This book examines claims for recognition of cultural difference from immigrant and Indigenous minorities, highlighting the ways in which they intersect with ideas of national community. Busbridge argues that there is an important, albeit under-explored, relationship between nation and multicultural politics of recognition. Drawing on the Australian context, the book explores how nation features as a productive, if somewhat ambivalent, discursive resource in contemporary Muslim and Aboriginal struggles to be recognised. In demanding recognition, minorities enter into the business of ‘making the nation’ by positing alternative conceptions of national identity, culture and belonging that are more attentive to their differences and claims. This dynamic is engaged as an expression of ‘postcolonial citizenship’. Postcolonial citizenship is imagined in terms of the ways in which minority groups actualise multicultural realities through rewriting ideas of national community. It underlines the critical importance of revising the power relations that deem some groups ‘more national’ and others less so – and which, in Western multicultural societies, are typically tied to notions of the ‘West’ and its ‘others’. This book is an important conceptual, theoretical and political intervention that brings postcolonialism and multiculturalism into dialogue on the increasingly potent issues of nation and national identity. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, politics, postcolonial studies, culture, identity and nation.

Most countries around the world exhibit a long history of exclusion and discrimination directed against ethnic, racial, national, religious, or ideological groups. The underlying justifications for these forms of exclusion have been increasingly discredited by the post-war human rights revolution, decolonization, and by contemporary norms of liberal-democratic constitutionalism, with their commitment to equal rights and non-discrimination. However, even as these older practices and ideologies of exclusion are discredited and repudiated, they continue to have enduring effects. The legacies of exclusion can still be seen in a wide range of social attitudes, cultural practices, economic and demographic patterns, and institutional rules that obstruct efforts to build genuinely inclusive societies of equal citizens. Finding ways to overcome this problem is a major challenge facing virtually every society around the world. The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies focuses on two parallel intellectual and political movements that have arisen to address this challenge: the 'politics of reconciliation', with its focus on reparations, truth-telling and healing amongst former adversaries, and the 'politics of difference', with its focus on the recognition and empowerment of minorities in multicultural societies. Both the politics of reconciliation and the politics of difference are having a profound impact on the theory and practice of democracy around the world, but remarkably little has been written about the relationship between them. This book aims to fill that gap. Drawing on both theoretical analysis and case studies from around the world, the authors explore how the politics of reconciliation and the politics of difference often interact in mutually supportive ways, as reconciliation leads to more multicultural conceptions of citizenship. But there are also important ways in which the two may compete in their aims and methods. The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies is the first attempt to systematically explore these areas of potential convergence and divergence.

This book is about multiculturalism, broadly defined as the recognition, respect and accommodation of cultural differences. Teo proposes a framework of multicultural denizenship that includes group-specific rights and intercultural dialogue, by problematising three issues: a) the unacknowledged misrecognition of non-citizens within the scholarship of multiculturalism; b) uncritical treatment of citizens and non-citizens as binary categories and; c) problematic parcelling of group-specific rights with citizenship rights. Drawing on the case of Singapore as an illustrative example, where temporary labour migrants are culturally stereotyped, socioeconomically disenfranchised and denied access to rights accorded only to citizens, Teo argues that understandings of multiculturalism need to be expanded and adjusted to include a fluidity of identities, spectrum of rights and shared experiences of marginalisation among citizens and non-citizens. Civic Multiculturalism in Singapore will be of interest to students and scholars of multiculturalism, critical citizenship studies, migration studies, political theory and postcolonial studies.

Multiculturalism has shaped identity politics in the Americas over the past decades, as illustrated by politics of recognition, affirmative action, and increasing numbers of internationally recognized cultural productions by members of ethnic minorities. Hinting at postcolonial legacies in political rhetoric and practice multiculturalism has also served as a driving force behind social movements in the Americas. Nevertheless, in current academic discussions and public debates on migration, globalization and identity politics, concepts like new ethnicities, ethnic groupism, creolization, hybridity, mestizaje, diasporas, and "post-ethnicity" articulate positionings that are profoundly changing our understanding of "multiculturalism." Combining theoretical reflections with case studies the aim of this book is to demonstrate the current dynamics of (post-) multicultural politics in the Americas.This book was based on a special issue of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies.

Is it possible, in a modern, pluralistic society, to promote common bonds of citizenship while at the same time accommodating and showing respect for ethnocultural diversity? 'Citizenship' and 'diversity' have been two of the major topics of debate in both democratic politics and political theory over the past decade. Much has been written about the importance of citizenship, civic identities, and civic virtues for the functioning of liberal democracies, and the need to accommodate the ethnocultural, linguistic, and religious pluralism that is a fact of life in most modern states. By and large, however, these two topics have been largely discussed in mutual isolation. Much of the writing on the issues of both citizenship and diversity remains rather abstract and general and disconnected from the specific issues of public policy and institutional design. Citizenship in Diverse Societies examines the specific points of conflict and convergence between concerns for citizenship and diversity in democratic societies and reassesses and refines existing theories of 'diverse citizenship' by examining these theories in the light of actual practices and policies of pluralistic democracies.

In an age of multiculturalism and identity politics, many minority groups seek some form of official recognition or public accommodation of their identity. But can public institutions accurately recognize or accommodate something as subjective and dynamic as "identity?" Avigail Eisenberg and Will Kymlicka lead a distinguished team of scholars who explore state responses to identity claims worldwide. Their case studies focus on key issues where identity is central to public policy. By illuminating both the risks and opportunities of institutional responses to diversity, this volume shows that public institutions can either enhance or distort the benefits of identity politics.

Practical case studies based on integration, identity and citizenship: Boundaries are constantly negotiated in multicultural societies, drawing people in or excluding them, permanently changing the line of demarcation between ourselves and others.