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Immigration, Multiculturalism, and the Social Contract

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

Joseph Heath
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Extract

Since the failure of the Meech Lake constitutional reforms and the crisis of national unity prompted by the most recent Quebec referendum, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act has been subjected to particularly intense and hostile scrutiny. While some of the criticism of this policy reflects merely parochial adherence to particular cultural or religious traditions, some of it has raised more significant doubts about the internal coherence, efficacy, and overall desirability of the policy. Most importantly, the multiculturalism policy is faulted for attempting to pursue two simultaneously unachievable goals, viz., to integrate ethnic minority groups into the dominant institutions of the society, while at the same time to protect them against various pressures to assimilate to the dominant culture. Critics have pointed out that social institutions and cultural values are interdependent. Not only do cultural value systems provide the central legitimations for social institutions, but the internalization of these values through socialization processes provides agents with their primary motivation for conforming to institutional expectations. This means that integrating an agent into a system of institutions can only be achieved by assimilating the agent to its underlying cultural system.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , July 1997 , pp. 343 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

1. The multiculturalism policy commits the government to remove any barriers impeding the integration of ethnic minorities into a variety of primary social institutions; to maintain a stance of official neutrality vis-à-vis the particular cultural practices and commitments of its citizenry; to promote the preservation of heritage languages; and to treat cultural diversity as an important social good. See Multiculturalism and Citizenship Canada, The Canadian Multiculturalism Act: A Guide for Canadians. Ci96–53 (1990).

2. For an overview of this criticism, see Yasmeen Abu-Laban & Daiva Stasiulis, “Ethnic Pluralism under Siege: Popular and Partisan Opposition to Multiculturalism” (1992) 18 Can. Publ. Pol.—Analyse de Politiques 365.

3. Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions (Toronto, ON: Penguin, 1994) at 70–77.

4. Howard Brotz, “Multiculturalism in Canada: A Muddle” (1980) 6 Can. Publ. Pol.—Analyse de Politiques 41.

5. See Louis-Jacques Dorais, Lois Foster & David Stockley, “Multiculturalism and Integration” in Howard Adelman, Allan Borowski, Meyer Burstein & Lois Foster, eds., Immigration and Refugee Policy, vol. 2 (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1994) 372 at 372.

6. See Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

7. The fact that both French and Aboriginal groups have criticized the policy as a surreptitious attempt to reduce their status to that of another ethnic minority is evidence that the policy is, in principle, not intended to do so. Also, it is worth noting that in the United States, blacks who were introduced to the continent as slaves do not fall clearly into either category.

8. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993) at 40–41.

9. John Rawls, “The Law of Peoples” in Stephen Shute & Susan Hurley, eds., On Human Rights (New York: Basic Books, 1993) 41 at 46.

10. Joseph H. Carens, “Migration and morality: A liberal egalitarian perspective” in Brian Barry & Robert E. Goodin, eds., Free Movement: Ethical Issues in the Transnational Migration of People and Money (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992) 25 at 26.

11. See Carens, ibid.; cf. Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice and the Liberal State (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1980).

12. See Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).

13. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1971) at 11.

14. Supra note 9 at 46.

15. At the level of international relations, Rawls explicitly outlines a “nonideal” version of his theory to deal with situations involving noncompliance. Ibid, at 52.

16. Alan O. Sykes provides an excellent survey of the negative externalities that immigration can generate in the public sector, in “The Welfare Economics of Immigration Law: A Theoretical Survey with an Analysis of U.S. Policy” in Warren F. Schwartz, ed., Justice in Immigration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 158 at 168–76.

17. It is considerations such as these that motivate Rawls to endorse the right to limit immigration, supra note 9 at 57.

18. It is important to note that this is not a Hobbesian claim: “given that nations exist in a state of nature, there is no justice among them,” but rather the Kantian one: “given that nations exist in a state of nature, compliance with the rules of justice cannot be expected.”

19. Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) at 165.

20. Ibid, at 165–66. Reference to A. Seltzer, “Acculturation and Mental Disorder in the Inuit” (1980) 25 Can. J. of Psychiatry 173.

21. Supra note 6 at 76.

22. Ibid, at 27–30.

23. The examples that spring to mind most readily are the European colonization of western Canada in the late 19th century, and of Palestine during the British mandate, which were both technically achieved through immigration (although there was significant use of force in both cases). Kymlicka’s argument suggests that it was not only the use of force that rendered these episodes morally objectionable. Even if they had been achieved peacefully, the disruptive effects upon the indigenous cultures would, in both cases, serve as legitimate grounds for opposition.

