Grounding Multicultural Citizenship: From Minority Rights to Civic Pluralism

Whereas multicultural citizenship in theory has focused on minority and group-differentiated rights, multicultural citizenship in practice has been framed in terms of the universal rights and obligations of citizenship. This paper seeks to address this apparent gap. It evaluates ‘civic pluralist’ models of multiculturalism, such as those in Australia and Canada, in which cultural difference is expressed within the limits of a common civic culture. A civic pluralist model of multicultural citizenship must meet two tests; it must not only recognize cultural difference in the public sphere but must also provide a new basis for political belonging. This requires an ‘open’ political culture or ‘deliberative democracy’, in which political institutions and practices are exposed to scrutiny and re-interpretation, and a sense of belonging based less upon shared political values and more upon common membership of public debate within a political community.