SOCIAL COHESION AND TOLERANCE

Key Issues

IV. Ideals

citizenship

Immigration, economic and political restructuring, and new modalities of exclusion have posed serious challenges to the nature of democracy, and in particular, its core idea of citizenship. Traditionally the liberal idea of citizenship in a national community requires a leap of faith in which people imagine that they are similar enough to hold common values and purpose. According to ideals of social citizenship, it also requires certain frameworks intended to ensure ‘equality of condition’ (Marshall 1950). However, as James Holston & Arjun Appadurai (1996:192) point out,

This liberal compact is now under tremendous strain. With the unprecedented growth of economic and social inequalities during the last few decades in so many nations, the differences between residents have become too gross and the areas of commonality too few to sustain this compact.

A large segment of the population -- especially groups of immigrants and ethnic minorities -- have had their dire economic and living conditions worsened by measures causing them to lose their representative voice and sink into a state of ‘subcitizenship’ (Mingione 1995); ‘a smaller but significant set,’ says Dahrendorf (1995: 38), ‘seems to have fallen through the net of citizenship altogether.’

Now in their second and third generations -- and notwithstanding their maintenance of close social (and often economic, sometimes political) ties with places of origin -- persons of post-war immigrant origins have become permanent residents with legitimate needs and demands, rights and obligations, with respect to their adopted countries. These needs and demands are certainly legitimate since such persons have over time contributed much through their labour, taxes, commercial services, participation in schools and neighbourhoods, and often through their part in enriching cultural landscapes. Yet all too often they have little say in the determination of public decisions which effect them. This is significantly affected by the fact that many do not have the legal status of citizenship; even in those states where some form of legal citizenship is extended, other social and political factors (largely attributable to racism and discrimination) prevent their full public participation.

Zig Layton-Henry (1990a: 186) points out that this situation, characterised by the political marginalisation or exclusion of socially and economic contributing residents, ‘challenges the liberal democratic values and institutional procedures so greatly prized in multi-party democracies’; ultimately, he reasons, this means that ‘representative government is no longer representative’ (1990b: 24). Social and political exclusion of resident foreigners and ethnic minorities not only presents conditions ‘jeopardising basic democratic achievements’ (Bauböck 1992: 59) but ones challenging fundamental issues of morality as well (Carens 1989).

The need to rethink the relation between immigrants, new diversities and exclusions, and the concept of citizenship has in recent years spawned numerous important publications. Examples include volumes edited by Brubaker (1989), Layton-Henry (1990c), Bauböck (1994b), Kymlicka (1995a) and Martiniello (1995). Further, several new concepts of citizenship and social cohesion have been proposed toward more inclusive ends. Among such new concepts are ‘transnational citizenship’ (Bauböck 1995), ‘multicultural citizenship’ (Kymlicka 1995b), ‘differentiated citizenship’ (Young 1989), ‘neo-republican citizenship’ (van Gunsteren 1994), ‘cultural citizenship’ (Turner 1994), and ‘postnational membership’ (Soysal 1994). Most of these seek in one way or another to extend T.H Marshall’s (1950) classic notions surrounding ‘social citizenship’ and to explore new meanings of ‘membership’ and, especially, ‘participation’.

‘participation’

In the general cause of social justice and democracy, Dilys M. Hill (1994: 7) points out, citizenship as ‘effective participation’ ‘depends on appropriate structures and processes, and on access and information.’ Effective participation in a civil society also means full and equal engagement in the public sphere. In this sense, Craig Calhoun (1994b: 327) states that

multinational, multicultural states require more than simply tolerance among subsidiary peoples. They require public discourse. Citizens from different nationalities, as from different regions, religions, or occupations, need to be able and willing to engage each other in discourse about the social arrangements which hold them together and order their lives -- in brief, about the common good. ...It is necessary, in other words, that the nation be open to democracy and diversity....

In fostering such structures, processes, means of access and dissemination of information, state and local policy formation and implementation can have critical impact. Yet. throughout the period of post-war immigration and settlement and into the present, on national and local levels across Europe policy responses in administrative, legislative and judicial terms have been largely conducted in piecemeal fashion. This has amounted to a widespread condition which Mark J. Miller (1986) has deemed ‘policy ad-hocracy’. Consequently, a wide variety of rules, structures and institutions concerning the political participation of immigrant and ethnic minority populations have arisen from country to country and, indeed, city to city within a single nation-state. However, currently in this field there are calls for comparison and harmonization (see below under ‘policy domains: political integration’).

‘tolerance’

Tolerance is often regarded as one of the cardinal virtues or core principles of liberalism (see Kymlicka 1989, 1995b, Mendus 1989, Horton 1993). Adjunct to the liberal concept of tolerance are associated notions of the subjectivity of value, of respect for liberty of others, and -- a kind of combination of the preceding two notions -- of not interfering with conduct or values of which one disapproves. The merits, paradoxes and problems of these ideals have gripped generations of political and moral philosophers, despite that fact that most would accept that tolerance is an indispensable characteristic of ‘the good society’.

Beyond the sheer philosophy, however, there are serious social and legal dimensions of tolerance which are presented by today’s multicultural societies. There are at least two fundamental conundrums which arise. One is described by Bhikhu Parekh (1994a: 289), who although being one of Britain’s most outstanding advocates of multicultural ideals, realizes that ‘The liberal society is tolerant of differences even when it disapproves of them. But it is also collectively committed to certain values and cannot tolerate every cultural practice.’ In other words, each society must determine its own ‘range of permissible diversity’ (Ibid.). It cannot be tolerant of everything, no matter how liberal. While coming to grips with traditions like ritual slaughter of animals, Western societies find it much more difficult to allow ritual scarring, while they have drawn a firm line concerning practices of female circumcision.

