Testing the Liberal Multiculturalist Hypothesis: Normative Theories and Social Science Evidence

WILL KYMLICKA

Queens University

Starting in the 1960s, a number of Western democracies embarked on new experiments in accommodating indigenous peoples, national minorities and immigrant groups. Although these experiments in multiculturalism have always been the subject of intense public debate, there was surprisingly little academic attention to them in the 1970s and 1980s. It was only in the 1990s that multiculturalism became a major area of academic inquiry, picked up initially by political theorists.1 Indeed, for much of the 1990s, the academic literature on multiculturalism was heavily normative, dominated by political philosophers who developed idealized theories of a distinctly liberaldemocratic and egalitarian form of multicultural citizenship. These theorists were interested in the question of whether multiculturalism was consistent in principle with their ideal theories of justicefor example, whether multiculturalist claims could be defended from within Rawlss theory of liberal justiceand attempted to show how familiar liberaldemocratic principles of individual freedom and distributive justice could be invoked to give a principled defense of certain multiculturalist claims. These normative philosophical accounts of multiculturalism have proven quite influential, shaping debates on multiculturalism not just within the field of philosophy, but more widely in academia and indeed in public life. A good example is the remarkable international influence of Charles Taylors 1992 essay, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition, translated into numerous languages and cited in discussions of multiculturalism from the isolated highlands of Bolivia to the teeming streets of Paris or Tokyo.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Francois Boucher for research help with this article. Will Kymlicka, Department of Philosophy, Queens University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, kymlicka@queensu.ca.
Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique 43:2 (June/juin 2010) 257271 doi:10.10170S0008423910000041 2010 Canadian Political Science Association ~lAssociation canadienne de science politique! and0et la Socit qubcoise de science politique

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An important aspect of these theories is what I will call the liberal multicultural hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, states can adopt multiculturalism policies to fairly recognize the legitimate interests of minorities in their identity and culture without eroding core liberal democratic values. We can represent this hypothesis schematically, as in Figure 1. On the left-hand side, we have a list of multiculturalism policies ~hereafter MCPs! of the sort that have in fact been adopted within one or more of the Western democracies since the 1960s in relation to immigrants, national minorities and indigenous peoples.2 On the righthand side, we have a list of the three traditional liberaldemocratic valuesfreedom, equality and solidarityas defined by the French Revolution and reformulated in Rawlss canonical formulation ~Rawls, 1971!.3 The liberal multiculturalist hypothesis, then, is that one can adopt one or more of the policies on the left, without jeopardizing the values on the right. Of course, a normative defense of liberal multiculturalism need not make this sort of empirical prediction. A philosophical defense of liberal multiculturalism could simply argue that members of minority groups have legitimate interests in their languages and cultures, and that justice requires accommodating these legitimate interests through MCPs, without making predictions one way or the other about how such MCPs affect broader liberaldemocratic values. Perhaps MCPs are needed to fairly recognize minoritys interests in language and culture, but their effect over time is to undermine the stability of democratic procedures, or the viability of a welfare state. If so, then we would be faced with a tragic choice: the need to choose between justice for minorities and broader liberaldemocratic values. However, most normative theorists of liberal multiculturalism do not view MCPs as creating these sorts of tragic choices. On the contrary, normative theorists of liberal multiculturalism typically assume, implicitly or explicitly, that justice for minorities through MCPs can be pursued without threatening core liberaldemocratic values and without having to compromise on a societys commitment to individual freedom, equal opportunity and social solidarity. And this assumption has been crucial in explaining the influence of normative theories of liberal multiculturalism. A commitment to liberal multiculturalism is not a commitment to justice for minorities even if the heavens will fall, but rather justice for minorities because the heavens wont fall. This is the assumption I am formulating as the liberal multiculturalist hypothesis: that one or more MCPs can be adopted without jeopardizing core liberal democratic values. Indeed, at its strongest, the hypothesis says that a country could adopt all of the policies on the left without jeopardizing any of the values on the right. Put that way, the hypothesis seems utopian, a highly idealized vision of how one might wish the world to be but not a realistic basis for describ-

