Is Multiculturalism Dead?

Is Multiculturalism Dead?

By Adrienn Kácsor

“The multicultural attempt has failed, utterly failed,” announced Angel Merkel in Potsdam a couple of days before. Amid the growing tensions between Germany's immigrants and residents, the German Chancellor's statement should be considered seriously: her speech, given at a meeting of the young members of her party, the CDU (Christian Democratic Union), absolutely marks the significance of the question of immigrants in the German society. After her speech, it is really time to think over: is multiculturalism still a live issue?

Just a few decades after the birth of “multiculturalism” and that it has become a leading ideology in cultural studies, the validity of the term has become challenged by the reality of everyday life. At least in most Western European countries, just as Germany, the United Kingdom or France, that could have been considered 'multicultural' in the last decades. Now mainly (but not only!) Muslim religion that strongly questions the patience of West European residents. According to one of the latest German polls, recently published in The Economist, “a third of Germans think the country is overrun by foreigners; a majority favour a “sharply restricting” Muslim religious practice. Over a tenth would even welcome a Führer who would govern with a “strong hand”.” It seems like now it is growing extremism and xenophobia that is typical to Western Europe, not multiculturalism.

For politicians, like Merkel, the biggest issue for the upcoming years is how to stop extremism and to restore multiculturalism - if restorable. And if anyone wants to restore it at all. It is really a serious question that why would it be worth having immigrants, packed up not only with their own cultural traditions, but also with their problems (just as like unemployment is a big challenge for France's Roma minority).

Is this really a solution to expect the immigrants to merge into the society in which they would like to live?

I still believe that the solution lies somewhere in the middle. Not only immigrants, but also Western Europeans have a lot to learn. And mainly about themselves: how open they are, which in the long run means: how democratic they are.