Multicultural States and Intercultural Citizens

Citizenship refers to membership in a political community, and hence designates a relationship between the individual and the state. One way to explore the idea of `multicultural citizenship', therefore, is to identify its images of the state and of the individual. First, we can ask about multiculturalism at the level of the state: what would it mean for the constitution, institutions and laws of the state to be multicultural? Second, we can ask about interculturalism at the level of the individual citizen: what sorts of knowledge, beliefs, virtues and dispositions would an intercultural citizen possess? Ideally, these two levels should work together: there should be a fit between our model of the multicultural state and the intercultural citizen. This article identifies three conflicts between promoting desirable forms of multiculturalism within state institutions and promoting desired forms of interculturalism within individual citizens, and discusses the challenges they raise for theories of multicultural education.