Abstract. For much of the 1990s, the academic literature on multiculturalism was heavily normative, dominated by political philosophers who developed idealized theories of a distinctly liberaldemocratic form of multicultural citizenship. This liberal multiculturalism hypothesis the notion that multiculturalism policies can be adopted without jeopardizing core liberal democratic valueshas been quite influential, shaping debates not just within the field of philosophy, but more widely in academia and indeed in public life. Many social scientists, however, question whether multiculturalism in the real world has been so benign. This paper considers the available evidence, empirically testing the liberal multiculturalism hypothesis, both in Canada and cross-nationally. What does this evidence tell us about the prospects for liberal democratic multiculturalism and about the impact of multicultural policies on liberaldemocratic values? Rsum. Au cours des annes 1990, la littrature acadmique sur le multiculturalisme tait dcidment normative, domine par des philosophes politiques qui ont dvelopp des thories idalises dune forme de citoyennet multiculturelle nettement librale-dmocrate. Cette hypothse du multiculturalisme libral la notion que des politiques de multiculturalisme peuvent tre adoptes sans compromettre les valeurs fondamentales de la dmocratie librale sest avre trs influente, structurant les dbats non seulement dans lenceinte de la philosophie, mais aussi dans larne plus vaste du milieu acadmique et mme dans la vie publique. Plusieurs chercheurs en sciences humaines, cependant, se demandent si le multiculturalisme dans le monde rel a t si bnin. Cet article examine la preuve disponible tout en valuant empiriquement lhypothse du multiculturalisme libral, tant au Canada quailleurs. Que nous indique cette preuve concernant lavenir du multiculturalisme libral dmocratique et limpact des politiques multiculturelles sur les valeurs de la dmocratie librale?

ing or predicting the effects of multiculturalism in the world as it actually is. And indeed, starting in the mid-1990s, a number of social scientists began to complain that these idealized theories were not adequately informed by empirical findings about the nature of ethnic relations and ethnic politics. From the perspective of these social scientists, it was naive, even irresponsible, to base public policy on these overly normative theories. If we attended to the findings of social science, rather than the fantasies of political philosophers, we would be much more skeptical of the liberal multiculturalist hypothesis. In particular, social science would have told us ~1! that the realworld motivations for making multiculturalist claims were rarely a disinterested or benign quest for liberal justice but rather a self-interested quest by ethnic entrepreneurs to gain greater power and control, often at the expense of group members; and ~2! that even if multiculturalist claims were well-intentioned, their adoption would likely create perverse effects, such as exacerbating prejudice or distrust, or reproducing segregation and exclusion. These problems, it was said, would have been clear if policy makers had been informed more by social science than by philosophy, if they had paid less attention to moral or philosophical justifications for multiculturalism and more attention to the evidence about its underlying assumptions about human behaviour ~Reitz, 2009: 2!, or about the strategic and political context in which cultural claims are formulated ~Jung, 2007: 269!.

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FIGURE 1
Multiculturalism Policies (MCPs) ~1! Re: Immigrants religious accommodations funding of ethnic organizations ethnic representation in media multicultural0mother-tongue education affirmative action ~2! Re: National Minorities official language rights regional autonomy consociational power-sharing ~3! Re: Indigenous Peoples land claims self-government rights customary law treaty rights

WILL KYMLICKA

Core Liberal-Democratic Values ~1! Civil and Political Liberties freedom of speech, conscience, assembly right to effective political participation ~2! Equality of Opportunity to acquire skills to gain employment ~3! Solidarity: mutual respect redistribution

We can find versions of this complaint from scholars in a wide range of social science disciplines, including sociologists such as Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper ~2000!, Christian Joppke ~2001, 2004!, or Adrian Favell ~1998a, 1998b!, political scientists such as David Laitin ~1998!, James Johnson ~2000!, and Courtney Jung ~2007!, and anthropologists such as Terence Turner ~1993! or Jane Cowan ~2001!, all of whom bemoan the undue influence of normative political philosophy in the multiculturalism debate.4 The heart of this critique, then, is that the liberal multiculturalist hypothesis needs to be tested against the empirical evidence, with the expectation that this will require some dramatic revision, if not outright refutation, of the hypothesis. And indeed this complaint has helped to inspire almost fifteen years of new empirical research by social scientists. We now have much more evidence from all of these disciplines. High-profile social scientists have become as influential as philosophers in the general debate over multiculturalism, and normative ideas about the principled arguments for liberal multiculturalism have been supplemented, if not displaced, by new ideas and concepts from the social sciences.5 This dramatic growth in social science is all to the good, since public policy should indeed be based on empirical evidence and not just idealized theories of justice. But it raises the question: what does all of this evidence tell us about the prospects for a liberaldemocratic multiculturalism? What does it tell us about whether or when MCPs support or erode liberaldemocratic values?