Another ground of dispute surrounds a different aspect of tolerance and its limits. ‘[W]hile not a new problem,’ John Horton (1993: 1) writes, ‘it has become an increasingly urgent issue of theory and practice as to how tolerant liberalism is, or can be, of cultural and religious groups which do not themselves subscribe unreservedly or without qualification to what have been taken to be the basic values of liberalism.’ For some commentators, the entire Rushdie Affair was an exercise in tolerance meeting intolerance (yet with the vexed question, which ‘side’ -- British secular liberalism or a particular school of Islam -- was which? see Appignanesi & Maitland 1989).

Clearly, ‘tolerance’ is not a panacea, a clear recipe for social cohesion, even if we were sure what it is supposed to look like. Further, promoting among the majority a ‘tolerance’ of minorities can be seen as creating a source of problems. As Parekh (1990a: 67) writes,

By not convincing the majority that minority cultures enrich it and are a valuable resource, and that their preservation is in its interest, the liberal response encourages it to think that it is bearing the moral burden of tolerance as an earnest of its generosity towards them, thereby paving the way for an unhealthy and inherently contentious relationship between the two.

Another way of putting it, as once said by a leading lesbian activist, ‘tolerance’ is a word you use with regard to your neighbour’s barking dog. Tolerance must be more than begrudging acceptance, indifference or even peaceful coexistence, since this still might provide for widespread discrimination and marginalization. To move beyond these, for a start, we must come to a better understanding of the multi-factor causes of intolerance.

minority rights

Another set of ideals which has increasingly exercised both philosophers and legal experts concerns minority rights (see for instance Kymlicka 1989,1995a,b). Subsequent to the widespread acceptance of one set of rights pertaining to collective groups -- including the freedom to congregate, worship, speak one’s own language, and engage in other cultural institutions and practices -- there are significant campaigns (again, often under the rubric of ‘the politics of identity’ or ‘politics of recognition’; see below) for groups’ rights of self-definition, self-expression and sometimes self-governance. This is all in keeping with a growing rejection, since the 1960s, of policies of minority assimilation.

Will Kymlicka (1995b: 6-7) outlines a typology of different sorts of minority rights demanded by specific kinds of groups in Western societies today:

‘self-government rights (the delegation of powers to national minorities, often through some form of federalism);

‘polyethnic rights (financial support and legal protection for certain practices associated with particular ethnic or religious groups); and

‘special representation rights (guaranteed seats for ethnic or national groups within the central institutions of the larger state).’

Beyond probing the relationship between individual rights and group rights, Kymlicka importantly points to the difficulties of arriving at common legal and policy frameworks for national minorities, immigrants, refugees and African-Americans -- all groups whose histories, current conditions, claims and demands need to be addressed specifically rather than through generalized legal accommodation.

multiculturalism

Ideals of tolerance, rights, recognition and accommodation are all implicit in the notion of multiculturalism. Yet the notion itself -- which, having arisen in the 1970s, is now ubiquitous in poplar discourse and government policies around the world -- is one of the most vague, and over-used in the entire field of immigration and ethnic minority issues. Multiculturalism, for instance, is term which is used ‘both descriptively and evaluatively’ (Horton 1993: 1-2; cf. Kymlicka 1995b), a reference to the demographic co-presence of people from different cultural backrounds or a vision of society toward which a wide range of policies should be directed. Moreover, ‘The concept of "multiculturalism,"’ Ella Shohat and Robert Stam (1994: 47) also observe, ‘is polysemetically open to various interpretations and subject to diverse political force-fields.’

In the broadest senses, ideas underlying -- and the people invoking -- the terms ‘multicultural’ and ‘multiculturalism’ are differentiated by a binary divide into orientations which Pierre-André Taguieff (1990) has labelled ‘heterophilia’ (in which a multiplicity of different cultures in any single society is desired and praised) and ‘heterophobia’ (in which such multiplicity is feared and rejected). People who invoke ‘multiculturalism’ in the former, positive manner would likely agree that the term is meant to summarise and promote ideals of: tolerance, the right of ethnic minority groups to maintain aspects of cultural heritage and language; equal treatment, equal access, and full participation with regard to matters of law, employment, education, social services, economic activity, and political representation; rights to collective expression; and commitment by all, regardless of ethnic background, to a constitution or state and its rule of law. People who invoke ‘multiculturalism’ in a negative way commonly view the term as representing ideas which threaten core ideals (such as republican citizenship, ‘academic freedom’ or ‘the melting pot’); therefore, in their eyes, the term represents a recipe for the destruction of national identity and the breakdown social cohesion. Within both of these general orientations -- yet more so in the advocates’ camp -- there are numerous, identifiably distinct (although not mutually exclusive) discourses in which the meanings, emphases, strategies, and visions surrounding the terms ‘multicultural’ and ‘multiculturalism’ differ (cf. Castles 1987, Kobayashi 1993, Vertovec 1996a, 1997b).

The different implicit or explicit ideals which a state administration holds regarding multiculturalism naturally has direct bearing on its structures and policies relating to the integration of immigrants and ultimate, the maintenance of cohesion in a plural society.

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