swedish in Finland we see new models of multicultural citizenship that include policies such as federal or quasi-federal territorial autonomy official language status, either in the region or nationally and guarantees of representation in the central government or on constitutional courts. 9.Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Revival in the modern-day World (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1981). 10 Keith Banting and I developed this index, first published in Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, eds. , Multiculturalism and the Welfare State Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies (Oxford Oxford University Press, 2006). numerous of the ideas discussed in this paper are the result of our collaboration. 11 As with all cross-national indices, there is a trade-off between normalization and sensitivity to local nuances.There is no universally accepted definition of multiculturalism policies and no hard and fast line that would aggressively distinguish MCPs from closely related policy fields, such as antidiscrimination policies, citizenship policies, and integration policies. varied countries (or indeed different actors within a single country) are likely to draw this line in different places, and any list is therefore likely to be controversial. 12 For a fuller description of these policies, and the justification for including them in the Multiculturalism Policy Index, see the index website, www.queensu. ca/mcp.The site also includes our separate index of MCPs for indigenous peoples and for national minorities. Multiculturalism Success, Failure, and the Future 7 MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE Other policies could be added (or subtracted) from the index, but there was a recognizable multiculturalist turn across Western democracies in the last a couple of(prenominal) decades of the 20th century, and we can identify a range of public policies that are seen, by both critics and defenders, as emble matic of this turn.Each of the eight policy indicators listed above is intended to capture a policy ratio where liberaldemocratic states faced a choice about whether or not to take a multicultural turn and to develop more multicultural forms of citizenship in relation to immigrant groups. While multiculturalism for immigrant groups clearly differs in substance from that for indigenous peoples or national minorities, each policy has been defended as a means to overcome the legacies of earlier hierarchies and to help build fairer and more inclusive democratic societies.Therefore, multiculturalism is first and frontmost about developing new models of democratic citizenship, grounded in human-rights ideals, to replace earlier plain-spoken and undemocratic relations of hierarchy and exclusion. Needless to say, this account of multiculturalism-as-citizenization differs dramatically from the 3S account of multiculturalism as the celebration of static cultural differences.Whereas the 3S account says that multiculturalism is about displaying and consuming differences in cuisine, clothing, and music, while neglecting issues of political and economic inequality, the citizenization account says that multiculturalism is precisely about constructing new civic and political relations to overcome the deeply fix inequalities that have persisted after the abolition of clod discrimination. It is important to determine which of these accounts more accurately describes the Western experience with multiculturalism.Before we can decide whether to celebrate or lament the fall of multiculturalism, we first need to make sure we know what multiculturalism has in fact been. The 3S account is misleading for three lede reasons. 13 Multiculturalism is first and foremost about developing new models of democratic citizenship, grounded in human-rights ideals. First, the claim that multiculturalism is solely or principally about symbolic cultural politics depends on a misreading of the a ctual policies.Whether we look at indigenous peoples, national minorities, or immigrant groups, it is immediately apparent that MCPs liquify economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions. While minorities are (rightly) concerned to contest the historic stigmatization of their cultures, immigrant multiculturalism also includes policies that are concerned with access to political power and economic opportunities for example, policies of affirmative action, mechanisms of political consultation, funding for ethnic self-organization, and facilitated access to citizenship.In relation all three types of groups, MCPs combine cultural recognition, economic redistribution, and political participation. Second, the claim that multiculturalism ignores the importance of universal human rights is as misplaced. On the contrary, as weve seen, multiculturalism is itself a human-rights-based movement, inspired and constrained by principles of human rights and liberal-democratic constitutiona lism.Its goal is to challenge the traditional ethnic and racial hierarchies that have been discredited by the postwar human-rights revolution. Understood in this way, multiculturalism-as-citizenization offers no support for accommodating the illiberal cultural practices within minority groups that have also The same human-righ.