Cosmopolitanism and integrationism: is British multiculturalism a ‘Zombie category’?

Abstract

The alleged death of British multiculturalism has been celebrated in some quarters and regretted in others. Invoking Ulrich Beck’s discussion of zombie categories, we argue that while the appeal of ‘multiculturalism’ as a term has clearly declined, the category in Britain that it refers to encompasses not a single charter, but a series of political settlements and public policies that remain in place even though they have been joined (and frequently challenged) by others. Distinguishing between the term and the category is a valuable means of assessing the persistence of multiculturalism as a mode of integration in Britain.

Keywords:

• Ulrich Beck
• citizenship
• integration
• multiculturalism
• Muslims
• zombie category

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to three anonymous reviewers and to the editors for their helpful suggestions.

Notes

^1. ‘Logically interconnected conceptions which are limited and modest in scope, rather than all-embracing and grandiose … theories intermediate to the minor working hypotheses evolved in abundance during the day-by-day routine of research, and the all-inclusive speculations comprising a master conceptual scheme...’ (Merton 1957, p. 5).

^2. While developments in Human Rights Conventions are pan-European, the substantive influence of these varies radically according to how well a human rights culture is entrenched in respective civil societies.

^3. Both the multiculturalism policy index (MPI) and the migrant integration policy index show that between the years 2000 and 2010 the Netherlands has fallen back dramatically on its recognition and support of cultural minorities (from a score of 5.5 to 2.5 on the MPI measure), while for the same period on the same measure Britain has scored the same (5.5). As a wider comparison, for the same periods on the same measure, France and Canada stayed the same scoring 2 and 7.5, respectively.

^4. Something which clearly sits uneasily with his earlier view that British citizenship should ensure that ‘the legitimate rights of communities, of their culture and of their religion, are recognised’ (Nazir-Ali 1997, p. 35).

^5. At the same time, and once it was established in the public mind that young Muslims and communities were the protagonists being discussed, the official documents themselves did not always explicitly state this and so therefore used more universalistic language. We are grateful to Varun Uberoi (Brunel University London, UK) for this point.

^6. This section draws on Meer and Modood (2009).

^7. See http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1575 [Accessed 1 September 2008].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nasar Meer

NASAR MEER is Reader and Chancellor’s Fellow in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

Tariq Modood

TARIQ MODOOD (MBE, AcSS) is Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy, Founding editor of Ethnicities, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, Bristol University.