What is Post-Multiculturalism? Recent Trends in Legal and Political Discourse

In recent years, culturally diverse societies have faced increasing difficulties in accommodating cultural and religious diversity. Multiculturalism, once celebrated as a long-sought solution to the issues cultural diversity may raise, seems to have lost popularity, at least at a discursive level.1 The so-called retreat from multiculturalism has not only been confined to continental Europe, but it has been also evident in traditionally migrant-receiving societies such as Australia and Canada. Notwithstanding the absence of agreement about what comes aft er multiculturalism, there seems to be a strong consensus in both scholarly circles and public discourse that we are now in a postmulticultural era.2 In this chapter, we seek to unpack the meaning of postmulticulturalism and discuss its implications for culturally conditioned subjects. We define those subjects as individuals whose cultural, religious or ethnic identity is singled out from the rest of the population, and who are subject to legal and social discourses emphasising their diff erences. While unpacking the meaning of post-multiculturalism, we acknowledge that similar to the term multiculturalism, post-multiculturalism is a contested term.