The increasingly multicultural fabric of modern societies has given rise to many new issues and conflicts, as ethnic and national minorities demand recognition and support for their cultural identity. This book presents a new conception of the rights and status of minority cultures. It argues that certain sorts of `collective rights' for minority cultures are consistent with liberal democratic principles, and that standard liberal objections to recognizing such rights on grounds of individual freedom, social justice, and national unity, can be answered. However, Professor Kymlicka emphasises that no single formula can be applied to all groups and that the needs and aspirations of immigrants are very different from those of indigenous peoples and national minorities. The book discusses issues such as language rights, group representation, religious education, federalism, and secession - issues which are central to understanding multicultural politics, but which have been surprisingly neglected in contemporary liberal theory.

Is it possible, in a modern, pluralistic society, to promote common bonds of citizenship while at the same time accommodating and showing respect for ethnocultural diversity? 'Citizenship' and 'diversity' have been two of the major topics of debate in both democratic politics and political theory over the past decade. Much has been written about the importance of citizenship, civic identities, and civic virtues for the functioning of liberal democracies, and the need to accommodate the ethnocultural, linguistic, and religious pluralism that is a fact of life in most modern states. By and large, however, these two topics have been largely discussed in mutual isolation. Much of the writing on the issues of both citizenship and diversity remains rather abstract and general and disconnected from the specific issues of public policy and institutional design. Citizenship in Diverse Societies examines the specific points of conflict and convergence between concerns for citizenship and diversity in democratic societies and reassesses and refines existing theories of 'diverse citizenship' by examining these theories in the light of actual practices and policies of pluralistic democracies.

This topical book examines the debates around contemporary conflicts between liberal democracies and increasingly vociferous special interest groups within society. It analyses the way a new sense of difference and the growth of multi-culturalism are straining modern notions of citizenship and rights, looking in particular at how ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe have escalated to international tragedies, while in the US and Canada, race, ethnicity and radical feminism are at the heart of a social conflict which challenges national identity and the unity of the state.

Contrary to predictions that it would become increasingly redundant in a globalizing world, citizenship is back with a vengeance. The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship brings together leading experts in law, philosophy, political science, economics, sociology, and geography to provide a multidisciplinary, comparative discussion of different dimensions of citizenship: as legal status and political membership; as rights and obligations; as identity and belonging; as civic virtues and practices of engagement; and as a discourse of political and social equality or responsibility for a common good. The contributors engage with some of the oldest normative and substantive quandaries in the literature, dilemmas that have renewed salience in today's political climate. As well as setting an agenda for future theoretical and empirical explorations, this Handbook explores the state of citizenship today in an accessible and engaging manner that will appeal to a wide academic and non-academic audience. Chapters highlight variations in citizenship regimes practiced in different countries, from immigrant states to 'non-western' contexts, from settler societies to newly independent states, attentive to both migrants and those who never cross an international border. Topics include the 'selling' of citizenship, multilevel citizenship, in-between statuses, citizenship laws, post-colonial citizenship, the impact of technological change on citizenship, and other cutting-edge issues. This Handbook is the major reference work for those engaged with citizenship from a legal, political, and cultural perspective. Written by the most knowledgeable senior and emerging scholars in their fields, this comprehensive volume offers state-of-the-art analyses of the main challenges and prospects of citizenship in today's world of increased migration and globalization. Special emphasis is put on the question of whether inclusive and egalitarian citizenship can provide political legitimacy in a turbulent world of exploding social inequality and resurgent populism.

This book examines claims for recognition of cultural difference from immigrant and Indigenous minorities, highlighting the ways in which they intersect with ideas of national community. Busbridge argues that there is an important, albeit under-explored, relationship between nation and multicultural politics of recognition. Drawing on the Australian context, the book explores how nation features as a productive, if somewhat ambivalent, discursive resource in contemporary Muslim and Aboriginal struggles to be recognised. In demanding recognition, minorities enter into the business of ‘making the nation’ by positing alternative conceptions of national identity, culture and belonging that are more attentive to their differences and claims. This dynamic is engaged as an expression of ‘postcolonial citizenship’. Postcolonial citizenship is imagined in terms of the ways in which minority groups actualise multicultural realities through rewriting ideas of national community. It underlines the critical importance of revising the power relations that deem some groups ‘more national’ and others less so – and which, in Western multicultural societies, are typically tied to notions of the ‘West’ and its ‘others’. This book is an important conceptual, theoretical and political intervention that brings postcolonialism and multiculturalism into dialogue on the increasingly potent issues of nation and national identity. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, politics, postcolonial studies, culture, identity and nation.

Includes statistics.

Most foundational works in political philosophy have made fundamentally false and far-reaching assumptions concerning the culturally homogeneous character of the polity.Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy, andSelf-Determination in Multicultural Societies provides a much needed corrective to conventional accounts of the normative foundations of the state by reconceptualizing some of the fundamental issues in political theory from a perspective that recognizes the culturally pluralistic character of contemporary democracies. Among the issues considered are democratic deliberation in multicultural societies, the justification and function of political communities, the nature of self-determination, the justification of cultural rights, and the moral rationale for regional self-governance and secession. This work is suitable for graduate and upper-division undergraduate courses in political philosophy and political science, as well as the lay reader interested in understanding the major sources of conflict and instability in democratic societies.

Uses public opinion on LGBT equality to show an evolutionary shift toward deliberative democracy in which everyone has a voice.

Achieving socio-political cohesion in a community with significant ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity is a difficult challenge in contemporary liberal democracies. In the quest for neutrality, public policies and institutions shaped by the needs of the majority can inadvertently marginalize minority interests. Minority groups must therefore translate their desire for cultural recognition into terms that, ironically, often minimize cultural difference. Intercultural Deliberation and the Politics of Minority Rights examines the relationship between this minority rights paradox and cultural difference, building a compelling case for an inclusive approach to navigating minority rights claims. R.E. Lowe-Walker’s intercultural deliberation is designed to mitigate the injustices imposed by majority norms. Instead of asking what the liberal state can tolerate, she asks how our understanding of difference affects our interpretation of minority claims, shifting the focus from how to limit difference toward inclusive deliberations. This important work thus serves as a measure of social justice and a vehicle for social change.

This book has been written for people who make decisions and bring about change, at all sorts of levels, and in a wide range of disciplines. Researchers and managers have a duty to collaborate with clinicians, to understand and make the most of each others' skills. This necessitates a new paradigm of health service research which is part of a change management culture and change promotion.