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One safe but boring answer is to say that we dont yet have enough evidence. This indeed is the conclusion reached by several recent surveys, which insist that the effects of MCPs on liberaldemocratic values remain largely unknown ~Marc, 2008, 2009; Reitz, 2009; Government of British Columbia, 2008!.6 But while recognizing the incompleteness of the evidence, I think its worth trying to identify at least in a preliminary way the emerging lessons or conclusions of the past 15 years of social science research. After all, policy makers and practitioners need to make decisions now, based on the evidence to hand, so its worth asking what the available evidence adds up to. And here I want to raise a bold and surprising possibility: namely, that the evidence to date, far from refuting the liberal multiculturalist hypothesis, actually supports it. Despite the widespread presumption that greater attention to empirical evidence would lead to greater skepticism about the merits of liberal multiculturalism, I want to suggest that the evidence bolsters the case. For the purposes of this paper, I will focus on the evidence in relation to immigrant multiculturalism, although I think a similar argument could be made in relation to national minorities and indigenous peoples.7 What then does the evidence tell us about the impact of immigrant MCPs on basic liberaldemocratic values of freedom, equality and solidarity? Let me start be reviewing the evidence in the Canadian case, which was the first Western country to adopt an official multiculturalism policy and remains the only country in which multiculturalism is enshrined in the constitution. It therefore provides a good first test case: if multiculturalism has pernicious effects, they should have shown up in Canada. In reality, however, the evidence suggests that MC is having a positive effect in the domains of freedom, equal opportunity and solidarity. Consider the following findings of recent research. Political rights. Compared to every other Western democracy, immigrants in Canada are more likely to become citizens ~Bloemraad, 2006!. Nor is this simply a desire to gain the safety or convenience of a Canadian passport. Compared to other countries, these naturalized immigrants are more likely to actually participate in the political process, as voters, party members or even candidates for political office ~Howe, 2007!. For example, there are more foreign-born citizens and Canadian-born minorities elected to parliament in Canada than in other Western countries, both in absolute numbers and in terms of parity with their percentage of the population ~Adams, 2007: 7074!. While the percentage of foreign-born in the Canadian federal Parliament ~13 per cent! is lower than the percentage of foreign-born in the overall population ~19.3 per cent in the 2001 census!, this level of demographic parity is ~far! higher than in the US ~2 per cent foreign-born in the House of Representatives versus 14.7 per cent in population! or Australia ~11 per cent versus 23

