226 CHAPTER 11
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW The 1960s and 1970s witnessed a trend towards growing political assertiveness among minority groups, sometimes manifest in the form of ethnocultural nationalism . This development affected parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, but it had a particular impact inNorthAmerica, Australasia andWestern Europe, where it was typically expressed through a quest for cultural or ethnic recognition within a liberal-democratic framework. This was, for example, evident among the French-speaking people of Quebec in Canada, in the rise of Scottish and Welsh nationalism in the UK, and in the growth of separatist movements in Catalonia and the Basque region in Spain, Corsica in France, and Flanders in Belgium. A trend towards ethnic assertiveness was also found among the Native Americans in Canada and theUSA, the aboriginal peoples inAustralia, and theMaoris inNewZealand. In response to these pressures, a growing number of countries adopted ‘official’ multiculturalism policies, the 1988 Canadian Multiculturalism Act being perhaps the classic example. This Act acknowledges the freedom of all members of Canadian society to preserve, enhance and share their cultural heritage, and endorses the principle of bilingualism . A common theme among these emergent forms of ethnic politics was the desire to challenge economic and social marginalization, and sometimes racial oppression. In this sense, ethnic politics was a vehicle for political liberation, its enemy being structural disadvantage and ingrained inequality. For black communities in North America and Western Europe, for instance, the establishment of an ethnic identity provided a means of confronting a dominant white culture that had traditionally emphasized their inferiority and demanded subservience. Apart from growing assertiveness among established minority groups, multicultural politics has also been strengthened by trends in international migration since 1945 that have significantly widened cultural diversity in many societies. Migration rates rose steeply in the early post-1945 period, both as people tried to escape from poverty by looking to economic opportunities abroad, and Western as states sought to recruit workers from abroad to help in the process of postwar reconstruction. This saw, for example, massive migration to the Middle East from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and a growing number of Chinese migrants in Africa. In the case of European states, migration routes were often shaped by links to former colonies. Immigration into the UK thus came mainly from the West Indies and the Indian subcontinent, while immigration in France came largely from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. In the case of West Germany, immigrants were Gastarbeiter (guest workers), usually recruited from Turkey or Yugoslavia. These trends have nevertheless intensified in the post-Cold War period, fuelled by a combination of an upsurge in war, ethnic conflict and political upheaval, and deepening economic fault-lines exposed by the advance of globalization
(see p. 21). More and more societies are, as a result, characterized by ethnic diversity, meaning that the monocultural nation-state has become very much the exception and not the rule. By the early 2000s, a growing number of Western states, including virtually all the member states of the European Union, had responded to such developments by incorporating multiculturalism in some way into public policy. This has been particularly evident in countries such as Belgium, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Nevertheless, the tide may have turned against multiculturalism. It has
Ethnocultural nationalism: A form of nationalism that is fuelled primarily by a keen sense of ethnic and cultural distinctiveness and the desire to preserve it. Bilingualism: The ability to speak two languages, or the widespread practice in society of speaking two languages.
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