24. In bargaining terms, actual agreements take the status quo as the initial bargaining point, whereas social contracts take some idealized point.

25. In the early history of social contract theory, some theorists maintained that insofar as each citizen possessed a right of exit from their country of residence, political obligations were in fact all voluntarily incurred. However, it was quickly pointed out that the costs associated with emigration are so high that nationality is de facto involuntary. Hume argued, for instance, that while passengers on a ship at sea have a “right of exit,” viz., jumping overboard, it is not a live option. It should therefore be kept in mind that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary is determined by some notion of which options an individual could reasonably be expected to exercise.

26. See Ronald Dworkin, “What is equality? Part I: Equality of Welfare” (1981) 10 Phil. & Publ. Affairs 185 and Ronald Dworkin, “What is equality? Part II: Equality of Resources” (1981) 10 Phil. & Publ. Affairs 283.

27. See Talcott Parsons, The Social System (New York: Free Press, 1951).

28. Supra note 19 at 188.

29. Supra note 26 at 285.

30. Kymlicka also includes a third class of “special representation rights,” but these are not especially relevant to the current argument. See supra note 6 at 37.

31. Similarly, there is a system of resource redistribution, since English-Canadians subsidize various institutions committed to the preservation of the French language, just as members of both linguistic majorities provide transfers to Aboriginal communities.

32. Hence the ambiguity in the term “sovereignty” as it is used by Québécois and Natives. In the Canadian political lexicon, the demand for sovereignty is a demand for self-government rights, i.e. accommodation through group-differentiated institutional structures. However, since this demand is usually backed by the threat of secession, the sovereigntist can easily be confused with the separatist. The difference is that the sovereigntist’s threat to secede is a legitimate liberal response to the denial of self-government rights, while the separatist’s unconditional demand for secession is usually the expression of a desire to develop or maintain ascriptive forms of solidarity.

33. The case of immigrants participating in the Quebec separatist movement is controversial, precisely because it presents a borderline case.

34. In Rawlsian terms, self-government rights take effect at stage one, the determination of the basic structure, while polyethnic rights are relevant at stage two, the implementation of this basic structure. See supra note 8 at 140–44.

35. The position of blacks in the United States is unique in that they have a legitimate claim to self-government rights (having been originally brought to the Americas involuntarily), but lack territorial concentration, thereby making it near-impossible to institutionalize these rights through the usual federal structures. Affirmative action programs in the United States can be seen as an attempt to build structural pluralism into every major social institution, in such a way as to respect the legitimate anti-integrationist claims of the black community. In this respect, American and Canadian affirmative action programs have very little in common, since the latter are almost invariably aimed at promoting integration, rather than helping minorities resist it.

36. Supra note 3 at 139.

37. Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) at 166.

38. Francis Fukayama, Trust (London: Penguin, 1996) at 305.

39. The extent to which European-stock value systems have been liberalized in North America is often underestimated. Michael Lind, in The Next American Nation (New York: Free Press, 1995), has documented the way that Anglo-Americans in the early twentieth century complained bitterly about the flood of immigrants from the “unassimilatable” Irish, German, Italian and Polish races. Most younger North Americans now find this sort of talk hard to take seriously, although it retains considerable currency in Europe proper.

40. Although this may be more a problem of perception than reality, since passages like 3(1)c, which commits the Government of Canada to “promote the full and equitable participation of individuals and communities of all origins in the continuing evolution and shaping of all aspects of Canadian society, and assist them in the elimination of any barrier to such participation,” supra note 1 at 12, are hard to read as anti-integrationist.

41. Or 533 nations, depending on how you count.

42. William R. Brubaker, “Citizenship and Naturalization” in William Brubaker, ed., Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in Europe and North America (New York: University Press of America, 1989) 99 at 118.

43. It should be noted that although a “communitarian” writer like Charles Taylor recognizes this distinction (he refers to “first-level” and “second-level” diversity), he has no principled way of drawing it. Instead, he relies upon the observation that ethnic minority groups simply do not “want” self-government rights, while Québécois do. Charles Taylor, Reconciling the Solitudes (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993) 181.