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per cent! or any European countries. ~In fact, in France most of the foreign-born members of parliament are the children of French diplomats or colonial settlers, not people of immigrant ethnic origin!. Moreover, its worth noting that the foreign-born MPs in Canada are not only, or even typically, elected in ethnic enclave ridings composed of their own co-ethnics ~Adams, 2007: 7780!. To be sure, there remain obstacles to the political participation of immigrants and ethnic minorities in Canada ~Bird, 2004, 2005, 2007!. But, compared to other countries, political parties in Canada are more likely to actively recruit minority candidates and to run them in competitive ridings ~and not just as token candidates!. And once nominated, there is no evidence that voters in Canada discriminate against such candidates ~Black and Erickson, 2006; Bird, 2009!. No doubt there are many factors that explain this, including the fact that Canada tends to select more highly skilled immigrants than other countries. But those scholars who study the political participation of immigrants in Canada in comparison with other countries concur that multiculturalism has indeed enhanced the effective exercise of political liberties.8 Indeed, Canadas comparative advantage in the political integration of immigrants is often most striking precisely in relation to less skilled immigrants.9 Equal opportunity. Equal opportunity has two key dimensions: first, to acquire skills; and second, to translate those skills into jobs that are commensurate. In both cases, Canada has a comparative advantage. According to a recent OECD study, the children of immigrants and minorities have better educational outcomes in Canada than in any other Western democracy. Indeed, uniquely among Western countries, second-generation immigrants in Canada actually outperform children of non-immigrant parents ~OECD, 2006!. Again, this is not solely due to the higher socioeconomic background of immigrants in Canada; on the contrary, immigrant children from lower socio-economic backgrounds also do better in Canada than in other countries. In terms of acquiring employment, immigrants in all Western societies suffer from an ethnic penalty in translating their skills into jobs. However, the size of this ethnic penalty differs from country to country, and according to a recent British Academy study, the penalty is lowest in Canada ~Heath, 2007!. Here again, lots of factors explain this comparative record, but there are good reasons to think that MCPs play a role. For example, the massive OECD study that established Canadas comparative advantage in educating immigrant students emphasized that a crucial factor in this success was the presence of specific policies to address issues of cultural and linguistic diversity in the school population, policies that, in the Canadian context, have emerged under the rubric of multiculturalism. These diversity policies help to explain why the children of immigrants do better in Canada even when controlling for the skills, education and income of their par-

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ents, in part, because of the way they help children acculturate ~Berry et al., 2006!. Solidarity. Much of the anxiety around multiculturalism has focused not on its effects on political or economic integration, but rather its effects on social integration, and particularly on feelings of mutual identification and acceptance. Yet what is truly striking is the high level of mutual identification among immigrants and native-born Canadians. Canadians view immigrants and demographic diversity as key parts of their own Canadian identity. Compared to every other Western democracy, Canadians are more likely to say that immigration is beneficial, and less likely to believe that immigrants are prone to crime ~ Focus Canada, 2006!. And immigrants and minorities return the compliment; they have very high levels of pride in Canada and are most proud of Canadas freedom and democracy, and its multiculturalism ~Adams, 2007!. This high level of mutual identification is also reflected in the fact that whereas ethnic diversity has been shown to erode social capital or trust in other countries, there appears to be a Canadian exceptionalism in this regard ~Kazemipur, 2009!. Here again, there are many factors at work beyond the presence of MCPs, but social scientists working in the field concur that the presence of multicultural norms has played an important role, helping to normalize diversity ~Harell, 2009; Kazemipur, 2009!. In particular, multiculturalism provides a locus for the high level of mutual identification among native-born citizens and immigrants in Canada. In many countries, native-born citizens with a strong sense of national identity or national pride tend to be more distrusting of immigrants and minorities, who are seen as a threat to their cherished national identity ~Sides and Citrin, 2007!. But the fact that Canada has officially defined itself as a multicultural nation means that immigrants are a constituent part of the nation that citizens feel pride in, so multiculturalism helps native-born citizens to link national identity to solidarity with immigrants and minorities. And, conversely, multiculturalism provides a link by which immigrants and minorities come to identify with, and feel pride in, Canada. From their different starting points, there is convergence on high levels of pride and identification with a multicultural conception of Canadian nationhood. Studies show that in the absence of multiculturalism, these links are more difficult to establish, and national identity is more likely to lead to intolerance and xenophobia ~Esses et al., 2006!. Indeed, Canada is the only Western country where strength of national identity correlated positively rather than negatively with pro-immigration attitudes ~Laczko, 2007!, a striking finding that I believe can only plausibly be explained by the fact that multiculturalism is now part of Canadian national identity. So there is growing social science evidence that, at least in the Canadian case, MCPs are not only consistent with core liberaldemocratic

