Overview
- Exploring multiculturalism and diversity issues using an extensive national survey
- Diversity of findings on many different ethnic, racial and religious minorities, comparison of Quebec and rest of Canada
- Interdisciplinary and internationally-known scholars in sociology and psychology
- Findings challenge uncritically optimistic or pessimistic views of multiculturalism
- New proposals for multiculturalism policy
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Does multiculturalism ‘work’? Does multiculturalism policy create social cohesion, or undermine it? Multiculturalism was introduced in Canada in the 1970s and widely adopted internationally, but more recently has been hotly debated, amid new concerns about social, cultural, and political impacts of immigration. Advocates praise multiculturalism for its emphasis on special recognition for cultural minorities as facilitating their social integration, while opponents charge that multiculturalism threatens social cohesion by encouraging social isolation.
Multiculturalism is thus rooted in a theory of human behaviour, and this book examines the empirical validity of some of its basic propositions, focusing on Canada as the country for which the most enthusiastic claims for multiculturalism have been made. The analysis draws on the massive national Ethnic Diversity Survey of over 41,000 Canadians in 2002, the most extensive survey yet conducted on this question.
The analysis provides a new and more nuanced understanding of the complex relation between multiculturalism and social cohesion, challenging uncritically optimistic or pessimistic views. Ethnic community ties facilitate some aspects of social integration, while discouraging others. For racial minorities, relations within and outside minority communities are greatly complicated by more frequent experiences of discrimination and inequality, slowing processes of social integration. Implications for multicultural policies emphasize that race relations present important challenges across Quebec and the rest of Canada, including for the new religious minorities, and that ethnic community development requires more explicit support for social integration.
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Multiculturalism and Social Cohesion
Book Subtitle: Potentials and Challenges of Diversity
Authors: Jeffrey G. Reitz, Raymond Breton, Karen K. Dion, Kenneth L. Dion, Mai B. Phan, Rupa Banerjee
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9958-8
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-9957-1Published: 27 April 2009
Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-8228-2Published: 19 October 2010
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4020-9958-8Published: 05 April 2009
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 194
Topics: Anthropology, Sociology, general, Psychology, general, Population Economics, Social Sciences, general