Interculturalism, multiracialism and transculturalism: Australian and Canadian experiences in the 1990s

Abstract

The current debate on multiculturalism in Australia and Canada has provided a forum for a conceptualization of its alternatives. By the late 1980s Australian and Canadian governments abandoned the Utopian pluriculturalist experiments of the 1970s and introduced interculturalist policies. However, the early 1990s have seen in both countries the emergence of another ethnoracialist ideology, multiracialism, which presents many similarities with institutionalized multiculturalism. At the same time, a new transcultural understanding of Canadian and Australian social realities has suggested avenues by which to reach a model of non‐racialism. This article outlines the features of these pluralist society projects and assesses their relevance for the process of nation‐building in post‐colonial democracies.