Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Depolarisation

ABSTRACT It has been suggested that multiculturalism has contributed to majority anxieties and thereby to the current polarisation. This article focuses on how to tackle and lessen this polarisation, which is fostering mutual distrust and threatening the national, democratic citizenships upon which any multiculturalist, egalitarian and unifying project must be built and so which multiculturalists, together with others, must defend. This does not involve giving up on multiculturalism but, rather, developing a multicultural national identity to which all citizens can have a sense of belonging without giving up other identities that are important to them. The goal should be that such a multicultural sense of the national can be adapted to be part of an electoral majority on a stable, continuing basis; above all, such a sense of the national allows one to be sensitive to minority identity vulnerabilities and majority identity anxieties within an integrated theoretical and political framework.