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values of freedom, equality and solidarity, but actually enhance them. A skeptic might respond that Canada is somehow an outlier or exception in this regard and that we cant draw any generalized lessons from the Canadian evidence. Fair enough. So lets set aside the Canadian case, and ask which country comes second in these cross-national studies of immigrant political participation, educational attainment, equal opportunity in the marketplace and mutual respect. Interestingly, the answer typically is Australia, which is precisely the country that most quickly and closely followed Canada in adopting a multiculturalism policy.10 A skeptic might retreat further, and argue that Canada and Australia both reflect peculiarities of New World countries of immigration, such that evidence from those countries cant be applied to Europe. But if we ask which European country does best on these criteria, it is Sweden, which has been one of the strongest and most consistent proponents of a multicultural approach. Sweden outperforms those countries that never embraced multiculturalism ~for example, France, Germany!, or that have retreated from earlier commitments ~for example, Netherlands, Britain!.11 So we seem to have a pattern here: countries with strong and consistent policies of multiculturalism outperform the other Western democracies. Of course, this is still just three countries, and perhaps all three are somehow exceptional, rather than manifesting a more general rule about the beneficial effects of MCPs. But insofar as we have crossnational data on the effects of MCPs, the preliminary evidence suggests that this indeed is a more generalized effect. For example, John Berrys cross-national study of 13 countries shows that children are better adapted in countries with multiculturalism policies ~Berry et al., 2006!; Christel Kesler and Irene Bloemraads cross-national study of diversity and social capital in 19 countries shows that multiculturalism policies have a positive impact on political participation and social capital ~Kesler and Bloemraad, 2010!; Steven Weldons cross-national study of prejudice shows that multiculturalism policies have a positive effect on reducing prejudice ~Weldon, 2006!; and earlier cross-national work that I conducted with Keith Banting suggested that multiculturalism policies may have a positive effect on redistribution ~Banting and Kymlicka, 2006!.12 So it seems that there is at least some plausible evidence in support of the liberal multiculturalist hypothesis. I hasten to add that none of these bits and pieces of evidence adds up to proof of that hypothesis. Legitimate questions can be raised about the way these studies define the dependent and independent variables, and about the limitations of the data. Further research will almost certainly require modifying and qualifying their conclusions. Yet, as I said earlier, we often need to make provisional judgments based on the evidence to hand, and so far as I can tell, this evidence strongly ~if provisionally! suggests that liberal multi-

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culturalism is a viable approach, worthy of being considered by policy makers. But if so, this raises a puzzle. For the general tenor of most discussions of multiculturalism, both in academia and policy circles, is of a failure or crisis of multiculturalism. To take just one example, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recently issued a report which states, without hesitation or qualification, that multiculturalism has failed in Europe, and indeed that it has proven to be as harmful as the assimilationist approach it replaced ~Council of Europe, 2008!. This is a remarkable statement: here we have a formal intergovernmental body, speaking on behalf of its 47 member states, stating that there is, in effect, a European consensus that multiculturalism is no longer a viable approach. This is just one of many examples one could give of the now widespread assumption, found among both intergovernmental organizations 13 and academic commentators,14 that we have moved into a postmulticultural age. What explains this surprisingly widespread judgment that multiculturalism is no longer a viable option? One possibility, of course, is that I have misread the available evidence and that the retreat from multiculturalism reflects a sound example of evidence-based policy making. As I read the debate, however, the retreat from multiculturalism is even less evidence-based than its original advocacy by political theorists. To be sure, empirical evidence is often invoked by critics of multiculturalism, but in my view, this evidence is being invoked in ways that distort rather than illuminate the debate over MCPs. Let me give two quick examples, which I think have been particularly influential. The first is the remarkable global influence of Robert Putnams work on diversity and social capital. According to Putnams widely cited findings, as the ethnic diversity of American cities increases, social capital declines, reflected in lower levels of civic associational life and of interpersonal trust ~Putnam, 2007!. These findings are widely seen as proof that the multicultural ideal is not working and have been invoked repeatedly by critics of multiculturalism ~for instance, Goodhart, 2004!. But even if Putnams findings turn out to be robustand the jury is still out on that questionhow do they relate to multiculturalism? The assumption often made by critics is that if diversity drives down social capital, then adopting policies that recognize and accommodate diversity will exacerbate the problem. But this is an empirical claim that needs to be tested and, as I noted earlier, the evidence to date suggests that MCPs ameliorate rather than exacerbate the situation. Nor should this is surprising, since of course the whole point of multiculturalism is to normalize diversity. To be sure, this is very preliminary evidence, and we need more research on how MCPs affect social capital ~and how social capital in turn affects liberaldemocratic values of freedom, equality and solidarity!.

