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multiculturalism: translating differenceWhat does multiculturalism mean? We encounter difference every day, from big ideas to our choice of socks. The Strange career of multiculturalism charts the evolution, use and abuse of multiculturalism in theory, culture and politics. At the border takes encounters with difference close-up, with stories of the difficult and unexpected, and Untranslatable words explores worlds within words that do not translate into English.
Play your part in shaping the debate, by giving a glimpse of life on your street, and joining the discussions.  "Friends and neighbours became enemies." As Pakistan celebrates, Maruf Khwaja recalls the pain of birth (archive)
London is often hailed as a true multicultural city, where global citizens thrive, travel and work side by side. But in the shadows of this multi-coloured carnival lurks a cast-iron ethnic division of labour. Read the rest of this post...
2005 has been a bad year for multiculturalism. Does it need to be reformed or replaced? Reena Bhavnani, Max Farrar, Judith Squires, and Sami Zubaida joined an openDemocracy / Open University panel to discuss living with difference. Sarah Lindon summarises a rich discussion which you can watch by webcast. Read the rest of this post...
The right to blasphemy is not the right to religious hate. Shakira Hussein draws on her own multi-religious background to challenge her childhood hero, Salman Rushdie. Read the rest of this post...
Mariano Aguirre, revisiting his native
Argentina after thirty years' absence, discovers a capital city trapped
in the contradictions of globalisation.
From the late Ottoman era to the modern republic, Turks have found their passions, longings and even their politics mirrored in the work of England’s greatest playwright. Gönül Bakay tracks an enduring friendship. Read the rest of this post...
Islam, so often seen as the west’s “other” and depicted as a monocultural and intolerant religion, itself has centuries of experience of hosting and regulating a diverse cultural mosaic. Nushin Arbabzadah gazes through history’s mirror. Read the rest of this post...
On the door of SO36 in Berlin, the intricacies of managing diversity and creating spaces of freedom are all in a night’s work. Kira Kosnick explores getting the mix right at Gayhane HomOriental Clubnights. Read the rest of this post...
Being “tubli” in a “tubli” country is not as easy as it sounds. Ülle Allsalu on small beginnings and high expectations in Estonia. Read the rest of this post...
The murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh has left the Netherlands in turmoil and its reputation for tolerance in tatters. What does the second political murder in thirty months mean for the Dutch multiculturalist model? The strategist and author Theo Veenkamp looks back and thinks forward. Read the rest of this post...
In the New York subway, Mariano Aguirre sees into the divided, lonely heart of America – but glimpses fertile seeds in the post-election landscape. Read the rest of this post...
Serbs’ history has taught them stubbornness in the face of the world – and even of their own best interests. Read the rest of this post...
Western variants of multiculturalism and secularism are being challenged by religious demands for public recognition of faith. Instead of reinventing the wheel, the world should learn from India, says Rajeev Bhargava. Read the rest of this post...
The clandestine culture of illegal homosexuality in Britain generated a creative linguistic response. Tom Wicker traces a hidden history. Read the rest of this post...
The contemporary city, London especially, was supposed to be the model for the workable, cosmopolitan multicultural future. But neo–liberal globalisation and its disastrous consequences are reproducing in the city the growing inequalities of the world, argues the foremost analyst of multiculture. Read the rest of this post...
Sarah Lindon reports on openDemocracy’s event in September, exploring how London's diversity can contribute to an understanding of multiculture Read the rest of this post...
An immigrant to Canada traces official multiculturalism’s origins and finds an idea that is dead from the roots. Read the rest of this post...
The Poles perfected the art of survival under communism, and reinvented their language in the process; but at what cost to their soul? Read the rest of this post...
The current of anxiety among Britain’s centre–left establishment about race, diversity and national unity reflects a shift away from the post–1960s multicultural model. But is the recent demand for members of minority communities to “assimilate” based on reason or prejudice? And is the most visible signifier of diversity, Islam, the new black? Read the rest of this post...
Multiculturalism distorts the past, deforms the present, and diminishes the future. The best of America, says Ali Hossaini, shows the world a better route to a free, unified society: its name is assimilation. Read the rest of this post...
The American high–security prison is a primitive and violent world that encourages a retreat to racial bonding as one of the few guarantees of security. At the borders of white, Hispanic and black gang affiliation, between a criminal past and the hope of a future on the outside, long–term inmate Michael Santos takes us inside a multicultural battleground. Read the rest of this post...
Is multiculturalism a description of the existing world or a bridge to a better one? David Theo Goldberg, one of the foremost thinkers on issues of race, examines how ideas of nation, purity, and power are being challenged by new spatial understandings of the multicultural city. Read the rest of this post...
The many streams of one great river, African American experience, are retrieved and reimagined in the work of the historian and photographer Deborah Willis. Read the rest of this post...
The population in and around New Haven includes chickens, suburban neighbours and Yale students. Vron Ware observes how people's movements through the city reflect American patterns of social segregation and fear of difference Read the rest of this post...
The multiculturalist model that elevates difference to a social principle is under attack. People committed to creating a world of justice and equal rights should not waste time defending it, says Alana Lentin. Read the rest of this post...
The concept of multiculturalism, and the policies that stem from it, have played an important role in displacing the imperial ideal of assimilation, but in its fatal linkage with hard notions of ethnicity it is deeply conservative and increasingly obsolete. The challenge now is to develop a “post-hybridity” politics based on common human nature. Read the rest of this post...
In the first of a series tracing “the strange career of multiculturalism”, Paul Gilroy – leading thinker on race and racism, and currently chair of African American studies at Yale University – surveys the current debate in Britain, and calls for an end to its entrapment by “the problem of assimilation”. Read the rest of this post...
Elia Zureik – born Palestine, left Israel, lives Canada – is stopped in transit through Tel Aviv airport, and under the interrogator’s gaze discovers how deep and complex is the Israeli state’s ambition to define him. Read the rest of this post...
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