《Has multiculturalism failed The》.pdf

‘Has multiculturalism failed?’ The importance of lay knowledge and everyday practice Caroline Howarth1 Eleni Andreouli2 Abstract Multiculturalism has been a heavily debated term within Western political discourse and academic discussions. In the British political sphere, multiculturalism is increasingly seen as a failed project that encourages inter-group segregation. By contrast, academic discussions have focused on the institutional frameworks to be employed in order to advance cultural equality, integration and positive intergroup relations. Against this background, this paper proposes a social psychological approach to multiculturalism that seeks to fill in a gap in current multiculturalism research by studying multiculturalism as a system of lay knowledge and as an everyday practice. Rather than assume or impose one particular definition of multiculturalism, we argue that successful social policy and public debate need to rest on a more in-depth understanding of how lay people construe and relate to multiculturalism in the context of their everyday lives. It is argued that a social psychological approach can enrich our understanding of multiculturalism by enabling us to study the very practice of inter- cultural interactions and inter-cultural identities in context. Introduction Multiculturalism has been largely seen as a normative framework and a set of state policies which advance tolerance and advocate the recognition of cultural difference. In the United Kingdom, which has historically assumed a race relations approach to equality (Favell 2001), multiculturalism was adopted as an appropriate framework for dealing with cultural difference. Multiculturalism has indeed been a key term in British political discourse over the