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Unfortunately, too many commentators have jumped from Putnamesque findings about the negative correlations between ethnic diversity and social capital to predictions about the negative effects of MCPs, predictions that are at best empirically unfounded and at worst irresponsible. A second example, particularly influential in the European debate, concerns the Dutch case. The Netherlands is widely cited as an example of a country where multiculturalism failed, with negative effects on liberaldemocratic values. Based on this one case, several scholars have jumped to the conclusion that multiculturalism in general has negative effects. A particularly influential version of this argument is the recent book by Paul Sniderman and Luuk Hagendoorn, which lays the blame for prejudice and ethnic polarization in the Netherlands at the feet of multiculturalism, and concludes that other countries should avoid the Netherlands costly and failed experiment with MCPs ~Sniderman and Hagendoorn, 2007!. I have elsewhere criticized their analysis, which in fact provides no evidence that MCPs exacerbated rather than ameliorated the problem of prejudice and polarization in the Netherlands and which ignores much evidence to the contrary ~Kymlicka, 2008!.15 But even if they are right about the effect of MCPs in the Dutch case, on what basis can we conclude that the Dutch case is generalizable rather than exceptional? There are, after all, some unique aspects of multiculturalism in the Netherlands, which initially emerged as a policy to encourage migrant workers to return home to their country of origin rather than as a policy to encourage immigrants to feel at home in their new country of residence. It is hardly surprising that a form of multiculturalism that initially arose within such a returnist framework has had deleterious consequences. If it is a mistake to generalize the benefits of multiculturalism from the Canadian case, surely it is equally a mistake to generalize the harms of multiculturalism from the Dutch case. What we need is look across the full range of cases and , as weve seen, the bulk of the evidencenot just from Canada, but also Australia and Sweden, and cross-national studiessuggests that multiculturalism remains a viable approach worthy of serious consideration. To dismiss multiculturalism based solely on the Dutch case is at best premature. These two examples are indicative of a more general failing in the literature. We certainly need good social science evidence to help guide public policy on issues of ethnic diversity. But we need to approach this evidence carefully, with an open mind. Too often, social scientists have started from the premise that because the liberal multiculturalist hypothesis was championed by normative political theorists unschooled in the methods of social science, the hypothesis therefore must be nave and wrong. But we should at least contemplate the possibility that the liberal multiculturalist hypothesis is valid, at least in some times and places, and then see where the evidence falls.

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1 See, for example, Baubock ~1994!; Kymlicka ~1989, 1995!; Raz ~1994!; Phillips ~1995!; Spinner ~1994!; Tamir ~1993!; Taylor ~1992!; Tully ~1995!; Walzer ~1992a, 1992b, 1994!; Young ~1990!. Its an interesting question why political theory ~along with education! was the first to engage this issue. After all, sociology and anthropology have a much longer tradition of thinking about culture and cultural difference. I suspect part of the reason is that multiculturalism seemed a good test case for addressing the liberalism versus communitarianism debate that dominated Anglo-American political theory in the 1980s. 2 This list is adapted from the Multiculturalism Policy Index, developed in Banting and Kymlicka ~2006!, which gives further details on the rationale for, and definition of, the items on the index. 3 These three values correspond with the three parts of Rawlss theory of justice: the liberty principle, the principle of equality of opportunity and the difference principle. 4 Anthropologists were particularly aggrieved, since of course they view themselves as the specialists on issues of culture, and yet woke up in the 1990s to find that a raging public debate on multiculturalism had emerged with little or no input from their discipline ~and, even worse, no one involved in the debate had seen fit to ask for their input!. While many anthropologists blame this state of affairs on the amateurism of multiculturalists, Turner acknowledges that it also tells us something about the limitations of contemporary anthropology and the way its professional preoccupations have become disconnected from the needs of citizens struggling with these issues ~1993!. 5 Witness the enormous influence of ideas of social capital, ethnic entrepreneurs, outbidding, culture as tool-kit, and so on. 6 According to Reitz, while academic discussions of multiculturalism have been extensive, there is no real evaluation. The information base for such an evaluation is simply not there ~2009: 13!. 7 I explore this evidence in Kymlicka ~2007: ch. 5!. 8 Bloemraad examines Vietnamese immigrants in Boston and Toronto, who provide an interesting natural experiment in the effects of multiculturalism policies. There are virtually no relevant differences in the demographic characteristics of the Vietnamese immigrants who ended up in Toronto rather than Boston; they arrived with comparable levels of education, work experience, language fluency, and so on. Yet the Vietnamese in Toronto have a much stronger sense of Canadian citizenship and are more actively participating in Canadian public life. There are, of course, many possible explanations for this difference other than the presence of stronger multiculturalism policies ~for example, labour markets, political party structures, and so forth!, but Bloemraad systematically canvasses these alternative explanations and concludes that multiculturalism policies are indeed a crucial part of the story. These policies encourage and enable the Vietnamese community to participate more quickly and more effectively in mainstream Canadian institutions by facilitating the selforganization of the community, by creating new cadres of community leaders who are familiar with Canadian institutions and practices, by creating new mechanisms of consultation and participation and, more generally, by creating a more welcoming environment. According to Bloemraad, the same pattern applies to Portuguese immigrants to Toronto and Boston as well; they arrived with similar demographic characteristics, but the Portuguese immigrants in Toronto have integrated better into Canadian citizenship, due in large part to Canadian multiculturalism. For a related exploration of the role of multiculturalism in facilitating immigrant integration at the municipal level, see Good ~2009!.

