CHAPTER 3: Populism and Multiculturalism in Europe
3.1 Policy demonstrating the spirit of Multiculturalism
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CHAPTER 3: Populism and Multiculturalism in Europe
While going through the literature I have come to realize that one topic remains untouched. The reviewed literature talks about how multiculturalism or immigration make people afraid and perceive it as a threat to their culture and that refugee crisis adds fuel to the rise of popularity and power of the right-wing populist parties all over Europe. Due to the immigration people are worried about the future, that their culture and values are in danger. But one thing that the debate does not consider is what role do media play in creating this fear among people. The same can be said about right-wing populist political parties and their agendas, election campaigns, statements, tweets, speeches, debates on television, interviews and other communication channels through which they approach people and touch these issues, that might not have been big threats in the first place. So, apart from the role of gender, what level of education one achieved, immigration and multiculturalism endangering the culture and blaming established parties with long tradition for failing to address these issues properly and allowing that way populist parties to gain more power I am convinced that we, in future research, should pay closer attention to how these populist parties or media cause the fear of multiculturalism.
Here goes the literature review.
3.1 Policy demonstrating the spirit of Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism got its spotlight and attention from political researchers in the early 1990s when they started looking to it more. Before that it was mainly a subject of research for political philosophers (Kymlicka, 2010). Bleich points out that many authors reach a conclusion that multiculturalism is something that is quite hard to define, because countries that have this debate also have a different definition of what multiculturalism is. The problem is that it is a very broad topic (Bleich. 1998). Runblom adds that there is no fixed definition of
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multiculturalism among the political debates or scholars doing research in cultural field.
Language, ethnicity, culture and different religions are often used as the multitude that characterizes a situation described by multiculturalism. Nevertheless, we must remember that there is a difference in definition of this term in each country. This term is however more often used when talking about the situation change in North America and Europe, because these two places are more lucrative for the immigrants after all (Runblom. 1994).
Turner’s definition is that the term multiculturalism can be associated with people with different ethnic or racial origin that live in one state (Turner, 1993). In case of ideology the political views are that demographic diversity represents different habits, values and beliefs. The expansion of territory and migration is what caused this demographic diversity (Citrin et al., 2001).
When we look at a diverse society and its multiculturalism, we can see the culture does not really adjust to ‘other’ cultures or people do not really suffer a loss of their ‘own’ identity, traditions and culture, but as the time goes it rather transforms. Ethnic identity is what comes from historical context, rather than what we carry within ourselves. There is a problem, that we as people, do not understand each other and we are not always able to start and maintain a relationship with somebody that differs from us, which is an issue that is often being associated with many recent conflicts (Dijkstra et al., 2001).
Migration from the Third World countries and Eastern Europe to the west is something that has been happening for a long time, specifically from 1970s and it is the reason why anti-immigrant xenophobic groups, political parties and other movements were established and are on the rise.
Actually, there is an acceleration of this process that is noticeable. Therefore, there is no surprise that this issue is among top priorities for countries in the European Union and their national
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governments, because of the upward trend in terms of aggression towards foreigners (Abu-Laban et al., 1992).
Nowadays, dealing with immigration is a crucial part of the European Union, however it has not always been this case, as some argue that handling such issues as immigrants or refugees is not the EU’s original purpose. The question is whether it is solely up to state to handle the present diversity? Transnational connections connect the multicultural world, which we all live in, and creates a space for international collaboration. Many NGOs and other organizations provide assistance in dealing with these issues to the states. The complication is, according to Dijkstra: “Individuals are at the same time members of various communities which are not mutually exclusive. There is therefore a large diversity between, but also within, the actors.”.
Everyone has his own personal interest but one common interest that would connect them is insufficient or missing. In order to consider issues such as refugees, coordination and combination of these subinterests is needed (Dijkstra, 2001).
Since the 1960s the democracies of the west have been using multicultural policies that adopted a concept named liberal multiculturalism, that can be adopted without threatening core liberal-democratic values. Justice, guaranteed for the minorities, is another thing that can be accomplished thanks to these multicultural policies without hazarding with democratic values.
However, Kymlicka sees it as a Utopia – the formulation of political philosophers of what we wish the world to be, rather than what it actually is. The evidence is still lacking, even though there are many surveys that focus on multicultural policies and their effect on liberal democratic values – these effects are uncertain (Kymlicka, 2010).
This raises a question, whether multiculturalism is really that bad? The answer would differ, depending on through which state’s eyes it is viewed. There is one country – Canada, which
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can be used as a perfect example, because it is the world’s only country that implemented an official multicultural policy into its constitution. Canadians believe that immigration does not equal crime, but the society benefits from it. Australia shares similar beliefs about immigration.
They conducted 5 surveys between the years 1995 to 2003 and asked whether people that immigrate to Australia make it more open to new cultures and ideas – they got mostly positive answers (Markus, 2011). Could this be used as an example for the countries of the European Union? Because western European countries, such as France and Germany never embraced this kind of policy, or there is the Netherlands that have backed out from their previous commitments. Sweden on the other hand has a positive approach towards multiculturalism.
There exists a pattern, which shows that countries that endorse multiculturalism policies perform better than other democracies in the West (Kymlicka, 2010). In 2008 the Council of Europe, specifically the Committee of Ministers conceded that multiculturalism, after replacing the assimilationist approach, had failed in the European Union (Council of Europe, 2008).
Kymlicka talks about how the Netherlands is often associated with the failure of multiculturalism, having unfavorable effects on liberal and democratic values. Such example made many researchers believe that multiculturalism indeed has negative effects. Despite the fact, Kymlicka is convinced that the case of the Netherlands is just an exception, because there are still original multiculturalism aspects that develop into policies. In the Netherlands they try to convince the migrants to return back to their country of origin instead of them having the feeling that the Netherlands is their home. The author believes that the above-mentioned examples show that there is a failure in the literature and calls for better social science evidence, that could assist public policies with the problems of ethnic diversity (Kymlicka, 2010).
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