On the Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe

Some major themes/thoughts:

• “Multicultural” is a descriptor, “multiculturalism” is something that states do
• European states are multicultural, but they have not done “multiculturalism”
• Europeans tend to see the birth of “multicultural” Europe emerging after 1945, but it was actually long before that (for example, France had the highest rate of immigration in the world in 1930)
• The “New Racism,” where one replaces biological notions of race with cultural notions of race, is in large part to blame for tensions around multiculturalism (“they’re unassimilable”)
• With the “New Racism,” European conservatives and some liberals have turned the Enlightenment from a universalist project to a project that only Europeans can claim (this is why Muslims are “unassimilable” in the view of many)—this builds off of Buruma’s work
• It is ridiculous to claim that “multiculturalism is a failure” when there has been so little policy to even manage multicultural societies in Europe