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9 The dramatic divergence in naturalization rates between the US and Canada is primarily due to divergence at the bottom of the SES ladder, not the top. 10 For example, Australia comes just behind Canada in the OECD study of the educational outcomes of immigrants children, and just behind Canada in the British Academy study of the ethnic penalty faced by immigrant groups in the labour market. Australia has also traditionally done comparatively well in cross-national studies of mutual identification of native-born and immigrants, and political participation. 11 For example, Sweden scores best among European countries in the British Academy study of ethnic penalties in the labour market. It also scores highest in the European Migrant Integration Policy Index ~Niessen et al., 2007!; indeed, it was the only country deemed to have favourable policies in all domains of social, political and economic integration. Sweden also has the lowest level of xenophobia, as measured by the World Values Survey ~asking about having someone of a different race as a neighbour! or the European Social Survey ~asking about whether immigrants make the country worse!. See the data in Cochrane and Nevitte ~2009! and Finseraas ~2009!. 12 Crepaz ~2006! reaches the same conclusion. 13 To take one further example, at a global level, UNESCOs recent World Report on Cultural Diversity also takes as a given that we are now in a post-multicultural era ~2009!. In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that I was asked to write a background paper on post-multiculturalism for this report. 14 I survey this literature in Kymlicka ~2010!. 15 A related analysis of the Dutch case is contained in Koopmans et al. ~2005!, Koopmans ~2006!. Whereas Sniderman and Hagendoorn simply assume that multiculturalism inherently has negative effects, Koopmans and colleagues argue that MCPs have a curvilinear effect: a few MCPs are helpful, but beyond a threshold, multiculturalism starts to have negative effects. This is an interesting claim, but the only empirical evidence for it rests on the Dutch case, and I dont see why we should assume that the Netherlandsrather than, say, Canada, Australia or Swedenrepresents the best test case for examining the effects of robust multiculturalism.

References
Adams, Michael. 2007. Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism. Toronto: Viking. Banting, Keith and Will Kymlicka. 2006. Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Setting the Context. In Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies, ed. Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baubock, Rainer. 1994. Transnational Citizenship: Membership and Rights in Transnational Migration. Aldershot UK: Edward Elgar. Berry, John, Jean Phinney, David Sam and Paul Vedder. 2006. Immigrant Youth in Cultural Transition. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bird, Karen. 2004. Obstacles to Ethnic Minority Representation in Local Government in Canada. In Our Diverse Cities, ed. Caroline Andrew. Ottawa: Metropolis and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Bird, Karen. 2005. The Political Representation of Visible Minorities in Electoral Democracies: A Comparison of France, Denmark, and Canada. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 11 ~4!: 42565. Bird, Karen. 2007. Patterns of Substantive Representation among Visible Minority MPs: Evidence from Canadas House of Commons. Prepared for the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Helsinki.

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